by Yannic L., crew member on the Nadir on mission 2/2024 (May), photos: Leon Salner and Friedhold Ulonska
While the criminalization of migration reaches a new level in Tunisia, the Tunisian autocracy is trying to destroy the last remnants of the rule of law and more and more people critical of the government are being arrested, the Nadir sets sail for the first time this year towards the area of operation. During this time, it encounters several boats from Tunisia and one from Libya, which are on their way to Lampedusa, Italy.
We spend the first few days after the training sessions mainly anchored off Lampedusa to wait out the bad weather. When the wind and waves slowly calm down, we leave the harbor, do a last joint training with Maldusa and their new ship, the newest member of the civilian sea rescue, and sail towards Tunisia. A situation that we have also observed repeatedly in recent years is that boats leaving Tunisia are generally unable to make a distress call, as the possession of satellite phones has been heavily criminalized under anti-terrorism laws since 2015. We therefore rely primarily on coordination with other actors such as the Pilotes Volontaires and Airborne aircraft and on our own eyes to find boats in distress.
On the very first day in the operation area, the Nadir is informed by Colibri 2(Pilotes Volontaires) about an unmaneuverable, drifting inflatable boat with around 60 people on board. Watch the Med Alarm Phone had received similar information from relatives. The group had been missing at sea for days and was drifting without help from the authorities. When the Nadir arrived at the position communicated by Colibri 2 two hours later, the people had fortunately already been taken on board by the Italian Coast Guard, which had responded to the same distress call from Colibri 2. Only the dinghy left behind was still visible. So we turned back in the direction of Tunisia.
First mission: inflatable boat with 40 people in distress at sea
The next morning, the crew spotted the next boat: a black rubber dinghy with 40 people on board. The engine was broken and the group had been at sea for three days, 35 nautical miles from the Tunisian coast, in the Tunisian no-fly zone. Neither FRONTEX nor civilian search and rescue aircraft are allowed to carry out their search flights in this zone. This is why boats drift here particularly often and for a long time without any help in sight. The crew immediately starts to give everyone life jackets and drinking water. We then wait together with the people in distress for the Italian coastguard, who arrive three hours after the mayday relay is sent and take everyone on board.
Four steel boats with 44 people on board each in two days
In the days that followed, Colibri 2 spotted up to nine boats a day that were in distress, mainly between Tunisia and Lampedusa. The Italian coastguard seemed visibly overwhelmed by the situation and the number of boats and was barely able to fulfill its task of rescuing people at sea. During these missions, the Nadir repeatedly coordinated with Maldusa about who was going to which emergency. During this time, the crew of the Nadir encountered four particularly poorly self-made metal boats, all overcrowded with 40 to 50 people on board. On two of the boats were infants and babies, the youngest only three weeks old. We briefly took a three-week-old baby and his mother, who was from Cameroon, on board before the Italian coastguard brought them all to Lampedusa. As we were shocked to discover again and again during this mission, these metal boats were even worse built than last year. This indicates that the European isolationist policy in Tunisia is working and that people are embarking on ever worse boats and therefore even more dangerous crossings, as they have no other choice to escape the racist hunts in Tunisia. One boat in particular sticks in the memory: the first weld seams on the bow had already come loose and the hull continued to break apart. Inexhaustibly, the occupants scooped water out of the boat, which only had a few centimetres of freeboard left.
57 people rescued from wooden boat in distress
In the course of May 6, the weather deteriorates again to wind force 5 and waves higher than one meter. The crew expects a calm night and an early end to the mission. At 10 p.m., however, a distress call comes through Watch the Med Alarm Phone: around 60 people on a blue wooden boat drifting near the Tunisian island of Kerkennah, two days after leaving Libya. Watch the Med Alarm Phone stays in contact with the boat and regularly relays positions to the relevant authorities and the Nadir . The crew finds the boat after two hours in Tunisian territorial waters. Little knowledge of English on the wooden boat and little knowledge of Arabic on our dinghy enabled communication to work in the end. It became clear that the boat could not continue on its own and that there was at least one dead person and three other people on board who were in urgent need of medical assistance. However, it also became clear that a rescue operation in the middle of the night in high waves would be a challenge.
With the impressive and necessary help of some of the castaways, the crew evacuated 55 people onto the Nadir and was then able to take the wooden boat next to him so that he could enter the boat himself and finally attend to the medical emergencies. This was necessary as a rescue would not have been possible otherwise in this swell. In addition to the acrid stench of petrol and human excrement, the crew found a corpse, which the boat’s occupants had already pulled up, and two unconscious men on the lower deck. The level of petrol in the air there was so high that the crew members could only descend with protective masks and for short intervals in order to rescue the two unconscious men and place them on the deck. Nadir to the hospital. Resuscitation measures and stabilization of the people whose lives were in danger were initiated immediately. One of the three injured people was treated by his two brothers, while the ship’s doctor and medical officer looked after the other two. By 5 a.m., all the people in distress on board the Nadir evacuated and the body recovered.
Throughout the operation, the authorities were kept constantly informed, but neither Italy, Malta nor Tunisia took action, gave instructions or offered help. At 7 a.m., nine hours after the first distress call, the Lampedusa authorities informed us that they would send a coast guard vessel for a medical evacuation of the two injured people. They had now been stabilized but were suffering from severe poisoning from the petrol gas and burns from the dangerous mixture of petrol and salt water that had collected in the lower part of the boat. One of them regained consciousness during the journey.
Exhaustion understandably spread on board. Many of those rescued fell asleep under their rescue blankets immediately after a few crackers and something to drink. Some were noticeably relieved that another stage since leaving their homes in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Syria was behind them.
Another three hours later, the Italian coastguard arrived to carry out the medical evacuation and, surprisingly, to take all the survivors on board. The only thing they didn’t want to take with them was the body, so the Nadir had to travel another five hours to Lampedusa to bring the deceased ashore. The young man was called “Salam” (meaning peace) by two fellow travelers. The NGOs Maldusa and MemMed took care of further identification and contact with the bereaved in order to facilitate an appropriate grieving process, again work that is mainly done by NGOs, victims’ associations and volunteers because government agencies do not provide resources for this.
After another day of Italian bureaucracy, the crew finished their mission and sailed back to Malta the next evening. The feelings at the farewell consisted of sadness and anger. At the same time, memories remain of the encounters at sea and of the people who will still need a lot of strength and courage in their ongoing fight against the racist bureaucracy of the European Union.
