Islamabad, Pakistan – When Hassan Ali went into the bitter waters of the Mediterranean Sea, he considered his two kids – in their smiles, their hugs and his hopes for his or her month.
After he remembered the others from his tiny village in Pakistan’s Punjab province who had dreamed of creating it to Europe and questioned in the event that they, too, had spent their endmost moments within the pitch-black sea, considering of house and the family they’d left in the back of.
“I’d heard about so many others,” says Hassan, talking on a borrowed telephone from Malakasa, a refugee camp akin Athens. Not able to swim, he says he felt positive that he would drown.
After, he felt the rope – thrown from a service provider army send. “I held onto it with my life,” he says.
Hassan was once the primary individual pulled on board within the early hours of Saturday, December 14, akin the Greek island of Crete. Many others would practice all the way through the two-day rescue operation that concerned 9 vessels, together with the Greek coastguard in addition to service provider army ships and helicopters.
However now not everybody made it.
Greek government showed no less than 5 deaths and greater than 200 survivors, following 4 independent rescue operations through the coastguard over the weekend, although the full collection of lacking family remainder opaque.
3 boats wearing migrants capsized between December 14 and 15, akin the island of Gavdos, which is additional south of Crete, and every other boat capsized akin the Peloponnese peninsula.
Pakistan’s international ministry showed that the our bodies of 5 Pakistani nationals had been recovered, month no less than 47 Pakistanis had been rescued. The Pakistani embassy in Athens stated that no less than 35 Pakistani nationals stay lacking.
‘To live with dignity’
Hassan’s travel had began about 3 and a part months previous when the 23-year-old left his spouse and two infant sons of their village akin the main business town of Gujrat.
The 3rd of 5 siblings, he labored on building websites as a metal fixer, incomes 42,000 rupees ($150) according to hour, if he labored 10 to twelve age days, seven days according to date.
However regardless of how hardened or lengthy he labored, he struggled to stick afloat as costs stored emerging.
“My electricity bill would be anywhere between 15,000 ($54) and 18,000 rupees ($64) [per month],” he explains. “And groceries would cost nearly the same for my family, including my parents and two younger siblings.”
Hassan continuously needed to whip tiny loans on the finish of the hour simply to produce ends meet and he all the time frightened about what would occur if there was once some roughly crisis, like an disease within the society.
“In Pakistan, it’s impossible to live with dignity on such earnings,” he says.
It drove him to whip determined measures. “Nobody willingly risks their life like this,” he explains.
Hassan first said to his spouse, mom and used brother to indicate that he practice others of their village and try to achieve Europe. His society indubitably and determined to promote a tiny plot of land, together with Hassan’s mom’s jewelry, to backup charity the travel.
They raised just about two million rupees ($7,100) to pay an “agent” who promised cover passage to Europe. The society had heard of family who left however by no means made it, but in addition of those that had safely reached Italy inside only a few days of resignation Pakistan. Hassan felt a mix of trepidation and pleasure.
Only some weeks after, he stated farewell to his society and onboard a aviation from Sialkot to Saudi Arabia. He spent two days there prior to gliding to Dubai. From Dubai, he flew to Egypt and from there, he took his ultimate aviation to Benghazi in Libya.
‘Beaten ruthlessly’
In Libya, Hassan was once informed that he could be placed on a ship that might whip him to Italy, however rather, he was once taken to a storagefacility the place greater than 100 males had been confined to a 6-metre x 6-metre (20-foot x 20-foot) room. Many of the males had been from Pakistan. Many have been there for months.
The smugglers took Hassan’s telephone, passport and backpack with a couple of pieces of clothes inside of, and the 50,000 rupees ($180) he carried with him.
Hassan says guards from Libya and Sudan watched them all the time and warned them to not produce any noise.
“We received a piece of bread daily,” he explains, including: “The guards allowed us one five-minute bathroom break a day.”
He describes how someone who complained concerning the insufficiency of meals or requested to worth the bathroom or bathe was once crushed with metal rods and PVC pipes.
“All we were able to do was to look at each other or whisper with each other a little. Anybody making a little bit of noise, the guards would pounce and just beat them ruthlessly,” he says.
Occasionally, the boys would beg to be despatched again house. However that, too, could be met with violence.
After, firstly of December, the guards informed the boys that malicious climate intended that rather of being despatched to Italy, they’d be heading for Greece. They got half-hour to organize to reduce the room the place they’d been held for months. Their telephones and passports had been returned to them.

‘Everyone began praying’
Hassan, who had by no means viewable the ocean prior to, was once terrified. “I begged to be sent back to Pakistan, but they told us, ‘There is no going back. Either go forward or die’,” he says.
Greater than 80 males had been stuffed on board a rickety picket boat designed to hold not more than 40 passengers, Hassan explains.
The ocean was once treacherous. Hassan describes how “stormy winds and huge waves” left the boys “soaked and terrified”.
“The engines broke down and everyone began praying,” he says, including that they had been positive they had been committing to die.
After, upcoming 40 hours at sea, the boat capsized and Hassan and the others plunged into the Mediterranean.
“As I fell into the water, I held my breath,” he recollects, describing how he attempted to stay quitness.
“When I came up, miraculously I was able to grab the rope that was thrown by the ship to save us.”
When he was once pulled onto the deck, Hassan says he collapsed. He believes this is a amaze that he survived.
‘Not worth the risk’
Hassan’s enjoy is, unfortunately, now not abnormal.
Gujrat, together with neighbouring towns in Pakistan reminiscent of Sialkot, Jhelum and Mandi Bahauddin, is a hub for family making an attempt to achieve Europe. With land routes more and more closed off, many now flip to the damaging sea path by way of Libya.
In line with figures from the United Countries Top Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), greater than 190,000 migrants and refugees arrived in Europe this yr, of whom 94 p.c – greater than 180,000 – took the precarious sea path.
UNHCR figures additionally display that this yr, just about 3,000 Pakistanis have reached Eu shores, most commonly arriving in Italy and Greece. The corresponding determine endmost yr was once simply over 8,000, appearing a short of no less than 62 p.c.
In one of the crucial deadliest shipwrecks within the Mediterranean, greater than 700 family together with alike to 300 Pakistanis, died when the Adriana, an aging fishing trawler, capsized akin the Greek island of Pylos in June 2023.
In line with the Global Group for Migration (IOM), 2023 was once the deadliest yr within the Mediterranean since 2016, with greater than 3,100 deaths through drowning.
Now Hassan is within the Malakasa camp with survivors from his shipwreck and others, together with a few of those that survived the Adriana crisis.
He’s cautiously hopeful that he’s going to be capable of get started doing a little roughly paintings within the camp in order that he can ship cash house to his society, who he speaks to as soon as a age when he is in a position to borrow a telephone.
He has a message for someone considering embarking at the identical travel.
“After what we have experienced, I only implore people to never, ever take this route,” he says. “It is not worth the risk.”