Remembering and giving hope

A President and a Prime Minister, MPs and ministers looked on as 24 coffins were brought forward in an unusual funeral on Thursday, 23rd April 2015.  Unusual as all who were mourned had numbers but no known names.  All the honours of a state funeral were granted, yet there were no relatives to share who they were, what made them laugh, where they came from.

Picture by Peter Cheney

On the Saturday beforehand (18th), a 20-metre boat carrying up to seven hundred people capsized between Lampedusa and Libya. Only twenty-eight people survived, rescued by vessels which responded to their call for help.

While these 20 men and four boys were treated with no dignity by those who smuggled them out to sea, the ceremony at Mater Dei respectfully recognised their value as “fellow brethren” in the words of Bishop Mario Grech.  

The event itself was co-led by him and Imam Mohammed El Saadi, as those whom they remembered could have come from either faith. Other than a Bible found in one pocket, and a few scraps of paper in Tigrinya (spoken in Eritrea and Ethiopia), there was little left to tell their stories.  Everyone who was there on that day will, no doubt, always remember one white casket for the youngest boy; he was only about 10 years old.

For some time afterwards, a laminated sheet marked where they now rest in a plot just beside Addolorata Cemetery’s entrance from Triq Hal Luqa. Then, in May 2019, a group of organisations involved in advocacy for migrants laid down a small black granite memorial to honour their memory.

It’s very fitting that this little corner of Malta is so quiet. Factories, flats and offices can be glimpsed through the trees – the places creating the better opportunities sought by everyone who comes here for work. 

Thoughts naturally turn to all the chances to live life well, to travel, to love and be loved, which many of us enjoy but which each of these men have missed. A visit here is an uncomfortable honour.  Missing migrants can be identified but distance (and everyday struggles back home) makes it difficult for families to come forward. For now, it falls to others to pay their respects, and that is in itself a humbling honour.

The discomfort, though, comes from knowing that their deaths will not have been not the first – nor the last – in a shameful time in history, of lives and potential lost in open sea, caught between the greed of traffickers and rescues which have become scarcer or harder to organise over time.

There is a need to remember – this was probably the Mediterranean’s worst peacetime shipwreck.  And African and Asian migrants continue to die at sea almost every week.  These boats are often unseen by us Westerners … but imagine how bright the lights of our shores look like from them in the darkness of the night.

As Bishop Grech reflected on that morning, genuine mercy and love “can bring these victims out of anonymity and into our hearts as our neighbours.” Imam El Saadi added: “The tragic end of these people’s lives raises questions about whether we are all living the properties of love, dignity, peace and solidarity.”

One answer that should unite us is that no-one deserves to die at sea, or in the sands of a desert, wherever we have come from.  Calling on those in power to make rescues happen (and warn of the dangers on the journey) is perhaps the best gift we can give to people at risk who have the same hopes, dreams and potential as we do.