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"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said a representative for Doctors Without Borders.
International aid group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that it plans to appeal the latest detention orders placed by Italian authorities on its search and rescue vessel, Geo Barents, arguing the directives were aimed at preventing it from saving the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said Juan Matias Gil, a representative for the organization, which is also known by the French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The latest orders against the group and its ship were issued on Monday, days after MSF helped 206 refugees disembark in Genoa, Italy on September 19.
After that rescue, the group received a distress alert from a plane that monitors the passage of asylum-seekers across the Mediterranean, where thousands of people have drowned in the past decade while attempting to reach Europe after fleeing violent conflicts, political unrest, and poverty.
The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center gave the Geo Barents crew approval to proceed to the overcrowded wooden boat detected by the plane, which was holding around 110 people from Syria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Egypt.
But as MSF was about to complete the rescue, with just 20 people left in the boat, a Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat that had been donated by Italy arrived at the scene.
"They arrived, threatened to shoot, and carried out unsafe and intimidating maneuvers around the people in distress and the MSF rescue team," said Fulvia Conte, search and rescue team leader for MSF.
The group said the order, which requires the Geo Barents to be detained at a port for 60 days, is based on "twisted logic" and MSF's "alleged failure to comply with instructions from unreliable and often dangerous Libyan coast guards," said Judith Sunderland, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, who was aboard the Geo Barents as it completed the rescue.
"It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
"People fleeing Libya often tell us about violent interceptions at sea carried out by the E.U.-backed Libyan Coast Guard," said Gil. "It has been documented by the United Nations and independent investigative journalists that the Libyan Coast Guard is complicit in serious human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, and collusion with smugglers and traffickers. It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
Sunderland noted that earlier this month, a judge lifted a previous 60-day detention order against the ship, with Italian authorities claiming MSF had caused "a dangerous situation by rescuing dozens of people from the water at night."
"The judge concluded the rescue had been 'urgent and unavoidable' and the detention jeopardized the organization's humanitarian objectives," wrote Sunderland.
Even though MSF had approval to complete the rescue on September 19, the first detention order was issued under the Piantedosi Decree, a law introduced in 2023 which requires non-governmental rescue ships to sail to the assigned port after a rescue, without picking up people from other boats in distress.
The second order was issued Monday following an in-depth inspection of Geo Barents by the Port State Control, which said it found eight technical deficiencies on the vessel.
Conte said such inspections "are another layer of administrative and technical instrumentalization of laws and regulations that the authorities have been using for the past seven years to obstruct the work of humanitarian search and rescue vessels in the Mediterranean."
"This one seems to have the intention to ensure we don't operate anytime soon," she said. "We are moving to quickly address these deficiencies and to go back to prevent deaths at sea."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of HRW, said the latest orders suggest the Italian government is doing everything in its power "to stop NGO rescue ships from operating in the Mediterranean because rescuing migrants gets in the way of Italy's (and the E.U.'s) preferred approach of using the risk of drowning as a deterrent to migration."
MSF has helped rescue more than 91,000 people in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, including 12,540 people who have been saved by the Geo Barents crew since 2021.
U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor said in 2023 that the punishment and criminalization of people working to save refugees from drowning was "a darkening stain on Italy and the E.U.'s commitment to human rights," after the Italian authorities brought criminal charges for "aiding and abetting unauthorized immigration" against nearly two dozen rescue crew members and rights advocates.
As the president looks toward his final months in office and his legacy, supporting a strong and sustained resettlement program will be a way to reaffirm America’s commitment to humanitarian values.
Like millions of Americans, I came from elsewhere, but now wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and was forced to flee war when I was just 14 years old. After almost two decades of waiting in Uganda, separated from my family, I was approved for refugee resettlement in the United States in 2016 and eventually found a permanent home in Fort Worth, Texas.
After my initial resettlement in New Jersey, graduate school in Vermont, and a first job in Connecticut, I was happy to reunite again with my mother and brothers in Texas. In addition to the warm weather—which my elderly mother is thankful for as she takes daily walks—I love this state and this country for all the diverse cultures we experience. Every day, I meet people from around the world and I am reminded that refugees are some of the most resourceful and entrepreneurial people on this planet. We are grateful to be here and eager to give back to the communities that welcome us, we just need the opportunity to do so.
When given the chance, Americans choose to welcome.
I became a citizen in 2022, and I am proud to call myself an American. While my refugee journey had a happy ending, many other people just like me are still living in refugee camps, waiting to resettle somewhere safe and looking for ways to plan their futures and put their talents to work. Less than 1% of the total refugee population ever gets resettled, even though prolonged conflicts and restrictions on local integration in most refugee hosting countries make third country resettlement the only durable solution for most refugees.
The United States has a proud history of being a global leader in refugee resettlement, but that spirit isn’t always matched by some of our elected officials, including in my adopted state. Yet despite the rise of misinformation and anti-immigrant political rhetoric, many officials are standing up for the truth that refugee resettlement benefits this nation. This includes the bipartisan group of nearly 500 state and local elected officials who signed onto a new letter urging U.S. President Joe Biden to strengthen the U.S. resettlement program “to improve our capacity to welcome, enable our communities to more nimbly provide humanitarian protection, and preserve the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for years to come.”
Strengthening the U.S. refugee system and reuniting more families are in the interest of our country, with a positive ripple effect on our economy and on our lives. Refugees contribute billions of dollars to the local economy in my home state of Texas alone. Across the state, thousands of refugee entrepreneurs own businesses that earn more than $500 million each year, and refugees and immigrants could fill job shortages in essential sectors like nursing. This is true wherever refugees live across the U.S.
Thankfully, I know firsthand that Americans from all backgrounds, faiths, and political beliefs believe in welcoming refugees. Polling shows that Americans across party lines support refugee resettlement, and that number goes up significantly when people personally know a refugee. Across the country, people have been signing up for Welcome Corps, a new program where Americans sign up to directly participate in their community’s resettlement process. It’s a reminder that when given the chance, Americans choose to welcome.
As President Biden looks toward his final months in office and his legacy, supporting a strong and sustained resettlement program will be a way to reaffirm America’s commitment to humanitarian values and secure a lasting impact for future generations. Strengthening this program is not only the right thing to do but also a smart and compassionate decision that reflects our nation’s core values. Together, we can build a more inclusive and hopeful future.
3,000 deaths of migrants made barely a ripple in most of the world’s major news media. But this summer one single tragedy on the Mediterranean has been making globs of global headlines.
Over
3,000 migrants fleeing from poverty and conflict, the Council on Foreign Relations recently noted, died last year trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.
Those deaths made barely a ripple in most of the world’s major news media. But this summer one single tragedy on the Mediterranean has been making globs of global headlines.
On Monday, August 19, amid a fearsome sudden storm, a boat deemed “unsinkable” sank off the coast of Sicily’s Palermo. Seven of the 22 people on board perished.
What made this sinking so newsworthy? The ship that sank just happened to be a luxury sailing yacht that sported the world’s tallest aluminum mast. And the casualties from that superyacht’s sinking just happened to include the high-tech CEO once hailed as the “British Bill Gates.”
That chief exec, the yacht’s owner Mike Lynch, had envisioned this voyage as a celebration over a decade in the making. Just weeks earlier, after years of legal battling, a federal jury in Northern California had acquitted Lynch and one of his VPs on charges they had artificially inflated the value of Lynch’s software company. That inflating, prosecutors charged, had sealed the firm’s 2011 sale to Hewlett-Packard for over $11 billion, a deal that netted Lynch personally about $800 million.
But within a year after the sale the value of Lynch’s company had tanked by some $8.8 billion, and H-P was referring allegations of accounting improprieties against Lynch to the British Serious Fraud Office and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The referrals would eventually produce a civil-suit victory for H-P and a 2019 criminal conviction of a key exec at Lynch’s firm.
The 59-year-old Lynch and his finance VP Keith Chamberlain would have much better luck in their own criminal trial on similar charges. Unfortunately for them, they’ll never get to enjoy their acquittal. Lynch drowned in the sinking of his yacht, as did Lynch’s top trial lawyer and the chair of financial giant Morgan Stanley’s international arm, a star witness for Lynch’s defense.
What made this Lynch yacht sinking particularly irresistible for the world’s media? On the same day as the sinking, reports surfaced that Lynch’s acquitted co-defendant Chamberlain had just died after a car ran him over while he was jogging. A sheer coincidence? And how could the captain of Lynch’s superyacht and all but one of his crew escape the boat’s sinking alive while Lynch and six other passengers perished? Such juicy meat for endless conspiracy speculation!
But we need not resort to conspiratorial theorizing to understand why Lynch’s $25-million yacht sank so quickly that stormy night. That blame belongs in no small part to climate change, not some cabal of his billionaire corporate rivals.
By this past June, points out a new Financial Times analysis, water temperatures in the Mediterranean had been rising for 15 straight months. Higher water temperatures invite ever more extreme weather events. One such event — a tornado-like waterspout with “ferocious winds” howling at nearly 70 miles per hour — hit right near where Lynch had last anchored his superyacht.
Only 16 minutes passed between the moment those harsh winds first hit the yacht and the moment the yacht sank. That “rapid sinking of such a large, modern and well-equipped yacht,” adds the Financial Times, “has raised concerns over marine safety as extreme weather events occur with more frequency and intensity.”
In other words, the superyachts that typically spend summers in the Mediterranean and winters in the Caribbean better beware.
But the mega-rich who own these yachts have, in one sense, no one to blame but themselves. Our globe remains in overall climate-crisis denial in no small part because our wealthiest have so much to lose if our world gets serious about ending the profligate corporate practices now driving our planet’s climate collapse.
The ranks of these richest include, of course, the fossil-fuel industry’s top execs and investors. But all our super rich, not just the kings of Big Oil, have a vested personal interest in “calming” climate anxiety. Coming to grips with the chaos fossil fuels have already created — and speeding a worker-sensitive transition to a carbon-free future — will take enormous financial resources. The world will only be able to raise those resources if the rich and their corporations start paying their fair tax share.
A tax of between a mere 1.7 and 3.5 percent on the wealth of the world’s richest 0.5 percent, suggests the UK-based Tax Justice Network, could annually raise $2.1 trillion. Most of the world’s richest nations, notes the Tax Justice Network’s Alison Schultz, are shying away from that suggestion.
Notes Schultz: “This needs to change now — the climate can’t wait, and nor can the people of the world.”