This June 20 is World Refugee Day and it could not come under worse circumstances. Last day 14 hundreds of people died or disappeared in the waters of Kalamata, Greece. They were aboard a fishing boat that capsized with some 750 people on board, according to the International Organization for Migration. It is necessary for such an event to occur for the drama to appear on the cover.
At the moment, only 104 people have been rescued alive and 81 bodies have been recovered, while the possibility of finding more people alive is practically impossible. This tragedy is added to that of last February, when another fragile overloaded boat sank a few meters from the coast of Steccato di Cutro, in the Italian region of Calabria: almost a hundred deaths.
“It is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions, even more so because it was totally preventable,” said Adriana Tidona, spokesperson for Amnesty International on migration, about the events in Kalamata. This organization, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1977, demands that help be provided to the survivors and calls for “an urgent, exhaustive, independent and impartial investigation into what happened.”
Amnesty International questions the response of the Greek coast guard, which alleges that the occupants of the boat refused their help. There are still, says Adriana Tidona, many unanswered questions: “Why wasn’t a search and rescue operation launched earlier? Why did the ship capsize? How many people perished and how many have survived? Their families deserve transparency, truth and justice.”
There are tragedies that occupy the front pages of the international press from time to time. And then there are buried tragedies, daily. This was denounced by the Community of Sant’Egidio, which recalls that “65,000 migrants have died or disappeared since 1990 in their attempt to reach Europe.” There are more than five deaths a day for 33 years “in the Mediterranean or on land immigration routes to Europe.”
Sant’Egidio has participated in numerous peace processes in countries in conflict and has declared war on lack of solidarity, xenophobia and radicalism, religious or of any other kind. This movement carries out an endless number of activities, such as accompanying and helping the elderly who live alone, organizing soup kitchens and welcoming those fleeing war or famine with open arms.
This Wednesday the Community of Sant’Egidio will carry out another of these activities at its headquarters in Barcelona, ??the basilica of the holy martyrs Just and Pastor, where it will organize a prayer in memory of those 65,000 people. Preventing the Mare Nostrum from continuing to be a Mare Mortum, says Saint Egidio, is a matter of honor: “The honor of our continent depends on avoiding tragedies at sea, based on values ??of justice and humanity.”
So many good things can be said about the Community of Sant’Egidio that it is difficult to begin. Let this altruistic and supportive entity, recognized and praised by the Vatican, be the one to define itself: “The institutions welcome, we integrate.” But this is only one of the realities of a multifaceted association present in more than 70 countries. If something defines it, it is that it puts a face to the disinherited of the Earth. Face and…
Face, name and surname. Poverty, loneliness and lack of opportunities are not an entelechy, a scourge that affects the invisible half of humanity. Sant’Egidio has specialized in making visible that hidden side of the moon that many do not want to see. This movement, founded in 1968 by Andrea Riccardi in Italy, claims that the solutions are visible to the whole world. It only takes the will to apply them.
Pope Francis held a meeting in March with refugees saved thanks to humanitarian corridors, the option defended by the Community of Sant’Egidio to fight against human trafficking. “It is necessary to extend this model and open more legal routes for migration,” the Pope said. This Wednesday the victims will be remembered in a ceremony in Barcelona. On Thursday there will be five more. And another five on Friday. AND…