Anas Zwebi, a 5-year-old boy from Menzel Bourguiba, a town in the governorate of Bizerte in Tunisia, had left with his father on February 5, 2024 on a dinghy that had left the coast of Bizerte heading for Sardinia.
The ceremony
Last Thursday, August 9, a final farewell to the little boy was celebrated in Lamezia Terme. In the city square of Lamezia Terme, some religious and institutional representatives gathered around the child’s white coffin in a public ceremony to remember Anas before letting him leave for Tunisia.
The body will arrive on Wednesday, August 14, in Menzel Bourguiba where the little boy’s aunt, who fought so hard to get him back, will await him together with the local community to celebrate the funeral.
It is important to remember that in addition to Anas, there were other people involved in the shipwreck of February 5: 18 Tunisian men, including Anas’ father, who also lost their lives on this journey.
The boat never reached its destination, the families lost contact with the travellers. The bodies, dragged by the currents, dispersed in the sea and six of them reached the beaches of the regions of Sicily, Calabria and Campania, on several occasions over the months,
As for Anas, his little body was found on April 14 in the waters near the industrial area of Lamezia Terme and from this discovery the investigations of the corresponding Prosecutor’s Office began.
The research of the 18
The search for relatives on the other side of the Mediterranean had begun months earlier: after the disappearance of the 18, the families of these people – including the little boy’s aunt – immediately sent out the first official reports and requests for help to civil society. Once they learned of the discovery of some bodies in Italy, the families mobilized together to understand if they were their relatives and contacted solidarity organizations in Sicily and Sardinia to obtain information.
At their request, Mem.Med took action to search for and facilitate the identification of some of them, including little Anas, his father Souhail and the travellers Helmi, Mohamed, Bilel, Mahdi, Maher, Mohamed, Ghanim. With these families we reconstructed the story and collected all the information useful to allow us to give a name to those bodies dehumanized by the violence of the border. Thus, we filed a missing persons report with the competent authorities in order to carry out the identification and repatriation of the bodies to their country of origin.
The presence of tattoos on some of the bodies allowed for an almost immediate identification of the bodies. However, DNA testing was still necessary given the advanced state of decomposition of some. The procedures took several months: five bodies were finally identified and repatriated, while two are still waiting to return home. In total, between the deceased and missing, there are still 14 bodies of the people who left that night stuck in limbo at the border.
Anas
The body of little Anas was officially identified in July, right on his sixth birthday, but since the discovery of the body we had hypothesized that it could be him, thanks to a specific detail: before leaving for the Mediterranean, Anas had been dressed in three layers of trousers that had been put on him specifically to protect him from the cold and humidity. But that protection, however accurate, was not enough to save him from prolonged abandonment in the water. During that last journey in the Mediterranean waters, where the currents dragged the lifeless little body for miles, those clothes had remained tight on Anas, accompanying him until his arrival on the shoreline of the Calabrian coast.
As his family told us, Anas loved to splash around in the sea water “like a little fish” and those three layers of tissue that remained adherent to his skin for days and days seem to have somehow functioned, like scales, to protect the integrity of his body.
This detail of the clothing, later also transmitted by the Lamezia Terme Prosecutor’s Office, had been publicly released through press reports allowing us to learn that in all probability the minor’s body corresponded to the identity of Anas.
Now little Anas will be able to find peace in his homeland, next to the love of his aunt and her family.
But this story cannot be said to be closed yet: several people are still missing, including Souhail, the little boy’s father. And behind these missing people there are several families who are still demanding truth and justice. The relatives of these people have fought since day one in Tunisia, making their voices heard across the sea to learn the truth about one of those many untold disappearances, called “minor” or “invisible” shipwrecks, due to a number of victims that is considered low by public opinion.
We will continue to argue that all these lives matter. Alongside Anas’ story, we will remember that of Souhail, Helmi, Mohamed, Bilel, Mahdi, Maher, Mohamed Omar, Mohamed, Ghanim and all the others who lost their lives that February night.
Lives that we will take care to remember, traces that we will continue to collect, struggles that we will not stop supporting.
And the memory of those three layers of trousers of a travelling child, soaked in hope and future that, despite everything, continue to protect from the cold layers of violence and indifference that envelop our sea.
Mem.Med Memoria Mediterranea
