Abstract
Independent rescue boats have been forced out of the sea by government deals so it is now almost impossible to discover details of refugees trying to cross to Italy.
“UPDATE. The #Aquarius boat terminates its activity… This is good,” tweeted Matteo Salvini, Italy’s right-wing populist interior minister.
It was seen as a victory: the Aquarius’s withdrawal was the final act of a campaign to remove all rescue boats run by non-governmental organisations from the central Mediterranean – the area between Libya, Malta and Italy.
But as well as carrying out rescues, these boats documented the numbers of deaths at sea, allowed journalists on board and reported human rights violations. Without them, external observers have disappeared, and many suspect that deaths and human rights violations now elude public scrutiny.
Nick Romaniuk, the search and rescue co-ordinator of the Aquarius, says the area has turned into an “information black hole”, yet the overflowing boats of refugees are rarely out of the Italian media, and immigration is a subject at the heart of current political battles.
Tommaso Fusco, a junior editor at Open Migration, a website covering stories about migration, told Index: “Deaths at sea continue, and there are still very many, but they are much less talked about because there isn’t a third party that records them – and when there is one, it is not always listened to.”
Deaths are still recorded, but many believe official figures are inaccurate and the public are deliberately being kept in the dark.
“At the moment, the political preference is to not let the public understand what is happening,” said Matteo Villa, head of the migration programme at the Institute for International Political Studies in Italy. “This way… the government doesn’t run the risk of controversies over pushbacks or deaths at sea.”
Until 2017, NGO rescue boats were co-ordinated by the Italian coastguard. Rescued migrants were taken to Italy because they wouldn’t be safe if returned to Libya, where civil wars have raged since 2011.
But as arrivals in Italy hit record numbers, public opinion turned against refugees and political support for them fell away. In 2017, the EU supported Italy’s then centre-left government to strike a deal with Libya, under which the EU provided funds, ships and training to the Libyan coastguard. In return, Libya intercepted fleeing migrants – between 15,000 and 30,000 – and took them back to its ports.
Critics, including Romaniuk, say the Libyans weren’t answering distress calls, and there are reports that migrants and asylum seekers taken back to Libya have been tortured, raped or sold as slaves.
SOS Méditerranée, who operated the Aquarius with Médecins sans Frontières, told Euronews that if an NGO or a commercial boat rescued migrants in international waters and returned them to Libya, it would constitute a violation of international law.
In August that year, Italy asked all NGO rescue boats working from its ports to sign a code of conduct. Regional prosecutors then launched investigations into them. Virtually all were unsuccessful, but when boats were kept-from the sea, some began to pull out.
Migrants hoping to cross over to Italy are spotted by the aid organisation SOS Méditerranée in January, 2018. Independent rescue boats are being forced out of sea by political deals
CREDIT: DPA Picture Alliance/Alamy
SOS Méditerranée spokesperson Laura Garel for, said: “I guess, for governments who want us not to talk any more, the best way is for us not to be there.”
In June 2018, Salvini announced on Twitter that Italy would close its ports to NGO rescue boats, and Gibraltar and Panama were pressured to revoke the registration of the Aquarius.
By the end of the year, no NGO rescue boats remained in the central Mediterranean. Only commercial operations, military vessels and the Italian and Libyan coastguard were left.
Most of their communications are confidential and observers can only discover basic information from the shore: how many leave Libya; how many arrive in Italy; how many are returned.
Villa says the figures on deaths at sea have become less reliable. After June 2018, deaths almost doubled, only to inexplicably nosedive soon after. The International Organisation of Migration says the drop is at least in part due to a dramatic fall in departures from Libya. Though some believe smaller boats are still travelling without detection, meaning deaths also go unreported.
Sporadic reports offer a glimpse of what we may be missing. In September 2018, the deaths of more than 100 people were discovered, and in January 2019, after months in which few deaths were recorded, an Italian plane spotted a distressed boat carrying 120 people. When a helicopter arrived hours later, only three could be saved.
Another report revealed that a commercial boat under the Gibraltar flag returned 54 people to Libya in March.
Italy was persuaded to start search-and-rescue operations after a public outcry following hundreds of deaths in October 2013. Ultimately, not knowing what happens offshore reduces the chance of there being another.
“There is this idea of sweeping everything underneath the carpet without the public being aware,” said Romaniuk. “But the problem is not going away.”