A Bollywood film chronicling Malta’s worst migrant tragedy, and the Mediterranean’s single largest loss of human life since WWII, is set for release later this month.
The Hindi-language film deals with the 1996 Christmas Day catastrophe in which almost 300 south Asian illegal migrants lost their lives in the Malta-Sicily channel while being transferred from a freighter to a Maltese launch that sank in stormy waters.
The movie, Kaafila – or Caravan in English – uses the incident and victim’s stories as a backdrop for an unprecedented Bollywood look into the shadowy world of illegal migration and human trafficking by relaying the events leading up to the tragedy and the incident itself, as well as its aftermath.
“It’s a real thing happening in India and the world,” said the film’s director Aamtoje Man. “So many people are suffering from this. I believe in meaningful cinema and having real issues.”
The release of the Lm1.5 million movie, pricey by Bollywood standards, has been anticipated for years and will feature Bollywood heart-throb Sunny Deol and Pakistani actress Sana Nawaz.
A total of 283 Indians, Pakistanis and Tamil Sri Lankans died that fateful night in 1996 as they were being transferred in stormy, icy weather from the Yiohan freighter to a smaller Maltese launch, ironically a former RAF rescue vessel, which was to then transport them to Sicily.
The two vessels had collided in the choppy seas, the Maltese vessel sinking in the process – although many of the survivors have claimed that the Maltese vessel had been intentionally rammed.
The plan had been to transfer the migrants to Sicily in smaller groups but the 300 passengers were forced aboard the Maltese launch, which capsized and sank in seconds.
The Yiohan eventually made port in Greece, where survivors recounted their ordeal to authorities – none of which took the survivors’ claims seriously until Sicilian fishermen began pulling up human remains in their nets.
A deep sea investigation by means of a robotic camera, by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, finally brought to light an underground cemetery 100 metres under the water’s surface.
Efforts by the families of the victims to have the remains of their loved ones recovered from the bottom of the channel have so far proved unsuccessful but matters appear to be moving forward, with the Italian government recently indicating it would be ready to finance such an operation after parliamentary pressure from Maltese-Italian parliamentarian Arnold Cassola.
The sole individual to be tried for the crime of voluntary mass homicide in the courts of Syracuse, Pakistani-born Maltese national Turab Ahmed Sheik, who had always maintained his innocence, argued that he was not part of that particular operation and had even advised that the transfer not take place, given the evening’s adverse weather conditions.
He was recently exonerated of all charges.