[The right to safety and pursuit of happiness belongs to every
human being. This can be reached only through freedom of movement as a
universal right.]
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EU FOR THE FEW  
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August 8, 2023
The Left Berlin [[link removed]]

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_ The right to safety and pursuit of happiness belongs to every human
being. This can be reached only through freedom of movement as a
universal right. _

Somali refugee boat, (photo: PH1 Robert R. McRill. Public domain).

 

In April 2020, a few months after the sea refuguee rescue
organisation _Mediterranea Berlin_
[[link removed]] was born, one of our activists
received a WhatsApp message from an unknown Libyan number. It was
asking whether the “Ocean Viking” was close to Tripoli. The
“Ocean Viking” belongs to another maritime refugee rescue
organisation _SOS Mediterranee_. [[link removed]] Our
rescue boat is called “Mare Jonio” but was not at sea at that
moment. The inexperienced activist had no clue how to answer this
message, but knew they could not forward such sensitive information
due to “aiding irregular migration” accusations.

Their immediate and rough answer read “It doesn’t work like
that. _We don’t have information, we don’t give information._”
Yet, this made them feel guilty and powerless. There was a person in
need asking for help, they felt compelled to do something. Thus, with
further question, _Mediterranea Berlin_ came to know the story of a
23 year old father who had sent the WhatsApp.

SALIM NYARIGA had left The Gambia and his unaware pregnant wife in
January of the same year with one thing in mind:

“I was in school and I couldn’t stop worrying about the money for
my wife and my future child. That Friday was the day I had this sudden
idea: if all my friends have used this journey to help their family,
why not me?”

At the beginning of the Corona crisis, even the human traffickers were
afraid of the pandemic and would barely leave their homes. The
departures from Libya were diminishing, the prices had increased and
the weather conditions at the beginning of the year were even more
discouraging. Crossing the Mediterranean had become more dangerous
than ever.

At the time Salim sent the message he was waiting for his turn at the
“connection point” in the Garabulli neighborhood, one of the
places where people on the move wait for the moment to sail off. Many
of his “brothers” met during his journey to Libya had already lost
their lives trying to reach Europe. Salim’s greatest fear was not
for his own life, but for the future of his newborn daughter that he
saw for the first time on a photo sent by his wife while crossing the
Tassili mountains in Algeria.

Salim wanted to go back home, but he was afraid to admit it. The 6000
km back to The Gambia would have meant he was defeated. Our activist
encouraged him to follow his heart, there was nothing to be ashamed
of. A repatriation through the _International Organisation for
Migration (IOM)_ was a concrete option. Salim felt relieved and after
a year of waiting he caught one of the few available flights back to
his home region where he could start over beside his family.

This particular happy ending was not what the activist was expecting
on a first mission. Meanwhile, a year had gone by, in
which_ Mediterranea Berlin_ had been taking to the streets shouting
out loud “Refugees Are Welcome Here!”.

None of us will ever have the power to decide if, when and where to be
born. It is the duty of the privileged ones to actively help whoever
takes the first step to change their destiny. Whether going back home
or in search of a new one, freedom of movement is a universal right.
Crossing borders is the political act necessary to claim that right.

Mediterranea was born with the goal of helping people on the move,
political actors claiming this right by crossing borders on land and
at sea, in the Mediterranean as well as on the Balkan route and in
Ukraine.

In the same spirit, we have been supporting the self organized
movements born during the inspiring protests at the UNHCR (United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) offices in Tripoli and Tunis.
In the night between the first and second October 2021, the Libyan
militias violently raided all houses in the Gargaresh neighborhood,
arresting thousands of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The ones
who managed to escape had no other choice but to gather in front of
the UNHCR headquarters, the UN agency supposed to protect them.

More than 4000 people started a movement, REFUGEES IN LIBYA, asking
to be recognized as human beings, the closure of all the detention
centers financed by the EU and the evacuation towards safe countries.
Instead of resorting to violence as a political means, they chose
words. They opened a Twitter account through which they shed light on
the Libyan black hole, thereby reaching international media and
institutions, the African Union, the European Parliament, the Pope,
human rights organizations and movements. They elected 2
representatives for each of the 11 national communities. Their
assemblies would last for days on end practicing democracy and the
values Europe keeps professing at home, while excluding the ones
bearing the consequences of the colonial past and present.

The struggle of _Refugees in Libya_ resisted for more than 100 days,
until another brutal eviction by the militias resulted in a mass
arrest and imprisonment of 600 people in the Ain Zara jail.

It was not the end though. On the contrary, the movement kept growing.
Some made it to the other side of the Mediterranean and continued to
fight alongside the European movements. The first joint initiative was
organized in October 2022, on the occasion of the ITALY – LIBYA
MEMORANDUM renewal where funds were promised in return that boats
where stoped leaving Libya’s shores. Thousands of activists taking
to the streets in 20 different cities.

As a result, 300 women and children were released from the Ain Zara
detention camp. It was only the first step. The second was taken in
December of that same year, in front of the UNHCR headquarters in
Geneva. 50 more detainees were then freed. The last step brought the
movement to Brussels in July 2023, at the center of European
decision-making. The protest was directed towards the EU institutions
responsible for the endless suffering and death at the European
borders (EU-Council, EU-Commission and Parliament) as well as the
UNHCR, IOM and Frontex (European Agency for the Management of
Operational Cooperation at the External Borders) offices, involved in
migration and refugee “management”. The remaining 250 prisoners
were consequently released from Ain Zara.

All the detainees were finally freed. However, they are now in the
same position as they were in more than one and a half years before.
They are still in need of what they were demanding in front of the
UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli in October 2021.

Libya is still not a safe place, but the battlefield of a civil war,
ruled by warlords financed by Italy and EU. A hell for all the people
on the move in search of a second chance.

The same goes for Tunisia, a land governed by a dictator who blamed
the people on the move for his own economic failures. Kais Saied’s
racist speech on the 21st of February 2023 incited and legitimized
anti-black persecutions. Nonetheless, refugees in Tunisia risked their
lives and reacted strongly, organizing protests in front of the UNHCR
offices in Tunis where they appealed to the international and European
institutions, asking to be evacuated. A desperate cry for help left
unheard as shown a few months later. The EU – TUNISIA
MEMORANDUM signed in July consolidated the dictator’s anti-migrant
policies which escalated with the abandoning of almost 2000 people on
the move in the desert at the Algerian and Libyan borders.

At the end of May 2023, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Annalena Baerbock, made a statement which was soon confirmed by the
CEAS (Common European Asylum System) reform restricting freedom of
movement: “_Having no inner borders in Europe means that external
borders must be protected_”.

The message is clear, the EU is for the few. And yet the Ukrainian
crisis proved otherwise. So we ask ourselves: are African wars less
deadly than Russian ones?

The right to safety and pursuit of happiness belongs to every human
being. This can be reached only through freedom of movement as a
universal right. Until then, Mediterranea will continue to exist.

_The Left Berlin is a community of international progressives in
Berlin. We run an online journalism project hosting a range of
left-wing perspectives in English, as well as collaborating on
progressive campaigns and events in the city. The site is run by a
team of volunteer editors, writers and translators._

_We send out regular weekly newsletters with a digest of leftist
politics around the city. It’s a great way to keep an overview of
what’s happening and how you can stay active regardless of what your
cause is.  This project emerged from the Berlin LINKE Internationals
and maintains close links but the site has editorial autonomy and
attempts to reflect a range of debate on the left._

_Read more about the work of Mediterranea Berlin
[[link removed]]:  In the SUMMER OF 2018 the
idea of Mediterranea was born; born out of INDIGNATION over
the THOUSANDS OF DEATHS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN and the closed-port
policy.  In a very short time, PEOPLE and ASSOCIATIONS working
together in a CIVIL SOCIETY PLATFORM organised and put to sea the
first and, as yet, only CIVIL RESCUE VESSEL flying the ITALIAN
FLAG.  On the night of 3RD-4TH OCTOBER 2018, exactly 5 years after
the tragic SHIPWRECK where more than 360 people died off the coast
of LAMPEDUSA, the MARE JONIO set sail from the port of Augusta on
its first monitoring and rescue mission._

 

* refugees
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* European Union
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* Borders
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