"I have never seen so much pain in one room”

"I can see the lights; I can see the land! The captain told us that we’ll be in Italy in an hour.”

These are the last words Maida, 16, sent to her family on the night of 25 February, a year ago. The final message before the sea snatched her up, 150 metres off the beach of Steccato di Cutro in Calabria, southern Italy. After four days of sailing on an old fishing boat, crammed among almost 200 people who had set off from Turkey, Maida finally had Italy in front of her.

"She set off on her own. She decided she didn't want to tell anyone in our family because she knew they would try to stop her. She wanted to have a future, she wanted to study and become a lawyer. But girls like her in Afghanistan have no choice. To study, she had to come to Europe,” explains Farid, Maida's uncle. Farid arrived in Germany 14 years ago, after a ten-month journey from Afghanistan via Greece and the Balkans. He had become Maida's rock to chase her dreams to reach Europe for studying.

Farid was faced with the most difficult task of his life: identifying his niece's corpse.

"I knew she had set off, but I didn't know what boat she was on. I was very worried about her because I know the route and I know how dangerous and difficult it is. She was so determined to reach Europe and to accomplish her dream that she wouldn’t want to think of all the journey’s risks."

Farid was ready to take care of her once she arrived, guiding and orienting her through her first months in Europe.

Instead, Farid was faced with the most difficult task of his life: identifying his niece's corpse. Maida died at dawn on 26 February 2023, after the fishing boat she was travelling on sank a few hundred metres off the Italian coast, after hitting rocks on the seabed. In the days after the shipwreck, the sea returned the bodies of 94 people. Exactly how many people went missing, a year after what has been called "the Cutro massacre", is still unknown.

In those days, while Farid desperately searched for the body of his niece among the shipwreck's corpses, another man tried to find the courage to call his sister.

"After we fell into the water, we put Ahmad on a floating piece of wood to keep him afloat. We stayed in the water for at least two or three hours before help arrived. Ahmad started to have chest pain. He was cold. He stopped talking and died. When they came to help us, they tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late.” This is what Firas remembers of that 26 February.

Firas was among the nearly 200 people on board the fishing boat that wrecked in Cutro a year ago. He left Syria in 2014, when the war put his family's life at risk.

"We had been in Turkey for the past few years, but the discrimination and violence against Syrians had become unbearable. I left with my nephews, Hassad, 21, and Ahmad, 6. We dreamed of reuniting our family in Europe. We wanted Ahmad to go to school. Instead, I had to tell my sister that her six-year-old son died at sea.”

"Making that call was a dramatic moment. Firas and his nephew didn't have the strength to call the child's mother to tell her that he had drowned," explains Mara Tunno, an MSF psychologist who is part of the MSF team that regularly provides psychological assistance to survivors of shipwrecks off the Italian coasts. That 26 February, she rushed to Cutro with the intercultural mediators to assist the survivors and the families of the victims.

"I have never seen so much pain in one room. All those coffins, with numbers on them. Each of those numbers was a life, a story, dreams."

"We dreamed of reuniting our family in Europe. We wanted Ahmad to go to school. Instead, I had to tell my sister that her six-year-old son died at sea.”

Mara remembers the days following the shipwreck when she and the other members of the MSF team provided psychological support to the victims' families during crucial events like body identification.

In a year, so much more pain has been added to the one of those families. With over 2,500 individuals who lost their lives and thousands more going missing while attempting the sea crossing to reach European coasts, the shipwreck on 26 February marked the start of one of the bloodiest years in the Central Mediterranean.

Since 2014, over 23,000 individuals have died in the Central Mediterranean. And which concrete measures have been taken to avert further human losses?

Nothing. On the opposite, considering recent Italian government legislation and European policies.

"After the tragic shipwreck in Cutro and the frightening average of seven lives lost every day in the desperate attempt to cross the Central Mediterranean, we would have expected national governments and European institutions to put first the protection of human lives,” explains Marco Bertotto, director of MSF programmes in Italy.

Since 2014, over 23,000 individuals have died in the Central Mediterranean. And which concrete measures have been taken to avert further human losses? Nothing.

“Despite the vacuous and uncontrolled rhetoric of the day after the shipwreck, a meaningful institutional response did not emerge. The Italian authorities have not taken a single concrete initiative to prevent other tragedies: no action to strengthen rescue capacity at sea, which has been further weakened by obstructing the role of civil society; nothing, except the blind continuation of deterrence policies, which continue to prevail on safe and legal pathways.”

"Since the first decree-law of 2023 (later converted by law 15/2023), the Italian government has put in place increasingly restrictive rules to limit the capacity of search and rescue non-governmental (NGO) organisations to be present at sea and conduct rescues. People continue to die at sea while NGOs are instructed to reject requests for help, prevented from carrying out multiple rescues, and assigned distant ports of disembarkation”, continues Marco Bertotto.

“In addition, the authorities enacted the Cutro Decree, in the aftermath of 26 February shipwreck, instead of preventing people from dying at sea, threatens those who survive with detention, reduces asylum seekers' rights, restricts protection services, facilitates expulsions, and exposes thousands of people on the move to irregularity. These measures have the clear objective of deterring and preventing landings on Italian shores, even if this comes at the cost of human lives.”

Detention threats and denied rights will not prevent deaths at sea. They did not stop Maida and Ahmad, victims of inhumane political choices. But what if they had had an alternative to the dangerous sea crossing? What if they had had safe and legal channels to reach Europe? Perhaps, today, Maida and Ahmad would not be numbers on a coffin, but they would be pursuing their dreams.

"I have never seen so much pain in one room"