On a recent rescue mission by German organisation Sea-Watch, a German man by the name of Martin was met with an extremely confronting moment.
Amongst the 25 drowning victims discovered trying to cross the ocean between Libya and Italy, a baby was pulled from the sea after a wooden boat capsized. As Reuters reports, Martin described the baby as “like a doll, arms outstretched”.
He went on to say: “I took hold of the forearm of the baby and pulled the light body protectively into my arms at once, as if it were still alive … It held out its arms with tiny fingers into the air, the sun shone into its bright, friendly but motionless eyes.”
A photo of the moment he was holding the drowned baby has since become a devastating symbol of the Mediterranean refugee crisis.
Though Sea-Watch had been able to pick up 135 survivors on its journey, the baby was amongst the 45 victims that did not survive.
Martin, the man who recovered the body, works as a music therapist usually, and reported that he had to ‘sing to comfort himself’ about the fact that just six hours earlier, the child had been alive.
The photo of the child humanises the fact that more than 8,000 people have died in the Mediterranean since the start of 2014. Not much is known about the child, but the Sea-Watch team was unanimous about wanting to publish the photo.
In a statement accompanying the photo, Sea-Watch said: “If we do not want to see such pictures we have to stop producing them.”
