ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A family’s dream of reaching Europe was shattered in the early hours of Wednesday morning as the parents and their two children struggled to stay afloat in the Aegean Sea while their boat, which was carrying around 70 people, capsized after its engine stopped working leaving the father to make an agonizing decision: which child to save.
Fryad Ali, his wife, his son Baran and his daughter Sevda boarded the boat on Tuesday night, hoping to reach Greece or possibly Italy in the pursuit of a better life. Like thousands of other people from the Kurdistan Region, they were taking great risks through illegal routes to reach western Europe.
Ali spoke to Rudaw’s Bakhtyar Qadir on the phone from Greece on Friday, recalling the moments his children were caught up in the waves.
“When the waves hit, the boat lost its balance and capsized. Some people were holding on to it. My daughter had drifted away a few meters and I swam and grabbed her. I could not swim back to the boat and she became motionless. I looked at my wife and my other child and I thought I’d better save them and let my daughter go,” said Ali.
“I swam back to the boat and at that moment my other child was in an Arab man’s arms. He [Baran] said ‘Dad shall I come to you?’ I said no don’t come. The Arab man let him go and he jumped into my arms. Another wave hit us and he fell in the water, I did not see him again,” he added.
The three-year-old Baran and Sevda, 6, whose bodies remain missing, were on the boat with some other 70 people. Around 13 people survived, including their parents, while the others are missing.
The Head of Europe’s Deported Migrants Association in the Kurdistan Region Bakir Ali confirmed that the boat was carrying 70 people, 60 of them were from the Region.
Bakir noted that only 13 had survived while the rest 57 are missing.
However, the father, Ali, says no one other than 12 people made it out alive from the sea.
Speaking on Kurdish migration activist Ranj Peshdari’s Facebook live stream on Saturday evening, Ali, who stated that all he could see there were 12 survivors and that he is not positive whether anyone else made it out alive.
He told Peshdari that the incident happened around 7:30 on Tuesday night and by the time the Greek police arrived it was around 1:30 on Wednesday morning.
“As far as I know no one else survived,” Ali told Peshdari. “I believe the police did not come to our rescue deliberately.”
Ali said that other survivors are in detention and cannot speak about the incident. “I can talk about the incident because my wife is in a bad state and I am in a hospital with her, but other are in detention.”
The family traveled to Turkey in mid-December, three weeks after the English Channel disaster on November 24 when a dinghy capsized carrying at least 33 migrants. Two people survived and 27 bodies have been recovered by the French authorities. The rest remain missing.
Ali worked at a cement brick factory in his hometown of Hajiawa in Sulaimani province. He did not sell his home and possessions so they could return back if their plans to reach Europe failed.
Baran and Sevda’s grandfather is calling on the Kurdish authorities to send the children's bodies to the homeland.
“My request as their grandfather is to find not only the bodies of my grandchildren but also the bodies of others whom I see as no different to mine. They should also help them. The government should help them,” Ali Mohammed, grandfather of the children, told Rudaw on Friday.
This is the third tragedy of migrants in the Aegean Sea since last week.
This year, 110 people from the Kurdistan Region have lost their lives trying to reach Europe, while 1,400 have returned to the Region.
According to data provided to Rudaw in October by the Head of Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs Ari Jalal, in the past seven years over 633,000 people from the Kurdistan Region and Iraq have tried to use smugglers’ routes to reach Europe. Of them, over 260 have died on the way; a number that has significantly increased in recent months.
Additional Reporting by Bakhtiyar Qadir
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