For the second time in days a merchant ship had been abandoned by its crew in atrocious weather in the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy, its human cargo left helpless in storm force gales.
The message from the Ezadeen was simple and helpless: “There is no one to steer.”
The Moldovan-flagged Blue Sky M was abandoned by most of its crew three days earlier. One of the migrants on board had been able to raise the alarm, but initially a Greek frigate in the area reported nothing amiss on board. Some 800 people were crammed into the hull of Blue Sky M.
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In November, Pope Francis made an impassioned plea for Europe to recognize the “human dignity of immigrants.”
“We cannot allow the Mediterranean to become a vast cemetery,” he told the European Parliament.
But with several countries on the southern shore of the Mediterranean highly unstable, smugglers will be hoping to make much more money in 2015. And hundreds of their customers are likely to perish in the process.
