Alarmphone | 27.07.2018
Alarm Phone 6 Week Report, 11 June – 22 July 2018
About 1,500 counted fatalities this year – highest death count ever in June due to Salvini & Co +++ Open harbours and corridors of solidarity demanded by mayors and civil society +++ More sea-arrivals in Spain than Italy +++ Developments in all three Mediterranean regions +++ Summaries of 187 Alarm Phone distress cases
Introduction
At the time of writing, forty people, including two pregnant women, are still stranded at sea. After a dangerous journey on a small wooden boat, they had reached international waters and the Maltese search and rescue zone. They were rescued but Malta did not allocate a safe harbour to them as they were legally supposed to do and they definitely did not want to allow them to Maltese land. Italy and other EU member states did not want them either. And Tunisia, scared to set a precedent, also refused to let the people to land. Only the crew of the Sarost V supply vessel on which they currently are, showed solidarity, responsibility, and humanity. For more than two weeks now, the forty are literally stuck at sea, with no government allowing them into a harbour – a wholly undignified spectacle.1