The Med Migrant Crisis and Defend Europe

Center for International Maritime Security

By Claude Berube and Chris Rawley

8 August 2017

This summer while many European vacationers bask on sunny Mediterranean beaches, out in the water, hundreds of people are fighting for their lives while an increasingly more complex and robust collection of maritime non-government organizations (NGOs) (see Table 1) alternatively try to rescue them from drowning or send them back to Africa. The line between maritime human trafficking and a flow of refugees at sea has been blurred. In response to the ongoing migrant wave, the group Defend Europe recently raised enough money to charter a 422-ton ship, the C-Star, to convey a team of its activists to Libya. They arrived in the search-and-rescue zone off the Libyan coast on August 4-5.

The authors understand the complexities of this situation in the central Mediterranean particularly with regard to strongly held political positions by both sides. We try not to take sides in political battles, especially as we sit on the board of directors of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC). Our interest is simply to discuss how organizations use the sea as a venue to proactively accomplish their own goals and deter their opponents’ goals. Our piece at War on the Rocks discusses the search-and-rescue NGOs and the approaching counter-NGO ship C-Star. As it has arrived on station off Libyan territorial waters, we spoke with Thorsten Schmidt, spokesman for Defend Europe.

What is the C-Star’s mission?  “We came to the conclusion,” Schmidt says, “to get activists who are independent and fair. We need to get our own ship to get people there and to observe the left-wing NGOs.” Schmidt contends that the media has been embedded with the NGOs and therefore have a bias in support of their work. When asked if C-Star had an embedded reporter or asked for a reporter from any media organization, he stated that they just wanted their own activists to report with cameras.

The search-and-rescue (SAR) NGOs have operated between Libya and Sicily for two years. When Defend Europe began to consider their own maritime mission, they were approached by the owner of a ship to charter. The ship was the C-Star (formerly the Suunta – a Djibouti-flagged floating armory in the Red Sea). The owner is Sven Tomas Egerstrom, formerly associated with the Cardiff-based Sea Marshals which he was terminated from on 26 March 2014. Although there have been some questions as to whether C-Star has armed guards aboard, it is unlikely. Schmidt told us that the ship had no weapons aboard. More practically, we assessed in our previous piece that Defend Europe does not have the funds to support a ship for an extended mission beyond two weeks as well as the more costly endeavor of an armed guard team. Ships transiting the Gulf of Aden will only pay armed guards for a few days. That is a function of both need and cost in higher-risk areas.

The ship was detained both as it transited the Suez Canal and when it pulled in to Famagusta, Cyprus. It is unknown what exactly happened. Several reports suggested the ship had false documents or was transporting foreign nationals to Europe. Schmidt states that in both cases the authorities found nothing on the ships.

Once on station, C-Star will spend a week in the company of search-and-rescue NGOs and on the lookout for both migrant boats and human traffickers. Their cameras will be their weapons. According to Schmidt, nine out of ten migrants using the sea do not migrate from war-torn countries as refugees. When they reach the Libyan coast, he says, human traffickers put them on gray rafts and enough food and fuel to get to the 12 nautical mile territorial limit of Libya where search-and-rescue NGOs then pick up the migrants and take them to Europe. The traffickers use smaller, high-speed boats to follow the rafts then, when the NGOs have rescued the migrants, the traffickers take the motors and return them to Libya. Schmidt notes that in some cases, the traffickers join the migrants so that they can establish networks in Sicily and beyond. Italian authorities in Lampedusa this week seized the Iuventa, owned by the SAR NGO Jugend Rettet, accusing them of aiding and abetting traffickers.

If C-Star encounters a migrant boat in distress, Schmidt says it will render assistance first by notifying the MRCC in Rome, and then bring them aboard. According to Schmidt, the ship has “hundreds of life vests.” When asked about how it might accommodate for potentially dozens of refugees from a boat in distress, he says “the ship is fully equipped with an extra amount of water and food. Of course there are several activists on board with medical aid skills.” Instead of taking the migrants to Sicily or other European ports, they intend to take the migrants to closer, non-European ports such as in Tunisia. It is unknown if they have secured the diplomatic agreements to make those transfers happen. Defend Europe argues that this makes sense since there are closer countries than Italy that aren’t unstable like Libya.

Defend Europe wants an end to human trafficking but, as Schmidt says, “we are just one ship and you can’t stop it with just one ship…We are an avant garde but need help.” Though they have an abbreviated mission this time, the $185,000 they have raised ensures that they will look to a second and third mission. Already, he says, two more ship owners have contacted them.

Table 1: NGO Rescue & Interdiction Vessels Operating in the Mediterranean

Organization	Vessel	Gross Tonnage	Flag
Jugend Rettet	IUVENTA	184	Netherlands
Lifeboat Project	Minden	Unk.	Germany
MOAS	Phoenix	483	Belize
MOAS	Topaz Responder	1198	Marshall Islands
MSF	Bourbon Argos	2343	Luxembourg
MSF	Dignity I	648	Panama
MSF	Vos Prudence	2937	Italy
Proactiva Open Arms	Astral	Unk.	United Kingdom
Proactiva Open Arms	Golfo Azzurro*	350	Panama
Proactiva Open Arms	Open Arms	427	Spain
Save the Children	Vos Hestia	1678	Italy
Sea Eye	See-Eye	Unk.	Netherlands
Sea Eye	Seefuchs	Unk.	Netherlands
Sea Watch	Sea Watch-2	Unk.	Netherlands
SOS Méditerranée	Aquarius	1812	Gibraltar
Defend Europe	C-Star	422	Mongolia

Claude Berube teaches at the United States Naval Academy and is an officer in the Navy Reserve. He has published three non-fiction books and two novels. Follow him on Twitter @cgberube. Chris Rawley is a Navy Reserve surface warfare officer and entrepreneur. Follow him on Twitter @navaldrones. Rawley and Berube frequently write and speak on maritime organizations and both serve on the Board of Directors of CIMSEC. The views expressed are theirs alone and not of any organization with which they are affiliated.

Source: http://cimsec.org/med-migrant-crisis-defend-europe/33588

Italy police probe priest once hailed for Nobel Peace Prize

AFP

9 August 2017

Rome (AFP) - An Eritrean priest once in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize for helping migrants is now under investigation in Italy on suspicion of abetting illegal immigration.

"I received a letter from the Trapani public prosecutor's office on Monday informing me of the investigation," Mussie Zerai told AFP in Rome, insisting that he was innocent.

After fleeing Eritrea as a youngster and arriving in Italy alone aged 16, Zerai entered the seminary aged 45 and became a reference point for migrants in distress for a period of almost 15 years.

For a long time, his was the only telephone number many had to call for emergency assistance.

Don Mose would sometimes receive dozens of calls for help per day, mostly from migrants in distress calling from a satellite phone from their rickety vessels at sea.

He would transmit the coordinates of the stricken boats to the Italian coast guard but also sometimes to the privately-run rescue ships known to be in the vicinity.

That is likely the reason his name ended up in a probe Trapani prosecutors have opened into illegal immigration which focuses largely on the roles played in migrant rescues by the privately-funded NGOs.

The investigation lead to the seizure last week of a boat run by German NGO Jugend Rettet, which is accused of having had direct contact with traffickers off the coast of Libya.

"It's totally contradictory to attack the humanitarian organisations to fight illegal immigration. It's like protesting against diseases by taking it out on the doctors," Zerai said.

"Instead we should tackle the causes of the disease (illegal immigration), which make these people desperate enough to risk their lives at sea," he added.

He referred in particular to the plight of hundreds of thousands of people trapped in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Uganda, with barely enough food and water to survive and little hope of a better future.

"There is a famine going on in the Horn of Africa, the dictatorship, the war ... there will always be refugees, you cannot just tell them 'don't come, keep your suffering away from us'.

"Africans also have the right to live and have a future," he said.

Source:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/italy-police-probe-priest-once-hailed-nobel-peace-171340941.html

'High-quality refugee boats' for sale on Chinese website, despite EU criticism

The EU has taken measures to restrict the sale of boats in Libya, but aid groups say the sales are just a 'symptom of a wider problem'

Middle East Eye

By Will Horner

9 August 2017

Chinese manufacturers are advertising inflatable dinghies as "high-quality refugee boats" in an attempt to market them to people-smugglers in the Mediterranean, despite the EU asking China to clamp down on the practice.

The sales, carried on the website of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, offer buyers a "high-quality refugee boat" for between $800-$1,100. According to the web page, the boats, constructed out of plywood, aluminium and PVC, can carry 25-30 passengers.

Life-jackets are considered "optional equipment".

A medical charity that operates migrant search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean told MEE that the sales were “highly irresponsible” and were putting the lives of people crossing the Mediterranean at risk.

But Annemarie Loof, who oversees the search and rescue work of charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said that simply stopping the sales of dinghies was not enough and said that as long as there was a lack of safe, legal routes for migrants and refugees the problem would continue.

“It is highly irresponsible that these kinds of inflatable dinghies are actually being advertised as quality refugee boats,” said Loof.

“Unscrupulous smuggling networks are only focused on maximising their profits, and the use of these types of unseaworthy vessels has only made the crossing by sea even deadlier."

'Symptom of a wider problem'

It's not the first time Alibaba has been caught out selling such boats. Another web page which has since been removed from the site advertised "inflatable rescue refugee boats" as being "not likely to sink".

“The boat has good capacity of anti-sinking,” the advert read. “When the boat is in max loaded condition (even the boat is filled fully with water), the boat still can be float on the water.”

A leaked report from Operation Sophia, the EU's mission to crack down on illegal people-smuggling routes across the Mediterranean, confirmed that Libya-based smugglers were buying Chinese-made inflatable boats and shipping them to North Africa via Malta and Turkey.

In one case, Maltese customs officials intercepted a shipment of 20 packaged rubber boats bound for Misrata, on the Libyan coast, but were forced to release the cargo as there were no legal grounds to hold it.

Last month, the EU took measures to restrict such sales as part of its steps to disrupt the business model of people-smugglers by imposing restrictions on the export and supply of such boats to Libya.

EU officials have called on China to do more to help fight people-smuggling in the Mediterranean.

"The rubber boats used by the smuggler networks in the Mediterranean are fabricated somewhere in China,” Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU commissioner for migration, said on a visit to Beijing in May.

In a statement sent to MEE, a spokesperson for Avramopoulos said that he had “requested the support of the Chinese authorities to better fight against migrant-smuggling in the Mediterranean, having in mind that a certain number of rubber boats used by the smugglers are produced by firms operating in China”.

However, Loof said that simply stopping these sales was not the answer.

“The sale of these dinghies are just the symptom of a wider problem,” she said, “which is the lack of safe and legal channels for people who are in search of safety or a better life.

“Until safer alternatives are provided, people will continue to take these dangerous routes and risk their lives.”

Source: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/chinese-businesses-target-people-smugglers-high-quality-refugee-boat-sales-350372488

Italian mission in Libya 'on right road' - UN envoy

Alfano calls for UN leadership, Gentiloni wants 'decisive push'

ANSAmed

8 August 2017

ROME - Ghassan Salame', the United Nations special envoy for Libya, on Tuesday praised the Italian naval mission to support the Libyan coast guard's efforts against human traffickers. "I know there were rows in Libya, but I think that cooperation and transparency between Italy and Libya is the most constructive way (to get results)," Salame' told a press conference with Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano after a meeting in Rome. "We are in the right road in this sector to address a challenge that involves everyone". Alfano, meanwhile, said a single negotiation process on Libya led by the United Nations was necessary as too many talks so far had led to zero final results.

"Negotiation formats in Libya must be reduced to one, the UN needs to take the leadership", Alfano said.

"Up until today there have been too many negotiations, too many negotiators and zero final results.

"Political instability in Libya is not a second-tier match, it is an absolute priority", stressed the minister.

Premier Paolo Gentiloni called on the United Nations to up its efforts to support stability in Libya during his meeting with Salamè, sources said Tuesday. "Italy has been working for Libya's stabilization for some time," Gentiloni said during the meeting at the premier's office in Rome, according to the sources. "I hope that the United Nations will give this process a decisive push". Gentiloni also stressed that strengthening Libya will help solve the Mediterranean migrant crisis.

"Stronger Libyan authorities will make the common effort against traffickers in human beings more effective," he said, according to the sources.

Source: http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/politics/2017/08/08/italian-mission-in-libya-on-right-road-un-envoy_940c9afb-5de5-4ccb-ad3c-91bbe5d1b729.html

Cracks Appear in Italian Resolve Over Disputed Naval Mission Off Libya

VOA

By Jamie Dettmer

7 August 2017

SAN BENEDETTO DEL TRONTO, ITALY

Italian government ministers are becoming increasingly divided over risky naval efforts to curb the numbers of migrants who have landed at the country’s ports.

At issue — what the mission should be for two Italian naval ships set to be deployed in Libyan waters. Several ministers object to the idea of Italian sailors turning back mainly sub-Saharan asylum-seekers — either directly or indirectly in coordination with Libyan Coast Guard ships, some of whom are suspected of being in league with people smugglers.

The emerging cracks in the Italian government policy come as a ship leased to a far right anti-migrant group started to shadow refugee-rescue vessels operated by humanitarian organizations, raising fears of a possible dangerous confrontation at sea with the far-right activists from Defend Europe.

The number of migrants who have arrived in Italy this year totals more than 95,000, although in the past two weeks the rate of arrivals has eased slightly. About 2,000 migrants attempting the sea crossing this year have drowned. In the past four years, about 600,000 migrants have arrived on Italian shores — the majority of whom departed from Libya and made the hazardous journey across the Mediterranean Sea.

The mass influx has strained Italy’s emergency and humanitarian system almost to the breaking point and is a source of increasing political tension among Italy’s political parties. It is likely to dominate next year’s national elections and is worsening the electoral prospects of the center-left coalition government of Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Last week, parliament approved the limited Italian naval mission to help Libya’s coast guard regulate the flow of migrants and prevent human trafficking. On Sunday, a leading opponent of the mission, Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro, said, “Turning migrants back to Libya at this moment means returning them to hell.”

His remarks were prompted by reports that on Saturday, Libya's Coast Guard announced it had “recovered and saved” more than 800 migrants near its coast. Giro says that returned “migrants end up in detention centers in the hands of militias, who take advantage of them to do their business.” He says just returning migrants to Libya won’t alleviate a huge humanitarian crisis."

Giro, a member of the Sant'Egidio Community, an influential Catholic volunteer association, also defended NGOs, which are being blamed by populist parties and some in the government for acting as a collective “pull factor” for migrants by mounting rescue missions.

The NGOs have been accused of coordinating pick-ups with people smugglers — something the humanitarian organizations vehemently deny. NGO heads say they are merely doing what European governments should be doing more of — rescuing migrants at risk of drowning. NGOs are now responsible for picking up more than 40 percent of those rescued at sea.

The head of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), Tommaso Fabbri, says, “The responsibility to organize and conduct search and rescue operations at sea lies — as it always has — with states. As such, our current rescue activities are simply filling the void left by Europe.”

Last month, the government of Italy introduced a code of conduct restricting what refugee-rescue charities are allowed to do, if they want to land migrants at Italian ports. Among other requirements, they are to refrain from patrolling within Libya’s territorial waters.

Only three out of eight NGOs operating in the southern Mediterranean have agreed to the Italian terms. A vessel operated by the German NGO Jugend Rettet was seized last week off the coast of the island of Lampedusa by Italian coast guard vessels for breaching the code and the ship has now been impounded while investigations continue.

Giro is seen by the Italian media as the spokesman for an influential group of parliamentarians featuring left-wingers and Catholics. He acknowledges some NGOs subscribe to “a no border ideology, a kind of humanitarian extremism,” but he argues, “In the face of the tragedy that’s happening, I prefer humanitarian extremism to other types of extremism.”

His views are in direct confrontation with former Communist and Interior Minister Marco Minniti, the exponent of a tough, security-focused line on migration.

The 61-year-old Minniti wants to close Italian ports to any NGOs failing to sign the code of conduct, a proposal frowned on by transport minister Graziano Delrio. And he was the main exponent for the Italian naval mission after persuading Prime Minister Fayez Serraj, the head of an internationally recognized government in Libya, to welcome the mission.

The Italian naval mission to Libya is not only under threat from opposition within the Italian government. Now a Libyan warlord has threatened to bomb the Italian ships.

Minniti has warned that the Democratic Party and its coalition partners face electoral disaster next year, if they fail to take mounting public anger seriously and come up with ways to curb the flow of asylum-seekers, most of whom are economic migrants fleeing poverty, rather than refugees fleeing war.

Anti-migrant rage is obvious in slogans daubed in cities and even in towns that have been allotted only a few thousand migrants. In San Benedetto del Tronto, a seaside resort on Italy’s Adriatic coast, high-school students shocked their teachers in July by daubing across a large mural the slogan “Stop The Immigration Business!” The mural adapted an Edward Hopper painting, replacing a yellow hay field with a dark and stormy sea and a boat loaded with migrants.

Source: https://www.voanews.com/a/italy-naval-mission-off-libya/3975297.html


   

Italy's Mediterranean naval mission gets new commander

Business Standard

7 August 2017

Rome, Aug 7 (IANS/AKI) Italian Rear Admiral Enrico Pacioni on Monday became the new commander of his country's naval mission in the Mediterranean, which is now conducting security operations in some 160,000 square km including Libyan coastal waters.

Following a request to Rome from Libya's UN-backed unity government chief Fayez al-Sarraj, the Italian parliament on August 2 approved the naval mission aimed at aiding Libyan Coastguard fight the gangs trafficking migrants across the Mediterranean.

Libya's unity government said it had only requested logistical and technical support for Libyan Coastguard from Italy, Libya's LANA news quoted the country's Foreign Ministry as stating last week.

The Italian naval mission has heightened disagreement between Sarraj's unity government and the rival administration in the eastern city of Tobruk which in recent days has slammed the mission as "a violation of Libyan sovereignty".

Italy's naval mission to Libya will not be "aggressive" but will give support to its crisis-hit former colony, Premier Paolo Gentiloni stated last Wednesday after lawmakers voted in favour of the mission.

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/italy-s-mediterranean-naval-mission-gets-new-commander-117080701355_1.html

MSF says less involved in migrant rescue operations

'We continue to work and cooperate with Coast Guard'

ANSA

7 August 2017

(ANSA) - Rome, August 7 - Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said it is being involved less in migrant rescue operations after refusing to sign an Italian-drafted code of conduct for NGOs operating in the Mediterranean.

"We are not the first to be called for rescue operations as occurred in the past", said Michele Trainiti, the head of the NGO's search-and-rescue project. "We know we will be working less but we are always at the disposal of the Coast Guard. We are here and we are ready to cooperate.

"Our position has not changed we are working as usual respecting the law. We adapt to the Coast Guard, we do what we are asked to do. This doesn't mean avoiding the code, we don't want to cause controversy. As usual, we are working in the respect of international, maritime and Italian laws".

The official added that the Coast Guard "gives indications on rescue operations and coordinates operations. We have always cooperated and we will continue to do it. We are at sea to save human lives and we will continue until we are allowed. All we want is to work in peace".

Trainiti also spoke about an operation on Saturday night in which 127 migrants aboard its vessel Vos Prudence were transferred aboard two Coast Guard cutters, rather than being taken to an Italian port: "The operation took place in a calm and regular manner. Such a procedure is not unusual. Perhaps, before the code we could have sailed closer to Lampedusa. But such transfers at sea are not unusual. The Vos Prudence actually has a deep draft so we could not have reached the port".

He also expressed the hope that "this political moment can be solved to work in peace. The pressure on the work of NGOs - concluded Trainiti - could limit their ability to rescue people, to save human lives".

Source: http://www.ansa.it/english/news/2017/08/07/msf-says-less-involved-in-migrant-rescue-operations_b7bd444c-3626-4b44-be1a-0763a37e7c2e.html