*34C3 preroll music*
Herald Angel: And I'm very happy to have 2 speakers here who
will tell us about their experiences on the Iuventa, the ship that
was seized in august this year. Kathrin has been doing search and rescue
operations in the mediteranean since 2 years, and she was on board when the boat
was seized, when the Iuventa was seized, and she was even Head of Staff. Hendrik
has also been active in such a rescue operation as a RHIB
*chuckles* Voice-over: driver
Herald Angel: RHIBer, which is a kind of special function, and he has also been
doing this for 2 years approximately, for different NGOs. And I am very happy that
they are here and can tell us about what happend on the Iuventa. So, we have
translation to German on the Mumble that is in the back now, and yeah, please
welcome them to the big applause, thank you.
*applause* Hendrik: Hello. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the
introduction. Hello everybody. Welcome to the talk "The Seizure of the Iuventa". We
are glad that a few people made it here. When we actually planned for the talk we
were planning for one hour, so we put a lot of content in the description and it
was only two weeks ago that we learned we only have half an hour so we were really
pressed to focus a bit. So. Yeah what I will do is I will give you a quick
introduction into the area we operate in which is the central Mediterranean. I will
tell you what we do there. And after that Kathrin will talk about the actual seizure
of the Iuventa. So this is Kathrin, I'm Hendrik obviously, I think you already
noticed that. So yeah I like maps. So I put this map in the slides. So, migration
is happening we all know that. And people are trying to reach Europe for, yeah in
search of a better and safer life. So the reasons why they are fleeing are very
different. There are war, violence, discrimination, prosecution, or poverty.
They all have their reasons to leave their homes. So what we see here is the routes
these refugees take are constantly changing and that is due to changing
political circumstances. We have different routes through the Mediterranean. For a
while now we have the eastern route that was quite famous two years ago when a lot
of people tried to cross the Mediterranean from Turkey to Greece. That was basically
closed. We had the western route like 10, 15 years ago. A lot of people tried to
cross it from Morocco to Spain or to the Canary Islands. And at the moment we
mainly are focusing on the central Mediterranean route, that is where all the
migration, or most of the migration is happening. People are trying to cross
mainly from Libya, which is the brown spot at the bottom, to Italy. In the last
couple of months there also were people trying to cross from Tunisia, but still
the main part of the migration is happening through Libya. So to give you a
better understanding about what we are talking here, we draw you a map with some
distances on it. The distances are given in nautical miles. That is the unit we use
at sea. Just to give you an example: Under perfect conditions, a refugee boat that
would leave Libya would take at least 3 days to Lampedusa, more than 4 days to
Malta, and more than 5,5 days to Sicily. That would be under perfect conditions
that never exist. There are always waves. There is the wind, the boats often don't
have a compass so they don't know where to go. So in fact the only boat we know of
that really made it to Malta was underway for 8 days. So the distances these people
have to cross, have to cover, are quite long. So the classic boats we encounter on
that route, these type of boats, below you see a wooden boat, these wooden boats have
really different sizes. They take from 100 up to 1000 people. Usually 500 people with
plus minus 100, but their fit up to 1000 people in them. And on the upper part you
see the typical boat that was used until last summer. That is the rubber boat. 120
to 150 people usually fit in there. But we also encountered boats with 180 people in
them. These conditions like these boats and the long distance and these not
seaworthy boats of course make this route the most dangerous route in the world. So
the most people trying to cross borders are dying in the Mediterranean. You see
this statistics, they are from the Missing Migrants Project. They only collect the
data off the known deaths. These are no absolute numbers, it's just a relation. So
the big dark blue part is the relation of the people dying in the Mediterranean
related to the rest of the world. So I think you all see that the Mediterranean
is really really a dangerous route to take. But still people are forced to take,
to use this route because Europe and their allies are basically closing off the
shorter and safer routes. So the international law states a duty to rescue
people in distress. We always have acted and complied with these laws of the sea
and these international laws and we are fulfilling a duty that usually is up to
the European Union but they are not willing to do that. So the NGOs had to
step in to rescue these people. So the region we are operating in ...
*applause* Thanks. The region we are operating in is
also regulated by international laws. You have Libya there of course the Libyan law
applies as well as in the C Zone on up to the 12 mile line, which is the red line
you see there. This is also Libyan territorial waters. And from the 12th mile
on it's basically international waters. We have the so-called contiguous zone up to
24 miles, where the Libyan authorities have certain law enforcement rights, but
it still is international waters. So the blue shape you see is the Search and
Rescue Area where we find most of the boats. And that is basically where we
operate up to the 12 mile line, we don't cross the 12 mile line usually. So to be
able to conduct effective operations we need of course to buy a ship, because
without a ship you cannot go there. So the Iuventa was bought and the Iuventa was
sent to the area where most boats get in distress. That means we are doing
proactive search and rescue. Proactive in this case means we go there before boats
get in distress and actively search for them. That is because ships move slowly so
we cannot wait on Malta until ships get
in distress, until boats get in distress
because it would take us 24 hours to get there. So for us it is important to be
there when the people depart from shore, because these boats you saw the pictures
on the slides before they are immediately a distress case, as soon as they are in
the open sea, there's no discussion about that. As soon as one of these overcrowded
boats is in the open sea they are a distress case. They don't have to sink to
be a distress case. So we need to go there before they depart to be able to help
immediately. The Iuventa is a very small ship, you can see that it's only 33 metres
long. There's not much people fitting on there and for transfer, it usually can
take only the crew. So we act as a first response unit. When we find the boats in
distress, we secure them with life jackets and life rafts. So we supply lifejackets
to the people on the boat and, if necessary, bring out life rafts and
evacuate people on the life rafts. And then call for bigger ships that transfer
them to Italy. You can see one of the bigger ships here. It's the Vost Prudence.
It was used by MSF, it was chartered basically, and this is a way bigger ship
and it can take way more people and it can bring them safely to Italy. So these
transfers to these big ships we always do in close cooperation with the Maritime
Rescue Coordination Center in Rome, the so-called MRCC. The MRCC is responsible
for distress cases in that area. They are there to coordinate the rescue
operations and they are always ordering the transfer of the migrants. So whenever
we transferred migrants to one of these big ships, the MRCC ordered us to do so,
we never did that on our own. But you have to keep in mind: The MRCC is not an agency
that is acting independently. It basically is a subordinate of the Interior Ministry
in Italy, so it is bound by instructions to the Interior Ministry. You have to keep
that in mind for later when Kathrin is telling you something. As I already said:
The Iuventa is not suited to transport people to a place of safety. It is only
there to secure them. That was always clearly communicated with the MRCC and we
always acted as a first responder, and secured the situation. That was our job.
That is what we are good at. So this is how we operated from the beginning, and
this is how we operated on another NGO vessel I've been in 2016, the Minden. It
was the same case: We were there as a first responder, we secured the people,
transferred them to bigger vessels, they then brought them to Italy. This is also
how all the other NGOs working there worked, like CI Sea-Watch, MSF, Safe the
Children, Moas Mission, Lifeline, and all the other NGOs working there. We're not
alone there. And it was a successful, proven concept. So just to tell it once
more: The concept is we have smaller boats, staying there, securing the people,
and once they are secured we call for bigger ships, call for help, transfer them
to these bigger ships, and they then bring them to a place of safety, which usually
is Italy. But in May 2017 suddenly some things started to change for the Iuventa.
Kathrin: Thank you.
One thing I may want to emphasize again is that everything we did was always
under the coordination of the Rescue Coordination Center in Rome in Italy and
up until then we really had a good working relationship with them. We were conducting
successful and very efficient search operations, rescue operations. Maybe a
little bit too efficient. So we can say a chain of unusual events started in May
this year. And one situation I want to talk about now is when we received
distress calls over the radio about numerous migrant boats in distress in an
area we were in. And the other ships in vicinity who had found those boats, they
called us and asked for our assistance to rescue these people, and up until that not
an unusual situation. However all of a sudden we were requested by the MRCC, the
coordination center in Rome, to withdraw to leave the Search and Rescue Zone
immediately and to go to Lampedusa. So to make that clear: We were ordered to ignore
distress calls of people at imminent, who were at imminent threat of their life and
go away. This has never happened before until then. So as you can imagine we were
torn back and forth whether we should actually do that, or not. We were somewhat
obliged to follow their instructions but it did mean obviously that we had to leave
people on these boats in distress behind. And I can remember the persistent efforts
that day we were trying to make, and also others were trying to make, to keep the
Iuventa in the SAR Zone for that, for that situation. However, it did not work out,
they continued insisting. And finally we had to give in, and proceed to Lampedusa.
Unfortunately, later we learned that those two days when the Iuventa was absent,
which turned into one of the most busiest rescue periods we had seen in 2017. Many
hundred people lost their lives and the remaining capacities in the SAR Zone were
just way beyond their capacities. So this very procedure continued twice: Once more
in May, and another time in June. And again: Back then we were absolutely in the
dark as to what could possibly be the motivation behind such instructions and we
realized something had changed, the good working relationship with the MRCC for
some reason wasn't that good anymore. But we did not understand what was going on,
why are they behaving like that. And I mean we have to realise that: This is an
authority whose duty it is to coordinate rescues at sea, and to save people's lives
at sea. And they are withdrawing and actively reducing Search and Rescue ships
from where and when they're needed most. We were utterly astonished, not to say,
speechless. And we could imagine various scenarios until then. Of course we were
quite aware that the situation they were dealing with is really, I mean, not easy
to deal with. So we were a lot of the times putting it down to "Hey, okay,
they're probably really overwhelmed with dealing all these increasingly complicated
rescues in the Mediterranean, and eventually that leading to really poor
decision making". However such incidents kept occuring. And at the end of July the
Italian coast guard transferred 2 migrants on board of the Iuventa. And they had
found them in a really small rubber boat. They had left from Tripoli and they
requested us to take them on board. So again that was a rather unusual event,
never happened before, as we learned from Hendrik before. The boats are usually a
little bit bigger than three metres and there are usually a few more people than
two on there. Yet, you know, what if what's happening out there is actually
normal. So yes we took those 2 people on board and we accommodated our guests for
two days before we actually got any instructions as to how to continue, and we
were kind of almost expecting that we had to proceed to Lampedusa with our two
guests. So on the way to Lampedusa, approximately half way, we received
another distress call from Rome, about a boat that had apparently left in Tunesia
in the early morning. And what was really interesting that day was that they gave us
super precise instructions as to how to perform a search pattern. A search pattern
is like the organized way of performing a search at sea with the coordinates and
distances to speeds you go, so they were in total control of what we did and how we
did it, and they were making sure continuously that we are following their
plan. Something never happened before because usually they were really not
interested in how we performed the search, as long as we found the boats, obviously.
While they were making us perform a search pattern that would have taken us three
days to complete, the way they ordered us to do it, they neither gave us an official
distress notification, nor an official search and rescue case number, both of
which would be the usual procedure. And probably worth by adding is that also the
Iuventa was the only ship involved in that search that day, all the other ships were
just not a few between Tunisia and Lampedusa had not been, obviously, not
been informed. Another private rescue ship that was, that happened to be in the area
was initially declined by the MRCC to support us. Then I kept insisting like:
"Hey guys, we cannot possibly do this on our own".
And so eventually they allowed them to join into the search. Very interesting
also is that we requested the support of a surveillance plane,
of a private surveillance plane by Sea-Watch, the Moon Bird,
and it was completely rejected and declined from morning till evening that
day. So Moon Bird never left the ground in Malta that day. And yet believe it or not:
We were still not fully convinced that the MRCC's decisions are actually really
solely driven by the interests of the Ministry of Interior in Italy.
We were still somewhat in denial, thinking that, you know, something like law
enforcement would be beyond their scope, really. And so our paranoia level had
simply just not, could not grasp yet the dimension of where this would take us.
Until the very moment when we reached Italian territorial waters close to
Lampedusa, and 4 Coast Guard ships escorted us with blue lights into the
harbor of Lampedusa. And the Iuventa was searched and seized on August 2nd. So,
slowly it was dribbling, all these events beforehand started to make sense, fell
into place. And in fact, there are a lot of facts now, in hindsight that were, you
know, we can, that we can put in order, and we know that the warrants for the
search, as well as for the seizure, had both been signed one day before we
actually came to Lampedusa. And also the complete confiscation order of the Iuventa
had been leaked to the media in advance so they could they could be there, they could
receive us in the middle of the night. They were waiting for us at the peer, the
Italian press. And, you know, then you think: "Okay, that search pattern we did.
What was that about? Were they buying time to fly in all these police officers that
ended up on our ship?" But one thing we know for sure now is that the scenario I
talked about before when they withdrew the Iuventa from distress calls that day in
May, there was actually a price they accepted to pay to install a bug on the
bridge of the Iuventa that day. Also when they continuously ordered the Iuventa back
to Lampedusa, I mean, now that kind of starts making sense as well if you
consider that the capacity of a SD card may not be that big over such a long time.
Roundabout the same time when the bug was installed on the bridge of the Iuventa
there were also 2..., there was also 1 undercover cop placed on another private
rescue ship and he later produced forged evidence to incriminate the crew of the
Iuventa. So in fact, the investigation, we then learned, of the Iuventa crew by the
Italian authorities was started as early as September 2016 (last year) when two
security officers on board of another vessel, they were both former cops, had
proactively informed not only special police forces dealing with organized crime
in Sicily, but also the Italian foreign intelligence service and a politician of
the Lega Nord in Italy, and although their testimonies were somewhat contradictory
and they were reporting strange behavior of the Iuventa, they actually did prompt a
large scale investigation. So the accusations that are meant to justify the
seizure of the ship include: Facilitation of illegal immigration, Collusion with
human traffickers, and possession of firearms. However, until this day, there
are no criminal charges against any individual crewmembers, nor against the
organization, which I guess works in their favor as well because they have reached
what they wanted, they bought time, they have one ship less in the Search and
Rescue area at the moment. And the moment they actually get a trial they start
having to produce real evidence, which may be trouble for them. So the seizure of the
Iuventa they called a so-called 'Preventive Measure', and that was only
enabled by Anti-Mafia laws, which by the way were also used against..., for similar
cases like the Capandamur in 2005 and Tunisian fishers in 2007, both of which
cases the charges had to be dropped after some years. Still the damage was done. So
we have of course appealed the seizure, in the meantime, at the court in Trapani,
but, as we expected, that was rejected and has been taken to the next level at the
Supreme Court in Rome. And yeah, we are now waiting for them to decide whether
actually the seizure of the Iuventa was legal or not.
Hendrik: What we had to learn in the aftermath was that the seizure of the
Iuventa was only a small part in a way bigger political fight. What the EU
actually wants to do is they want to shut down the central Mediterranean route at
all costs, and what they also want to prevent is pictures of drowning people.
And instead of sending ships there to rescue these people, what they want to do
is they want to get rid of the witnesses that document how the people drown and
actually save them. So they are trying to stop the NGOs from working there.
*applause* *boo*
So what we learned is that the fight for the Iuventa we are fighting at the moment
is not a legal fight but a political fight, and we are waging that fight
together with a lot of other NGO that are active there in the central Mediterranean.
So for us of course the seizure of the Iuventa was a drawback. We don't have a
ship anymore which with which we can operate. But still you can see also with
constant pressure, sometimes there are positive surprises. For example in
December the United Nations made an evacuation flight for migrants from Libya
directly to Europe. And that of course was only possible because of the constant
media work a lot of NGOs did so that the European Union had to react and allow
that. So what this also shows us is that with patience and continuous struggle it
still is possible to drill small holes into the walls of Fortress Europe.
Kathrin: Yes, continue that fight! Thank you.
Hendrik: Thanks.
*applause* *cheer*
Herald Angel: Breathtaking. Thank you so much. So, do we have questions? We have
some microphones in the Saal, so you can just go there, and place yourself. Okay, I
think I will start with number 6. Microphone No. 6: Yes, hello, thank you
for the good work. You mentioned a charge of firearms on the ship. Were there any?
Kathrin: Good question. No, they have not found any evidence at all during the
search, and we also later learned that they had to include this section into the
accusation to actually justify the seizure at all, because those are the two
accusations whould've not been strong enough to justify the seizure.
Herald Angel: Okay, microphone 1 please. Microphone 1: Thank for the talk. 3 quick
questions: How much did the Iuventa cost? How much would it cost to buy a new ship?
And is this feasible? *laughter*
Hendrik: I actually have no idea much that ship cost, do you know that?
Kathrin: I roughly know how much a ship in that size would cost now, at a similar
age. We are probably looking at between 180.000 to 250.000 Euro. And feasible or
not, from an economic point of view probably doable, yes, I mean, people have
done it before, and it's probably possible to do it again. From a political point of
view it's certainly debateable whether..., how to proceed and what the right action
is at this point.
Herald Angel: Okay, we have a Signal, we have a question from the Internet, please.
Signal Angel: Is what happened to your ship unique, or are there other ships that
have been seized?
Kathrin: Can... I didn't understand the question.
Hendrik: Actually it's... The seizure is unique but there have been other ships
that have been searched by the cops like from Save the Children and MSF.
Herald Angel: Okay, number 1 please. Kathrin: Something to the answer of that
question: We... In our file we certainly also know that while they are
investigating against the Iuventa crew, they have tapped phones of numberous
people that also work for all the other NGOs, mainly in Italy, so we know that
this is going over and beyond what happened to us, but we were just a, like a
digestible bite, to put it that way. Herald Angel: What a bite. Okay, number 1
please. Microphone 1: Let's say I've got a half a
year of free time on hand... where do I sign up?
*laughter* *applause*
Hendrik: Sounds great, I can invite you to come to the assembly afterwards. We have
an "Just humans" assembly in hall 2 where a lot of these NGOs I mentioned in the
talk actually are, so just come and talk to us, and find us there.
Herald Angel: Okay, one last question, I hope it's a short question because we just
got 2 more minutes. Microphone: Thanks for the talk, and
thanks for the work you do. One question: The bug, was it actually legal? Was it a
legal operation that they did that? And how do you know that there is a bug, that
there have been a bug? Kathrin: We know that there is a bug
because that was a... it's part of the investigation file that we were handed
over, part of the 500 pages investigation file. We know the exact date and time,
when the bug has been installed, and roundabout where, namely on the bridge of
the Iuventa. Whether or not that action was legal, because we are looking at
Italien authorities, planting a bug on a ship under Dutch flag, bugging people in
interational waters, mostly from German decent. Until today we have not got a
clear answer to that question, we are still asking a number of lawyers around
Europe and it's probably a situation that doesn't happen too often. Also you're
warmly invited to come around to our assembly and we can talk about that a
little bit more, because that's one of the most interesting and pressing questions we
have as well. Herald Angel: Okay. So, like the two said:
Assembly Hall 2, just Humans, is the space where you can meet them, where you can ask
more questions. And thank you once again!
*applause and cheer*
Kathrin: Thanks for having us!
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