Islamabad, Pakistan – The Rehan Assma family has run a job and a rental of cars and food stores. Rehan helped run these companies.
But five months ago, the 34-year-old sold his car, Toyota Hiace Wagon, for $ 4.5 million ($ 16,000) to pay an agent that would help him leave his life in his village, Jora, in the Gujrat District in Pakistan PUNJAB Province, in search of the future in Europe.
He never succeeded.
Rehan, the father of two girls and boys, was among the 86 people who boarded a passenger ship near Nouakchotta on January 2, the capital of Mauritania in West Africa, targeting the Canary Islands, the archipelago near the northwestern Africa coast controlled by Spain.
Store at sea for more than 13 days, the vessel eventually saved the Moroccan authorities – with only 36 survivors on board. Rabia Kasuri, an acting ambassador to Pakistan, Morocco, confirmed that at least 65 Pakistani was on board: of them, 43 were dead, while 22 survivors.
Rehan was among those who died.
“He just wanted to come to Europe somehow. It was his dream, and he told us that we were not making any obstacles along the way,” said Mian Ikram Aslam, Rehan’s older brother, for Al Jazeera. “All he wanted was to look for better options outside Pakistan for his three children.”
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that he would return 22 survivors of recent accidents on board near the coast of Morocco, but there were few closing on the horizon for the families of those who died.
Instead, she left the tragedy awakened by a series of questions. How did people die on board? Why have they traveled to Europe from West Africa – unlikely and new routes for irregular Pakistani migrants?
And why did people like Rehan, from families with some financial stability, risk their lives to come to Europe in the first place?
‘Tortured to death’
This incident in the western Mediterranean route comes only a few weeks after four other vessels in the central Mediterranean December last year. In these tragedies, 200 people were rescued, but almost 50 were reported dead or missing, including at least 40 Pakistani.
One of the most deadly shipwrecks in the Mediterranean happened in June 2023When more than 700 people, including nearly 300 Pakistani, died after Adriana, older brake fishing, preoccupied near the Greek island of Pylos.
In the latest incident, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially announced on January 16th that the ship “covered” near Dakhl, a port city on the controversial Western Sahara territory controlled by Morocco. But the victims’ families claim that their loved ones were “beaten” and “tortured” before throwing it over the ship.
A statement
The incident of a ship covering from the Morocco coast pic.twitter.com/0znVrjwf4m
– Foreign Ministry – Pakistan (@foreignofficepk) January 16, 2025
Aslam, 49, said they survived from his village reported that the pirates had attacked them on another ship, stole their things and attacked the passengers with hammers before they threw some into the sea.
“We managed to talk to some of the surviving boys in Dakhla, who shared that the pirates repeatedly attack their boat for a week, torturing and throwing people over the ship,” he said.
A similar account was shared by Chaudhry Ahsan Gorsa, a businessman from the village of Dhola near the town of Gujrat in Punjab Province.
The Gorski lost their nephews, Atif Shehzad and Sufyan Ali, who paid agents to agents with $ 3.5 million ($ 12,500) to make their way easier. The survivors informed him of the brutal circumstances of their death.
“These boys sold their country to raise money and leave last August,” Gorsa told Al Jazeera. “But I could never imagine that he would meet such a terrible fate – physically attacked, tortured and thrown into the water,” he said.
After rescuing the ship last week, the Pakistani government sent an investigative team of Rabat to cite the exams. However, their report has not yet been published.
“We are still conducting our investigation and interviewing the survivors of their experiences,” said Rabia Kasuri, Ambassador of Pakistan in Morocco, said Al Jazeera of Rabat, where she has served the last two years. Investigators, as she said, were still “trying to understand the details of what took place in the days when the ship was stranded in the sea.”
New route
Despite being one of Pakistan’s most fertile regions and the home of several industries that produce electronic goods such as refrigerators, fans, sports and surgical goods, Punjaba District in Gujrat, Salkot, Jhelum and Mandi Bahauddin were centers for people wanting to migrate in Europe for decades.
According to Frontex, the European Union’s border and coastal guard agencies, nearly 150,000 irregular migrants from Pakistan arrived in Europe using land and sea routes, since 2009, when the agency began to record migrants who enter the European Union.
Most Pakistani traveling usually travel to the United Arab Emirates, then fly to Egypt and Libya before they try the sea path across the Mediterranean.
Kasuri, an acting envoy, said the Western Mediterranean route is unusual for Pakistani seeking improper migration. But this choice of route could be a consequence of attempting Frontex and Pakistani authorities to pierce their curbs on irregular migration, Pakistani officials said.
Overall, according to the High Commissioner of the United Nations for refugees (UNHCR), almost 200,000 people moved to Europe through various Mediterranean routes in 2024, while at least 2,824 were declared dead or missing.
But although these numbers are still significant, Frontex reported on the fall of an irregular border crossing in the EU 2024, marking the lowest levels of 2021.
Frontex Data reveals that while just over 10,000 Pakistani arrived in Europe in 2023, numbers fell for half past next year, since about 5,000 people entered Europe with irregular means using land or sea routes.
Since Adriana sank in June 2023, causing national anger, Pakistani authorities say they increased and improved their examination to tighten on the people of the smuggling of people, said Munir Masood Marath, a senior Pakistan investigation official. But the smugglers, in response, searched and found new routes.
“This is a cat and mouse game, because we continue to monitor the smuggling network, they also find different routes to seek and lure people to use them,” Marath told Al Jazeera in an interview.
Rehan flew from Faisalabad in Punjaba in Dubai. Then to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, then Dakar, Senegal. From Dakar, the agent took Rehan and others in his group Road to Nouakchotta, in the north along the Atlantic coast.
The agent, Aslam said, was known to the family. Rehan did not face abuse from the agent or his assistants and was often able to talk to his family home over the phone.
Until his death, Rehan’s journey seemed better than what many unfathomrated migrants who make such trips must withstand – something Aslam knew from his own experience.
The European bait ‘Lifestyle’
More than two decades ago, in 2003, Aslam also tried to risk traveling Europe – through Earth, to Greece. Together with a group of 50 to 80 people from the Gujrat district, he passed in the Pakistani southwestern province of Balochistan, from where his smugglers helped him and others cross the border and enter Iran.
“We kept walking on foot for months, and if we slowed down, they [smugglers] He would threaten to kill us or sometimes win, “he recalled his trip.
But after almost two months of walking and hiding, when the group eventually reached the border with Turkiya, Aslam gave up and decided to return home.
“I just told them I couldn’t walk anymore. I showed them bubbles on their feet and begged them to let me go,” he said. They let him go. “The wonder I survived that torture,” Aslam added.
Since then, the family has built their business, and Aslam, one of five brothers, said they were financially safe. The brothers are now running a successful job of renting a car with “a fleet of 10-15 vehicles,” he said, as well as food products. They also have a small tract of agricultural land.
“Our family was well inhabited, and Rehan helped me in our business,” Aslam said. “But after repeatedly failed to secure visas for Canada or the United Kingdom, he decided to take the risk [going to Europe without documents]. “
Marath, a FIA officer, pointed out that, although economic reasons play their role in convincing people to embark on such dangerous travel, there is also a social aspect. Families, even those who are financially stable, see their neighbors, friends and relatives whose sons have arrived in Europe by breaking their social mobility.
Aslam explained that the bait of wealth, better opportunities and “an opportunity to live in a more fair society” pushed people to life -threatening risks.
“There is such a rot in our society, people do not get justice for little things,” he said. “So often, when our vehicle deals with cities, traffic police stop the people looking for bribes randomly. For many, this is part of the business here, but for some, like my brother, they had enough of that.”
Gorsa also recalled that his nephews worked in Dubai in a construction company, which he helped establish before deciding to realize his European dreams.
“Both of these boys wanted to find a way to get to Europe. They see the lifestyle of some of our fellow locals who managed to send their children to Europe and how they gave them more social mobility. So, the two also wanted to try their happiness” , he added.
Yet, despite his own trip in 2003 and the death of his nephew in January, Aslam was fatalist – almost as if he had made peace with the dangerous decisions that led to Rehan’s death.
“Our brother decided that,” he said. “And we consciously allowed it, despite the risks.”
