Saving Lives Should Never Become a Crime!
I remember walking towards our office* in Brussels on a cold and rainy day in February 2016, angry; I had just discovered the European Council’s draft conclusions and minutes of various meetings at which EU officials discussed how to keep NGOs working to support migrants upon their arrival on EU ground away. The plans were to register, identify and certify such NGOs.
Today, criminalisation of support brought to migrants appears to be accepted; the true mainstream.
OpenDemocracy recently reported that, across Europe, “elderly women, priests and firefighters [are] among those arrested, charged or ‘harassed’ by police for supporting migrants.” We have heard again and again about rescue boats being denied access to European shores. They are transporting individuals who were otherwise going to drown in the Mediterranean Sea.
As I write, a ship is denied access to harbours in Malta and Italy. The Open Arms ship, which is operated by the Spanish-based NGO Proactiva Open Arms, has been in international waters for eight days; “among those on board, reports The Guardian, are 32 children, including nine-month-old twins.”
This week, Matteo Slavini’s Italy stepped up its repression against rescuers. A new decree will provide the Ministry of Interior with the power to confiscate boats involved in search and rescue operations and to fine captains up to €1 million. The text is still to be signed by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella.
In its reaction to the text, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said– once again — that “imposing financial or other penalties on shipmasters could deter or impede sea rescue activities by private vessels at a time when European states have largely withdrawn from rescue efforts in the Central Mediterranean.”
I thought history would judge Europeon the way it has treated refugees in the past decade, and before. In fact, Europe will be judged on the fact that it is criminalising those who save lives!
As a helmsman on sailing boats, on the Geneva Lake and in the Mediterranean Sea, in the Plymouth Sound, in the Rade de Brest, in the Channel in front of Saint Malo or Le Havre or Zeebrugge, in the Broad Sound or the Massachusetts Bay or the Cape Cod Bay, in the wonderful Gulf of the Farallones, as well as on Swan River and so many lakes in Europe, there is one thing I thought I knew: if something happens to my crew every other sailor, every captain of any ship, would come to the rescue of my crew and me if we are in need.
The whole principle on the water is that others will rescue you. It is a moral code.
And it is a legal duty, codified in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, applicable to passenger ships and cargo ships. This Convention is amongst the international law treaties enjoying the most ratifications and was at first adopted in 1914 following the sinking of the Royal Mail Ship Titanic on 15 April 1912. To date, 165 States ratified this Convention. Amongst States that have not ratified one can find Afghanistan, Armenia, Bhutan, Burundi, Central African Republic, the Holy See, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor Leste, Zimbabwe, etc. In other words, all European Union member States ratified this Convention.
The Convention regulates inter alialifeboats and inflatable and rigid liferafts,cubic capacity of lifeboats and their equipment, lifebuoys, life-jackets, distress signals. It protects all of us when we take a passenger ship and protects crew on any ship.
The Convention also lays out that any master of any ship at sea “which is in a position to be able to provide assistance […] is bound to […] proceed with all speed” to the assistance of “persons […] in distress at sea.”
Laws like the to enter into force in Italy must be challenged by all contracting States to the Convention, as the law contradicts not only the very spirit of the treaty, it violates the letter of Italy’s obligations under the treaty.
The moral conduct I know from sailing — regulated in law — is in fact the moral conduct that created the ethical path of our cohabitation in society. The duty to rescue does not exist at sea only; the duty to rescue is anchored in law. In other words, the Good Samaritan laws is what makes us able to cohabite in society. Philosophy and law Professor Anthony D. Woozley wrote about the relationship between morality and lawin this regard — an interesting article to go deeper on this issue.
In today’s Europe, we are seeing that a principle of law is changed by criminalising those who fulfil their duty to rescue.
There is something pernicious in accepting that one who rescues another will face a fine or jail time; it shows the direction we are taking as society. A route in which law is used by those holding power to criminalise those who help humans they do not wish to see in their homes. A direction in which we denounce each other, which will lead to a “gestapist” society. And a path in which law is used to ensure that those most in need are indeed abandoned to their fate, even if their fate is a certain death.
* At the time, I was with Human Rights House Foundation, which had an office in Brussels.
