227 migrants saved in 48 hours. Sea Watch: “The militias threatened to take us to Libya”

More than two hundred people in 48 hours. Dozens of children rescued alone, pregnant women taken away from a boat on the verge of sinking, injured and burned, all saved despite pressure and explicit threats from unidentified boats. It is not a war bulletin, but the bare chronicle of the last two days of operations of Sea-Watch 5 and Aurora 2, two of the German NGO's ships on a mission in the central Mediterranean.

The smallest, Aurora 2, was allowed to dock in Lampedusa, after the initial indication to reach Catania. An impossible goal with the little fuel they had in the tanks. There were 76 people on board, rescued under the threatening gaze of militiamen who continued to remain in the area from a fiberglass boat throughout the entire rescue operation. However, towards the Sea Watch 5 rescue teams, still traveling to Civitavecchia, the intimidation was direct and explicit.

The flagship of the German NGO was the only one to respond to the alarm raised by Albatross, the civil plane of SOS Méditerranée and reach a deflated and overcrowded dinghy that was struggling in the middle of the central Mediterranean. On board, 28 terrified people, half of them barely children. At the end of the rescue, when the 28 castaways were already on the deck waiting to receive first aid, a ship that identified itself as belonging to the Libyan Navy approached the Sea Watch threateningly, so much so that it pushed the crew to activate maximum security measures and barricade themselves inside together with the castaways.

“We will take you and bring you to trial in Tripoli,” they continued to say from the command bridge of the Libyan vessel, ordering the NGO ship to leave despite being in international waters. Hours of threats and pressure, with the terrified castaways on board. "As soon as they left, we responded to an Alarm Phone report and rescued 51 people from a sinking boat, including a pregnant woman. Many have serious burns", they say from on board.

Shortly after, another boat in difficulty, another intervention, providential in a Mediterranean now emptied of rescue assets. On board Sea Watch 5, they are all or almost all refugees par excellence, people fleeing from countries destroyed by civil conflicts and real wars: South Sudan, Eritrea, Sudan. To bring them all to port and conclude the rescue operation, which, as recently recalled by the Court of Appeal of Catanzaro, ends only after disembarkation in a safe port, the German NGO teams will have to wait another few days. For the Interior Ministry, in all of Italy, there was no safe harbor available before Civitavecchia. During the crossing, at least one woman was urgently evacuated for health reasons.

"Sea Watch rescued 227 people in the space of a few hours. One of the ships was sinking and only thanks to civil society, our ships, the planes, the Alarm Phone reports we don't find ourselves reporting other shipwrecks", says the spokesperson of the Italian section, Giorgia Linardi. "And yet the Italian government continues to treat us like criminals, sending our ship 900 kilometers away. Deliberately reducing rescue capacity is a political choice with lethal consequences. A choice for which history will hold us accountable."