Following accusations from the Frontex agency and the prosecutor's office, the NGOs have responded to the charges: “Groundless: we only save migrants' lives”.
In recent weeks, the NGOs that have spent years rescuing migrants adrift on boats in the Mediterranean have found themselves at the centre of heavy criticism. The prosecutors' offices of Palermo, Catania and Trapani are, moreover, investigating not only the funding structures of these organisations, but even an alleged "support" effectively granted to people smugglers.
Public prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro presented in particular a dossier in which he spoke of "a proliferation of naval units positioned by NGOs that take it upon themselves to rescue migrants. At peak moments, we recorded the presence of thirteen naval assets. We asked ourselves about the phenomenon and how such high costs could be sustained without having a return in terms of economic profit." The same prosecutor also noted that some vessels – in particular those of the Maltese NGO Moas – sail under the flags of Belize and the Marshall Islands.
A further broadside came from the European agency Frontex, tasked with monitoring EU borders. On page 32 of its Risk Analysis 2017 report<, the body states: "It is clear that missions at the limit and occasionally inside the 12-mile limit, in Libyan waters, have undesired effects." In other words, the presence of the organisations' vessels would represent a kind of "insurance" for smugglers, who are aided by the fact that they can aim to reach the nearby rescue ships rather than the far more distant European coast. As if that were not enough, Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri directly accused the organisations: "They do not cooperate with us."
Palermo deputy prosecutor Maurizio Scalia poured cold water on the accusations, judging them difficult to prove, as reported by the Agi news agency: "What is the charge supposed to be, aiding and abetting? But how could an offence of that kind be established when there is someone to rescue?".
The organisations themselves were quick to respond: "Our role is extremely clear," explained Sos Méditerranée co-founder and vice-president Sophie Beau, speaking to Radio Vatican's French-language service. "We are a humanitarian organisation, created in 2015 because of the lack of adequate responses from institutions to the problem of migrants losing their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean. This was especially the case after the closure of the Italian Navy's Mare Nostrum programme."
The boats crossing the sea between Africa and the southern European countries represent – the activist continued – "a tragedy that has cost the lives of more than 46,000 people from 2000 to the present day." As for the accusations levelled against her own and other NGOs, Beau was blunt: "Our mandate is to save lives at sea. We have no connection of any kind with any organisation in Libya and, obviously, in particular with the smugglers, whom we on the contrary report to the authorities."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPjR_ZX1C8U
"Furthermore," she added, "one hundred per cent of our rescue operations are coordinated by the Coast Guard's central operations room, in Rome. It is they, the authorities, who receive reports of vessels in distress at sea. And it is they who decide which ship to dispatch from among those in the area at that moment. It is also they who then tell us which Italian port to dock at. Clearly, they turn to the organisations because they are the only ones doing this work: the institutions are absent in the face of what should instead be a moral obligation."
Marco Bertotto, head of advocacy at Médecins Sans Frontières, then told the Ansa news agency that the suspicions directed at them "are paradoxical". Meanwhile the organisation's Mediterranean mission chief, Ellen van der Velden, described them as "groundless accusations."
MSF itself, on 21 March, announced the deployment of a new vessel, the Prudence, capable of accommodating up to a maximum of one thousand people on board, with the aim of strengthening its search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. During the night of 26 to 27 March, the vessel carried out its first rescue: the Coast Guard dispatched Médecins Sans Frontières personnel to international waters off Sabratha. The total was 412 people saved. Later, at 12.30, a second rescue operation involved a broken-down inflatable dinghy carrying 129 migrants on board. The youngest of those rescued, Abdul, born in Libya, is just one month old.