The rescue ship Aurora, operated by the civil sea rescue organization Sea-Watch, evacuated 41 people from the supply ship Maridive 208 today. The sea rescue organization had been alerted by the Alarmphone emergency hotline. The people had been stranded at sea for six days. Government authorities refused to provide timely rescue for days. Seven people are missing after going overboard of the boat in distress. It was only through the intervention of civil sea rescuers that those stranded are now safe.
After 41 people were stranded in international waters for days, the Tunisian navy instructed the supply ship Maridive 208 on August 28 to evacuate the people in distress onboard. The supply ship Maridive 208 sails under the Egyptian flag. According to their own statements, the people in distress had already set sail from Libya on August 27.
Despite the requirement under international maritime law to rescue shipwrecked persons, no European state initiated a rescue of the stranded persons. On September 1, the Italian state sent a helicopter to observe the situation, and it left the scene again. Due to the inaction of the European authorities, the organization Sea-Watch has also been monitoring the situation since August 30 with its observation aircraft and has repeatedly called on Malta and Italy to rescue the people stranded.
On August 31, the Tunisian navy arrived on the scene and planned to forcibly bring the 41 people to Tunisia. However, Tunisia is not a safe country for people on the move: there is no functioning asylum system, and people fleeing their home countries are exposed to deprivation of rights and violence. The stranded people therefore refused to be taken to Tunisia. Meanwhile, the situation on the supply ship worsened: after six days, the people were running out of food and health conditions were deteriorating.
Still, EU authorities refused to coordinate, even though the incident also took place in the Maltese search and rescue zone. They could have rescued the stranded people within a matter of a few hours.
“Forty-one people were ignored in the Mediterranean sea for six days, despite a clear duty to rescue them. The fact that a civil ship had to intervene is a shocking example of the systematic violation of the law by European states,”
says Bana Mahmood, spokesperson for Sea Watch.
The incident shows that without civil sea rescue, these people would have been left to their fate at sea. Sea-Watch is calling for permission to immediately disembark the rescued persons at the nearest safe port and for a European sea rescue operation.
