The head of mission at Médecins Sans Frontières responds to the accusations from the Catania prosecutor's office: “The finger is pointed at us, but it is Europe that has failed”.
Alleged contacts with "people on the ground" in Libya, hypothetical money transfers, "support" for people smugglers. In recent months, extremely serious accusations have been levelled at the non-governmental organisations engaged in saving the lives of migrants adrift in the Mediterranean. The words of public prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro, of the Catania prosecutor's office, landed like boulders. The magistrate 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 have asked ourselves about the phenomenon and how such high costs can be met without having a return in terms of economic profit."
Tommaso Fabbri, Head of Mission at Médecins Sans Frontières in Italy, explains in detail the means, methods and aims of the NGO's work at sea. And why the accusations are, in his view, entirely unfounded.
What did you say to one another within Médecins Sans Frontières when the accusations from the prosecutor's office came raining down on the NGOs?
We learned from the media about the opening of a preliminary inquiry by the Catania prosecutor's office into the activities of NGOs conducting search and rescue in the central Mediterranean. We were never contacted directly by the authorities, even though on our part there has always been the utmost willingness and transparency to provide all information that could have been useful.
What concerns us greatly, however, is the escalating poisoning of the atmosphere that we have been witnessing for several months now. In recent years, rescue operations in the Mediterranean were accompanied by the closeness of a great many Italians and above all by the institutional recognition of the duty to save lives at sea. Today we find ourselves in the opposite situation: in practice, those who carry out search and rescue at sea (and even more so the people rescued) risk finding themselves surrounded by a hostility that, for the country which took the initiative of launching Mare Nostrum, represents an enormous step backwards.
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There have also been suggestions of funding reaching the NGOs from traffickers: have you ever witnessed any unclear transactions?
Médecins Sans Frontières is an independent humanitarian organisation that operates with the utmost transparency: its accounts are available online on our organisation's website. The nature of our funding is clean and has nothing to do with human traffickers.
Our individual donors number over 300,000 and their contribution amounted to 94% of the total fundraising in 2016, as stated in the accounts published on the website and certified both internally and by a third party. These are individual people, private citizens, so we are legally obliged to guarantee the protection of their data, which are obviously not public. To this is added a 6% contribution from companies and foundations that we select through a rigorous ethical screening process, also public and available on the website. The main companies and foundations that have funded us are listed one by one — and I stress one by one — in our online accounts, on page 21. George Soros's foundation "Open Society," for example, does not appear among the funders of Msf Italia (the name had been mentioned by certain political figures, ed.).
Even L'Osservatore Romano, however, wrote that "the fear that the generous efforts of many on behalf of migrant rescue may falter must not lead us to oversimplify the problem by denying its existence". Technically, how do your operations work?
All rescues in the Mediterranean are carried out in agreement with the Coordination Centre of the Italian Coast Guard and in full compliance with international maritime law, European regulations and Italian law. It is the competent Italian authorities who determine when and how MSF intervenes to assist a vessel in distress, and where the people rescued must be disembarked. Every man, woman and child rescued by our organisation is handed over to the Italian authorities at the disembarkation ports designated to us. As a humanitarian organisation, the sole and exclusive objective of our activities at sea is to save lives. In addition, our teams on board and on shore identify the most vulnerable cases and report them to the authorities at the port of disembarkation.
The existence of the traffickers' business is a consequence of the failure to establish regulated channels that would allow refugees and migrants to reach Europe legally and safely. Only by filling this gap would it be possible to deal a definitive blow to trafficker networks and put an end to the unjustifiable deaths at sea.
Your vessels often wait at the edge of Libyan territorial waters. Some argue that this has changed the way smugglers operate, as they know they can "count on" your presence…
The idea that sea rescue operations act as a pull factor for departures is a myth that we have heard repeated time and again over the years, without anyone ever having been able to demonstrate it in numbers or with incontrovertible evidence. Over the years we have interviewed hundreds of people on board our vessels, and not one has ever told us they set off in the belief that they would be picked up as soon as they crossed into international waters.
But a simple analysis of the figures is enough to show how absurd this claim is. First of all, the only period of study available to us is the first four months of 2015, following the closure of Mare Nostrum. During that time, departures did not decrease at all, despite the extensive publicity given to the end of the operation. Meanwhile, mortality rose by as much as 30 times, as a consequence of the privatisation of rescue. Secondly, migration flows are determined by complex dynamics more closely linked to so-called push factors. Flows continued to grow from 2014 to 2017, primarily due to the evolution of situations in countries of origin and the deterioration of conditions in Libya. There were fluctuations: the decrease in Syrians in 2015 due to the opening of the Balkan route (40,000 in 2014, approximately 7,500 in 2015); fewer Eritreans due to the greater difficulties encountered along the route through Sudan and the arrest of a trafficking network in Italy and other European countries; more Nigerians due to the worsening situation in the north of the country. But in general, the growth trend dates back to 2015. That is, well before the increased presence at sea of NGO rescue vessels. And it continued unchanged throughout 2016.
Finally, the fact that NGOs and rescue operations do not constitute a significant pull factor is further corroborated by the 46 per cent increase in crossings that took place in 2016 along the western Mediterranean route (again, primarily by African nationals), where there are no NGO sea rescue operations whatsoever.
Is it true that in some cases your vessels have crossed Libyan waters with their transponders switched off?
No, incidents of this kind have never occurred on our vessels.
Are there contacts between NGO vessels and individuals present in Libya? In recent weeks there has been talk of a radio exchange between "people on shore in Libya" and others on board a vessel. From the latter, it was allegedly stated: "You can send them… We are here…".
I repeat: our vessels operate in full compliance with the law, under the coordination of the Italian Coast Guard and in line with international regulations. Médecins Sans Frontières has no contacts and never exchanges any information with the trafficking networks operating in Libya or other countries.
The government appears to have reacted to the accusations in a disjointed manner: some siding with the NGOs, others with the prosecutor's office. Do you have the impression that there is a lack of institutional support for your activities?
Our presence at sea, like that of other NGOs, is t
