“Unfortunately when the news is going as it goes, we don’t look back on this succession of shipwrecks,” laments Jean-Pierre Lacan, coordinator of the NGO, on Tuesday on France Bleu Hérault.
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“There have been more than 23,000 deaths in the central Mediterranean since 2014 and all this goes unnoticed, we trivialize Mediterranean tragedies”, regrets Jean-Pierre Lacan, coordinator of SOS Méditerranée in Hérault. He was the guest of France Bleu Hérault on Tuesday March 26.
With the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the representative of the association regrets that rescues and deaths in the Mediterranean are taking a back seat. “Unfortunately when the news is going on we do not return to this succession of shipwrecks, he describes. There are almost every week in the Mediterranean. We only come back to it when one of these tragedies is more terrible than the others.”
About ten days ago, they carried out a rescue in international waters off the coast of Libya of a “rubber raft with 25 people on board”. The small boat was “in distress for more than a week without food, without water, in the middle of the Mediterranean”recalls Jean-Pierre Lacan. “There were only 25 on board, they were in a pitiful state of health, completely anemic, very tired, he remembers. We had to airlift two people, one of whom died, and testimonies tell us that initially there were more than 80 of them, so there were 60 of their comrades who died in the Mediterranean.”
Create “a real rescue force”
Not much media coverage of this drama, according to him, “it’s been in the news, it’s terrible. That’s what revolts us, we have more than 23,000 deaths in the central Mediterranean since 2014 and all this goes unnoticed, is part of everyday life , we trivialize Mediterranean dramas”, deplores Jean-Pierre Lacan. He calls to create “a real rescue force in the Mediterranean” and to stop “to finance the Libyan coast guard”. “Let’s put these resources, several million euros, into the rescue. It’s unacceptable, almost 30,000 deaths across the Mediterranean since 2014,” concludes the coordinator of SOS Méditerranée.
