【英语语言学习】非法移民到意大利

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Thousands of unauthorized migrants travel by boat each year to Italy. Their journeys from North Africa across the Mediterranean¹ can be perilous². As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, there's a top security naval³ compound on the outskirts⁴ of Rome that Italy is using to tackle one of Europe's major crises.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE⁵: Reports of migrant boats in distress⁶ are a near daily news headline.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: (Speaking Italian).

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: (Speaking Italian).

POGGIOLI: Last October, twin shipwrecks⁷ killed more than 300 migrants. That prompted Italy to order it's Navy to conduct search and rescue operations to save lives and capture smugglers. The operation is called Mare⁹ Nostrum¹⁰, Our Sea, the ancient Romans' name for the Mediterranean.

ADMIRAL MICHELE SAPONARO: This is the operation room, the room in which the core business of this accord is carried out.

POGGIOLI: Thirty miles out of Rome, sits Rear Admiral Michele Saponaro, head of operations at the Santa Rosa naval commander center. He points to a large screen with the naval area of operation; nearly 30,000 square miles. The biggest migrant flows come from Libya, now gripped by lawlessness, and from Egypt. The majority are Eritreans, Syrians and sub-Saharan Africans. Smugglers, Saponaro says, use any craft they can find.

SAPONARO: Those leaving the Libyan soil - dinghies, rubber boats. Those coming from the east Med, they use, normally, large fishing units.

POGGIOLI: Officers work at computers collating¹¹ data from Coast Guard radar¹², maritime¹³ agencies and other governments. Captain Enrico Esposto, head of the Naval Operations Division says that once an unidentified blip appears on the satellite screen, a software program detects the anomaly and sets off an alert to the search and rescue ships deployed¹⁴ at sea.

CAPTAIN ENRICO ESPOSTO: We use an average of five ships. One big ship is a flag ship, usually two frigates¹⁵ and two patrol boats.

POGGIOLI: Once located, migrants are transferred to the big ship. They're given food and water and examined by doctors. Those in need of emergency care are evacuated¹⁶ by helicopter to the closest hospital. All are fingerprinted¹⁷ and asked to identify the smugglers who often pass themselves off as asylum¹⁸ seekers.

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POGGIOLI: This video was recorded earlier this month by an Egyptian smuggler⁸ on his phone. He and six accomplishments¹⁹ were arrested. The footage shows an overcrowded vessel²⁰ with many women and unaccompanied children. Dozens of migrants are piled inside the hold on top of each other. A place on deck can cost $2,500. Migrants who can't pay more than a thousand dollars are forced into the hold where, says the admiral, many die from asphyxiation²¹.

SAPONARO: One month ago, we discovered some 30, 40 people dead inside the boat. They had not enough air to breath.

POGGIOLI: Captain Esposto believes the smuggling²² trade today is worse than slavery whose aim, he says, was to ensure the slave arrived on the other continent alive.

ESPOSTO: These people are maintained in captivity²³. They are tortured. Often, a lot of women are raped²⁴. And once they pay the ticket, the smugglers don't care. They don't care if they arrive alive or not.

POGGIOLI: Mare Nostrum costs the Navy $12 million a month. Many right-wing politicians want Mare Nostrum scrapped²⁵ saying it simply attracts more migrants. The admiral dismisses that argument saying the migrants would arrive anyway. Before Mare Nostrum began, out of 10 smugglers' boats that left North Africa, only one or two made it to Italian shores. But, the admiral says, Italy cannot carry the burden alone.

SAPONARO: Operation Mare Nostrum is not the solution to this massive flow. We need the intervention²⁶ of the United Nations, all Europe because it's not only an Italian problem.

POGGIOLI: In all of 2011, the year of the Arab uprisings, just over 60,000 migrants arrived by sea in Italy. By mid-August this year, the numbers surpassed 100,000. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.

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