An absolute disgrace. A nonsense whose solution is not in our hands, but in the hands of those who occupy positions of political responsibility in high places. I do not feel Spanish or European. I just want to feel like a human being in a global world that has lost its north, south and any moral cardinal point.
A four-year-old boy from Côte d'Ivoire who drowned in Atlantic waters near the Canary Islands has been buried in Gran Canaria. Little Moisés Yván Mathis Brou set off in a boat from the coast of Morocco for the islands. He died in a shipwreck at the end of June last year. Spain ignored the matter and left it to the neighbouring country to intervene.
The Moroccan patrol boat arrived 17 hours after the migrants' relatives gave the alert. There was nothing they could do except rescue 24 survivors. There were 37 people on the boat, including a baby and two children, one of them Moses.
It is inconceivable. They have come to normalise the death of desperate human beings who only seek a better life, without thirst, without hunger, without persecution, without being objects of exchange in wars. That was the wish of Moses' mother, who, unable to board the boat, entrusted the care of her little boy to those who were already crammed into the canoe of hope, finally converted into a boat of death.
Moisés has finally received a Christian burial in Telde, one year later. His mother could not even be present at her son's mass and burial. She could not get the papers to attend the burial. Damn bureaucratic red tape and financial impediments. Some heartless official enforced the rules so strictly that Charlotte had to follow the ceremony by videoconference. An NGO volunteer read her letter on Saturday. "You used to say to me: Mum, I want to go to school, and I said that when you arrived in Spain you would go to school. Forgive me, Mois. If I could go back in time, I would and you would not have crossed the sea," she wrote.
It is shocking, shameful and undignified. We are a shitty country. The case of the little boy is front page news around the world and the subject of comments that have made his sad story known. It is not the only one and, sadly, it will not be the last. Because as long as the well-off politicians and civil servants here and there do not have enough human courage to be ashamed and take responsibility for hundreds of deaths in our next sea, nothing is going to change.
It is not news that the Atlantic swallows hopes. Never mind that the world is falling apart.
That the lives of human beings are worth zero to an affluent world - thanks to the plundering of plundered land - is heartbreaking. Now, their grandchildren are just looking for a better life.
