On the third attempt, 17-year-old Mubarak succeeds in crossing the Mediterranean.
The first time, his party gets lost in rough seas and is forced to return to Libya. The second time, the overloaded boat’s hull is torn apart. Small children and pregnant women fall into the water.
– Three people died that day, says Mubarak, originally from West African Guinea, to the aid organization SOS Méditerranée.
Libya’s coast guard finds the wreckage and sends the roughly 130 migrants back to the country’s prison-like detention camp. In March 2021, during the third attempt to reach Europe, Mubarak is picked up by the Norwegian rescue ship Ocean Viking, chartered by SOS Méditerranée.
Choose death at sea
– Those we rescue are often on their fourth, fifth, sixth attempt to escape from Libya. The stories they tell are horrific. “Between dying mentally every day in Libya and dying once in the sea, I choose the sea,” they say, says the organization’s spokesperson Francesco Creazzo.
In a single day recently, 26 migrant boats arrived on the island of Lampedusa. In a facility built for 400 new arrivals, 3,000 people are crowded. During spring and summer, more and more people are expected to go out to sea.
State of emergency in Italy
So far this year, more than 500 people, including around 50 children, have died in the Mediterranean, according to FN:s migrationsorgan IOMalongside more reports of delayed government rescue efforts and aid organizations being prevented from saving lives.
Italy’s right-wing government has declared a national emergency and introduced laws that many say make rescue efforts more difficult.
– Our job is to save them. It is not negotiable. For six, seven years, Europe has decided that migrants should not be rescued, that they should be left to die in the sea or sent back to hell in Libya, says Francesco Creazzo.
He is referring to the cooperation that the EU started with Libya in 2016, in short it means that the responsibility for patrolling the Mediterranean lies with the Libyan coast guard – largely with EU money.
The coast guard has been accused of firing sharply at both migrants and rescue vessels. The country is accused of inhumane conditions in the refugee camps.
