27/02/2023
My heart goes out to all the people that died in yesterday’s ship wreck in the Mediterranean Sea.
This is once again the direct result of the European immigration policy, lead by , and not a migration crisis.
The EU considers people on the move a problem of public order to be handled by Frontex (the European Border and Coastguard agency). The European coastguards and Frontex denied to save these people and create a lack of safe passage.
This is way I do the work that I do on rescue ships of humanitarian organisations.
The Italian right government of Georgia Meloni has installed more rules in December to prevent humanitarian NGO’s (non-governmental organisations) from saving people drowning at sea; another measurement in trying to criminalise our work. However, Italy is certainly not alone in the EU with its tough migration policy, as became apparent during the recent European migration summit. It was mainly about drones, border fences and walls, and barely about shelter and solidarity, or saving lives at sea. Also is only trying the prevent people seeking refugee to reach The Netherlands.
The claim that maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) operations act as a ‘pull factor’ of irregular seaborne migration has frequently been used to criticise NGO’s conducting SAR off the coast of Libya, which are considered to provide “an incentive for human smugglers to arrange departures” (Italian Senate 2017: 9). Research (by for instance the migration policy centre) has never shown a relationship between the presence of NGO’s at sea and the number of migrants leaving Libyan shores.
Large numbers of asylum seekers are being driven adrift by global conflicts, uncertainty, inflation and climate change. That 'push factor' is more decisive than whether they can expect help. The migration policy of the EU doesn’t change the amount of people coming. They DO make migration routes to the EU more deadly. ⤵️
