Drowning refugees in the Mediterranean: The harassment with which sea rescuers are hindered – reportage page

Now the “Alan Kurdi” is free again, she left the port of Palermo on Thursday evening after seven weeks of insanity, attempts to intimidate and open threats. It was also seven weeks during which Gorden Isler kept reading new reports about drowning people on his smartphone and thought: Maybe we could have saved these people.

“What happened to us was no accident,” says Isler on the phone. “These chicanes have a system.”

Several hundred people have already drowned in 2020 trying to get to Europe via the Mediterranean. In June there were officially 96 deaths so far. The actual number is likely to be higher, because many sea rescuers, who otherwise cross in the region in international waters and are on the lookout for crashed boats, are currently ready for action, but are prevented from leaving under the threat of punishment.

Gorden Isler, spokesman for the German rescue organization “Sea-Eye”, which operates the ship “Alan Kurdi”, says: “Unfortunately, the corona pandemic has meant that death in the Mediterranean has largely disappeared from the public eye.” And: ” Our opponents made targeted use of Corona to further criminalize sea rescue. ”

The “Alan Kurdi” last saved 150 migrants from drowning in April. Shortly afterwards, the ship was arrested in the port of Palermo by the Italian authorities. Reason: An inspection showed that the “Alan Kurdi” violated conditions. For example, the ship only has three toilets. The German sister authority – the ship sails under the German flag – clearly contradicted, but Italy remained stubborn. “You have to imagine that,” says Gorden Isler, “we should seriously drown refugees because we supposedly couldn’t offer them enough sanitary facilities on board?”

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Employees from other aid organizations report similar attempts to prevent them from being saved by bureaucracy. An Italian prosecutor, for example, wanted a ship from “SOS Méditerranée” and “MSF” to be confiscated because the garbage was allegedly not separated correctly. The clothing of those saved from the sea must be declared as “toxic waste”. And again and again ships are prevented from entering ports after a rescue operation.

This Monday it was a year ago that German captain Carola Rackete opposed such a ban and brought her ship to the port of Lampedusa with 40 rescued people after weeks of odyssey. Rackete was then temporarily arrested and released only after public pressure. The Italian Supreme Court later ruled that the German had acted correctly and in accordance with maritime law.

“Corona as an excuse to break maritime law”

Italy now has a new government, but the right-wing interior minister, Matteo Salvivi, is gone. Nevertheless, “nothing has changed fundamentally within the EU and at the EU’s external border,” Carola Rackete wrote in a statement on the anniversary: ​​”If anything, the situation has worsened over the past year. Malta in the first place, but also other European countries, including Germany, are using the corona pandemic as an excuse to suspend human rights and break maritime law. ”The many deaths each month are not the victims of an unexpected accident or natural disaster. “They are drowning because the European Union wants it to. To deter those who could also take the dangerous route across the Mediterranean. ”

The pressure on private sea rescuers follows an inner logic. After all, drowning people who are rescued by them from distress at sea then bring the aid organizations to a European port – captains are obliged under international maritime law to drop rescued people in a safe port. Libya, torn by the civil war, from which most refugees start their crossing, is out of the question. The same would – theoretically – also apply to state-owned ships, for example if the federal government initiated a sea rescue mission. There is no such mission.

Instead, Germany supports the so-called Libyan coast guard, militias of a civil war party. Ships from these militias were provided by the Italian state, and the EU financed the training of the crews and their equipment.

The so-called coast guard takes action against the remaining civilian sea rescuers in international waters – also with gun violence. Ships were pressed and rammed, shots were fired. Above all, the militias generally take refugees who have been picked up back to Libya – and intern them there in camps. So far, 5000 people have been detained this year.

Rape and forced labor in the camps

NGOs and the UN describe what is happening there as blatant violations of human rights. The official prisons are overcrowded, there is a lack of water and food, prisoners report abuse, rape and forced labor. However, there are also camps to which aid organizations have no access – an estimated 1,000 migrants have been brought there in the past six months. Survivors report violence and enslavement. Detainees were tortured to force relatives to pay ransom payments. A sub-organization of the UN says: Libya is definitely not a safe place to save the rescued.

The federal government is also aware of the systematic violations of human rights. The Federal Foreign Office compared Libyan prisons to “concentration camps” three years ago. When asked about the illegality of the repatriations to Libya, the federal government has been responding for years by stating that it will work to ensure that the Libyan partners “comply with applicable law” in the future.

“SOS Méditerranée” believes that the European Union continues to support the so-called coast guard and the return system as a scandal: “Breach of international law and the risk to human life are accepted with such approval.” The aid organization has 70 pages in a recently published report Libyan offense documented. It calls for the EU states to launch their own rescue program. This is all the more necessary since the number of refugees could increase significantly in the coming months.

Since Turkey massively upgraded the Libyan government and its militias at the beginning of the year, they had gained ground in the civil war against Warlord Khalifa Haftar – which led to displaced gangs of smugglers being able to return to coastal towns and now increasingly willing to flee in rubber and wooden boats on the Expose to the sea.

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While the EU relies on local militias in front of Libya, the coast guard of a member state violates international law 1,000 kilometers northeast. In June, refugees were brought to the open sea by the Greek coast guard off the island of Lesbos, where they were released into inflatable life rafts and left to their own devices. Other migrants who tried to get from Turkey to Lesbos are intercepted by the coast guard in international waters, their boats are pulled back to Turkish territory, and the engines are then rendered unusable. Several of these illegal actions are documented on videos.

Gorden Isler, the spokesman for “Sea-Eye”, says on the phone that one has to differentiate. Dissent is smoldering within the federal government. While the Federal Foreign Office emphasizes that sea rescue is a legal and humanitarian obligation and that the “contribution of private sea rescue” is important and should not be hindered, two CSU-led ministries act in the opposite direction.

In April, the Interior Ministry, under Horst Seehofer, wrote to the German sea rescuers and appealed that Corona “is currently not taking any voyages and recalling ships that have already gone to sea”. The Ministry of Transport under Andreas Scheuer actively – and effectively – hampers the rescuers: by exchanging a single word in a federal regulation, she has decommissioned several German boats.

Just last year, the Higher Administrative Court in Hamburg had confirmed that private sea rescue was a political-humanitarian activity that involved leisure activities. In contrast to commercially operated pleasure boats, sports boats used in this way do not require a so-called ship safety certificate.

The Ministry of Transport countered the court ruling by reforming an ordinance that regulates who does not have to show such a certificate: the word “leisure time” was replaced by “recreation”. Since the lifeguards do not recover during their missions, they must now acquire the certificate in question. How exactly they have to convert their ships for this and what costs are incurred is unclear to them.

They can expect no help from the Ministry of Transport. A spokesman for the ministry said at the presentation of the change on June 10 in the federal press conference to a corresponding question: “The responsible ship safety department is certainly available as a contact when it comes to implementing the measures.” One intention, the sea rescue restrict, he denies. The amendments to the law were “based solely on ship safety law considerations”.

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The few who are still allowed to operate will soon receive reinforcements: In July, the new rescue ship “Sea-Watch 4”, which is also operated by the Evangelical Church, will cross the Libyan coast for the first time, and is currently still in a Spanish port. Bavarian State Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, who has advanced the project in recent months, accuses the EU of “moral failure”.

In particular, he defends himself against objections that sea rescue creates a “pull effect” that encourages more and more people to flee across the Mediterranean: As studies have shown, it has no effect whether rescue ships are at sea or not. In Hamburg meanwhile, volunteers are converting a bought-in torpedo fishing boat from the Bundeswehr. The “Rise Above” should also help in the Mediterranean.

The change in regulation by the Ministry of Transport and the associated conversions will delay the expiry, says the “Rise Above” founder, but will not stop under any circumstances.

It will go on like this, says Gorden Isler from “Sea-Eye”. “The authorities are coming up with new harassment, we are trying to react somehow.” It is an eternal cat and mouse game, just one in which people die.