Natural Born Migrants

Mandeep was among the 300-odd illegal immigrants to Italy who were lowered from the Yiohan, a cargo ship, into a former RAF search-and-rescue launch capable of holding only 100. Some fell overboard, while most others drowned in the icy waters when the boat capsized. The final toll was 283 south Asians, including 170 from Punjab.

Mandeep says it wasn’t an accident but a deliberate act of betrayal by a crew that couldn’t get its human cargo anywhere. For years, he battled the demons of that night when he hung on to a rope for his life while his best friend drowned. Finally a year and half ago, he completed his passage to Italy.

Speaking on phone from Reggio Calabria where he works as a mason, he says he took the risk to give a better future to his seven-year-old son.

Balwant Singh Khera, chairman of the Malta Boat Tragedy Probe Mission, an NGO that is fighting for compensation for the families of the victims, says this is not an isolated case. “Most of the survivors returned, again through agents, and many affected families sent others sons abroad,” he says.

Jasbir Singh, a marginal farmer of Manan village in Kapurthala, knows it only too well. His eldest son Balvinder Singh, who also had a miraculous escape in the Malta incident, took off for the US six years ago on a tourist visa, and is now a policeman in Washington, while his younger two sons, Harvinder and Gurvinder, are in Italy.

Sitting under a craggy tree with sweat running into his eyes, he explains: “There is no future in farming here. I have lived hand-to-mouth all my life. And even though my eldest son was a graduate, he couldn’t get a job. So I sold off part of my land and told my sons to scout around.”

Yes, Malta did rattle him, but only for a year. “I was worried when my two younger sons also headed for Italy, but thankfully, they managed to reach there safely.”

It’s no different for the families whose sons were buried in the Mediterranean. The death of Gurjinder Singh Purewal of Chintgarh village in Kurali, who at 19 was the youngest victim of the tragedy, did little to deter his two elder brothers from mapping his footsteps to Greece.

Narinder Kaur, their widowed mother who still believes Gurjinder will return, tells you how distraught she was when there was no news of her eldest son Jatinder for months in 1999. “It is not easy to reach a foreign shore. He had to travel by sea for months,” she explains. But unlike that of his brother, Jatinder’s voyage was successful. Two years on, his younger brother Kulwinder Singh also followed suit. Today, the two are settled in Greece.

Ajit Singh, a village elder, says it’s for the best. “With very little land and no education, they would have starved here.”

It’s this quest for a “decent life” that sent Palvinder Singh, the eldest of three brothers from a carpenter’s family at Kala Sanghian village, to his death at sea near Malta. Palvinder may have failed to dock but his youngest brother Jaspal Singh has managed to reach China.

Sitting at his cramped PCO in the village, his brother Sukhwinder Singh, who speaks Punjabi with a smattering of English, doesn’t know what’s the big deal about Malta families choosing to send their surviving sons abroad. “Everybody wants a better future,” he says.

His brother Jaspal, he claims, made his way to China with the help of a friend two years ago. “He works at a hotel and is doing well. I believe he has also picked up the language,” Sukhwinder beams. Ask him if he has any plans to go abroad, he shrugs. “Right now, the agents are charging a bomb. Let’s see.”