AYS Daily Digest 16/04/2021 — European Officials Made Deals With Libyan Coast Guard Knowing People Would Be Left to Die
By: Are You Syrious
Tags: Italy, Digest, Libya, Migrants, Refugees

AYS Daily Digest 16/04/2021 — European Officials Made Deals With Libyan Coast Guard Knowing People Would Be Left to Die

A photo of Assad overlooking Aleppo. 10 years after the revolution began, Assad’s grip on the country is as strong as ever, despite the Danish government’s claims that parts of the country is now safe. From this photo series by Rami al-Bustan

FEATURE

Leaked recordings show Italian officials aware of Libyan Coast Guard’s indifference, cooperated anyway

For several years, people on the move and advocates have been sounding the alarm about cooperation with Libya. Despite evidence of torture in Libyan camps, despite evidence of brutality on the part of the so-called coast guard, EU governments continue to send people back to Libya and share resources with local authorities. Ever since the Italy-Libya deal in 2017, which ceded responsibility for rescues in the Mediterranean Sea to the Libyan authorities, countless people have died as a result of the Libyan Coast Guard’s brutality and indifference.

New leaked recordings show that the Italian authorities were aware of the indifferent attitude their Libyan counterparts had towards rescues. In one phone call, coastguard Col Massoud Abdalsamad responds to information that ten boats are in distress in Libyan waters by saying, “It’s a day off.”

It’s a day off. It’s a holiday here. But I can try to help. Perhaps we can be there tomorrow.

In the spring of 2017 alone, several hundred people died at sea because Libyan authorities would not answer distress calls, even when Italian authorities themselves made the call.The EU has officially known about the Libyan authorities’ inability to conduct rescues since 2018, according to an internal report, but the deals continued.

One of the sad ironies of this story is that these conversations were only recorded because Sicilian prosecutors were looking for evidence to pin bogus charges on NGOs for smuggling. Instead, they uncovered evidence of their own government’s complicity in hundreds of deaths in the Mediterranean. Despite the Italian government knowing that Libyan authorities would not or could not rescue people in distress at sea, making NGOs the only actors preventing people from drowning, they chose to go after the rescuers.

Just ten days ago, new PM Draghi made his first visit abroad of his term to Libya, where he praised the government’s efforts in rescues at sea. Of course, truth or humanity has never succeeded in blocking the wheels of politics before, and it will not stop them now.

The Guardian broke the news of the transcripts the same day that a shipwreck killed at least 40 people off the coast of Tunisia. Although this incident happened in Tunisia, not Libya, it still highlights the failure of the European response to the situation in the Mediterranean. Since the 2017 deal with Libya, European authorities have virtually ceased their own search-and-rescue activities, happy to cede that responsibility to the Libyan Coast Guard, knowing that rescues would not happen. They also simultaneously lay the rest of the responsibility on NGOs while severely limiting the scope of their operations and criminalizing them.

Perhaps if there was a robust mechanism for search-and-rescue in the Mediterranean, the 40 people who died would still be alive today. Instead, European governments are knowingly funding institutions that leave people to die. Instead, 40 families will now spend their days grieving.