The pandemic has not relegated what is happening in the Mediterranean to second place - nor third, fourth or fifth. It has not because before covid-19, the crisis that has been going on for years in the same sea where we go for a dip in summer was already more than silent. The central Mediterranean - as well as the other maritime routes towards Europe - has consolidated itself as a huge lacuna of information. Due to the lack of any effective official rescue operation and the boycott of NGOs - Matteo Salvini's great legacy - most days the route goes unobserved.
As a result, no one can know how many boats sink each year or how many people drown each month. We will probably never know, and to speak of figures is, directly, absurd. But there is one circumstance that, at the very least, gives us clues to the real scale of the tragedy. When NGOs such as Proactiva Open Arms start a mission, they do not usually need much more than twenty-four hours to locate the first vessels at risk of sinking. In these missions, which usually last two weeks, several rescues are made, usually until the situation on board reaches the limit and they are forced to return to port.
In the face of this pattern, the question is worrying: what happens when the NGOs are not there and, as for example right now, nobody is looking?
