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Where is Europe’s Outrage?

Ongoing Border Transgressions and Struggles in times of Mass Drownings, Push-Backs, and Europe’s Silence

In the past four weeks, the WatchTheMed Alarm Phone was involved in 19 distress cases, of which 7 took place in the Aegean Sea, 7 in the Central Mediterranean and 5 in the Western Mediterranean Sea. While in most cases the safe arrival of all travellers could be confirmed, in some cases we had to witness the loss of life and human rights violations:

On the 11th of June, we were alerted to an illegal push-back operation of a refugee boat between Cesme and Chios. The boat had already entered Greek territory, when the Greek coastguard threatened the passengers with gun violence and forced them back to Turkey. A boat part of the Frontex mission was present but did not intervene. The Alarm Phone statement denouncing the incident can be found here: https://alarmphone.org/en/2016/06/15/watchthemed-alarm-phone-denounces-illegal-push-back-operation-with-frontex-present/?post_type_release_type=post.

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Quelle: Alarmphone | [FR] [ES]

Statement 26th of June 2016:

During the interception the migrants’ boat capsized. The survivors witnessed that the Marine Royal did not rescue all passengers, but only 5 of the 8. The Marine Royal then left the three dead bodies behind.

On Sunday the 26 of June 2016, the Alarmphone got a call from a Senegalese man staying in Morocco. His brother had left in a rubber boat with a group of 8 persons, heading from Tangier in direction of Tarifa. During the interception the migrants’ boat capsized, because of the big waves produced by the ship of the Marine Royal.

The survivors witnessed that the Marine Royal did not rescue all passengers, but only 5 of the 8. The Marine Royal then left the three dead bodies behind. In anguish the Senegalese comrades in Tangier wrote the following statement:

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Quelle: Alarm Phone

Changing Escape Routes: Alarm Phone experiences in the Mediterranean Sea

EU politicians and institutions will publicly express their sorrow about the many fatalities. They will call for policy-changes and the further militarisation of the sea. They will again blame the smugglers and seek to reinforce deals with authoritarian regime. However, every shipwreck and every death of the past years is a consequence of exactly these European actions and inactions.

For most of the past five weeks, the Alarm Phone remained largely silent. Whereas a few weeks ago we received dozens of calls from the Aegean region per week, sometimes even per day, the new deterrence measures between Greece and Turkey have resulted in fewer attempted sea crossings and the Alarm Phone was not involved in any emergency situations in this region. In the Western Mediterranean Sea, the Alarm Phone was involved in three instances of successful sea-crossings from Morocco to Spain. In the five weeks that this report covers, we witnessed a remarkable increase of crossings from Libya to Italy and were alerted to 7 cases of boats in distress at sea in the Central Mediterranean. For the first time in months, Syrians and Iraqis were amongst these cross-border travellers trying to reach Italy and in several harrowing shipwrecks hundreds of people lost their lives.

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