Lrescue operations at sea are again in the spotlight after the Italian authorities’ senseless efforts to prevent the disembarkation of survivors taken from the waters by the ships of three non-governmental organizations, including Médecins sans frontières (MSF), and the politico-diplomatic haggling that followed.
These difficulties are set against the backdrop of years of harassment of migrants and those who help them, of repeated lies against them, in particular about their alleged complicity with smugglers, as well as than the dismantling of the rescue system in the Mediterranean.
To these accusations we reply: excuse us for disturbing you by not letting them drown! It is quite indecent to accuse our organizations of favoring crossings when the European States, France and Italy in the lead, have constantly promoted, by supporting the Libyan coastguards, a system of refoulement and detention based entirely on violence. For the year 2022 alone, more than 17,000 people – men, women, children – have thus been brought back to Libya and often imprisoned in detention centers where they are subjected to multiple abuses and deprivations.
accomplices to these crimes
Now, who are these “Libyan coastguards” if not a disparate assembly of armed militias, simple politico-military entrepreneurs of violence? These groups, whose porosity with the networks that organize the trafficking of human beings has been widely demonstrated, receive financial support from the European Union and Italy, and are endorsed by all European governments. In reality, you are the first accomplices of these crimes.
Once brought back to the detention centers, those intercepted will for the most part be subjected to atrocious blackmail: remain locked up in these fetid cages for months to come or else pay a ransom to be released; or decide to join the “voluntary return” program in their country of origin, organized by theInternational Organization for Migration.
Only a few will end up benefiting from the protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which will not protect them from violence and detention, but will be the first step, for a very small number of them. , towards a possible relocation to a European country.
“Let them go back to Africa” ? But, in reality, nowhere within the French and European authorities is this policy being debated! More than twenty-five thousand people have died in the Mediterranean since 2014, and nearly two thousand for the year 2022 alone. Here again, there is no debate within the French and European authorities, even less questioning.
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