File image / Ben Wiid / Unsplash (CC0)In response to the news that a boat carrying migrants from Haiti capsized off the coast of the Bahamas on Sunday, the Archbishop of Nassau in the Bahamas expressed his condolences and called for global efforts to eliminate the factors that force people to take dangerous journeys abroad.
According to a statement by the Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis, 17 dead were found by rescue workers, including one newborn.
He also stated that the migrants were thought to be travelling to Miami, Florida in the US.
25 survivors have so far been saved, and eight are thought to remain missing.
Archbishop Patrick C. Pinder expressed the following in a statement sent by email to CNA on July 25: “As a community of faith, we hold firmly in our prayers all those who have perished or those who have been impacted by this catastrophe at sea.
The value of every human life is something we hold dear. Each and every life has worth.
The boat capsized about 7 miles off the island of New Providence, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
Two men have been taken into prison by the police as a result of the tragedy, as reported by Archbishop Pinder, and Prime Minister Davis has denounced “the organisation of smuggling activities which jeopardise human life.”
The Bahamian Prime Minister continued, “I appreciate the situation that many of these migrants confront that would drive them to take such a big risk,” in reference to the high rates of violence and poverty in Haiti.
Davis urged anyone who was thinking about making such a trip “not to.”
“We encourage and support international efforts which seek to mitigate the conditions, whether social, economic, or political, which cause migrants to leave their homeland and risk their lives in search of a better way of life for themselves and their families,” Archbishop Pinder said in a statement to CNA.
On June 29, the United States Coast Guard announced that during the previous fiscal year, 1,527 Haitian migrants had been detained, an increase from 418 migrants the year before.