A coalition of search and rescue organisations have announced that they will end any communication with a Libyan maritime co-ordination centre, saying continuing to do so makes them complicit in crimes against humanity in the central Mediterranean Sea.
In a press conference on Wednesday, spokespeople from the organisations accused Italian and European authorities of continuing to fund and fuel violence against refugees and migrants as a matter of policy, to stop them from reaching Europe.
The organisations said they are willing to risk the confiscation or detention of their vessels and related fines, which they will fight in court. They also called on the European public to bring this human rights crisis back into public discourse.
The organisations involved are Sea-Watch, Sea-Eye, Sea Punks, CompassCollective, Louise Michel, Mediterranea, Pilotes Voluntaries, ResQShip, R42, Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario, Mission Lifeline, Tutti gli Occhi sul Mediterraneo and SOS-Humanity.
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Together, they have rescued more than 155,000 people, said Giulia Messmer from Sea-Watch.
The Libyan coastguard – trained by the EU – is violent towards them, Ms Messmer said, with two rescue ships fired at in the past three months. “The Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre [in] Tripoli, which co-ordinates the violence by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, cannot be regarded as a competent authority,” said a press release.
Since 2017, at least 174,333 people, trying to reach Europe across the Mediterranean Sea, have been intercepted and forced back to Libya, according to figures from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and other publicly available information. There, they are often locked up indefinitely, without charge or trial, in detention centres where starvation, torture, sexual violence and medical neglect have been well documented.
Though the European Parliament voted in support of a comprehensive European search and rescue mission in 2023, while saying co-operation with the Libyan coastguard should be ended in the case of fundamental rights violations, this has not been acted on.
Without a naval rescue operation in the central Mediterranean, EU border agency Frontex focuses on surveillance – including through flying Israeli drones.
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A spokesman for Frontex said that while “no one can be blind to the suffering ... often, the first decision must be to act fast to save lives, even if that means contacting the rescue co-ordination centre in Tripoli when [an] incident takes place in the Libyan search and rescue zone”.
He said that while “Frontex’s main task is border management ... saving lives is always a priority for us”.
Search and rescue organisations say their work is actively being impeded by European authorities, with Ms Messmer saying their ships and planes had been blocked from operating more than 30 times since the beginning of 2023, for more than 750 days in total, while more than 900 days of operational time was lost due to an Italian policy of ordering them to sail to faraway ports after they conduct a rescue.
Libya is a transit point for refugees and migrants fleeing a huge range of situations across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including war, persecution, crushing poverty, a lack of adequate healthcare, and the impacts of climate change.
Many in recent years come from Sudan, where more than 11.7 million people have been displaced, according to the UN. A devastating war there began in April 2023, with war crimes and ethnic cleansing documented.
“If people are dying [on] the other side of the world it concerns us because we are all the same human beings. We just need to live in a world that belongs to all of us, not just block the border or build walls,” said Lam Magok, from refugee-led organisation Refugees in Libya, at Wednesday’s press conference.
A spokesperson for the Italian prime minister did not respond to a request for comment. The Irish Times also contacted the Libyan co-ordination centre, but received no response.
Figures collected by the International Organisation for Migration show nearly 33,000 people have died or gone missing trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea since 2014, more than 26,600 of whom were in the central Mediterranean route – between Libya or Tunisia and Italy or Malta. These numbers are largely assumed to be an underestimate.
