Pakistan begins burials for 13 migrants drowned off Africa

MIRZA VIRKAN: A Pakistani who drowned along with 12 compatriots when a boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized off northwest Africa was buried in his hometown on Thursday.

Each year thousands of Pakistanis pay large sums to traffickers to launch risky and illegal journeys to Europe, where they hope to find work and send funds to support families back home.

Pakistanis are frequently among those drowned on crammed boats which sink on the Mediterranean Sea separating North Africa from Europe -- the world´s deadliest migrant route.

Islamabad´s foreign ministry this week said 13 of its citizens were among the dead recovered from a boat which went down in the Atlantic.

Around 80 passengers were aboard the vessel, which left Mauritania and sailed north towards Spain´s Canary Islands before it capsized near the Western Sahara port of Dakhla, the ministry said on January 16.

On Thursday the village of Mirza Virkan in eastern Punjab province buried Arslan Khan -- one of four bodies from the shipwreck repatriated a day earlier.

“We sent Arslan to build a better future, and the trafficker assured us that he would send him legally,” his 34-year-old brother Adnan Khan told AFP.

“We sold our property and animals for Arslan´s future, but the trafficker betrayed us -- he sent back our brother´s dead body.” Pakistan has one of the highest rates of emigration in the world, according to the United Nation´s International Organization for Migration.

Many migrants depart from Punjab and the northeastern region of Pakistan administered Kashmir because their communities have historic ties to the country´s diaspora in Europe.

An official from the Federal Investigation Agency, speaking anonymously to AFP in 2023, estimated Pakistanis attempt 40,000 illegal trips every year.

In June that year the Mediterranean witnessed one of its worst migrant shipwrecks when a rusty and overloaded trawler sank overnight.

It was carrying more than 750 people -- up to 350 of them Pakistanis according to Islamabad -- but only 82 bodies were ever recovered.