Massacre in Cutro: what were the migrants fleeing from?
What were the dozens of migrants fleeing from, almost all Afghans, who lost their lives a few meters from the coast of Crotone? The Kabul government lets it be known that it is praying for those “martyrs”, but behind the tragedy there is a worsening social situation, political and economic which makes the life of millions of Afghans less and less sustainable. “It is with great sadness that we learned that 80 Afghan refugees, including women and children, who were traveling from Turkey to Italy on a wooden boat, drowned in the sea off southern Italy,” the Taliban ministry said in recent days. Foreign. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan prays for the forgiveness of the martyrs and for the suffering of the families and relatives of the victims, once again urging all citizens not to go abroad through irregular immigration,” he added. After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, writes AsiaNews, and the country’s reconquest, the living conditions of the population have dramatically worsened.
According to a press conference by Ramiz Alakbarov, deputy special representative of the United Nations and humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, about 700,000 people have lost their jobs in the last 18 months. During the same period, gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 35%, while food costs increased by 30%. There are at least 28 million, including over 15 million children out of a population of less than 42 million) people who depend on humanitarian aid and “Afghanistan remains the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in 2023, despite, of course, the recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria,” Alakbarov said, adding that 75 percent of Afghan household income is spent on food.
The UN agencies have declared that they need at least 4.6 billion dollars to deal with the humanitarian situation. It is also estimated that at least $18.3 million will be needed for demining and explosive ordnance disposal in 2023: after decades of conflict, Afghanistan is in fact one of the countries with the highest rate of contamination by explosive devices in the world, and it is estimated that around 15% of the population has some form of disability due to mines, poverty and lack of access to basic services.
As regards the restrictions on women, asiaNews writes, there have not been “encouraging developments” in terms of education, Alakbarov continued, adding that the Taliban have made some exceptions to the participation of women in some sectors, such as health care. Over the past four months, the Taliban authorities have also interfered in the distribution of aid to the population: “Most of the access problems, and what is leading to the temporary suspension of humanitarian programs in recent times, is related to the directives against Afghan women who work for national and international NGOs”, explained the deputy special representative. “It’s not related to security issues and we continue to enjoy good physical access across the country,” she added.
All the obscure points on the Cutro massacre
Meanwhile, some obscure points remain on the disaster, summarized by Giusi Fasano in the Corriere della Sera. Starting with the phone call from a Turkish number that can no longer be traced or traced, the eyewitness and a mysterious post on Facebook. The Courier reads: “4.52 am. Another «foreign whistleblower contacts the same operations center in Rome. Again the number is Turkish; the guy speaks in english. “There is a boat about to sink in front of Isola Capo Rizzuto,” he says. They ask him if she is on board and he replies no, “but I got the information via Facebook and I don’t have the board number”. Do you know how many people are on board?, they ask him. Answer: “From the post on the Internet, there are 200-250 people present, I don’t know what boat it is and I have no other information”.
The Corriere summarizes some questions: “What would be the facebook profile that would have published the post to say “we are sinking”? (4.52 call). Does it make sense to publish an Sos via Facebook while waiting for someone to pick it up in the sea of the Web? Or: how can one of the migrants on board know the exact location? And finally: who is the mysterious person who calls at 4.20 and then disappears?” So many mysteries behind which the massacre is shrouded.
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