“I felt a moral obligation to help those who didn't have the same opportunities as me.” This is how Carola Rackete describes herself — the thirty-one-year-old German woman who rescued 42 people at sea and is now defying the authorities.
The latest odyssey to play out in the waters of the Mediterranean over the past two weeks has a face. That of Carola Rackete, the young captain of the vessel Sea Watch 3, who had the courage to defy the Italian authorities in order to bring the 42 migrants on board to safety — people who had been pushed to the very limits of their endurance.
Two weeks ago, the Sea Watch 3, operated by the NGO of the same name, rescued 42 people who were on board a stricken dinghy in the waters of the Mediterranean, approximately 47 nautical miles off Zawiya, Libya. Having refused to disembark the migrants at the port of Tripoli on the grounds that it cannot be considered a safe port, the vessel requested authorisation to disembark from both the Maltese authorities and those of Lampedusa. In both cases, the answer was no.
So, after spending two weeks tracing an erratic course while the condition of those on board grew increasingly critical, Carola Rackete decided to head for Italy, ignoring the coastguard's order to stop and anchoring three miles from the port of Lampedusa. On the morning of Thursday 27 June, Rackete once again urged the Italian authorities to respond, but received no reply; in the early afternoon, she attempted to enter the port.
In the hours that followed, the Italian port authorities allowed two migrants to disembark for health reasons, but continued to deny permission to land. At around 1:50 in the early hours of the night between Friday 28 and Saturday 29 June, Rackete took matters into her own hands and entered the port, in a manoeuvre that pinned a Guardia di Finanza patrol vessel against the quay. The forty people on board disembarked at around 6 in the morning and were transferred to the nearby reception centre, while the captain was arrested on charges of resisting or using violence against a warship.
"My life has been easy. I was able to attend three universities and graduated at the age of 23. I am white, German, born in a wealthy country with the right passport. When I realised this, I felt a moral obligation to help those who didn't have the same opportunities as me." In an interview with the daily newspaper la Repubblica, Carola Rackete describes, with an almost disarming simplicity, a life choice considerably less comfortable than that of most of her peers.
Her LinkedIn profile (the only social network she uses) confirms that the thirty-one-year-old German holds a degree in Nautical Sciences from Jade University of Applied Sciences, in Lower Saxony, followed by a master's degree in Environmental Conservation from Edge Hill University in Lancashire (England), with a thesis on albatrosses. In addition to German, her mother tongue, she speaks English fluently, and has a more basic knowledge of French, Russian and Spanish.
In 2011, at just twenty-three years of age, she was a navigation officer for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Marine and Polar Research. This was the first of six different postings as a ship's officer, including seven months on Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise. She specialised in polar regions and environmental conservation projects, in the roles of both researcher and educator.
Her first volunteering experience dates back to 2014, when she spent eight months in the Kamchatka region to support the scientific research team, act as a guide for tourists and as an educator for local communities. In 2016 she came into contact with Sea Watch, spending one month volunteering on a rescue mission off the coast of Libya. From 2017 onwards the collaboration intensified: in addition to coordinating reconnaissance operations carried out by the Moonbird and Colibrì aircraft, she took part in several missions to rescue migrants at sea.
Article 1 of the so-called security bis decree (decree-law of 14 June 2019, no. 53) provides that the Ministry of the Interior may "limit or prohibit the entry, transit or stopover of vessels in territorial waters", as it indeed attempted to do in the case of the Sea Watch 3. In the event of non-compliance, Article 2 continues, a fine of between 10,000 and 50,000 euros is imposed. Those who repeat the violations risk having their vessel seized.
It should be noted that, given the media storm this affair has generated, in recent hours thousands upon thousands of people have spontaneously decided to donate sums large and small to the NGO. The campaign published on the platform Produzioni dal Basso has already exceeded 45,000 euros, while on Facebook the total has already surpassed 160,000. Amounts, therefore, more than sufficient to cover whatever fine might be imposed.
Matters are complicated, however, on the criminal front, where Carola Rackete faces several charges: refusing to obey a warship (the maximum penalty for which is two years), resisting or using violence against a warship (up to ten years, under the navigation code) and aiding and abetting illegal immigration, for which the Consolidated Immigration Act provides for between one and five years' imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 euros per person.
