Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

WEST AFRICA NOTES
WHILE THE WEST LOOKS THE
OTHER WAY
1. CRUEL SEA: ANOTHER MIGRANT-REFUGEE SAGA
From an article by Saeed Taji Farouky, 2007 [and still happening]
The photographer, Juan Medina, based in the Canary Islands, has been
documenting one of the world’s busiest and deadliest illegal immigration
routes. Up to 1,000 immigrants a week leave Africa’s west coast hoping
to reach the Canary Islands and EU territiry. Hundreds are detained
every week in Spanish centres and dozens more drown in unseaworthy,
overcrowded boats.
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Medina’s images tell of a man who has been following this story for
years. His most striking photographs avoid the obvious dramatic
moments – the pile of dead, anonymous bodies on an otherwise pristine
beach – that have become symbolic of this endlessly repeating tragedy.
Instead, his impact lies in looking at what happens when the world of
the illegal immigrant collides with the world of the coast guard, the Red
Cross worker or the tourist. In one image, a crowd of tourists, camped on
one of the island’s famous beaches stares, motionless, at a pair of dead
bodies. In another image, a group of tourists – ageing and naked except
for swimming trunks – carries the body of an immigrant on a stretcher.
NOVEMBER 2016