TUNISIA-EXHIBITION/MIGRANTS Tunis photo exhibit highlights pain of migrants' families

Record ID: 151395

  • Title: TUNISIA-EXHIBITION/MIGRANTS Tunis photo exhibit highlights pain of migrants' families
  • Date: 16th June 2015
  • Summary: PHOTOGRAPH ON WALL
  • Embargoed: 1st July 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Tunisia
  • Country: Tunisia
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA4UCXX9NTIL8QW27S3T9FQYYIG
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Twenty-two women are the subject of a new photo exhibition on display in the Tunisian capital.
    The pictures show the pain and suffering of women waiting to hear from their husbands, sons and brothers who have joined the tens of thousands who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean each year for what they hope is a better life in Europe.
    Om el-Khir, a mother of three, has yet to hear from her husband who disappeared in March 2011 as he was trying to make the crossing.
    She now helps lead the "Land for Everyone" foundation, which works to press authorities for information about those who are missing.
    Visiting the photo exhibition, she said those who set out on the perilous journey were desperately trying to improve their lives.
    "Like anyone else, like all the young people who throw themselves into the sea, they are not doctors' sons, not professors' son, not ministers' sons, not the sons of someone important. They are the sons of the poor, whose mothers collect plastic or sell bread," said el-Khir.
    According to statistics agency Eurostat, some 170,000 migrants, mostly from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, made the journey across the Mediterranean in 2014 alone, usually on board packed, unseaworthy boats operated by human traffickers.
    Tunisia is one departure point, but most traffickers prefer to operate out of neighbouring Libya to exploit a security vacuum in a country split by a power struggle between two governments.
    In April, up to 900 migrants died when their overcrowded boat capsized on its way from Libya to Europe.
    At the Tunis exhibition, the man behind the lens, photographer Aymen Omrani, said the tragedy experienced by the men extended to the women they left behind.
    "I invited the women on purpose. I didn't want them to be just pictures for tourists who just like to collect them or just pictures for people to look at, so they say 'that's nice'. I mean, the pictures may please people but the reality (of the situation) may not. That's why I wanted the women here in person, they are individuals, they are the ones who are suffering," he said.
    Quietly viewing the exhibit, which runs until June 18, were women who share the pain of those in the photographs.
    They, too, have a husband, brother, uncle or cousin they have yet to hear from since they left their homes.
    And the numbers of those who make the deadly crossing keep rising, as calmer waters prompt more and more impoverished migrants desperately seeking work in the European Union to set off in rubber rafts and wooden boats.
    Greece and Italy, where most migrants land, have asked other EU states to share the burden of taking in the new arrivals - something many countries are reluctant to agree to.
    As Europe struggles to deal with the issue, Peter Schafer of Tunis' Rosa Luxemburg institute, said the European way of looking at migrants was very limited.
    "The debate about migration, especially in Europe is always a passing idea or a discussion about figures, the numbers of the disappeared, without having their names or anything about them. For me, this is an opportunity to hear about and discover their names and see that there is a story behind the numbers," he said.
    Officially, more than 500 Tunisian migrants have disappeared, but the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights - an NGO working on migration issues - estimates the number to be far higher, at around 1,500.
    The organisation's head, Abderrahman Hedhili, said Europe needed to change the way it looked at the issue of migration.
    "The approach on the other shore, unfortunately the European Union or European side's approach, is always a security approach rather than an approach that offers alternatives about development or freedom of movement, meaning human alternatives or development or partnership alternatives," he said.
    Following the deaths of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean this year, EU governments have promised to act, but at a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment and government spending cuts, they are divided over their emergency response.
    The Commission wants EU governments to agree to resettle 24,000 asylum-seekers from Italy and 16,000 from Greece over the next two years, as well as accepting more migrants overall.
    Only refugees from states deemed by the EU to be known to be facing the worst strife will be taken in, meaning to date Syrians and Eritreans.
    Eastern European governments say they are already taking in refugees from the crisis in Ukraine. Britain, which is opting out of the plan, wants a stronger focus on people traffickers.
    Meanwhile, a recent decision by France and Austria to increase checks at their borders with Italy to prevent migrants from crossing has resulted in hundreds being turned back, leaving growing numbers of people camped out in railway stations in Rome and Milan.
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