One year ago exactly, we wrote that “everything (and everyone) was in motion.” While this is certainly true today for all the actors involved in the central Mediterranean route, it is no less necessary to try to put a few things straight. In order not to repeat what has already been said and widely agreed upon, it is perhaps better to insist here on the new challenges that add to, modify and/or complement those that people on the move and the civil fleet face every day at sea and on land.
If we can summarize, three are the main challenges we face in this Summer of 2024:
The new (?) European political context
In the light of the results of the elections for the new European parliament (think in particular of the outcome of the vote in Germany, not to mention the confirmations in Italy) or of the legislative elections in France, there is alarm at the growth of support for extreme right-wing political forces – explicitly racist and xenophobic and which seem to base their success precisely on anti-immigration political objectives – and at their being in some cases already forces of national government or which may just as legitimately aspire to be so. This is certainly true and we have seen in Italy how the coming to power of Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist party has corresponded to a further brutalization of the border regime.
But it is also true, without contradiction, that the arrival of extreme right-wingers at the threshold of power has been prepared by the very ‘big centre’ that has led the European institutions, and the governments of the most influential member states, in recent years. And the way has been paved precisely by their migration policies. Is it Orban and Meloni, Wilders, and Le Pen who first invented and practiced the strategy of externalizing borders? Who first – precisely in the name of a ‘closure policy that should leave no room for right-wingers’ – signed agreements with Erdogan’s Turkey, with Libyan militias, with the Moroccan regime along the main migration routes? And who first opened administrative detention facilities and organized chartered deportation flights to ‘safe countries of origin’? It is sufficient, and quite instructive, to read the two letters sent by Ursula von Der Leyen a little over a year apart to understand what the approach is and what the objectives are of those who call us to stop, in the name of democracy, the danger of the extreme right (March 20th, 2023 internal to the EU Commission members and June 25th, 2024 to the Heads of government of the EU Council – see CMRCC website to access the links).
This, mind you, in no way means that the electoral victories of extreme right-wingers change nothing for the real condition of people on the move along the routes and of citizens of non-European origin in our metropolises. Everything is not the same. Indeed. Even if, formally, the majority governing the main institutions of the European Union has not changed since the vote in June, it is clear that the extreme right will contribute more to what political scientists call “agenda-setting.” Let us therefore expect a tightening on the very points indicated by von der Leyen in her letters: “effective protection of the EU external borders, working with partners to prevent irregular departures and break the business model of the smuggling networks, […] and returning those with no right to stay.” What these words actually mean we unfortunately know well. And it is precisely on their practical translation that the two additional new challenges of these coming months will be played out on the ground.
The new Tunisian SAR region
Hunting black people in city streets, police round-ups, and forced deportations first in the countryside, then people left to die of thirst and hunger in the desert, violent interceptions to the point of shipwrecks and drownings at sea. On the other side, but in the same vein, intimidation and arrests against lawyers, journalists, NGO activists, and opposition politicians. These are the brilliant results of a year’s work in Tunisia by the fabulous ‘Team Europe’ (Meloni, von Der Leyen and the liberal Rutte) in collaboration with the authoritarian regime of Kais Saied: long prepared, 11th June 2023 was the date of the first agreement between European statesmen and the autocrat of Tunis.
If the business model is the one tried and tested over the past seven years in Libya, its maritime development could not be missing either: donation of Italian patrol boats, the commitment of the German cooperation agency (GIZ) to the infrastructure and, most recently (as in the tragic Libyan farce in 2018), the proclamation of a Tunisian SRR (Search and Rescue region). Decades of disputes with Italy and Malta over the boundaries of territorial waters and maritime jurisdiction have been magically resolved by the convergence on a single target: to strengthen and try to legalize a more effective interception, capture and pull-back device at sea, to make life more difficult for those trying to flee precisely from Tunisia. It is enough to look at the map drawn for the IMO (International Maritime Organisation of the UN) and notice that wedge that covers precisely the corridor of international waters between the Kerkennah islands and Lampedusa, where the support, assistance, and rescue activities of the civil fleet have been carried out with some difficulty and where it has been possible, in recent months, to often solicit the intervention of the Italian authorities, to understand what the Tunisian SRR is there for. And it certainly does not detract from a more functional development to safeguard human life at sea.
How will the ships of the Tunisian Garde National move in that area? How will the Italian authorities behave from now on? In particular how will they react towards the European civil society assets operating around Lampedusa? We will begin to see in the coming weeks. What is certain from the outset is that, in no way, Tunisia – for the many legal reasons of the past and the dramatic situations of today – can be considered a safe port of disembarkation. Resisting all attempts that will be made in this direction, and demanding a pronouncement to this effect by international organizations out of all shyness and ambiguity, is one of the new challenges of the summer.
The new implementation of the Italy-Albania agreements
On the other side of the Adriatic, another new challenge looms. For several months we have been wavering in our analysis as to whether to consider the agreement between the Italian and Albanian governments as pure propaganda (for Meloni as an opportunity to show herself as a ‘champion of the fight against immigration’ in the election campaign for the European Parliament, for Edi Rama as a ‘reliable partner’ towards the ever-promised accession to the European Union) or something more serious. The propaganda was all there, but since August 2023 they want to do it. And it is not just an Italian-Albanian issue. Many ‘democratic’ governments throughout Europe, starting with the usual von Der Leyen, have shown their interest in the ‘experiment’. The question for them is whether it is possible and practicable to take a further qualitative leap in the policy of externalization, and whether it is possible and practicable to take a further step backward in dismantling the legal scaffolding of asylum and international protection. What fools the British Conservatives were with the Rwanda tantrum! When every EU member country, if the Albanian experiment works, will be able to have its own little Rwanda on its doorstep.
The Italian government is serious. First with the new list of “safe countries” where people can be deported, it is no coincidence that the list traces carbon copies of the main nationalities of the current arrivals in Italy. Then with the acceleration of the construction works to set up the two camps (including a small extra-territorial prison for those who will rebel); the trade union agreements with the police forces to cover with money those who will offer to travel overseas; the tender for a specific naval vessel dedicated to the transfer. And finally, the legal corrections of the last “Cutro” Decree to try to make the Albania operation compatible with the judgment that the Italian law will have to pass before the European Courts. There will be no need to obtain large numbers immediately, such as the three thousand a month to 36,000 a year announced by Meloni. The important thing is instead to create a new “fait accompli” against international law, to prove to the whole of Europe that “the experiment can work.”
It is not a quiet life.
These new challenges add up and recombine with “old” ones. Beginning with the countless and continuous attempts to hinder civil rescue at sea and criminalize freedom of movement and solidarity, on land, and reinforce the process of “borderisation” of the sea.
Processes that are also not without contradictions: the Italian government can claim a 60 percent reduction, in the first six months of 2024, of landings in Italy compared to the record year 2023, but we know how this figure is also due to the particularly uncertain weather conditions (this is also how the climate crisis affects migratory routes!), as well as the strengthening of the prevention/interception capacity of departures in Libya and Tunisia. While, despite everything, the capacity of civil rescue has grown compared to 2023: over 15 percent of total arrivals, compared to around 8 percent the previous year (source: Viminale).
The Piantedosi Decree-Law continues to be a permanent threat to civil ships – and the very recent case of the LOUISE MICHEL stopped in Lampedusa proves it -, but on several occasions – among all, for example, the very important decision of the Civil Court of Crotone in the HUMANITY 1 case – the Italian justice system has ruled recognizing its illegitimacy and, for three months from April to July, it was no longer applied.
The so-called Libyan Coast Guard certainly continues to be hyperactive in capturing and pulling-back, but – after months of violent escalation culminating in the MARE JONIO shooting case on 4th April – it has systematically kept its distance from the operations of civil vessels and for more than three months there have been no reported cases of interference by its official assets. In the incidents that involved OCEAN VIKING and GEO BARENTS, putting the safety of the shipwrecked people at risk, on 9th and 10th July respectively, the protagonists were not by chance anonymous or SSA (Stability Support Apparatus) militia vessels.
The General Aviation Administrative body (ENAC) was once again used by politicians to try to intimidate the observation and monitoring of civil aircraft, with the ordinance of 3rd May, but SEA-WATCH Airborne and PILOTES VOLONTAIRES continue to operate with extraordinary effectiveness, contributing to the saving of the lives of hundreds of people and documented denunciation of the repelling devices.
As on land, attempts to criminalize people on the move are repeated (“every landing at least boatman to be arrested” seems the mantra), but at the same time public awareness is growing and solidarity campaigns are multiplying. Or the construction of new administrative detention centers – there should have been “one in every Italian region” according to the government’s plans – to facilitate repatriations and deportations slows down, while rebellions multiply in the existing ones.
And the list could go on.
In the new European political context, as well as in the face of developments in Tunisia and Albania, it will be a matter for all of us to take up the challenge to the full and to experiment, from our side together with the people on the move, with new possible forms of resistance. Legally as well as operationally. Together with many others who understand what is at stake. At sea as well as on land. After all, if we wanted a quiet life, we would have done something else entirely. 😉
12th July 2024
Mediterranea Saving Humans
