For now, the captain of the Sea-Watch 5 has been allowed to leave Italy and return home to the Netherlands. A criminal investigation into his alleged “aiding and abetting unauthorised immigration” is on-going, but he stands to fare much better than the many rescued people who have faced similar charges.
The allegations arise from the events that occurred on May 11. The Sea-Watch 5 had rescued 90 people in distress in international waters when an armed patrol boat approached and eventually fired live ammunition at them: first one shot, then a salvo of 10 to 15 shots. Through radio communication, they said they wanted Sea-Watch 5 to sail to Libya. When Sea-Watch 5 refused to comply, they threatened to board the ship.
After being fired upon, the crew of the Sea-Watch 5 sent out a Mayday, but it went unheeded by Germany, Italy and the EU naval mission EUNAVFOR MED IRINI.
On the contrary, on 12 May, the EU emphasised its intentions to expand cooperation and funding for Libyan maritime actors.
Experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, have described the practice of charging captains as a clear attempt to intimidate and to deliberately obstruct civilian search-and-rescue operations.
Until now, it’d been six years since Italy brought such a case. Back then, Italy repeatedly and deliberately used criminal investigations to target and delegitimise civilian search-and-rescue operations, says Sea-Watch spokesperson Julia Winkler. This is evident in the case of Sea-Watch captain Carola Rackete in 2019 and in the Iuventa case which was on-going for seven years, as well as in more than 20 other investigations, most of which were dropped before reaching trial.
“Of course, it is very concerning that Italy has opened investigations against our captain now, but at the same time, all these investigations have fallen apart in the past, and he's getting attention and support. What is often not known is that charges of facilitating unauthorised migration are being pressed against migrants, people seeking asylum, on an almost daily basis in Italy because of simple acts like steering the boat. These people are being arrested, they're being put in pre-trial detention and they're being sentenced,” says Winkler.
The legal framework for these cases is different to that of the captain of the Sea-Watch 5 who is protected by international maritime law that codifies the duty to rescue people in distress at sea. The people Sea-Watch rescues are found on over-crowded boats. There's often water in the boat, and the people onboard do not have enough food or water, so Winkler says that, according to all international standards, they classify as boats in distress, and Sea-Watch 5 has an obligation to rescue them.
In Italy, and other European countries such as Spain, Canary Islands and Greece, a migrant steering a boat is defined by law as facilitating the journey. “This has been criticised and condemned for many, many years by the United Nations which takes the position that these people have no other choice than facilitating their own entry: steering the boat, distributing water bottles, helping each other to stay alive on the boat. Unfortunately, at the European Union, the facilitation of unauthorised entry is framed very, very widely, so it can encompass a lot of different activities, and this is also why it is possible to start investigations like the one against our captain.”
As for the aims of Sea-Watch: “First and foremost, we want these people to survive. They have the right to survive and the right to live like everybody else. We also believe that people have to the right to seek a better life. Every one of us has the right to seek a better life. It is not migration that is the challenge of our times, it’s the highly skewed distribution of wealth,” says Winkler.
She counters the argument that civil rescue boats are taken advantage of to facilitate migration by referencing scientific studies that have shown that the absence of rescue vessels does not reduce the number of people making dangerous voyages – the result is simply that more people die at sea.
“There is actually a substantial body of scientific research on this. Since 2017, several studies have reached the same conclusion: there is no evidence of a correlation between the presence of NGO vessels and an increase in crossings.
“Moreover, I think it is important to stress a broader point here: these claims have been repeated many times over the years, despite there being no evidence to support them and a substantial body of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. I believe it is crucial to remain alert to the way such narratives can become normalised simply through repetition, even when they are not backed by evidence.”
Those making such claims should be asked to provide evidence, she says. The burden of proof should not fall primarily on those targeted by such claims to disprove or debunk allegations that have never been substantiated.
Since 2016, Sea-Watch and other civil rescue organisations have documented more than 75 acts of extreme violence committed by Libyan militia vessels at sea. As for the EU’s continued efforts to equip Libyan actors and give them political legitimacy, Winkler cites United Nations reports describing torture, sexual violence, and kidnappings of people on the move and in Libyan migrant camps.
“The EU is more or less openly cooperating with people committing crimes against humanity and then at the same time starting investigations against people who do nothing other than rescue people at sea. I think this is a paradox that is exemplary of our current times, and we should challenge it, not normalise it.”
References
Links to some research that indicate no evidence of a correlation between the presence of NGO vessels and an increase in crossings:
University of Potsdam, the Hertie School and the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (2023): Search-and-rescue in the Central Mediterranean Route does not induce migration: Predictive modeling to answer causal queries in migration research; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-38119-4
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (2020): Migration and the Myth of the Pull-Factor in the Mediterranean: https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/migration-and-myth-pull-factor-mediterranean-25207
European University Institute (2019): Sea Rescue NGOs: a Pull Factor of Irregular Migration?; https://cadmus.eui.eu/server/api/core/bitstreams/c488e141-6aad-5ff7-a90c-97e8e89ec88d/content
University of London (2017): Blaming the Rescuers; https://archive.transmediale.de/program/artwork/blaming-the-rescuers
University of Oxford (2017): Border Deaths in the Mediterranean: What We Can Learn from the Latest Data; https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2017/03/border-deaths
UN Special Rapporteur: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/10/italy-un-expert-condemns-criminalization-those-saving-lives-mediterranean
Documented violence: https://justice-fleet.org/en/incidents
EU support for Libyan actors: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/video/I-289395
ENDS.
Source: Human Rights at Sea 2026. Wendy Laursen.
Photo credit: SeaWatch
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