Countering China

"We will promote our values, including by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British joint Declaration."

"[We stress] the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait Issues."

"We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East- and South-China Seas and strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo and increase tensions."

G7 Closing statement of joint agreements

"We're in a contest, not with China per se ... with autocrats, autocratic governments around the world, as to whether or not democracies can compare with them in a rapidly changing 21st Century."

"As I've told [Chinese President] Xi Jinping myself, I'm not looking for conflict. Where we cooperation, we'll cooperate; where we disagree I'm going to state this frankly, and we are going to respond to actions that are inconsistent."

U.S. President Joe Biden

The group of economically advanced Western democracies that comprise the G7; the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada expressed its concern over the issue of forced labour in global supply chains inclusive of the agricultural, solar and garment sectors. All of which issues Beijing has repeatedly and forcefully rejected. From its perspective, efforts by Western powers to contain China are doomed to failure.

 

 As far as Beijing is concerned -- and its concern was conveyed by China's mission in the United Kingdom -- responding to Western assertions over China's growing influence, in efforts to counteract that influence and to contain China, it charges that Western powers remain gripped by an outdated imperial mindset, expressed by humiliating China.

 

Clearly one gross humiliation represents the G7 demanding a complete and thorough investigation of the origins of the coronavirus that appeared in Wuhan and that has gone on to devastate populations worldwide, along with the global economy. The final agreed-upon G7 communique, highly critical of Beijing, delved into areas that China insists are off limits to any outside interference of its sovereignty. The call for a transparent Phase 2 COVID-19 Origins study to be convened by the World Health Organization is anathema to Beijing.

Again and again China has responded to allegations citing its treatment of the Uyghurs, Hong Kong independence, and Taiwan's status as a free independent state, that these are internal issues; matters of no interest to any other country. Such efforts by Western powers to rein in China's ambitions have been characterized by Beijing as doomed to fail. Western powers' attempts to contain China reflect major powers still in the grip of an outdated imperial mindset following years of humiliating China.

That United Nations experts in human rights issues claim that over a million people, mostly Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have had their freedom and liberty dramatically curtailed as they have been detained in vast camps n Xinjiang in northwest China. Accusations that China characterizes as preposterous, nothing but slander. That all accusations of forced labour or abuse is without substance.

The camps, Beijing stresses, are in reality vocational centres, designed to eradicate extremism and having nothing whatever to do with forced labour. They are no longer even in operation, counters China.  Since late 2019, all those in the camps had "graduated".  "Stop slandering China, stop interfering in China's internal affairs, and stop harming China's interests", protested a spokesman from the Chinese Embassy in London.

"[China is a peace-loving country that advocates cooperation, but also has its bottom lines]."

"China's internal affairs must not be interfered in, China's reputation must not be slandered, and China's interests must not be violated,"

"We will resolutely defend our national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and resolutely fight back against all kinds of injustices and infringements imposed on China."

China's U.K. Embassy

The Chinese national flag is seen in Beijing, China. Photo: Reuters

                                                      

The Taut Front Lines

"There are places that have shortfalls, there are decisions being made because we don't have the supply, period. Nobody at the moment has an understanding, a full Canadian understanding of how much PPE [personal protection equipment] is in stock at each facility."
"For every one patient who is on a ventilator, for every single day, you're talking somewhere in the order of hundreds of pieces of PPE when you add up the gowns, the gloves, the masks."
"When the prime minister says they have all this supply coming, how is it going to be distributed? How are they going to figure out where the need is? they have no idea, because nobody has done that work."
"We've started that work here; we're working on that frantically to figure that out. We're all on edge. This feels like the Viking ships are on their way, we don't know how many ships there are, we know that when they arrive they're going to pillage, destroy. We don't know how much we're going to be able to fend them off."
"We're just hoping they're just sending one ship, and we've got enough people to battle them. We just don't know."
Dr.Andrew Morris, infectious diseases specialist,Sinai Health System/University Health Network, Toronto

Doctors treat COVID-19 patients in an intensive care unit in Rome, Italy. Antonio Masiello/Getty Images

The community is agitated and concerned; no one wants to become infected with the novel coronavirus and most everyone is following recommendations to self-isolate, to practise great caution, to maintain a two-metre distance from others, to religiously wash and soap their hands for a protracted scrub, to be vigilant about what they come in contact with. The news -- all the news, everywhere -- is suffused with updates on the lightning speed of infection and the number of hospitalizations, much less deaths from respiratory collapse.

And then there are the health professionals, both doctors and nurses and others, those engaged in cleaning the hospital environment to make every effort to reduce the chances of a silent, lurking virus invading the closest human body, to replicate and to re-infect endlessly in a spiral of mass infection. Medical staff are in close contact with the ill; their profession demands it of them to serve the needs of the sick, leaving medical personnel in a moral quandary; what about their personal obligation to their own longevity, to their families?

Everything is hugely complicated by the fact that hospitals have insufficient personal protection equipment for their staff, leaving them vulnerable to infection while they tend to the needs of those infected. The rate of death of clinicians, of attending physicians, of caring nurses, of paramedics has astonished and frightened everyone in the medical fraternity. They are more exposed, the viral load they may be infected with may account for their increased mortality. This is their profession, one they are proud of and protective of. At a new, harrowing cost.

"Physicians may be permitted in exceptional circumstances to refuse to practice if they reasonably believe that the work environment creates a legitimate unacceptable hazard that is not inherent to their ordinary work."
"As always, members should document their rationale for decisions under crisis situations to assist in the event of medical-legal difficulties."
Canadian Medical Protective Association

"I think what [doctors are] really concerned about is, 'do I have the guidelines to make proper decisions and do I have the support structure to make an unthinkable rationing decision of two patients, and one ventilator."
"What they're looking for now is really some guidance, some standards on how to make those decisions should they be forced to do so."
"[Doctors] have questions about the reuse of protective gear, questions about what's appropriate with respect to the use of  homemade gear."
"Physicians can't refuse to see patients who are ill or who have an infection, but there would be some expectation that they would have the appropriate gear to be able to complete their task."
"And so that's what we're telling physicians, but that doesn't necessarily go far enough. Because at the end of the day, the building is still burning, patients are still sick and they need to be cared for and physicians feel that tremendous obligation to care for them."
"So it's really putting the doctors in a very difficult position, because they're concerned about their patients, they're concerned for their own health. They're concerned about transmitting the infection back to their family. And they're concerned about asymptomatic spread."

Dr.Todd Watkins, associate executive director, Canadian Medical Protective Association

Thanks to the new pestilence that is upon the world, and the many unknowns related to it, and its
virulence, medical professionals now have conversations with themselves that they never before contemplated having to indulge in, as introspection goes. How much exposure should they permit themselves given the very real risk of morbidity? Two nurses in New York City have died so far. "Doctors are getting sick everywhere", stated William P.Jaquis, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Italy's experience has been telling. A first-world country with a first-rate medical system that has been overwhelmed by a firestorm of an infection rate that has exhausted them physically and psychologically, while taking a dreadful death toll of the medical community, on the verge of collapse. No fewer than 4,824 health-care workers were infected with the virus at last week's count, with 61 doctors having perished. That dread experience has informed Canadian doctors what the future may resemble for them, as well.

"My friends in Italy and Spain didn't seem to wrestle with it as much. We're a little less focused on the individual well-being here and more supportive of the social contract where we look out for each other."
"I just think Canadian doctors will be less likely to consider staying home if help is needed on the front lines of this battle."
Dr.Anand Kumar, critical care doctor, Winnipeg

A robot operated by medical teams helps treat patients suffering from COVID-19 in the Circolo hospital in Varese, Italy. Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters

In today's Canada where hospitals are concerned over their lack of equipment and doctors are exhausted before the real crush in intensive care units have even surfaced, doctors are isolating themselves, determined to avoid taking the novel coronavirus back to their families at home. The necessity of having to ration personal protective equipment places medical staff at higher risk of becoming infected themselves. And the scarcity of mechanical ventilators is the stuff of nightmares where doctors may be forced to make choices no one can morally contemplate.

To avoid over-use of PPEs, staff have begun using cellphones and baby monitors in communication with infected patients, hoping to limit face-to-face contact with the attendant need to fully suit up, using up scarce personal protective equipment. According to Public Services and Procurement, the federal government has placed on order 157 million surgical masks, 60 million N95 masks and 1,470 ventilators, while hoping to source even greater numbers.

Nightmare scenarios of having to decide in crisis situations whom to extend heroic care for, and whom to leave, haunts the medical profession, with the legal and ethical issues inherent in such dramatic decision-making. There's a brief window "during which they can be saved" reads an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, when a patient's breathing deteriorates to the point where a ventilator is required. Should the ventilator be withdrawn the person will die within minutes.

"Unlike decisions regarding other forms of life-sustaining treatment, the decision about initiating or terminating mechanical ventilation is often truly a life-or-death choice." Should the  young leapfrog the old? How much time is given someone to recover before life support is removed? COVID-19 has become a global pandemic,"and the sad fact of the matter is that in most health systems around the world, physicians, nurses, health-care providers have limited-to-no access to personal protective equipment", noted Dr.Ross Upshur of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics.

The Italian Renascence 

"Haters are people we should feel sorry for."
"I thought a committee against hatred, as a matter of principle, should be accepted by everyone. I thought it was almost banal."
"I have been worrying about our society. It made me think of a farcical and dangerous revival of the 'Gott mit uns; [alluding to the motto 'God is with us', featured on Nazi uniforms]."
"I personally experienced how easy it is to move from words of hatred to acts of hatred. I was taught that whoever saves a life saves the whole world."
"For this reason, a world where those who save lives are punished instead of honored sounds upside down to me."
"They’re serial haters who need to hate someone. Wasting time writing to wish death on a 90-year-old, anyway nature will soon take care of that."
"I don’t forgive [her experience at the hands of the Nazis]. I don’t forgive and I don’t forget, but I don’t hate."
Liliana Segre, 89 year-old Holocaust survivor, Rome

Italian Holocaust survivor and senator for life Liliana Segre

(photo credit: DANIEL REICHEL/PAGINE EBRAICHE)

"She is not afraid."
"She is shocked by these tensions and by this entire situation."
"People who were once forced to feel ashamed of these [hateful anti-Semitic] views now express them with pride."
Luciano Belli Paci, 61, Rome, Liliana Segre's son

"Every time prominent Jews are at the center of media attention in Italy, they get subjected to online anti-Semitic abuse."
"The anti-Semitic insults come from far-right circles that have a past, and sometimes present, of violence. It's part of their radical rightwing code, this pugnacious attitude."
"Since the beginning of the year to the end of September, we recorded about 190 anti-Semitic incidents, about 70 percent online."
"The radical far-right feels more legitimized and stronger, thus they're more active."
"Twenty years ago you couldn't hang around shouting 'Viva il Duce,' there was greater resistance towards extremist themes. The dam barriers have been lowered, so people feel they can freely pour hatred towards Segre online."
Stefano Gatti, Foundation Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center, Milan

She was thirteen years old when she was packed off with her family from their home in Italy to Auschwitz, the death camp in Poland where her family was murdered, and she managed somehow to survive, one of only a few Italian-Jewish children whom fate spared from the death that overcame six million European Jews in Nazi Germany's campaign to completely eradicate Jewish life through a meticulously planned Final Solution, approached initially by dehumanizing Jews, by depriving them of every human right; ghettoizing, then shipping them to work- and death-camps, and finally annihilating them in gas chambers and reducing them to ashes in giant furnaces.

This is a woman who has spent her life reminding the world of what it would far prefer to forget. Who became a public speaker, explaining to those who were too young to know, the dehumanization campaign that allowed Nazi Germany to 'legitimize' the cleansing of the social order, rounding up Jews, political dissenters, Roma, Homosexuals, the disabled, critical clergy, as enemies whose presence within society was a threat to law and order and public decency. In the process succeeding in extinguishing millions of lives of innocents, children, women and men from all walks of life.

Holocaust memorials at a doorstep, Via del Portico d'Ottavia, Rome.

Sylvia Poggioli/NPR

The rising spectre of renascent anti-Semitism has raised its ugly head everywhere in the world, including Italy. Ms. Segre's activism to ensure that the Holocaust not be forgotten, shelved far from public scrutiny, has failed to endear her to the Axis countries that were allied with Nazi Germany. Racist language has begun to consume Italy in lock-step with the rise of far-right groups signalling a return to fascism and a renewed fascination with Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini. No fewer than 200 threats each and every day went out to warn this woman that there were ample Italians who despised her message and threatened her.

A Black Italian soccer star, Mario Balotelli, who had been adopted and raised by Jews, was the recipient of racist chants from fans of the Hellas Verona team, whose leader argued that "Hitler chants are just kidding around". Even games between ten-year-olds are not exempt from the venomous sting of racism, with a mother at a soccer game using a racial epithet on a Black child. A prominent Jewish journalist at a rally of the League party was told "You're not Italian, you are Jewish, go home!"

The country, said Noemi Di Seni, president of the Union of the Italian Jewish Community, was going through a "rise in anti-Semitism, which manifests itself in many ways". The heated atmosphere and the ongoing, copious threats have resulted in police being assigned to protect Ms.Segre when she speaks in public. Rallies have been organized by politicians and Jewish groups in Milan and Rome to show Italians there is solidarity with Ms.Segre. Italian President Sergio Mattarella, recognizing the importance of Ms.Segre's testimony on the Holocaust to Italian students, made her a lifetime senator.

Senator Segre last month called for the formation of a counteracting parliamentary commission that would be tasked with investigating hate, racism and social media in Italy. Her motion passed, despite the nationalist League Party, post-fascist Brothers of Italy and center-right Forza Italia opposing it.

Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre has been put under police protection after repeated anti-Semitic threats against her life [Luca Bruno/AP]

The Unspeakable Hatred That Refuses To Die

"[After the vote the abstentions made me feel] like a Martian in the Senate."
"I appealed to the conscience of everyone and thought that a commission against hatred as a principle would be accepted by all."
Liliana Segre, 89, Holocaust survivor, Senator-for-life, Italy

Liliana Segre was escorted during a visit to a Milan exhibition on Thursday (Photo: PA)

"[It was] disgusting and shocking. That efforts to combat hate are met with threats of violence show just how much anti-Semitism continues to pollute our world today and how important education and awareness is in the fight against hate."
"A Holocaust survivor, of all people, should not have to face this sort of pernicious racism today."
Karen Pollock, chief executive, Holocaust Educational Trust

The activist Holocaust survivor who like many others whom fate decreed would suffer untold horrors during the Second World War as slave labourers and concentration camp inmates who watched as others were led to the gas chambers and awaited their turn, living in desperate conditions of basic survival, succumbing to malnutrition, starvation, disease, and loss of faith that the world cared about their tormented lives, was shocked on finding that Italy's right-wing parties lacked empathy much less a commitment to shun anti-Semitism.

As an outspoken, high-profile figure as one of the 25 survivors out of a total of 775 Italian children under 14 years of age, who were deported from Italy to Auschwitz in 1944 when she was thirteen years of age, she introduced a motion for the creation of a parliamentary committee to deal with the ongoing incidence of racism and anti-Semitism that she in particular among many others was subjected to. Each and every day on social media sites, this woman has been the recipient of no fewer than 200 hate messages.

At her advanced age, she remains committed to the goal of teaching as many people as she can, by reciting to them her personal agonies suffered as a child in the death camps that took the lives of an estimated one-and-a-half million Jewish children. When she stood in Italy's parliament and asked for an expression of solidarity with the nation's Jews, the League and Brothers of Italy had opposed the call for a parliamentary commission. "Forgive us Liliana. The politics of hate will not stop your commitment, nor ours", Agriculture Minister Teresa Bellanova, responded.

The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob

Researcher Stefano Gatti of the Centre of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, revealed that 190 instances of anti-Semitism had been reported so far this year in Italy, a steady increase over the previous years' counts. Although it gives scant comfort, he pointed out that though anti-Semitism is on the rise in Italy, it was manifested to a lower degree than in France and Britain. The result of the Italian far-right parties refusing to endorse a parliamentary commission on hate, was to embolden groups who embrace anti-Semitism.

This week one such group hung a banner denouncing anti-fascism in close proximity to where the Holocaust survivor was scheduled to make a public appearance. Liliana Segre has now been placed under police protection, resulting from ongoing threats from far-right fanatics. An Italian security source pointed out the police were to accompany her to public events, not having been authorized to provide around-the-clock protection in response to the death threats she receives on a daily basis.

The arrival of a deportation train, bringing Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, circa 1942.  Getty Images

What could conceivably be more cowardly than haters targeting a 89-year-old woman, born in Italy, returned to Italy after having experienced the most horrendous assaults on human dignity and human rights when her country of origin expelled her and other Italian children, in the full knowledge that these children were being sent to their deaths. "It must be said that Liliana receives vastly more messages of support and solidarity than she does hate messages", commented Ms.Segre's parliamentary chief of staff.

Small comfort to the memories that a child was forced to suffer in a fascist cult of death to Jews, Gypsies, political dissenters and homosexuals. The courage and resilience of such survivors in the face of ongoing messages of hate is monumental. As is her determination to continue visiting schools to speak of the horrors she had witnessed and herself suffered. "An 89-year-old Holocaust survivor under guard symbolizes the danger that Jewish communities still face in Europe today", wrote Israel's ambassador to Italy, Dror Eydar.

Liliana Segre was 13 when she was sent to Auschwitz, where her father and paternal grandparents were killed.   Credit:AP

Canada's Mafia Influence

"It was an inopportune time for them to come."
"We happened to be live [with wiretaps] when they [a southern Italian 'Ndrangheta boss and his lieutenant] travelled here [to Toronto]."
Det.Sgt.Carl Mattinen, anti-Mafia task force, York Regional Police Force

"[The Canadian board can have influence over the] entire 'Ndrangheta."
"The governing body of the Siderno branch no longer operates only in Calabria, transmitting orders abroad, but also does so directly on Canadian soil, to give it a more effective and efficient command structure."
Italian federal police authorities

"[This indicates that Canada's mobsters are] more strategically powerful than we had thought before."
"From the wiretaps it appears that -- differently from the situation portrayed in [previous investigations] -- the chamber of control in Toronto can extend its strategic resonance to Siderno as well, for the first time reversing the order."
"Decisions might be taken in Canada first and arrive in Siderno later."
Anna Sergi, criminology lecturer, University of Essex, 'Ndrangheta specialist

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The head of one mob family in the southern region of Calabria, Carmelo Muia, was assassinated -- a not uncommon occurrence between disputatious, territory-jealous mobsters anywhere, but particularly those of the infamous Italian Mafia. His brother inherited his role as mob boss and vowed to avenge the murder of his brother. Whose life was taken not by police authorities in a shoot-out with the gang, but by someone within the 'Ndrangheta network harbouring a grudge.

Vincenzo Muia, the new boss of the Mafia clan left leaderless with his brother's death, was intent on hunting down those responsible for his brother's assassination; honour demanded it, much less brotherly love. In analyzing details of the ambush, seeking clues, he finally concluded that the identity of the culprit must surely be a chief suspect whose own two brothers had been killed during a mob feud in which Carmelo Muia had been involved.

Vincenzo though prepared to order his personal sense of justice be carried out, exercised a bit of caution, wanting to be absolutely certain before launching a murder that would have internal repercussions within the mob clan network of the Mafia. So he travelled with an aide to Canada to verify his suspicions by interviewing "u Briganti", two brothers, Angelo Figliomeni and Cosimo Figliomeni, Toronto-based "fugitives" who had fled Italy just as Italian authorities were preparing to charge them.

Carmelo Muia sought answers and advice from the brothers before proceeding. The brothers were part of the 'chamber of control' a local board of decision-making with authority over the clan mobs within the Mafia. The original "camera di controllo" established in Siderno. It now appears a decision was made to launch a shadow chamber, but then the 'shadow chamber' of authority became dominant according to police in both Italy and Canada.

Who assert that the board, located north of Toronto has assumed the authority of decision-making beyond Canada's underworld, extending abroad, including back in its origins in Siderno, Italian authorities claimed in court documents. Camelo Muia's arrival in Canada happened to coincide with York police preparing to move in on Mafia leaders in the region, resulting in mass arrests out of an anti-mob probe, a large Toronto-area Mafia bust.

Among those arrested was Angelo Figliomeni. Respected, influential Calabrian mobsters have left their country of birth to immigrate to the Toronto area, many in flight from Italy's anti-Mafia investigations. The Canadian chamber of control was meant to supplement the Siderno original but has now overtaken it in significance and authority, a planned move to ensure the survival of the Mafia and its kingpins.

According to Fausto Lamparelli, director of the Central Operational Service of the Polizia di Stato the level of 'Ndrangheta authority concentrated in Canada is unprecedented.

Arrests took place in Italy simultaneous to the arrests in York region last week in Canada. Carmelo Muia was among those swept into the ambitious York Region dragnet. The Italian arrests under the probe Operation "Canadian 'Ndrangheta Connection", scooped up the man who had accompanied Muia to Canada, charged with Mafia association and financial crimes. As for Muia, he is charged with interfering with the police investigation in his brother's murder.

Attempting to preempt the police to exact his own vengeance, but as well because he hid evidence from police by taking possession of his brother's cellphone from the murder scene -- to shield evidence from police.

Det. Sgt. Carl Mattinen of York Region’s Organized Crime and Intelligence Services is part of York police’s new anti-Mafia task force, which ran a sting called Project Sindacato that resulted in several arrests.  Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Searching for Sanctuary

"I don't know if I'm shaking because I'm cold or shaking because I'm nervous. We gave instructions to our kids: if we don't call you by 11:30, then you try to reach us. If you can't reach us, call our lawyer. If you can't reach him, call all of our friends and let them know."
"If you want help and protection, you need to trust the system. We do trust the system and we will co-operate. This is the right thing to do, for our kids especially."
"It will give them a chance of a normal life again."
"Someone really, really seems to want us back in Italy -- and not to greet us with flowers. We are concerned."
The Demitris, fugitive couple from Italy

The fugitive Demitri couple fearing reprisals from the Italian Mafia if deported back to Italy, surrendered themselves for arrest by CBSA authorities at the International Centre Tuesday April 16, where they were then released.   Peter J. Thompson/National Post

This is a family that has applied for refugee status in Canada. The parents, both in their 40s, and their four children are awaiting reconsideration of their refugee claim which has already been refused once, before they appealed. They appear to have a well-founded fear for their lives, yet they found little sympathy for their plight in official quarters. They felt forced to go into hiding once their asylum claim was denied and Canada Border Services Agents were dispatched to deport the family last year.

Last month, a Federal Court handed down a decision allowing those declaring asylum who have come to Canada from countries like Italy to be entitled to a pre-removal risk assessment so it can be determined whether it is safe to deport them to their home countries. This ruling gave the Demitri couple new hope that such a risk assessment hearing might be their salvation and relieve them from the onus of their fugitive status.

They girded their resolve in hope of a resolution in their favour, to emerge from hiding and surrender to the Canada Border Services Agency enforcement office and there to formally apply for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment. Their immediate fear of deporation temporarily abated. Still, uncertainty assailed them before making that final decision and striking out for the office to make their application.

Born into a notorious crime clan in southern Italy, Ms. Demitri spurned the underworld life. A relative, once a leader in the Mafia family, had become a co-operating witness for the Italian government and in seeking vengeaqnce the family attempted to discover his whereabouts to kill him as a traitor. Because she had been close to this cousin when they were younger, it was assumed she knew his hideout and she was pressured to divulge what she knew, and threatened to make her cooperate.

But their assumption was wrong, she knew nothing about his whereabouts. At the same time her husband, a civilian who had undercover police connections and was investigating her relatives who were leading members of a clan in the Sacra Corona Unita, a crime syndicate, came under suspicion himself. The two had fallen in love and married and his cover was subsequently revealed, so he too became a target of the same mobsters threatening his wife.

They moved away from her family, establishing themselves elsewhere in Italy, after local police had recommended they move, and they did, about 1,000 kilometres distant, taking shelter in a monastery. However, when they were forced to register with local authorities to be enabled to have health care when one of their children became ill, their cover appears to have been breached with a frightening visit to their home by a threatening individual leading them to swiftly pack up and fly to Toronto.

While the Immigration and Refugee Board cast no doubt on their evidence, nor found fault with their credibility, it was also believed that adequate protection existed for them in Italy which led the Board to turn down the refugee application. An appeal to the court and to the Minister of Immigration, himself once a refugee from Somalia, on humanitarian and compassionate grounds asking for intervention, proved unsuccessful; no response was forthcoming.

The interview with CBSA officials has given this family new hope. Though whether or not they will, in the final analysis, be permitted to remain in Canada permanently is unknown, they now have newfound hope that through these legal means their application may be rewarded by assent. They are aware that an article about their case was recently published in a newspaper in Mesagne, the Sacra Corona stronghold. Under the article was an advertisement for cheap funerals. A message? They hope not.

The fugitive Demitri couple. Peter J. Thompson/National Post

The Unstoppable Force of the Migrant Tide

Moroccan migrants are seen on a dinghy as they cross the Strait of Gibraltar sailing from the coast of Morocco before disembarking at 'Del Canuelo' beach in Tarifa on Friday

"The Spanish government’s actions when it came to the Aquarius were good given all that’s happening in the Mediterranean right now."
"You can’t let people die and that’s why we needed that symbolic act of humanity and solidarity from the government. But the Aquarius also showed us what needs to be done in terms of intervention and reception. And that isn’t happening here."
"If they’d had the foresight to build a centre in all the years that have gone by, we wouldn’t have men, women and children – including babies – sleeping on the floors of sports centres in different cities, in the waiting room at Algeciras port or in police stations. This is a really awful situation.”
"I’ve seen what the wire [razor wire topping border fences at Melilla and Ceuta] does to people: it doesn’t cut you; it rips you."
“I’ve served as a chaplain at the CIEs [foreign internment centres] and it broke my heart every week when I went. They should not exist. Migrants who arrive have committed an administrative offence by arriving in Spain without the necessary documentation but they’re being locked up in a place that’s guarded by police and which, in many cases, has bars. They’re being detained."
Father Gabriel Delgado, Cádiz, Spain

"We’re taking them in on a daily basis [migrants off ships]. They’re just not called the Aquarius and they’re little boats. It may not be as striking as a boat drifting in the Mediterranean, but it’s the reality of what we’re seeing on the coasts of southern Spain on, sadly, a daily basis."
"[The maritime rescue service and NGOs are doing an extraordinary job]. Where we need help is with economic resources to improve and widen these capacities."
"But what’s fundamental is the need to come up with measures on development, dialogue, cooperation and improving things in the countries of origin and countries of transit."
Spain’s new prime minister, Pedro Sánchez

Spain's humanitarian dedication to welcoming migrants from Africa to its shores is now placing it in the position that Greece and Italy were mired in for years. When Italy's new government decided that enough was more than enough and refused to accept the Aquarius with its latest invasion of migrants to Italy, Spain stepped up and offered to take them in. That kind of selfless compassion has its cost; word spreads and Spain has become the latest easy entry point for those seeking to improve their prospects by leaving their failed countries of origin.

The first migrants from the Aquarius, a ship that was turned away by Italy and Malta sparking a major migration row in Europe, disembarked at the Spanish port of Valencia on June 17, 2018. (PAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images)

Europe is drowning in refugees and economic migrants; its generous impulse to share the advances it has made in providing a decent life for its populations suddenly in high demand by the world's less fortunate. There are, needless to say, official entry points where applications for asylum or immigration are formally made and considered by authorities of the host countries. But none of the tens of thousands of 'refugees' and asylum seekers have any interest in law and order and fairness, in acknowledging that there is an existing waiting list that their impulsive demands are complicating.

Spain's coast guard union is "overwhelmed", in their words, by the steep and never-ending rise in migrant crossings. A human tide requiring rescue from the flimsy rafts floating them over the Strait of Gibraltar, others coming overland in a violent spree of breaching borders. And in the last day, Spanish beachgoers were suddenly jerked out of their complacent enjoyment of a summer day when their beach was suddenly a little more crowded when a flimsy boat arrived to unload fifty Africans who speedily ran off after asking the beachgoers for food.

The Maritime Rescue agency urgently calls on aid so it can continue to cope with the "massive arrival of immigrants" on Spain's unprepared shores. More crew required to save lives afloat in an unfriendly sea. "An absolute overflow of work" for maritime resource centers has resulted from the "extraordinary upturn" in arrivals, cries out for more help for crews already operating with "insufficient" crew levels went the plea.

On Friday morning alone 35 rafts bursting with 627 people came in off the Strait of Gibraltar, raising the number that arrived in this week alone to 2,000. Spain is now considered to be the gateway of choice for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to access Europe. Over 20,000 such individuals breached Spanish shores this year, figures reached by the International Organization for Migration. Italy no longer can boast or groan, that it takes in larger numbers, and, in fact, no longer will agree to.

Thursday's violence at Ceuta, the outpost in Morocco, where over 600 migrants forced entry into Spain stands out for the vicious event it was, when once across the breached fence, migrants attacked the Guardia Civil stationed there with weapons and chemicals and fire. Despite which the attackers were not turned back, not arrested but ushered toward an migrant intake station to make their claims for haven, even while their forced entry was described by security forces as "unprecedented violence".

Reception centres in Spain are beyond saturated, and Spain now blames Italy's refusal to accept any longer those leaving Libya to cross the Mediterranean, where the new government has barred the docking of rescue ships. And while Spain mulls over the necessity of helping the countries that are bleeding citizens to transform them into places where their nationals will want to stay and aid in the building of nations where opportunities to flourish and human rights are respected, in Africa and the Middle East, the concerned nations themselves remain oblivious to any need to transform themselves.

Spanish beachgoers amazed at the sight of migrants spilling out of a boat and sprinting off.

The Agony of Destroyed Heritage

"This is a very small village and I fear it will be left to die. We have nothing now. We have no future."
"This is not a touristy place, it's not Assissi [which was meticulously restored after the 1997 earthquake]."
"I'm afraid we could be living here [emergency tent village] a long time."
Monica Valle, 49, Accumoli, Italy

"After seven years, L'Aquila [still unreconstructed, where 309 people died in a 2009 earthquake] remains an open wound. What's going to happen to us?"
Stefano Petrucci, mayor, Accumoli

"Amatrice is too important not to be rebuild. People come from all over Italy to eat spaghetti all'amatriciana here -- it's known throughout the world."
Giorgio, elderly resident of Amatrice

"No night can last so long that the sun never rises again."
"I am convinced that Amatrice will rise again. We owe it to the people who died here."
Sergio Pirozzi, Amatrice mayor

  The Arquata del Tronto tented camp - one of several in the earthquake zone -- AFP

Local people of the Green Heart of Italy, a huge triangle of mountains, forests and medieval stone villages despair that their historical towns will ever be rebuilt after the devastating earthquake that hit the region with a death toll of 290. The financial state that Italy is in lends credence to their fears. Augmented with their feeling that the determination that their hamlets be rebuilt will vanish after the initial shock to the nation of the heritage loss.

They envision their towns and villages left in ruin, the forests overtaking them.



Fewer than one percent of Italian home owners possess earthquake insurance. In Japan, by comparison, another hugely earthquake-prone geography, about 20 percent of homeowners do have such insurance. Should families in the mountainous region that saw all they owned and lived for destroyed by the tremblor and its aftershocks, wish to rebuilt, it is doubtful they could do so without financial assistance from some source, and the sole source they might consider would be government treasury.

When the city of L'Aquila was destroyed after a powerful 2009 earthquake, the government in Rome pledged it would swiftly rebuild. Seven years later, the city resembles a construction site, buildings wrapped in scaffolding, propped with girders, with 8,000 of its residents living still in the temporary accommodation provided to them in the immediate wake of the devastating tremblor that destroyed all that was familiar to them.

Little wonder the villagers inhabiting towns destroyed by the quake of last week have little faith. Matteo Renzi, their prime minister stated without equivocation that "We want those communities to have the chance of a future and not just memories", as he pledged to rebuild. But in light of the financial challenges the country is facing and considering that dozens of villages and hamlets were devastated, the very thought of building materials being transported up those narrow twisting mountain roads which heavy machinery must traverse is daunting.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, practical reality will impose itself, and the Renaissance frescoes in medieval churches, towers and convents now so heavily damaged, will never be restored, let alone peoples' homes. Amatrice was the worst hit, where over 200 of the victims died, and it is little but rubble, where it was once considered one of Italy's most beautiful of villages.

The heaviest casualties were in Amatrice, as many old buildings collapsed in the night -- AFP

"It Was Apocalyptic"

"We came out to the piazza, and it looked like Dante's Inferno."
"People crying for help, help. Rescue workers arrived after one hour ... one and a half hours.
Agostino Severo, Illica, epicentre of quake

"It was very, very violent and absolutely terrifying. I don't even know how to describe the sound."
"I managed to get out of my house but my pharmacy is destroyed."
Mauro Massimiliano, 49, Amatrice, Italy

An 8-year-old girl is rescued from the debris of a collapsed building in Pescara del Tronto.

The scene was captured on video by CNN affiliate Sky TG24.

The 6,2 Richter-scale magnitude tremblor that hit heritage medieval towns gracing the hilltops of Italy in the middle of the Apennine Mountains struck so early on Wednesday morning that sleeping residents of the towns hardly knew what hit them. They would have suspected an earthquake, since only seven years earlier one such tremblor destroyed a nearby town, as the latest one did their own. It is now known that 250 people did not survive the wreckage that became their beautiful towns' destruction.

Imagine the myriad of such scenes; a woman seated before a destroyed home, blanket covering her shoulders, in the shock of the aftermath, not knowing where her family members were, but suspecting they were all dead from the catastrophic earth movement. "It was one of the most beautiful towns of Italy and now there's nothing left. I don't know what we'll do", she said, distraught at the magnitude of the changes that had suddenly transformed her life.

CNN -- A woman sits in front of a destroyed convent.

About 300 people had been killed after a huge earthquake struck L'Aquila; now seven years later nearby Amatrice has suffered the same fate, along with surrounding villages in the central regions of Umbria, Lazio and Marche. Rescue workers were using sniffer dogs in attempts to detect signs of life, people still alive under the rubble, whom they could focus on rescuing.

The government has mobilized an all-out rescue with convoys of army trucks, of bulldozers, of ambulances and flatbed trucks driving the narrow, hazardous mountain roads. An appeal for people to donate blood went out nation-wide. Everything in the villages hit is covered with a fine white dust, vehicles sit crushed under masonry, many houses were sliced into portions, while other parts were left standing, interiors exposed to view.

Rescue workers from Italy's alpine rescue service accustomed to working in caves and on mountainsides, dug frantically through the huge rubble piles with their hands any time a suspected victim was detected, in hopes of saving yet another survivor. Injured people being carried away on stretchers were wrapped in blankets and bedspreads, the coverings that they were evacuated with from the beds they were in when the quake struck.

CNN -- A man leans on a well, in Pescara del Tronto

"There are many people still under the rubble. It's very dangerous work digging into the wreckage -- especially if there are more aftershocks", cautioned a police officer. "I was sleeping but suddenly heard this strange noise. I woke up and saw that everything was destroyed", Marianna, a nun helping to care for elderly people staying at the convent of the Most Holy Crucifix, said. Two other nuns were rescued by a pair of forest rangers: "They performed a very heroic act, they risked their lives. I'm sure God will reward them", said sister Marianna.

"Listen, I know it's not nice to say but if you need to pee you just do it", a ranger said comfortingly to an 80-year-old woman awaiting rescue from under the debris of her home, knowing it would take a little more time to effect her rescue. She was eventually rescued, but her 47-year-old daughter hadn't survived the quake. "It's totally collapsed, there's nothing left", said a man whose wife was weeping on his shoulder, viewing the ruins of their home.

An aerial view shows the damage in the village of Saletta on August 26. CNN

Migrant Marine Rescue Season

"It is still not entirely clear what happened, but they died a horrible death."
"[Water and fuel had undoubtedly mixed together and fumes were generated that] might have been enough for them to lose consciousness."
Jens Pagotto, head, Doctors Without Borders search-and-rescue operations

Migrants sit in their rubber dinghy during a rescue operation by Italian navy ship Borsini (unseen) off the coast of Sicily, Italy, in this handout picture courtesy of the Italian Marina Militare released July 19, 2016. Marina Militare/Handout via Reuters 

 

They've revved up the hope-and-pray machinery again, with the presence of warmer weather and more tranquil sea conditions. The urgent desire to continue harvesting the fears and aspirations of haven-seekers and migrant-opportunists eager to escape poverty, oppression, violence and degradation in their countries of origin for the greener pasture of civilized Europe has persuaded human smugglers that they've bided their time for long enough.

Monday marked the advent of 240,884 migrants having paid smugglers exorbitant fees to ferry them by sea into Europe, according to the records maintained by the International Organization for Migration. Their record-keeping also reveals that almost three thousand of those hopeful migrants have died in the Mediterranean through 2016.

The hapless victims of whom Mr. Pagotto spoke were those of 22 migrants mostly women, who had hoped to arrive in Sicilian waters whom Doctors Without Borders, patrolling the central Mediterranean, discovered. The bodies lay at the bottom of one of two rubber dinghies found floating off the Libyan coast. Taking the two dinghies in hand, over 200 people, 50 children among them, were rescued and brought to Italy.

Their discovery marks a 'first', a rather ghastly and inglorious one, where already the grim spectacle of deaths at sea have overtaken this early in the season what in previous years' counts took until fall to achieve in lost lives. North Africans are leaving in greater numbers, desperate to reach Europe, and smugglers have accordingly mustered greater resources of the usual unseaworthy vessels to get them there, dead or alive.

With the moderately 'safer' route from Turkey across the Aegean Sea to Greek islands having been diminished in opportunity reflecting the Turkish government's agreement with the European Union in exchange for Turkish favours that some might interpret as blackmail, the longer and more dangerously storm-tossed route across the Mediterranean to Italy has resurged.

Up to 135,000 economic migrants have attempted to find asylum in Italy in 2016, most hoping to forge on to other destinations further in Europe, like Germany or the Scandinavian countries where rumour has it that they will be welcomed so enthusiastically that all their cares and concerns will be resolved as economic opportunities open wide for their aspirations to be fulfilled.

A woman looks out of the porthole from aboard the Aquarius rescue vessel after arriving in Sicily June 25 with more than 600 migrants aboard the ship rescued by SOS Mediterranee and the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). | AP