"I would like to send to my family in Bassada a sum of money. Please excuse me and goodbye. This is the end of my life in this big Moroccan sea."
This sad note scribbled on a piece of paper was among the few items local police investigators found on board the ill-fated boat discovered off the St Philip coast April 29.
Tucked between 11 badly decomposed bodies, the message, written in Senagalese, told the tale of surrender – parting words from one of an estimated 52 West Africans who, in their bid for a better life, perished or succumbed to the bowels of the North Atlantic Ocean.
More at the BBC.
It is thought the men were attempting to reach Spain's Canary Islands.
Coastguards brought the 20ft (6m) unmarked boat into port at Bridgetown after the gruesome discovery was made by a local fisherman in April.
Barbados police have said the cause of the deaths was starvation and dehydration.
Faut de Pire on the 'root cause' of the tragedy. Last year, 700,000 illegal immigrants were granted an amnesty by the incoming Spanish Socialists.
"There was just one problem. Far from solving the country's illegal immigration problem, the Spanish amnesty instead triggered a new wave of migration. Spain's Canary Islands, which lie just off the African coast, have over the past year witnessed a surge in illegal entries, with boatloads of mainly sub-Saharan Africans being intercepted there on an almost daily basis. "
6 comments:
On the World Service the other night there was a woman from the EU (or UN) in the Canaries talking about the welfare of arriving migrants and the need to place them (in Spain proper?). No, that doesnt sound right I was thinking, you need to make it clear that everyone of them will be immediately deported asap.
I think any society that values it's right to decide who lives in it should poster all the harbour towns where these Africans embark with pictures of those who died.
African immigration should be strongly discouraged as, IMHO due to cultural failure, they seem unlikely to be assets to western society. Of course there are useful people in Africa and we should try an encourage them, whilst discouraging the net-loss.
Laban,
Why is it always assumed migrants are seeking a 'better life'?
"Of course, there are useful people in Africa ..."
Have you not heard of regression to the mean?
The Africanisation of the European gene pool is racial destruction.
guessedworker, its funny how when talking about humans the mainstream pretty much deny all differences, but when I read nation geographic (and I get the feeling a lot of the writers are bleeding heart leftists) they complain like hell about domestic dogs 'polluting' the gene pool of wild dogs and wolves causing the loss of the distinct species.
Don't forget wolves and dogs are 99% the same DNA!
Charles Martel - Why complicate things with an exchange programme, which our civilisation doesn't need? Britain's full up. Just deport the jihadis.
Or, given that the "vast moderate majority of Muslims" seems to be unable to contain this "tiny minority" of violent killers, perhaps the time for mass deportations draws nigh.
This massive movement of poor, illiterate, deeply ignorant people, many of them adherents of a violent, intolerant medieval cult, must be contained. With the hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 50 years, and Western expertise over the same time period, they should have sorted out their own hellholes by now. That they haven't isn't the fault of the West.
Frankly, that was a hellish way to die and my heart goes out to those men for their suffering, but they set out on a journey to get something for nothing. It didn't work out. anticitizenone is correct when he says that the photos of those poor men who died should be plastered at every port in Africa where similar people embark on a journey to the lands of milk and honey.
- anonymousette
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