E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Version

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 12, 2000; Page A17

ROME, July 11 –– More than 220 illegal migrants--including 50 children--were rescued by the Italian coast guard Monday evening from a fishing vessel that foundered on a sandbar off this country's southern tip. They were the latest evidence of a booming trade in humans desperate to find a better life in Western Europe.

Police said the boat evidently set sail from Turkey, one of the principal points of departure for people who are secretly moved by the hundreds of thousands into Europe by organized criminal groups. Officials say the gangs reap big profits while incurring little risk of prosecution.

The vessel foundered off Calabria, a province at the toe of the Italian peninsula where criminal activity has long flourished. Last year, more than 20,000 illegal migrants were detained by authorities after coming ashore in the area and were subsequently repatriated to their home countries. Many more are believed to have eluded capture.

Those rescued Monday night included Turks, Iranian Kurds, Pakistanis and Moroccans, according to wire service reports and Massimo Iorfida, a coast guard official in the nearby port of Roccella Ionica. Along with Albanians, these groups constitute the bulk of people attempting to gate-crash into developed European countries.

With a long seacoast, Italy is a major point of entry for illegal migrants. They then travel with relative ease across porous European Union borders to reach Germany, Switzerland and other prosperous nations to the north.

Police in Italy and and other European countries have said they believe that migrant smuggling is now so profitable that it has fallen under the control of Italian, Albanian and Turkish criminal gangs. "Vehicles, ships and boats that once brought over drugs, now bring over . . . illegal immigrants" and other contraband, including cigarettes, a senior police official here said.

Italian police and dozens of coast guard vessels maintain a nightly vigil along the country's eastern coastline. Their chief quarry are rubber dinghies fitted with high-powered outboard motors that attempt to put ashore people who pay fees ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. The handlers work with local crime groups to arrange transportation for the migrants to Rome, or to Naples on the opposite coast.

Last night, police arrested two Turkish crew members aboard the foundering vessel. Last year, the coast guard seized a similar vessel carrying more than a hundred illegal migrants. Finding it registered to the Bulgarian government, they returned both the vessel and the crew after Bulgarian officials pleaded ignorance of its use for smuggling.

Sometimes, migrant-laden vessels capsize, or crewmen try to escape capture by tossing children overboard as coast guard vessels draw near. It is not known how many illegal migrants have perished while attempting to enter Western Europe, but the risks were highlighted three weeks ago when 58 Chinese migrants suffocated in the trailer of a truck that had been ferried from Belgium to Britain.

Previous Article          Back to the top          Next Article