April 21, 2017
HOW EUROPEAN AUTHORITIES CONTINUE TO USE MIGRANT DEATH AS DETERRENT WHILE CRIMINALISING RESCUERS
A WATCHTHEMED ALARM PHONE EMERGENCY CASE OFF THE COAST OF LIBYA
The Easter weekend saw one of the biggest Search and Rescue (SAR) operations carried out in the Mediterranean Sea in the past few years, with 8,360 people rescued between Friday the 14th and Sunday the 16th of April 2017. The WatchTheMed Alarm Phone network was involved in 2 emergency cases and could observe first-hand both the sheer inadequacy of rescue efforts of EU authorities and the crucial contribution of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in preventing instances of mass dying at sea, which we had to witness so often in the past.
This absence of rescue forces in the most dangerous area of the deadliest borderzone of the world, however, is not a coincidence. Nor can it simply be attributed to a particularly exceptional situation, considering that the simultaneous departure of tens of boats from the Libyan coasts has been, for several months now, a relatively frequent event. It is instead the result of precise political decisions taken by the EU and its Member States, which first deny migrants legal ways to enter Europe, thus forcing them into the sea, to then consciously limit the presence of rescuing assets, hoping that mass dying would act as a deterrent.
While this ‘tactic’ has, in the past, led to massive losses of lives at sea – such as on the occasion of one of the deadliest shipwrecks ever registered in the Mediterranean, which took place exactly two years ago, claiming more than 1,200 lives in less than a week – the tireless rescuing efforts of civil society actors and activists have played a crucial role in averting the repetition of such a scenario.
QueerAnarchism 