MEDITERRANEAN SEA The day-long restlessness culminates on Saturday evening at 21:36 with an alarm echoing in the corridors of the rescue ship.
– Crew, prepare for the rescue operation, repeats the voice on the walkie-talkie.
The ship’s crew moves towards the lower deck of the ship quickly.
A small plane patrolling the Mediterranean has received a message that a rubber boat full of people is in distress somewhere nearby, in the waters of the coast on the border between Libya and Tunisia.
People trying to get to Europe are at risk of drowning at sea, just as this year has already happened to at least 2,500 people who tried to cross the Mediterranean.
Five minutes later, the members of the rescue team pull on hard hats and turn on their small headlamps. Two rubber boats are lowered from the ship’s side decks into the pitch-dark sea. Boat drivers step on the gas.
No one knows exactly where the rubber boat is, but it must be found.
This situation happened in the Mediterranean on Saturday night last week.
‘s Italian editor Jenna Vehviläinen and an Italian photographer working for Giorgio Casa have been with the rescue ship Geo Barents managed by the aid organization Doctors Without Borders for a week, watching how migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe are rescued from the Mediterranean Sea.
The ship left last week Wednesday from Salerno, Italy and came ashore on Wednesday.
Doctors Without Borders has been saving people at sea since 2015. During that time, the organization has taken more than 90,000 people who left Tunisia and Libya to safety.
Rescue operations like the one on Saturday night are therefore routine for the ship’s 21-person crew.
A rubber boat carrying 63 people even seems like a comparatively easy operation to them. Although it is dark and the search will take hours, the sea is calm and the rescuers only need to visit twice to get everyone safely to the mothership.
Often the situations are more difficult.
For example, last May the Geo Barents crew rescued 606 people from a sinking wooden fishing vessel off Sicily. The multi-story ship is so full of people that the rescuers had to make dozens of rounds to get everyone to safety.
– The number of people seemed endless, says a member of the Geo Barents search and rescue team Juan Cruz Vazquez Gonzalez.
Just a few weeks ago, the crew rescued people from the sea from eleven boats over the course of 12 hours.
– Every time we arrived at a new boat, the passengers pointed around and said that there are more boats over there, and over there too, Vazquez Gonzalez describes.
Even to a layman’s eye, the situation on Saturday night does not look easy.
When the rubber boat is found in the dark after about two hours of searching, it is so badly deflated that the bow is already pointing towards the sky. People are sitting in such small huts that two days later many say their bodies still hurt.
The boat, which left the Libyan coastal town of Zuwara the night before, has been floating in the sea for 22 hours before rescuers arrive.
When they then arrive, the people in the boat smell strongly of fuel. It’s a bad sign: exposure to motor gasoline causes not only skin injuries, but also central nervous system poisoning symptoms, which can even lead to a life-threatening condition.
The political climate has changed
The work in the Mediterranean is really challenging, and it is affected by more than just the complex conditions, says the project coordinator of the rescue operation of the Doctors Without Borders organization Céline Urbain.
The atmosphere regarding the rescue work carried out by aid organizations in the Mediterranean has changed in the Italian administration and at the official level.
– A few years ago, we worked closely with the Italian Coast Guard after rescues. Since then, one government after another has introduced new regulations that make our operations more difficult.
Aid organizations were the first to raise the bar by the Italian government’s minister of interior in 2018–2019 Matteo Salvinithe anti-immigration leader of the right-wing populist La Lega party.
In his time, it was common for rescue ships to float in the Mediterranean with rescued people on board for weeks before the authorities granted them permission to land.
Salvini received several criminal charges for his activities, some of which are still pending.
During Italy’s far-right government appointed last fall, ships carrying migrants and refugees no longer had to wait long to enter the port, but other regulations have been introduced instead.
While ships used to patrol the sea often for days looking for boats in distress, now the ships have to leave the search and rescue area as soon as they have saved one boat. If they don’t follow the rule, they are even threatened Fines of 50,000 euros or Prohibition.
Ports further and further away from the central Mediterranean
With the new government in Italy, the designated landing ports for ships are sometimes very far away. While in the past they were mostly in Sicily, now they are often located on the mainland – in Tuscany, Liguria or even on the Adriatic side of the coast.
Italy justifies this by the fact that it wants to distribute the reception of migrants more widely in different regions.
It is expensive and inefficient for organizations, and keeps their aid ships out of the Mediterranean search and rescue areas for a long time while they navigate the Mediterranean even back.
– Sometimes we have to leave for the assigned port to the north right away, even though we know that there are still boats in distress at sea, says Urbain.
It seems to him an inhuman contradiction.
– If we don’t follow the instructions of the authorities, we will be punished, but on the other hand, according to the international maritime rescue law, we have to help those in distress at sea.
Geo Barents has already received one fine of 5,000 euros and a 20-day suspension last February.
According to aid organizations, the prime minister by Giorgia Meloni the regulations and the anti-immigrant atmosphere of the government led not only make sea rescue more difficult, but also create increasingly dangerous situations in the Mediterranean.
For example, in February only a few kilometers away From the Calabrian coast of southern Italy a disastrous accident occurred in which at least 94 migrants died. Italian Coast Guard has been accused of slow action to prevent an accident.
Coastal authorities in Malta and Greece have also been accused of negligence in rescue operations.
Urbain says that even during their watch shifts in the Mediterranean, you can see how migrants are constantly left stranded on their boats.
– We often see that the authorities are aware of those in distress at sea, but do not respond to alarms or coordinate the rescue operation.
63 survivors entered the port of Genoa
Rescue boats from the Geo Barents approach a rubber boat floating in the Mediterranean Sea at night.
Juan Cruz Vazquez Gonzalez calls out to its passengers:
– Do you speak English? Arabic? France?
Screams of relief start to be heard from the rubber boat. Pairs of hands rise up.
– Take it easy, don’t get up!
The crew distributes life jackets to people. They are then transported to the mothership Geo Barents.
Those who survived the dinghy climb in one after the other from the side deck. 63 people – including Sudanese, Malians, Gambians, Nigerians and Bangladeshis. Four women and 59 men. Thirteen of them are minors.
Once inside, many fall to their knees, close their eyes and raise their hands in the air as if to say thanks.
The Italian authorities designate Genoa, 1,160 kilometers away, as the landing port of Geo Barents. The journey from Libya to there takes more than three days.
In the next article, we will tell the stories of the rubber boat survivors.