Dateline: Aug 11

Tonight on Dateline is “The Human Tide,” as Amos Roberts follows refugees fleeing Syria and entering Italy. But where do they go next in Europe?

More than 90,000 migrants have arrived by boat in Italy this year, but over 2,000 have drowned en route. The latest incident in recent days saw a boat carrying 700 capsize with at least 25 deaths.

A major destination is the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa – closer to the African coast than mainland Italy, but what happens after they get there?

On Tuesday’s Dateline, Amos Roberts traces their journey and follows them further into Europe.

“Where can we go? Shall we go up, up, fly, fly?” asks Riad desperately. “Shall I put on wings and fly? I don’t have any.”

He’s one of the many people fleeing Syria to have reached Milan railway station, escaping war for a treacherous journey via Libya into Italy.

“This is my life, carry bags, carry bags,” he says. The only possessions they have are those they can carry.

The station is the crossroads where they must make decisions that could shape the rest of their lives. Which train should they catch to a better life?

“Any country I can be like a human,” says Mohammed, another of the passengers. “Finally be a human, be myself.”

“I want to come a legal way. We go to embassy, they don’t accept us, they force us to do this – to sell everything we have, to pay money to the people take us and bring us here a dangerous way,” he says. “They make deaths for us. If they help us this will not happen.”

Mohammed and fellow refugee Alaa want to reach the UK, but Amos also speaks to those heading for France and Germany.

Volunteers coordinated by the local government do what they can, but they’re frustrated by Europe’s response.

“Every time that a boat capsizes, and somebody, hundreds of people die, they wake up and say oh, we have a problem. We have to do something,” Carlotta Dazzi tells Amos. “For a month they talk and then again, pfft, nothing.”

She’s been volunteering to help the migrants for several days a week for over a year.

“It’s a sort of drug. When you arrive here, you can never go away, and you want to stay here and help everybody,” she says.

Nathaniel from Eritrea has already received that kind of help, and Amos follows his journey to Sweden.

“I could not imagine anyone surviving, I didn’t even expect to survive myself,” he says recalling his boat catching fire and sinking off Lampedusa in 2013 – 350 people died.

Europeans are divided over what to do with the influx of migrants, but Sweden is one of the more welcoming countries and his claim for asylum has been accepted.

But he says: “You wonder whether it was worth paying the price to get here… sometimes I think I paid such a high price.”

9.30pm on SBS ONE.