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WARNING: This story contains offensive language.
It was the end of January and the Geo Barents, a search and rescue vessel in the Mediterranean Sea operated by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, suddenly found itself surrounded by oil platforms.
That means it is close to the coast of Libya, where most migrants cross the sea on their way to Europe.
MSF follows migrant boats in distress, based on aerial details provided by another NGO, Sea-Watch. The migrant boat was seen with 50 people.
But the Libyan Coast Guard – which is partly funded and assisted by the European Union (EU), its border agency, Frontex, and Italy – has followed the Geo Barents. And the Libyans managed to intercept the first boat.
The MSF crew called the coast guard on the radio.
“Libyan Coast Guard, this is Geo Barents. One person jumped into the water.”
The response from the Libyan military ships was swift and violent.
“Away, you whore! Whore! Stay out of the area or you’ll be exposed to gunfire.”
MSF decided not to intervene, but to stay close in case of an emergency.
“So, this is what it is: it’s an interception,” Ricardo Gatti, head of search and rescue (SAR) with MSF, told the team. “We know that this is one of the most difficult situations we can be in.”
❗️📢 Our team just witnessed it #LibyanCoastGuard intercepting boats in distress in international waters.
⚫️ When we approached the boat to rescue people and take them to safety, we were threatened to be shot if we remained in the area. pic.twitter.com/jqFczjx5a5
It was a typical cat-and-mouse game in the Libyan search and rescue zone in the Mediterranean.
There is always concern among MSF staff when they lose the opportunity to rescue a boat in distress. In addition, Italy has decided that NGOs can only carry out one intervention at sea before releasing migrants, meaning that others may be stranded at sea.
In order to save lives, MSF is used to working with new decrees, even if it sometimes means contradicting them – as they will do the next day.
A rescue can easily go wrong
During lunch at Geo Barents, a message rang out on everyone’s walkie-talkies in the cafeteria: “MSF team, MSF team, ready to intervene!”
The rescue team had not recovered mentally from the Libyan interception that morning. But this time, no one could beat him to the migrant boat.
Gatti told his team there was contact with the rubber boat. This time, there were 75 people on board.
“Sea conditions are good. Visibility is good. Stay calm and focus,” he said.
After Gatti ended his address, the two SAR teams ran in opposite directions to the RHIB (or rigid inflatable boat). As the small ships were launched into the sea, the teams shouted “ready” in unison, their voices echoing through the salty air.
The driver heads to the scene at full throttle, but as the RHIB gets closer, something else is in the air – the smell of fuel. It was almost unbearable. At the epicenter of this stench were 69 migrants packed in a small boat, including 25 small children and babies. He looked at the MSF team with a mixture of happiness and fear.
Team members at Geo Barents often say that normal interventions can easily go wrong. All it takes is one migrant who wakes up too soon and the entire rubber boat capsizes, leaving the rest of the passengers almost dead.
That’s why the SAR team was stressed by the strong smell of fuel, and the fact that the migrants had been sitting in a pool of water and gasoline for who knows how long. Crowd control is, therefore, complicated.
In this case, the task of Gerald Karl and Joan Oliva, the two leaders of the RHIB. He spoke to the migrants in a mixture of English, French and Arabic. “My friends, calm down! Sit down!”
The stored excitement, combined with the intoxication of inhaling fuel fumes, added to the euphoria on board. This made it more difficult to deploy life jackets and transfer the migrants to the two RHIBs.
Oppose the decree
From start to finish, this mission takes about an hour. Fortunately, no one was lost at sea.
But amidst the mixture of excitement, stress and petrol fumes, there was a gesture that showed. After sitting in the RHIB and on the way to Geo Barents, many migrants take their phones out of their plastic bags to immortalize the moment with a selfie.
Aboubacar, 16, from Guinea, said that when he saw the Geo Barents team, “I cried a lot. It was as if I had entered heaven. Because I saw a lot of suffering in Libya. There are many people still locked up there. . I myself thought of my friends -friends who still exist.”
“I’m very happy, because I didn’t know there were rescue boats looking for people in the Mediterranean Sea,” said Al Gassime, 14, also from Guinea. He believes that God placed Geo Barents in his path.
After the rescue, Geo Barents changed course to carry out two more interventions. It then returned to the port of La Spezia, near Genoa, in northern Italy, as ordered by the Italian authorities after the first rescue.
When Geo Barents finally arrived at the port, it was with 237 migrants – a total of three rescues – instead of 69 from the first rescue. However, the rules state that the ship must return to port after each rescue. The authorities in La Spezia were not impressed.
Fortunately, all 237 migrants were able to disembark and are now waiting for their asylum applications to be processed. But some have already left Italy, worried about being stuck there for months.
A political tug-of-war
According to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, around 105,000 migrants will arrive via the central Mediterranean route in 2022 – a big increase from 2021, when 67,500 people crossed.
Last year, at least 2,400 people died or went missing there, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. It is the deadliest migration route in the world, accounting for almost half of the more than 50,000 migrants reported missing or dead since 2014.
Last week, tragedy struck even after a dangerous crossing, when a wooden migrant boat ran aground on rocks off Italy’s southern coast, near the resort town of Steccato di Cutro, killing at least 65 people. MSF teams have been providing support to survivors.
However, the growing number of migrants has only fueled xenophobia in countries like Italy. For example, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini banned NGO rescue boats from Italian waters when he was interior minister in 2019.
The government of Georgian Prime Minister Meloni responded in a similar way to the crisis, often questioning the role of these NGOs, calling them “taxi drivers at sea” and suggesting that they encourage migration.
Italy’s recent decision to release migrants after each intervention appears to be a tactic to prevent NGOs from rescuing people.
Médecins Sans Frontières said that the newly commissioned port was deliberately far from the main rescue zone. The NGO filed an appeal, requesting the annulment of the administrative measures imposed on the ports of Ancona and La Spezia in January. The two ports are more than a thousand kilometers from the rescue zone.
The Italian government has always said it is rotating the security ports to show the burden of migrants across the country. But in mid-February, he sent Geo Barents back to Ancona.
On February 23, Italian authorities decided to detain the ship for 20 days. The reason is that there are missing documents from the Geo Barents landing on February 17. The captain was fined 10,000 euros.
For MSF, international maritime law and the obligation to assist vessels in distress take precedence over Italy’s decision.
“In the past year, we have seen different approaches, attitudes and decisions from the Italian authorities. But what has not changed is our international obligations at sea,” said Ricardo Gatti.
At the end of the day, migrants find themselves caught in the middle of this political war, when all they want is a life away from the conflict in their country.
“Some people were abducted to fight. My aunt and uncle both joined the war. However, I was small, so I ran away,” said Tewdros, 24, who two years ago fled the civil conflict in the Tigray region. from Ethiopia.
Before being rescued by Geo Barents, Tewdros was captured by Libyan authorities four times while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. And each time, he said he was sent back to prison, where he was beaten and where he had to work to buy his freedom.
Most of the migrants I met had similar stories about conditions in Libyan prisons. Indeed, for many, the sea has become a safer place.
Xavier Savard-Fournier entered the Geo Barents from January 17 to January 31, as part of a reporting trip funded by the Fonds québécois de journalisme internationale.
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