Photo: Alarm Phone
We write this report out of frustration at the news of several recent shipwrecks off the coast of Algeria, on the route of boats heading towards Spain.
Most of the sources are unofficial, since most of this information comes from relatives and friends of the people affected, as well as from networks of people who disseminate this information outside the media.
January closes as a traumatic month for families. Every day someone loses their loved ones who wanted to cross to Europe and lost their lives because they did not have access to safe transit routes.
Tragic shipwrecks at the end and beginning of the year
Last December 30 there was a shipwreck off the coast of Cap Djinet, Boumerdes. There were 32 people on the boat. Only four people survived and the body of one person was found shortly after the shipwreck. At the beginning of the year, 27 people were still missing. Two more bodies were found shortly afterwards, one in Jijel and one in Annaba.
The year began with the news of several shipwrecks. While the Cap Djinet shipwreck was reported in the Algerian media, many other shipwrecks are only reported in the social networks of family and friends, or by people who follow the atrocious situation.
On January 1, two small boats shipwrecked. One of them had left Mostaganem. Among others, a mother and her four children were on board.
The other boat had left Tlemcen. Six people were traveling on it. The shipwreck became known because the bodies of two young people were found. Those of the others are still missing or unidentified.
The importance of finding the bodies
When there is a shipwreck, it is crucial for many families that the bodies of those who have died at sea are found and can be identified. It is very painful to learn that a family member or friend has died on board a boat. In many cases, it is very difficult to grieve fully when the body of a loved one is not found. The arrival of bodies on the shores of Algeria is a daily tragedy. It is often the fishermen in the area who find the bodies of shipwreck victims or other signs of what happened.
For example, mid January fishermen found a backpack with the clothes of several people who had been missing since January 2.
The bodies of several people have washed up on the coasts this month.
On December 31, the body of a person washed up on Bordj el Kifen beach, Algiers.
On January 4, fishermen found a dead body near the coast.
On January 5, the bodies of two young men were found in Tlemcen. They had left from Mostaganem.
Between the night of January 6 and the morning of January 7, seven bodies washed up on the beach of Madag, Oran province, and were transferred to the Central Hospital in AinTurk.
On January 7, two bodies washed up on a beach in Jijel.
On January 18, the body of one person were found in Skikda and those of two others in Jijel. On the 19th another man was found dead in Boumerdes. Two of these were victims of the Cap Djinet shipwreck.
On January 20, the bodies of two women were found in Jijel, and in Annaba the body of another young man who was also identified as a passenger on the shipwreck at Cap Djinet was found.
On January 22 and 23, the bodies of two people were found on the beach of Bejaia, and in Annaba that of another young man.
Invisible shipwrecks
On many occasions no trace is found of some of the boats that leave. Without the appearance of a body, an article of clothing or the remains of a ship, it is impossible to know what happened to the people on board. As the weeks pass after an alert for a missing ship without any news of the people onboard, we lose hope that they have survived. These are often invisible shipwrecks.
In the morgues of the coasts of the Balearic Islands, Murcia, Alicante, etc, there are many unidentified bodies due to the difficulty of activating the identification process from Algeria for the families.
At the beginning of January, an empty boat appeared in Formentera (Balearic Islands). A few days later, on January 7 and 10, the lifeless bodies of three people appeared, in Formentera and in Palma de Mallorca. Could they have been traveling in that empty boat? How many more people disappeared?
It is important to know if the bodies found correspond to recent shipwrecks or disappearances, or if they have been washed ashore after several months at sea. If many months have passed, DNA testing is necessary for identification. This makes it possible to check with the DNA tests of the searching families whether the body found is that of their loved one. Unfortunately, as the families of people who disappear are not accompanied in this process, many of the bodies are considered “unclaimed”. Visas are often not granted to searching families, just as there were none for their loved ones.
An unfinished duel
On January 3, Alarmphone was alerted to the disappearance of 18 people who had left Tipaza on board a skiff on December 29. Coastguards and authorities were alerted to search for them. Several days passed, and the families did not receive any calls from their loved ones. Salvamento Marítimo had not carried out any rescue that corresponded to this boat. The Algerian navy had no news of this boat either. Relatives and friends in different parts of the world, not only in Algeria, wondered if their relatives could be held in a center or prison without being able to contact them, or be hospitalized. It is true that often the crossings are complicated and last many more days than expected, or that people cannot contact their families during the first days if they are in a hospital or held by the police to be identified. But as more days passed, we feared the worst.
On January 21, we received the news that two of the corpses found in Jijel in the past few days were those of two people from the family who were traveling on this boat. We then knew that the boat shipwrecked, although the rest of the people on the boat are still missing. How to tell a person that their relative is dead if they cannot see them? How to say goodbye to someone if the death cannot be named? Can the pain of uncertainty be repaired?
The only thing we can do from all sides of the border is to call for an end to the migration policies that drive people to take unsafe routes to Europe and are the direct cause of this dramatically normalised violence.
And until this is over, it is up to us to amplify the cry of pain of the families, in the struggle to make the identification and repatriation of the bodies of their loved ones more accessible and thus make a dignified mourning possible.
