Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1004621
16 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 JULY 2018 INTERVIEW SeaWatch International has been on a mission to save lives in the central Mediterranean since the end of 2014. Before turning to the current situation: what does a typical rescue operation entail, before and during the point of contact with a vessel in distress? Is there a pattern to how things unfold? There is a pattern, usually. It either starts when we are in- formed by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome that there is a boat in distress somewhere. They would call us on the bridge by telephone, and inform us of a boat spotted by the Italian navy. Sometimes, people have satellite phones, so they call the MRCC and they [in turn] forward the information to us. The MRCC is a huge coordination centre [...] where they have an overview of all the merchant or rescue ships in the area; but not of the naval vessels. So, if they hear of a boat in distress, they will find the closest ship and inform us. The other way that we sometimes find boats is by spotting them ourselves. We are at sea, always looking for rubber boats with binoculars; or we use our radar to find them. And sometimes, depending on the possibilities, we also have our own search air- plane in the air... With regard to the boats you spot yourselves – i.e., cases where you are not ordered to intervene by an MRCC – what are the rules of engagement? Would you consider any boat transporting asylum seekers to be in need of rescue, whether or not they send out a distress call? Yes, absolutely. 'Maritime dis- tress' is defined as such that, at the moment of encountering a boat, if you are certain that it is absolutely impossible for it to reach any port safely, you have to treat it as a boat in distress. For various reasons: first of all, we have seen many boats sink- ing. I have seen this personally, with my own eyes. They are very unstable; built very cheaply; they don't have enough fuel to reach Italy or Malta... they are often overcrowded; there will be sick or physically weak peo- ple on board... so we know that, if we left these people to sail on, someone could easily die on the boat. This has happened. Or they could all die, if the boat sinks. There is no stable situ- ation on this kind of boat, be- cause it's overloaded from the beginning, and can never reach a port safely. That makes it a dis- tress case. Your mission is specifically to conduct SAR in Libya's zone. Yet the rescue operations, as you say, are co-ordinated from Rome. At the same time, the EU is funding the Libyan coastguard to take over; and Italy has withdrawn the Mare Nostrum mission. Where does that leave responsibility for people rescued in that area? For quite a few years, I think more than 10 years, the Ital- ians have voluntarily taken over responsibility for [the Libyan Search and Rescue area]. So, we can say that by habit, we used to coordinate with Rome. Another reason is that, after Gaddafi lost power [in Libya] and the coun- try fell into civil war, there are no authorities in Libya; no one who can be responsible for that area. There is no stable, central government; and there is still a civil war going on. So, the Ital- ians voluntarily took over the coordination of this rescue zone. Just until 28 June, there was no coordination centre in Libya. Only 10 days ago, the IMO rec- ognised the notification of a Lib- yan RCC in Tripoli, funded and built up by Italy. This may explain why both Malta and Italy expect those rescued in Libya's SAR to be taken to Libya. Yet your NGO refuses to do this. Can you explain why? Maritime law clearly states that you have to take people to a 'port of safety'. There is no port of safety in Libya, which is still in a state of civil war. You can find many testimonies from people who have come out of Libya – the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and even the ships have sometimes collected records – and it's always the same story. We know that people get kid- napped a lot; they get enslaved, there is forced labour; people get murdered; people get tortured; people get raped; there are a lot of human rights violations of all types. Not only in the private prisons of smugglers, but also in these so-called 'official' deten- tion centres: which are under the authority of different... let's say, different 'groups': because the country is not under the rule of a central government... Your NGO has been accused of disobeying orders from an MRCC. Does that include refusing to hand over rescued migrants to Libyan coastguard, or take them to a Libyan port? Yes. We will not do this. We have always said we will not do it, because it puts people's life in danger. [...] Also, the 1951 Refu- gee Convention has a paragraph about 'refoulement', which means that if there is a refugee, you are not allowed to return him to a country where he will be facing this type of abuse. In the Lifeline case, how- ever, the rescue vessel went to Lampedusa, not a Libyan port... It is important to clarify that the ship itself doesn't decide on the port of safety [...] It is stand- ard practice that the coordina- tion centre is responsible for finding you a safe port; so de- pending on their negotiations, or availability, they appoint you a port, and you just go there... In this case, the appointed port was Lampedusa. But when Lifeline got there, it was denied entry into harbour... resulting in a stand-off between Italy and Malta. How do you account for Italy's apparent change of heart? Basically, what happened was that the MRCC in Rome de- clined responsibility for that case; which is very strange, be- cause in the beginning, when they were informed about this boat, they had assigned it a case number. Case numbers started at 1 in 2018; now, we're at num- ber 200-something. [...] But they assigned it a case number; in this way, actually taking responsibil- ity and knowledge of the case. Then later, they passed on the coordination to the so-called 'Libyan coastguard'; and then didn't want to deal with the case any more... even though they had assumed responsibility for it beforehand. Meanwhile, Sea-Watch has encountered similar problems in Malta, which – like Italy - has closed its ports to rescue NGOs. Moreover, your search airplane has been reportedly grounded. What reasons have you been given for this? Technically, the word 'ground- ed' means that we would not be allowed to fly at all, to any- where. But we're not grounded on technical reasons; what hap- pened is that we were informed that we're no longer allowed to come back from Libyan terri- tory to Malta. We have been operating the same way for 18 months; but at the end of May we were informed that we now need a special permit to come back from the Libyan airspace Sea-Watch and Lifeline are two vessels currently impounded in Malta, as per a new government policy not to allow voluntary NGO rescue ships the use of our harbours. CAROLA RACKETE, spokesperson for SeaWatch International, defends her organisation's mission to save lives at sea Smugglers just make money out of people; they never care if there's anyone out there to rescue them or not 'If we let those people sail on, we know they will die' Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt