SOS from the Mediterranean

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People crossing the Central Mediterranean in rubber boats are always putting their lives in danger. Now a bleak situation is made worse by Covid 19 as ports in Malta and Italy are closed to migrants and coastguards are reluctant to mount rescue operations. Over the Easter weekend several boats set out from the Libyan coast. Some made it to Sicily themselves. Two others drifted for days. The engines were broken and the people, including children and babies, ran out of food and water. Twelve people died. Dozens of others were picked up and taken back to Libya where they now languish in hellish detention centres. Others made it to Europe. This is the story of that weekend, told through recordings of distress calls from the boats and the testimony of a network of activists as they monitored the desperate situation.

Producer and presenter: Lucy Proctor

(Image: Migrants in a dinghy at sea. Credit: Reuters/Yannis Behrakis)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thanks for choosing to listen to this edition of assignment.
0:02.8	It's a story that caught my eye as I scrolled through Twitter over the Easter weekend.
0:07.0	While I was bald in lockdown but safe, an NGO was broadcasting the plight of several boatloads of migrants trying to get to Europe
0:14.4	drifting in two meter waves with children and babies on board and no sign of any
0:19.0	rescue. So I got in touch to find out what was going on.
0:33.0	Hello? Hello?
0:34.0	No, it's mine.
0:35.0	Yes. Yes, I hear you.
0:37.0	Good Friday, April the 10th.
0:39.0	Location.
0:40.0	34 45, 10, north, north, 14, 0.51 east.
0:46.7	Halfway between Libya and Malta.
0:48.8	No, we haven't seen any road.
0:52.4	A rubber dinghy floats in Europe's Mediterranean Sea.
0:56.0	The engine has failed.
0:58.0	47 people are on board.
1:02.0	They've been at sea for nearly two days and there's no more food or water.
1:07.0	Their one lifeline is a satellite phone.
1:19.0	2,000 miles away, a volunteer call handler tries to calm them down.
1:24.0	She asks the Maltese and Italian coast guards to go out to the boat.
1:31.0	Nothing. They tell her the ports are closed because of coronavirus, desperate to to attract attention to the migrants plight,
1:35.0	her colleagues published this recording on social media.
	...

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