ZARZIS - “It will be a heaven on earth,” has said the creator of a new cemetery for dead refugees, those thousands who have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean. Speaking to Il Fatto Quotidiano, Rachid Koraïchi said, “mine is a gift to the memory of these people, absolute heroes, who died at sea because of exploitative Western forces that forced these people on the run.”

  ‘The Garden of Africa’ was created by Koraïchi, an Algerian artist who also funded the project by selling his artworks, and is to be inaugurated on June 8.

  The cemetery is in Zarzis, a Tunisian port city, and will be dedicated to those who lost their lives on the journey from the horrific refugee camps of Tunisia and Libya to the shores of Europe. The large majority of the dead are unidentified, having been fished out of the Mediterranean surrounded by the wreckage of their dinghy.

  Previously a volunteer of the Red Crescent had set up a small cemetery in Zarzis, with dozens of corpses buried in the arid earth, though it was never much more than this thanks to a lack of aid and funds from Tunisian authorities.

  In 2018, something changed, as Koraïchi explained. “My daughter lives in London and works for an international organisation. One day she made me aware of that cemetery at Zarzis and from that point I wanted to know more about it. I was shocked, I could not accept that the bodies of people who died at sea could be buried in that place.

  “I wanted to do something to help the volunteers and improve the cemetery. From here I got the idea to create the Garden of Africa. The global health crisis slowed everything down, time was lost, but in a few days, finally, we will open the structure.”

  While the previous cemetery in Zarzis was miles from the centre of the town, Koraïchi’s structure is much closer to the bustling centre, and already houses 60 to 70 corpses, with a maximum capacity of 800.

  Koraïchi, 74, is a world renowned artist, sculptor, print-maker and ceramicist who emigrated from Algeria to Paris aged 21 to escape the dramatic post-colonial period in his homeland. The project was entirely self-financed through the sale of his artworks, and though he didn’t say the cost, he told Il Fatto “it was a significant sum, as you can imagine, seeing the project and the result.”

  Once the cemetery has been opened, Koraïchi plans to leave the management of it in the hands of the new Garden of Africa Association, headed by the President of the Red Crescent of Zarzis and Medenine, Dr Mongi Slim.

  Koraïchi added, “I did not want to create a normal holy place to bury bodies, but rather something to honour the memory of the victims, and above all that can give the opportunity to the families of the dead to find their traces.”

  As such, every body interred will, before burial, have DNA extracted. “This will allow us to leave a living trace of every corpse.” Koraïchi said. “Allowing the recovery of the remains of a loved one over which to cry has an inestimable value. The victims of the sea cannot remain unknown forever. Honouring the dead means being able to help the living, that’s how the concept of humanity is perpetuated.”

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