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Ferries not Frontex!
10 points to
really end the deaths of migrants at sea

On April
20, the Joint Foreign and Home Affairs Council of the EU released a
ten-​point action plan outlining their response to the recent
deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Many other proposals
have also been made over the last few days. We are activists who have
been involved in the struggles against the European border regime for
several years and who have been in touch on a daily basis with
hundreds of people who have crossed the Mediterranean through Watch
The Med and the Alarm Phone project. Faced with the hypocrisy of the
“solutions” that have been proposed so far, we feel compelled to
undermine their falsity and attempt to open up an alternative space
for reflection and action.

1. We are shocked and angered
at the recent tragedies that have claimed at least 1200 lives in the
Mediterranean Sea in the last week. We are shocked, although not
surprised, by the unprecedented number of deaths in merely a few
days. We are angered because we know that without a radical change
these are just the first of many more deaths to come in 2015.

2.
We are also angered because we know that what is proposed to us as a
“solution” to this unbearable situation only amounts to more of
the same: violence and death. The EU has called for the reinforcement
of Frontex’ Triton mission. Frontex is a migration deterrence
agency and Triton has been created with the clear mandate to protect
borders, not to save lives.

3. However, even if saving lives
was to be its core task, as it was the case for the
military-​humanitarian operation Mare Nostrum in 2014, it is clear
that this would not bring dying at sea to an end. Those who suggest a
European Mare Nostrum should be reminded that even during its
mission, the most grandiose rescue operation in the Mediterranean to
date, more than 3.400 people died. Is this figure acceptable to the
European public?

4. Others have called for an international
military operation in Libya, a naval blockade or the further
enlisting of African countries for the policing of their own land
borders. The history of the last 20 years in the Mediterranean shows
that stepping up the militarization of migration routes is only cause
to more death. Each and every time a route into Europe has been
blocked by new surveillance technologies and increasing policing,
migrants have not stopped arriving. They have simply been forced to
take longer and more dangerous routes. The recent deaths in the
Central and Eastern Mediterranean are the result of the
militarization of the Gibraltar Strait, of the Canary Islands, of the
land border between Greece and Turkey, and of several land borders in
the Sahara. The “successes” of Frontex mean death to thousands of
people.

5. International organisations as well politicians
from across the whole political spectrum have denounced smugglers as
the main cause of death in the Mediterranean Sea. Several prominent
politicians have compared the smuggling of migrants to the
transatlantic slave trade. There seems no limit to hypocrisy: those
who uphold the slave regime condemning the slave traders! We know
very well that smugglers operating in the context of the Libyan civil
war are often ruthless criminals. But we also know that the only
reason why migrants have to resort to them is the European border
regime. Smuggling networks would be history in no time if those who
now die at sea could instead reach Europe legally. The visa regime
that prevents them from doing so was introduced only 25 years ago.

6. Those who have called, once again, for the creation of
asylum processing centres in Northern Africa should be reminded of
two examples that are the most accurate examples of what these
centres would actually mean. First, the Tunisian Choucha camp managed
by the UNHCR, which abandoned those who sought refuge there from the
Libyan conflict. Even those who were recognized as needing
international protections were left behind in the Tunisian desert,
often without any other choice than trying to cross the sea. Second,
the creation by Australia of offshore processing centres on remote
“prison-​islands”, which is now hailed by many as a role model
for Europe, only shows how hideous the forceful confinement of asylum
seekers can be. These “solutions” serve only to displace the
violence of the European border regime away from the eyes of Western
publics.

7. Faced with this situation, what is to be done?
Comrades and friends with whom we have shared common struggles in the
past years have been calling for freedom of movement as the only
viable response to this situation. We too make this demand ours, as
it is the only one that has managed to open up a space of political
imagination in an otherwise suffocating debate. Only unconditional
legal access to the EU can end the death of migrants at sea. And yet
we think that a general call for the freedom of movement is not
enough in the current context. We want to consider the freedom of
movement not as a distant utopia but as a practice – enacted by
migrants on a daily basis often at the cost of their lives — that
should guide our political struggles here and now.

8. These
are the reasons why we call for the institution of a humanitarian
ferry, that should travel to Libya and evacuate as many people as
possible. These people should be brought to Europe and granted
unconditional protection in Europe, without undergoing an asylum
process which has lost its original purpose to protect and has de
facto become yet another tool of exclusion.

9. Is the idea of
a ferry unrealistic? In 2011, at the height of the Libyan civil war,
humanitarian ferries evacuated thousands of stranded migrants from
Misrata to Bengasi, overcoming obstacles such as shelling, constant
fire and sea mines. This shows that even in the current volatile
situation of Libya, considering such an action is possible. Moreover,
ferries would certainly be immensely cheaper than the prospect of a
massive rescue mission at sea and of any military solution.

10.
The only reality we know is that any solution short of this will
continue to lead to more deaths at sea. We know that no process of
externalisation of asylum procedures and border control, no amount of
compliance with the legal obligations to rescue, no increase in
surveillance and militarization will stop the mass dying at sea. In
the immediate terms, all we need is legal access and ferries. Will
the EU and international agencies be ready to take these steps, or
will civil society have to do it for them?

The Alarm
Phone
wtm-​alarm-​phone@​antira.​info

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