Rome (NEV), 22 March 2018 – “In the sea there are neither migrants nor refugees. Those in the sea are simply people who, if life is endangered, need to be rescued.” So says Oscar Camps, founder of Proactiva OpenArms, the Spanish sea rescue NGO whose boat, moored at the port of Pozzallo (Ragusa, Sicily), has been impounded by the Catania Public Prosecutor’s Office headed by Carmelo Zuccaro.
At a press conference in Rome under the banner “Against Criminalisation of Sea Rescue” initiated by Luigi Manconi, outgoing president of the Italian Senate’s Commission on Human Rights, the panel included Camps, Riccardo Gatti and Alessandro Gamberini, respectively rescue mission leader and defence lawyer for OpenArms. Three crew members from this forty-third mission – thanks to which 218 people were able to disembark on 17th March in what is known in maritime law as a “place of safety” – stand accused of criminal association in facilitating clandestine immigration, an accusation which is groundless.
The press conference opened with a video which shows how, during the rescue operation, the Libyan coastguard approached one of the OpenArms launches carrying women and children, and threatened to kill unless the migrants were immediately transferred to their boat. Gatti took us through the various stages of the sea rescue which took place in international waters 73 miles off the Libyan coast (and not in a Libyan search and rescue zone, no such thing being recognised by the relevant international organisations). Gatti confirmed, “We acted as we always have in every previous mission, following international law to the letter.” Camps went on, “We were dealing with an emergency. There were people whose lives were in danger. That we could not give them up to the so-called Libyan authorities was due to the fact that Libya is not a ‘place of safety’, a fact independently recognised in the latest report of the UN Secretary General on the situation of migrants in Libya”.
The OpenArms crew members under investigation – ship’s captain Marc Raig Creus, mission leader Anabel Montes Mier and NGO co-ordinator Gerard Canals – face between 4 and 15 years’ imprisonment and fines of 15,000 Euros for every person rescued. For now, the top priority for lawyer Gamberini is to have the case transferred from the Catania Public Prosecutor’s Office to that of Ragusa. The case has been officially assigned to Catania because that tribunal has enhanced anti-mafia powers under which the boat was impounded. However, the OpenArms vessel is moored in Pozzallo (under the jurisdiction of Ragusa), and, its team contends, the charge of criminal association is groundless. For these reasons, the legal team is seeking to have the seizure declared incompetent. The time-limit for ratifying the ship’s seizure will expire on 28th March.
“We have always acted within the confines of international law, always in co-operation with those co-ordinating operations, namely, the Italian coastguard command in Rome,” emphasised Gatti. Likewise, we co-operated with the port authority in Pozzallo, believing, as the Libyans had pointed Kalashnikovs at us, that we had been victims of an attack. We could scarcely have imagined that we would be the ones to be criminalised”.
Camps, for his part, is not afraid to use the term “poisoning”. “Criminalising NGOs is nothing new. I fear that we are facing a tactic designed to stop us from following what we consider to be our vocation: sea rescue. At present the only NGO operating in the Mediterranean Sea is SOS Méditerranée with its ship, the Aquarius”. But to what extent has the change in the Italian post-election political climate really influenced this particular case? Following the press conference, the NEV press agency put the question to Manconi, co-ordinator of UNAR (the National Anti-Racial Discrimination Office): “I don’t want that to be the case. I refuse to believe that the popular vote could upset fundamental values and norms of international law. Rather, I fear that behind this lies the wish of a certain group, albeit small in number, within the judiciary which is determined to be right at all costs. A year ago the Catania Public Prosecutor said (in relation to the file opened against certain NGOs suspected of collaborating with traffickers) that there was no legal basis for opening an investigation. A year later, he thinks he has found one. I recall that last time round, in the absence of any legal basis, less appropriate means were employed, namely, the mass media. I hope that this won’t happen again.”
For the FCEI, the press conference was also an opportunity to reaffirm its solidarity with the Spanish NGO, having sent two operators from Mediterranean Hope, its refugee and migrant programme, to participate in the forty-second mission, just prior to this one. Present at the press conference were Gaëlle Courtens from the FCEI’s press office, Gian Mario Gillio, director of institutional relations for the FCEI, and Fiona Kendall, European and Legal Affairs Advisor for Mediterranean Hope, who emphasised the FCEI’s wish to continue the newly-begun collaboration.
To reflect this commitment, on Saturday 24th March at 10.00am in Pozzallo, the FCEI, Mediterranean Hope’s “Casa delle Culture” in Scicli (Ragusa) and local Methodist church are organising a demonstration of solidarity with the OpenArms team members.
You can hear the entire press conference in Italian here on the Radio Radicale website.
