50 migrants adrift dead of hunger, thirst and burns: unheeded appeals

The survivors, in dramatic psychophysical conditions, told of having seen planes and helicopters flying over their drifting dinghy for days without water or food, but of having received no rescue from anyone. They were rescued by the volunteers of the Ocean Viking, the ship of SoSMediterranée – a network of humanitarian organisations active in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland whose aim is to conduct search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean Sea – which intervened in a stretch of sea that had been without rescue for days as three other humanitarian ships, Sea Watch 4 and 5 and Humanity1, are under seizure in Italy.

Then as now, the shipwrecked barge was spotted and monitored not for a rescue operation, but for a law enforcement one?

After Cutro, the government’s decree tightens migration policies: the communications and surveys of the maritime authorities continue to consider these crossings of the central Mediterranean, on open and overloaded barges, so much so that they can capsize at every slightest movement of people, as a mere ‘migratory event’ to be tracked, and not rather as a case of distress (immediate danger to life) to be dealt with as quickly as possible, already in international waters, with Search and Rescue (SAR) activities. According to the international Conventions that provide the notion of distress, rescue means must be sent immediately, even outside the SAR region of competence, as was the case in 2014 until Operation Mare Nostrum lasted, and again until 2016.