I was near, almost to the coast, when help came.

Why Lampedusa remains an island of hope for migrants

At the moment, it is among the coffins buried in a cemetery on the mainland of Sicily. Mulugeta knows, because it was up to him to identify the corpse. Like the majority of the migrants who have arrived in Lampedusa this year — a total of 13, so far, according to the Italian interior ministry — the polite, quietly-spoken year-old comes from a country that, due to internal conflict and repression, is deemed "refugee-producing".

Somalia, another nation in turmoil, is the third biggest country of provenance. Between them, these nations account for more than 18, people. There is clearly no shortage of people for whom the huge risks of the sea crossing outweigh those of staying at home. Everybody knows," says Mulugeta.

Lampedusa: Island Symbolising ‘Beacon of Hope’ for Open Borders Campaigners Is ‘Collapsing’

But we don't have any option. Almost exactly the same words come from Nisar Salam Aish, a year-old husband and father from Damascus whose family has fled to Jordan and who hopes that, once he has established himself in Europe , he will be able to bring them to join him. I can't believe I am in Italy, alive. But there is not any choice for us.

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Under the still-hot October sun, the Syrian breaks down in tears as he recounts his brother's fatal shooting earlier this year in the civil war. His wife and two children, aged five and 11, first fled to Daraa, near the border with Jordan. But because of the ongoing violence, they left the country altogether. He, meanwhile, decided he could no longer stay in Damascus, so left for Egypt for two months, then Libya for three months — all to get to Lampedusa, where he does not want to be at all.

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The Syrian is not alone in his reluctance to stay in Italy, although, according to EU rules, he must apply for asylum in his first point of entry into the bloc. They believe that other EU countries, for example Sweden, can instead guarantee the right to study, the right to work, the right to have an appropriate house. If the boat passengers are unsure about Italy before they arrived in Lampedusa, the facilities on the island are not, at the moment, likely to change their minds.

Lampedusa: Island Symbolising 'Beacon of Hope' for Open Borders Campaigners Is 'Collapsing'

Surrounded by sloping shrubland outside the town, the reception centre to which the migrants are taken is currently hugely overcrowded. The numbers fluctuate daily, but on Tuesday afternoon it had registered migrants, including minors, both with families and without. The centre — an entire wing of which lies burned out after a fire several years ago — has space for , maximum , people. We want people to be transferred [to other centres on the Italian mainland] as soon as possible," says Maurizio Molina, senior protection associate at UNHCR Italy and one of the team working at the centre in the aftermath of this month's disasters.


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Molina admits to feeling tired. He is trying to connect families who were separated in the joint Maltese-Italian rescue mission on Friday. As a first-level reception centre, the Lampedusa facility is not supposed to house people for "more than 48 hours, 76 at the very most" before transferring them to the mainland for more sophisticated asylum screening, says Viviana Valastro of Save the Children Italy.

But in recent weeks this has gone out of the window. NGO workers say there simply is not enough give in the system — not only in Lampedusa, but in Italy as a whole. Most worryingly for Valastro is the situation of the children. Behind her, as dusk falls, families ready makeshift camps for the night, a Syrian flag can be seen hanging amid the trees, and children play with balls in the very limited space.

Sicilian regional authorities have declared a state of emergency on the island, a move that should free up funds for aid workers. Valastro is also pleased that they have at last won permission to let minors out to play in a special child-friendly area for two hours every morning and two hours every afternoon. Surveying the camp from on high, above the hillsides strung with washing lines and studded with groups of potential refugees, Emanuele Billardello, a genial taxi driver born and bred in Lampedusa, says he feels great sadness.

He remembers when the island was a place known not for migrant deaths and institutional failures, but cheap and cheerful tourism. Now it is different — even if the tourist industry, decimated in during the Arab Spring when huge numbers of migrants paralysed the island, picked up this year due to continued violence in Egypt, the visit of the pope, and — of course — the TripAdvisor fame of spiaggia dei conigli — literally, "rabbits' beach". But, in its own way, Lampedusa is building itself a new identity — one of collective compassion and solidarity with those most marginalised. Last week, there were even suggestions it should win the Nobel prize for peace.

That might be going a bit far, but there is a growing sense that the island is, in its opposition to reactionary immigration laws, leading the way for the rest of the country.


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This can, of course, come at a price. Posters in shop and bar windows advertise the counselling services of psychologists from the Order of Malta's Italian Relief Corps CISOM , on hand not only to help victims' relatives and rescuers, but also the locals themselves. So the migrants are perfectly integrated with the Italians, and for this reason they experience the same pain.

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For many, the person who has come to symbolise the locals' mixture of political anger and human compassion is the island's mayor, Giusi Nicolini, of whom Billardello says succinctly: Letta has said he feels ashamed of these laws, brought in when the rightwing, xenophobic Northern League was in government with Silvio Berlusconi , and would abolish them if it was up to him. The Island of Lampedusa is considered as the door of Europe.

In the last twenty years, an estimate of , persons have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to land in Lampedusa. At least fifteen thousand have lost their lives in an attempt to cross. The world as a whole as looked into this tragic situation and each tragedy was treated as an emergency. But for the inhabitants of Lampedusa, this inflow of migrants and the everyday disaster is part of life — no longer traumatizing, but difficult to ignore.


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More people make an attempt to cross the Mediterranean sea every year and death toll due to drowning in on a sharp increase. By the end of , more than 4, people lost their lives trying to cross into Italy, higher than any previously recorded. As if he had white skin, as if he were our son drowned during a holiday. Little was done about her call until the tragedy that took place in October Thereafter, it was replaced by Triton, the greatest European Union mission in history. But it was a less effective endeavor due to its meagre monthly budget of under 3 million euro.