This article needs to be updated.(May 2023) |
Formation | 4 October 2018 |
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Founded at | Bologna (Italy) |
Type | Civil society reality platform |
Purpose | Monitoring and possible aid to those who risk dying in the Central Mediterranean |
Website | https://mediterranearescue.org |
Mediterranea Saving Humans APS is a "civil society platform" making connections between existing networks and individuals and a "non governmental project". [1] Though it is similar to the many NGOs operating in the Mediterranean it is not actually an NGO, it brings together heterogeneous organizations and individuals, secular and religious, social and cultural, unions and political, who have decided to take a stand against the deaths and the human rights violations committed daily in the Mediterranean Sea. It was founded in 2018 to keep watch of the situation in the Mediterranean sea and to save lives in difficulty after the majority of other NGOs were not able to act due the legal obstacles created by the Italian authorities. [2] [3] [4] The group coordinates the search and rescue operations of the ships Mare Jonio and Alex which sail under the Italian flag. The project also has the support of the German association Sea-Watch and the Spanish Proactiva Open Arms. [5] It has carried out several search and rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean Sea with the ship Mare Jonio. Recognition of the work of Mediterranea has come from Pope Francis.
On 9 May 2019, the Mare Jonio and the Italian Coast Guard saved almost 66 people near the Libyan coast. Their boat had capsized in the sea and the Mare Jonio ship welcomed 30 people on board. The minister of the interior announced that neither ship had the permission to make the people land, but later they were authorized. [6] The ship headed north, where it encountered the Italian authorities and was taken to Lampedusa. By order of the Internal ministry, on the night of the 10th the ship was seized and the crew were accused of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. [7] [8] The activists claimed they were undertaking research, and protested against a seizure. [9] On 13 May the Attorney general of Agrigento rejected the preventive seizure for lack of evidence. [10]
On 5 July 2019, the ship Alex, a yacht with a sail which had initially just been tasked with accompanying the Mare Jonio, reached the waters off the coast of Lampedusa with fifty four people on board, picked up the previous day. [11] As had happened previously with Sea-Watch 3, the authorities initially refused the request to enter. [12] The Italian government refused to accept people in Lampedusa and referenced Malta, some 100 km away, as an alternative. The spokesperson for the organisation, Alessandra Sciurba, declared the journey to be too long and impossible for the passengers on 6 July 2019. [13] [14] [15] In the afternoon of 6 July 2019, the captain Tommaso Stella entered the port of Lampedusa without permission. [14] [16] [17] [18] The ship was overloaded more than three times the amount agreed upon by the eleven members of the crew. From a maritime point of view, therefore, refusal was not an option.
On 28 August the rescue ship Mare Jonio saved approximately 100 people from a refugee ship that was sinking. According to the survivors, 6 people, including children, had previously drowned. [19] The Italian coast guard brought children and women on land in Lampedusa. Mare Jonio was forbidden from allowing the remaining 34 rescued people to reach land in an Italian port because the operators would have not respected the laws and caused an emergency situation. [20] The authorisation to land «for health reasons» came from the captaincy of the port on 2 September, following a storm and a hunger strike that the migrants had started. [21] [22] The ship was subsequently confiscated until February 2020, when the jury accepted Mediterranea's appeal, immediately releasing the ship from seizure. [23]
Halfway through March 2020 the organisation announced that its two ships, Mare Jonio and Alex would suspend their navigation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [24] Navigation resumed in the month of June. [25] On the 19th there was the recovery of sixty people, who were able to land at Pozzallo without facing particular obstacles. [26] On the 29th another forty-three people were rescued, and in subsequent days reached the shores of Augusta, Sicily. [27] Since some of them had resulted positive for the Covid-19 virus, the crew observed the mandatory quarantine, which ended without repercussions on 15 July . [28]
Mediterranea is supported with contributions and support from associations like ARCI and Ya Basta Bologna, NGOs like Sea-Watch, social enterprises and individuals. The project was made possible with a loan from an Italian ethical bank, Banca Etica, and a crowdfunding campaign with over 3000 supporters which raised over 1 million euros. [29] When Mare Jonio was stopped and fined in May 2019, in less than 2 days they received the 65,000 euros needed to pay the fine through crowdfunding. [30]
Pope Francis has publicly expressed support for the work of Mediterranea and their rescue mission. In December 2019 he received a cross with the life jacket that had been found floating in the sea. He had it placed at one of the entrances to the Apostolic Palace and wrote "I have decided to display this life-vest, 'crucified' on this cross, to remind us to keep our eyes open, to keep our hearts open, to remind everyone of the obligatory duty to save each human life. It is a moral responsibility that unites believers and non-believers." [31]
In May 2021 Mediterranea was awarded the Danish Shipping prize together with the Danish Maersk Etienne saving 27refugees off Tunisia whose ship had been taking on water. The Maersk Etienne crew took the refugees on board but they were not allowed to disembark in Malta as the Maltese authorities said that the rescue did not happen in its territorial waters. On 11 September, after 38 days on board, the refugees were transferred to Mediterranea's Mare Jonio vessel, and subsequently permitted to land. [32] [33]
Matteo Salvini is an Italian politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport since 2022. He has been Federal Secretary of Italy's Lega Nord party since December 2013 and an Italian senator since March 2018. Salvini represented Northwestern Italy in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2018.
In 2021, Istat estimated that 5,171,894 foreign citizens lived in Italy, representing about 8.7% of the total population. These figures do not include naturalized foreign-born residents as well as illegal immigrants, the so-called clandestini, whose numbers, difficult to determine, are thought to be at least 670,000.
Proactiva Open Arms (POA) is a Spanish NGO devoted to search and rescue (SAR) at sea. Set up in October 2015, it carried out its first rescue action that same month from its base on the Greek island of Lesbos.
Marco Minniti is an Italian politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the government of Italy as Minister of the Interior from 12 December 2016 to 1 June 2018. Previously, he was one of the most prominent councilors of former Prime Ministers Matteo Renzi and Massimo D'Alema.
The MV Aquarius, formerly Aquarius Dignitus and Aquarius 2, is a 1977-built dual-flagged search and rescue vessel, which has been used to rescue refugees and migrants stranded in the Mediterranean Sea since 2016. It has been chartered and operated since February 2016 by the NGOs SOS Méditerranée and Médecins Sans Frontières as a rescue vessel for migrants and refugees making the Mediterranean crossing in makeshift craft from Libya to Italy as part of the European migrant crisis.
SOS Méditerranée is a European, maritime-humanitarian organization for the rescue of life at sea, currently operating in the Mediterranean sea in international waters north of Libya. The organization chartered the Aquarius and more recently the Ocean Viking in order to rescue people fleeing by sea from Libya and who risk drowning. The group was founded in June 2015 by German former captain Klaus Vogel and Frenchwoman Sophie Beau after the Italian navy ended the rescue Operation Mare Nostrum in 2014. Its headquarters are in Marseille (France), Milan (Italy), Frankfurt (Germany), Geneva (Switzerland).
Jugend Rettet is a non-governmental organization (NGO) from Berlin. Its goal is to save drowning persons at the Mediterranean Sea. Operations are conducted with the Iuventa, a ship that sails under Dutch flag. This ship was seized in August 2017 after suspicion of cooperation with migrant smugglers.
Open Arms is a Mediterranean rescue vessel operated by the Proactiva Open Arms NGO.
Carola Rackete is a German ship captain who volunteered with the German sea rescue organisation Sea-Watch. In June 2019, she was arrested for docking a migrant rescue ship without authorization in the port of Lampedusa, Italy.
Sea-Watch is a German non-governmental organisation that operates in the Mediterranean Sea, notably by commissioning ships to rescue migrants.
Sea-Watch 3 is a ship of the Sea-Watch organization based in Berlin. The ship is around 50 m long, and is registered as a Cargo Ship in Germany. Sea-Watch 3 is used for sea rescue in the Mediterranean.
It Will Be Chaos is an HBO documentary on the European refugee crisis directed by US-based Italian filmmakers Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo. In 2019 It Will Be Chaos won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Current Affairs documentary at the 40th News & Documentary Emmy Awards. It Will Be Chaos also won the Best Directing Award at the 2018 Taormina Film Festival. Translated into over 10 languages, the documentary has been distributed worldwide.
Louise Michel is the name of the former French patrol boat Suroît, originally built for the Directorate-General of Customs and Indirect Taxes. It was refitted in 2020 to patrol rescue zones in the Mediterranean Sea.
Sea-Eye is a German non-governmental organization headquartered in Regensburg. It participates in the rescue of migrants in distress in the Mediterranean, in particular by having chartered the ships Sea-Eye and Seefuchs/ Sea Fox until August 2017, then the Alan Kurdi and since August 2020 the Sea-Eye 4. In June 2021, Sea-Eye received honorary citizenship from the mayor of Palermo.
Mission Lifeline is an association from Dresden, founded in 2016, whose purpose is to rescue people at sea in the Mediterranean. The rescue ship Lifeline was initially used for this, and since the end of August 2019 the Mission Eleonore has been used. From October 2021, Mission Lifeline have operated the ship Rise Above.
Alan Kurdi, named after the drowned Syrian child of Kurdish origin, Alan Kurdi, is a ship which has been used since 2018 by the humanitarian organization Sea-Eye - under the German flag - and latterly the Italian humanitarian NGO, 'ResQ - People Saving People' for the rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Before this, she was an oceanographic vessel operated by the Land of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, named Professor Albrecht Penck.
The ship Mare Jonio was originally constructed as a tugboat in 1972. Operating on behalf of Mediterranea Saving Humans (MSH), Mare Jonio has been active in a Search and Rescue (SAR) role rescuing shipwrecked refugees in the Mediterranean Sea since October 2018. The project also has the support of the German association Sea-Watch and the Spanish Proactiva Open Arms. The ship is owned by Alessandro Metz through Idra Social Shipping SRL and is managed by Augustea Imprese Marittime e di Salvataggi SpA of Genoa, Italy; Mare Jonio sails under the Italian flag.
The yacht Astral is a 30m ketch-rigged sailing yacht which was donated to Mediterranea Saving Humans (MSH) in 2016 by Livio Lo Monaco, head of Grupo Lo Monaco. Astral is a steel-hulled vessel and was designed by Philip Rhodes and built at Kröger Werft Rendsburg in 1970.