Other News
Maurice Stierl on the European Migration Crisis in the Mediterranean
The deaths of at least 1200 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea within merely one week in April have highlighted, once more, the scale of human suffering along Europe’s external borders. More than 1700 people have lost their lives in 2015 alone and many more can be expected to follow in the coming months. Rather than a fateful tragedy, these deaths are the direct result of a European politics of deterrence that actively reduces possibilities for safe and legal entry into Europe, making paths toward Europe evermore precarious and dangerous. Since the cessation of the expansive Italian military-humanitarian rescue operation Mare Nostrum, no adequate rescue programme has been installed. To the contrary, the European border agency Frontex launched a border protection operation (Triton) and advised EU member states, mainly Italy, to disengage from rescue operations in non-territorial waters. Also after the most recent shipwrecks, Europe responds by outlining militaristic strategies to intervene against the trafficking industry, an industry, however, that thrives from Europe’s border control practices and technologies. As so often in recent years, some symptoms will become superficially addressed, thereby reinforcing border surveillance and migration control, and further endangering migrant lives.
Maurice Stierl, a PAIS teaching assistant, engages in the activist network Watch The Med. Activists from Europe and North Africa created an Alarm Phone for people in distress at sea in October 2014 and have since dealt with various emergency situations (http://watchthemed.net/index.php/main). In the past few weeks, shift teams of the alarm hotline have been in direct contact with passengers on various vessels seeking to reach Europe. They were able to assist passengers by passing on advice as well as by forwarding crucial information to rescue agencies. Members of the hotline regard the Alarm Phone as a political intervention in spaces often considered reserved for border security practitioners and outside of democratic oversight. In enabling direct forms of engagement with people in distress at sea, the Alarm Phone project has created a presence in maritime spaces, capable of building pressure on coastguards to conduct rescue operations. The project supports the freedom of movement of all and seeks to make the often dangerous and deadly routes toward Europe less violent and more secure.
The Alarm Phone has received a lot of media attention in the past weeks, especially after the shipwrecks costing hundreds of lives. Maurice Stierl has been interviewed in Germany for three national and regional TV programmes and has also given interviews for print media outlets (http://www.daserste.de/information/politik-weltgeschehen/morgenmagazin/videos/fluechtlings-aktivist-stierl-man-kann-von-mord-reden-100.html, http://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/ndr_aktuell/NDRAktuell,sendung363130.html, https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/zapp/Schwierig-Berichterstattung-ueber-Fluechtlinge,fluechtlingsschiff114.html, http://taz.de/Hotline-fuer-Fluechtlinge-in-Seenot/!158286/)
The Alarm Phone has also published a position paper countering the 10 point action plan of the Joint Foreign and Home Affairs Council of the EU (http://criticallegalthinking.com/2015/04/23/ferries-not-frontex-10-points-to-really-end-the-deaths-of-migrants-at-sea/).