Italy's Catholic bishops have likened the treatment of immigrants seeking asylum in Europe to the treatment of Jews deported during the World War II Holocaust.The Catholic bishops' daily, Avvenire, on Friday published a strongly worded editorial in which it referred to the tragic deaths of 75 Africans who perished off the coast of Sicily as they crossed the Mediterranean in their bid for asylum.
Only five people were rescued on Thursday by Italian coastal police from the motorised rubber dinghy, which had been carrying 80 people, mostly Eritreans. The boat which set off from Libya had been adrift for at least 20 days and seen between Malta and the tiny island of Lampedusa.
Avvenire accused the West of having "its eyes closed" and failing to hear cries for help, comparing the situation to those that heard the Jews' and others who sought help when they were being deported by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
"When we read of the deportation of the Jews under Nazisim today, we wonder. Certainly people did not know, but those convoys, the voices, the cries, did no-one see or hear them in the transit stations?" the editorial said.
"There was totalitarianism and terror to make you close your eyes. Today there is not. There is a quiet resigned indifference, if not an irritating aversion in the Mediterranean.
"The West has its eyes closed. Five survivors arrived to tell us about sons and husbands who died of thirst after days of agony. On the same seas where we holiday. A tomb at the bottom of our happy ocean."
The article also raised fresh concern about Italy's harsh immigration law that makes it a crime to enter the country illegally and includes stiff penalties.
"No immigration control policy allows an international community to leave a boat full of castaways to their fate. There is a law of the sea, which is older than those written according to treaties. And that law says you save at sea,"read the editorial.
"On land there are other laws such as the right to asylum, welcome, and later deportation later. But lives must be saved."
The editorial ended saying: "An old law has been violated, that threatens our own roots. Our foundations. The idea of what is man, and how much man is worth".
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SIC: AKI