As 11,000 migrants land on Sicily they warn their own families not to risk deadly trip across Mediterranean Sea
Migrants' heartbreaking warning to families after only 'three of seven boats' made it across treacherous sea
BRUISED, exhausted and traumatised, they stagger off the rescue vessels in seemingly endless numbers.
More than 11,000 migrants from North Africa arrived on Sicily in just THREE DAYS this week, after a perilous journey crammed into overcrowded boats.
They are the lucky ones.
A week or so before them, five bodies had washed up on the shore of the Italian island.
And those five were a tiny fraction of the more than 3,000 people who have already perished in the warm seas of the Mediterranean this year.
Italy — and especially Sicily — has become the new gateway to Europe for the people smugglers.
They prey on the dreams of the desperate who come from places as far away as The Gambia and Guinea, on Africa’s west coast.
But now those who survived the crossing are telling their countrymen: Don’t do it. Stay at home. You could die.
The EU’s deal with Turkey, which ensures most people who arrive in Greece from Turkey are deported, has dramatically reduced the flow of migrants to previous entry hotspot, Lesbos in Greece.
Now the crossing from Libya to Italy is where the boats ply the water.
Locals in Sicily, who told The Sun in April how they feared the migrants would change course to their shores this summer, have been proved right.
An incredible 114,000 have already arrived in Italy this year — equivalent to the population of Watford.
But as the numbers increase, so too do the horror stories of survivors.
And now these tales are being used to warn others who might be thinking of getting into a boat to stay away.
The International Organisation for Migration, which helps tackle the arrival of migrants across Europe, has recruited some of the migrants to talk directly to their friends, relatives and countrymen back home through videos on TV and social media.
One of those in the campaign is Tchamba, who came from West Africa with his wife and newborn baby.
He says in his clip: “It’s a road with no return. It’s a road that leads to hell. It’s like betting on one’s own life.
“Maybe you have the money to pay all the smugglers but, with your own money, you’ll become just slaves.
“They do not care if you are a woman or a child, if you will live or if you will die.”
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He talks of how the inflatable boats he and others were given to travel on were no more than 13ft long, and how a storm was brewing as they prepared to board under cover of darkness.
He adds: “As I saw the water, the waves arriving at the water’s edge, I said, ‘No, in these conditions I will not leave’. I called the Libyan guy and I said, ‘I cannot go there with my woman and my child’.
“He said to me, ‘You will go or you’ll die here and we’ll throw your bodies in the desert’.
"I had no more choice. I held my baby. I cried. I cried like a little baby.”
Bright, a 26-year-old arrival from West Africa, describes his ordeal in another powerful video, and asks: “How can you allow your brothers to come to cross the sea?”
Then he adds: “Of the seven boats we were put in that day, only three succeeded.
"The people that drove us, they didn’t care about us. Even, they don’t care if the boat is good or not good.
"There is no way to sit, no way to eat, no way to shake your body in one small boat.
“Some people fell in the water. Some die there. Many people die in the sea.”
Flavio Di Giacomo, from the International Organisation for Migration, which organised the campaign, said: “Many migrants we have talked to who made it here tell us they would not have tried if they had known what they would face.”
Flavio also claimed that many of the migrants only ever planned to go as far as Libya, where they hoped to find work.
He said: “A lot of the economic migrants did not aim to come to Europe. They just wanted to make a better life in Africa, but once they were in Libya they faced torture, abuse and robbery.
“The way back was too dangerous but they feared being killed if they stayed, so they are preyed upon by the smugglers offering them a way to Italy.”
The £1.2million campaign with the slogans “Be Aware, Sister!” or “Be Aware, Brother!” is being aired in 15 African countries on TV, radio, Facebook and other social media.
It is desperately needed, even if it has little chance of success.
The United Nations Refugee Agency says migrant deaths in the Mediterranean this year are about to eclipse those for the whole of 2015.
More than 3,100 people have already died in 2016, against 3,771 deaths for the whole of last year.
Locals in the southern Sicilian port of Pozzallo, where many of this week’s rescued migrants were put into a secure reception centre, are alarmed by the influx.
One, Michael Grande, said: “We are not against migrants but when, say, 900 come at once and they come in the streets, it is not good.”
All those rescued at sea are now taken straight to secure reception centres like the one at Pozzallo.
There they are housed in rows of bunk beds in bare-walled rooms, with tents outside to keep the sun off as they queue to be fingerprinted and undergo health checks.
They are kept for a minimum 72 hours before those who may be able to apply for asylum are transferred to longer-term reception centres.
Economic migrants are sent elsewhere, ready for deportation — at least in theory.
In fact, even though 60 per cent of the arriving migrants are denied the right to stay, Italy only has bilateral agreements with Egypt and Tunisia to repatriate illegals.
That means migrants from other countries cannot be forced home.
And once they are handed an order telling them to leave, they disappear into the black economy with nothing to stop them heading across Europe.
Many, it is clear, are desperate to reach Britain.
A volunteer at the Jungle camp in Calais said yesterday of the thousands of this week’s arrivals in Italy: “The vast majority will be heading this way.”
Already, many of the up to 10,000 migrants and refugees in The Jungle in Calais are from African countries including Sudan and Eritrea.
Smugglers are helping them all the way — and often prey on the youngest of the travellers.
More than 90 per cent of the 580,000 minors who have claimed asylum in Europe since January 2015 used smugglers for at least one leg of their trip, Unicef figures revealed yesterday.
The 100,000 unaccompanied youngsters among them are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by the smugglers.
They are often forced to work, rob or offer sexual services to pay for their travel debts.
Smugglers are also raking in cash, charging up to £2,600 for just a single leg of the journey.
Unicef says people-smuggling and trafficking is now worth between £3billion and £4billion a year.
And with hundreds of thousands of migrants estimated to be waiting in North Africa for the chance to make the journey to Italy, the smugglers are not short of customers.