Profit over people

The ignored Arabian Sea migrant route is in the limelight after at least 56 people drowned last week after being pushed off two Yemen bound boats into the sea. Migrant smugglers pushed at least 300 African migrants of boats that were making their way to the Shabwa province in war-torn Yemen. The bulk of those on the ships were from Ethiopia and Somalia. The incident is a reminder that the migrant route does not go only to Europe. The European decision to curb migrant flow on its shore has pushed people to choose much more dangerous paths. Despite millions displaced and at least 8,000 dead in Yemen, it remains an attractive arrival destination for migrants from the Horn of Africa. What was behind the decision to push these desperate migrants off the boats can only be a guess, but it is clear that a network of human trafficking has become consolidated whose only concern is profit over people’s lives. One explanation is that the migrants were thrown off in panic to avoid arrest by Yemeni authorities.

The profit over people approach is, however, not limited to human traffickers. This is the same approach that the EU and the world’s wealthiest countries are using. The EU deal with Turkey to shift migrants who land in Greece is part of the same cold, rational logic, which is – almost literally – pushing migrants into the sea. The words ‘shocking’ and ‘inhuman’ continue to be used but the words have lost meaning in the face of the sheer apathy to the human tragedy happening in our seas. On the same route, 42 Somali passengers were killed when a helicopter affiliated with the Saudi-led military coalition opened fire on a migrant boat. In Europe, the migrant crisis has led to a documented rise in modern slavery. Romania, Italy, Cyprus and Bulgaria have been identified as key risk points for the rise in this abominable practice. But the tragedy is that the migrants who become slave labour in Europe are better off than those who drown in the sea. Humanity has been reminded of the shallow calculus it has undertaken to ignore the plight of millions ravaged by war and famine. The human traffickers who pushed the migrants off the boat are no worse than the rest of us.