How has 'Fortress Europe' created a humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean?: Sally Hayden

Earlier this month at least 86 men, women and children drowned off the coast of Calabria trying to seek refuge in Italy. In the last decade tens of thousands of refugees and migrants have died in the Mediterranean, creating what Pope Francis has called Europe's largest graveyard. Attempts by European’s governments to turn the continent into ‘fortress Europe’ have created a humanitarian catastrophe for those fleeing drought, famine, war and depression. Much of the reporting of this ongoing tragedy has been done by Irish journalist Sally Hayden whose recent book The Fourth Time We Drowned won the Orwell Prize, and was named the An Post Irish Book of the Year. Sally’s courageous work has revealed the human stories of those who have faced violence, abuse and even death in Libyan detention camps funded by European governments and the lengths to which international institutions have gone to cover up such crimes. In 2008, Sally received a Facebook message that began, ‘ Hi sister Sally, we need your help’. In the conversations that followed she discovered how people were being detained in Libya in the most horrendous conditions. In front of a live audience at Ireland's Edge in Dingle, she spoke to Ireland's Edge host Chris Kissane about Europe's moral responsibilities in a time of refugee crises and mass migration.