Strangers mourn the deaths of the anonymous in Malta

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NEED TO KNOW:

On the tiny touristed island of Malta, off the coast of Italy, strangers mourned for the deaths of unnamed migrants, killed when their boat capsized in the Mediterranean. Funerals for 24 people were held on the island, a tiny fraction of the many hundreds who have died in recent weeks.

Their plain, numbered coffins were carried through the streets by members of Malta's security forces. Migrants who had come before them stood watching the procession, many of them crying. Like the nearly 900 people who died in Sunday's disaster, those watching the funeral were once themselves fleeing war or poverty or oppression.

More people fleeing for Europe across the Mediterranean have died this year than in recent memory, writes GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Laura Dean, who is based in Cairo. About 1,750 have drowned so far in 2015. That is 30 times more than the 56 migrants who died during the same period last year. These kinds of statistics make one want to ask why.

Here is one reason: Italy reduced the number of rescue boats it tasks with patrolling international waters. Domestic opposition and the expense — 9 million euros a month — were cited as reasons. The EU took over, and things only got worse. The EU program is hyper-focused not on the noble humanitarian effort of saving lives, but on border security. It doesn't even have its own ships and surveillance equipment.

The result, according to the International Organization for Migration, is going to be a 10-fold increase this year in the number of people dying, even as the number of people actually fleeing decreases.

WANT TO KNOW:

There are more modern-day slaves living right now in India than anywhere else on Earth. And many of them are women and children being forced into the sex trade. The stories are devastating and there are thousands of them.

Mala's story is a common one: She fell for a man who convinced her to move away from her home so they could be together and be free.

“We left in the dead of the night, I had packed some clothes, but that was it. One of his friends was waiting a little outside the village in a van. We got in and drove for maybe five hours before we stopped. I did not know the name of the place, but I thought we would leave after a short break.”

Mala soon realized she’d been duped. “I saw a lady giving a big bunch of money to Rohit. He told me he was going out for half an hour, and after that I did not see him again.”

She was placed in a brothel and forced to service men in exchange for food. If she refused she was beaten. This is the world in which we live.

STRANGE BUT TRUE:

The queen of England, Elizabeth II, turned 89 earlier this week. Her family tends to live long. Her mother lived to be 101. The queen's son, Prince Charles, has waited longer than anyone in his position to become king. But in anticipation of the inevitable, the queen has already begun to transfer some responsibilities to Prince Charles in what is being called a “gentle succession.”

The British royal family are not the only ones preparing for the queen's eventual death. The British media has been gearing up for it for years. At least once a year but sometimes more than once a year, many UK media outlets rehearse the queen's death. In fact, they rehearse the timely or untimely demise of all the royal family members.

At one late and punchy rehearsal, writes GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Corinne Purtill, staffers imagined a scenario in which the queen’s husband Prince Philip was accidentally shot dead by his son Edward while hunting.

“After decades of practice, nothing about the media’s coverage of an historic funeral will be left to chance,” Purtill writes.