The Sea-Watch 3 was cleared to leave Malta after 3 month of unlawful detention to undergo repairs and refits in a Spanish shipyard and left Valetta port this morning, 7 am local time. Meanwhile the deathrate on the central mediterranean is at record high. The Dutch-flagged, 50-meter rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3 had been blocked from…
More than 3 months, the reconnaissance aircraft Moonbird, operated by Sea-Watch in cooperation with the Swiss Humanitarian Pilots Initiative, was prevented from operation by the Maltese government without providing any legal ground. With the crackdown on civil sea rescue, meanwhile, the death rate at Europe’s sea border reached its record high of one out of…
The Mare Jonio, a 37.5 m Italian flagged vessel run by the Italian civil society project “Mediterranea” in cooperation with Sea-Watch, has set sails to the Central Mediterranean Sea. Accompanied by the Astral, of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, the Mare Jonio is bound to resume civil sea rescue at the deadliest border of…
A dead body, found yesterday by the civil surveillance aircraft Colibri, likely indicates a new shipwreck in the central mediterranean sea. The lack of suitable rescue assets and the blockade of the civil rescue fleet, turn the central Mediterranean into a deadly black box: Several shipwrecks occurred, since Malta is blocking rescue vessels from doing…
Yesterday, Sunday, the crew of the surveillance aircraft Colibri witnessed once again a dramatic case of failure to render assistance by the Italian authorities. A rubber boat with over 80 refugees was in distress at sea for over 9 hours and was finally towed back to war-torn Libya by the country’s so-called Coast Guard. At…
