At 04.09 on February 9, 2020, the distress hotline Alarm Phone received a call, a call that was initially no different than the dozens of others the organization receives each year. (In 2019, 101 boats, carrying over 6,200 people, reached out to Alarm Phone for help, compared with just 27 boats in 2018.) A group of 91 people were trapped on a deflating black dinghy off Garabulli, Libya. They gave their GPS coordinates to Alarm Phone, who duly relayed the information to Italian, Maltese and Libyan authorities. The passengers called again at 05.35 — and then, silence. The people on board were never heard from again.
Continue reading #WhereAreThey: Remembering the lives of those who perished on February 9, 2020Image above: The deflated rubber boat thought to belong to the 91 people who disappeared in the Mediterranean on February 9, 2020. (Source: Frontex)
