Posted on 08/04/2006 6:14:12 PM PDT by blam
Two worlds collide as Tenerife sunbathers rush to help migrants
By Fiona Govan in Tenerife
(Filed: 05/08/2006)
The sun was sinking towards the west and the bathers were packing up and gathering in a bar at the end of the beach for a chilled beer when someone shouted: "Oh my God, there's another boat."
Within moments, the calm of the beach was shattered as a large canoe-shaped fishing vessel pitched through the breakers and ran aground, tipping its cargo of African migrants into the surf.
A civil guard with two migrants, as holidaymakers walk past
While many of the sunbathers at Playa La Tejita, a mile-long stretch of sand in the south of the island of Tenerife, watched in disbelief, others ran into the sea and hauled out Africans who were too weak to wade to safety.
As the men collapsed on the sand, weighed down by layers of sodden clothing, tourists covered them in towels and offered them water and whatever food they had left over from their day at the beach.
"The beach-goers did really brilliantly," said Austin Wainwright, the local co-ordinator of the Spanish Red Cross, who arrived on the beach with his team within 15 minutes of the boat's arrival on Thursday. "By the time we got there, every immigrant had someone helping them."
It was the second time in less than a week that bathers at La Tejita had come to the help of the occupants of a cayuco after the boats avoided detection by the authorities and put into shore after a perilous journey from west Africa. The second boat, which officials identified as likely to have come from Senegal, contained 49 Africans who said they had endured eight days at sea, the last three without food.
A cayuco fishing boat arrives off the Canary Islands
Patricia and Barry Stuart, a retired couple from Hastings, East Sussex, who are regular visitors to Tenerife, witnessed the scene. Mrs Stuart, 64, said: "It's like two worlds crashing together. Here we are sitting on the beach trying to forget our little problems and suddenly we are confronted with this extraordinary contrast."
Mr Stuart, 66, said: "We know things like this are happening but you expect to see them on the news, not right in front of you."
Spain estimates that nearly 12,000 people, mainly sub-Saharan Africans, have arrived in the Canary Islands this year, more than doubling the arrivals last year. Hundreds of people are thought to have died on the way.
The routes into the European Union have become steadily longer and more perilous since Spain and Morocco stepped up efforts to prevent immigration by sea across the narrow Strait of Gibraltar.
The EU said in May it would help to control the flow of immigrants to the Canary Islands, promising patrol boats and spotter planes to help the overstretched Spanish authorities. Four vessels have been earmarked to help patrol the west African coast, but none has yet appeared.
For Alberto Candelo, the captain of the port authority rescue boat in Los Christianos, Tenerife's southern port, help cannot come soon enough.
"We are struggling to cope," he said. "We are called out every day, sometimes three times a day, to collect immigrants from boats that are not made for these seas."
Insanity
It's not going to stop and will only get worse.
I suggest all advanced nations just divide the world's poor by the number of advanced nations, and move that portion to their own shores. Hell, lets get this over with. Let's sink the advanced nations and be done with it.
HURRY!
Why hasn't Mexico improved? Cuz all the Mexicans with energy heard they could simply move to the US.
Let's help Africa out and turn these boats back.
Sorry....
No, They were already slaves when they were sold to those who owned the slave ships. They just dropped the ivory tusks they had been carrying from the inner jungles into huge piles bound for China, and boarded the ships. Those who had been hunting elephants and attacking villages to acquire slaves simply took the gold payments and went back to work.
Why? Foreign Aid. A perverse incentive to remain in the stone-age...nice if you're at the top of the food chain, only, though.
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