The Left To Die Boat
The tragic story of migrants who fled fighting in Libya by taking a boat across the Mediterranean, hoping to reach Italy.
In March last year, 72 African migrants were forced onto an inflatable boat by Libyan soldiers in Tripoli. They were desperate to escape the fighting in Libya and hoping for a new life in Europe. Their boat headed for the small Italian island of Lampedusa, only 18 hours away across the Mediterranean.
There was a Nato naval blockade of Libya at the time and the area was full of military ships and aircraft. Yet, despite a number of sightings, the boat was never rescued.
Fifteen days later it washed up back on Libya's coast with only 11 survivors on board – two more died soon after.
In this documentary the survivors tell their story to producer Sharon Davis and she investigates how it was that these people were left to die in a boat in one of the most heavily-monitored seas on earth.
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Contributors and credits
Lorenzo Pezzani - Human rights investigator and forensic architect and PhD student - Goldsmiths, University of London. Co-researcher on the Left To Die-Boat report for the European Research Council project "Forensic Architecture".
Father Mussie Zerai - Eritrean Catholic priest based in Rome, Italy and Zurich, Switzerland. Founder and co-ordinator of Eritrean humanitarian refugee organisation, Agenzia Habeshia.
Ghirma Halefom - Boat survivor, Eritrean
Abu Kurke Kebato - Boat survivor, Ethiopian
Elias Kadi - Boat survivor, Ethiopian
Mohamad Ibrahim - Boat survivor, Ethiopian
Kebede Dadhi - Boat survivor, Ethiopian
Producers - Sharon Davis and Geoff Parish
Sound Engineer - Steven Tilley
Actors - Thuso Lekwape and Fayssal Bazzi
Broadcasts
- Sat 27 Oct 2012 21:05GMTBBC World Service Online
- Sun 28 Oct 2012 02:05GMTBBC World Service Online
