Monthly Archives: March 2020

Reporting by Patrick Kingsley, New York Times: “[O]ne day a few months ago the Libyan Coast Guard ordered [a German merchant ship] to divert course, rescue 68 migrants in distress in the Mediterranean and return them to Libya, which is embroiled in civil war. The request, which the [merchant ship] was required to honor, was at least the third time that day, Jan. 11, that the Libyans had called on a merchant ship to assist migrants. The Libyans could easily have alerted a nearby rescue ship run by a Spanish charity. The reason they did not goes to the core of how the European authorities have found a new way to thwart desperate African migrants trying to reach their shores from across the Mediterranean. And some maritime lawyers think the new tactic is unlawful. Commercial ships like the [German ship] Panther must follow instructions from official forces, like the Libyan Coast Guard, which works in close cooperation with its Italian counterpart.  Humanitarian rescue ships, on the other hand, take the migrants to Europe, citing international refugee law, which forbids returning refugees to danger. After the Panther arrived in Tripoli, Libyan soldiers boarded, forced the migrants ashore at gunpoint, and drove them to a detention camp in the besieged Libyan capital. ‘We call them privatized pushbacks,’ said Charles Heller, the director of Forensic Oceanography, a research group that investigates migrant rights abuses in the Mediterranean. ‘They occur when merchant ships are used to rescue and bring back migrants to a country in which their lives are at risk — such as Libya.’ [***] Since the 2015 crisis, European governments have frequently stopped the nongovernmental rescue organizations that patrol the southern Mediterranean — like the Spanish ship, Open Arms — from taking rescued migrants to European ports. European navies and coast guards have also largely withdrawn from the area, placing the Libyan Coast Guard in charge of search-and-rescue. Now Europe has a new proxy: privately-owned commercial ships. And their deployment is contested by migrant rights watchdogs. Although a 1979 international convention on search and rescue requires merchant ships to obey orders from a country’s Coast Guard forces, the agreement also does not permit those forces to pick and choose who helps during emergencies, as Libya’s did. ‘That’s a blatantly illegal policy,’ said Dr. Itamar Mann, an expert on maritime law at the University of Haifa in Israel. [***] Between 2011 and 2018, only one commercial ship returned migrants to Libya, according to research by Forensic Oceanography. Since 2018 there have been about 30 such returns, involving roughly 1,800 migrants, in which merchant ships have either returned migrants to Libyan ports or transferred them to Libyan Coast Guard vessels, according to data collated by The New York Times and Forensic Oceanography. The real number is likely to be higher….” Full story here.

From the Guardian: “…While the level of violence at Greece’s border with Turkey has shocked many Europeans, Europe’s retreat from refugee rights did not begin last week. Greece’s decision to seal its borders and deny access to asylum is only the most visible escalation of an assault on people’s right to seek protection.

The groundwork for this was laid in the central Mediterranean, where the EU and Italy created a proxy force to do what they could not do themselves without openly violating international laws: intercept unwanted migrants and return them to Libya.

The strategy has relied on maintaining deniability of responsibility for Libyan coastguard operations. But the connivance revealed in the audio recordings is supported by previously unpublished letters between high-level EU mandarins, confirmed by inside sources and laid bare in emails from the Libyan coastguard, all obtained by the Guardian. Taken together, this evidence threatens to unravel a conspiracy in the Mediterranean that flouts international law in the name of migration control….”

From IOM: “A tragic shipwreck off the coast of Libya last month and more than a dozen other recent fatalities elsewhere have pushed the death toll in the Mediterranean Sea to 20,014 since 2014, according to IOM’s Missing Migrants Project. ‘The disappearance and presumed drowning of at least 91 people reported missing aboard a dingy north of Garabulli, Libya, on February 9 is the latest in a series of so-called “ghost boats” that have vanished en-route to Europe, claiming hundreds of lives,’ said Frank Laczko, Director of IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre. … Although the annual number of deaths has decreased every year since 2016 when more than 5,000 lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean, the proportion of deaths compared to attempted crossings rose in both the Central and Western Mediterranean in 2019 compared to previous years – a continuation of the increasing risk of death seen since 2017….”

From The Conversation, “Tensions mount at Greek border with Turkey amid contested history of migration in the Aegean“:

“… The Aegean islands were also where boats filled with Greek Orthodox residents of Asia Minor came in the wake of the Convention of the Forced Exchange of Populations of 1923 between Greece and Turkey, signed after the first world war. Following the arrival of more than 1.5 million people in Greece, the population of the islands almost doubled to the extent that many locals still have family members from among the group originally and still known as the ‘Asia Minor refugees’….”

Reporting by the Guardian, “Erdoğan says border will stay open as Greece tries to repel influx“, discussing the linkage between Erdoğan’s decision to open its border with Greece and the offensive in Idlib:

“…Erdoğan complained that funds transferred to Turkey from the EU to support refugees were arriving too slowly, saying he had asked Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to send them directly to his government.  But the policy shift appears to be intended to force the EU and Nato to support Ankara’s new military campaign in the north-western province of Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold, where thousands of Turkish soldiers are supporting opposition forces facing an onslaught from regime forces backed by Russian air power.  Erdoğan said Turkey could not handle a new wave of migration, in an apparent reference to the growing humanitarian crisis in Idlib. …”

23 February article from the Times of Malta:

“Interception and rescue operations by the Libyan Coast Guard have stuttered in recent weeks following instructions by the Tripoli government to halt all operations at sea, raising questions over the future of Malta’s deal with Libya to minimise the number of arrivals. Times of Malta is informed that the Libyan Coast Guard received orders in the second half of January to halt rescues and stop disembarkation of migrants in Libya.

They have since restarted some interceptions, however, most of the boats that left the coast were not aiming to land in Malta. Back in November, Times of Malta had revealed how Malta had secretly negotiated an agreement with Libya that sees the Armed Forces of Malta coordinating with the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept migrants headed towards the island and returned to the war-torn North African country….”