[Pressrelease] WatchTheMed, a counter-surveillance network for migrants’ rights at sea

[Gipfelsoli Presse]

WatchTheMed: a counter-surveillance network to stop deaths and
violations of migrants’ rights at sea

5th of December 2013

While the EU launches Eurosur – the European Border Surveillance System
– to further militarize its maritime borders, members of civil society
launch WatchTheMed (watchthemed.net) – a “counter-Eurosur” to document
and denounce migrants’ deaths and violations of their rights in the
Mediterranean.

3rd of October 2013. A boat carrying more than 500 people sinks less
than 1km from the coast of Lampedusa. At least 366 people die, only 155
people are rescued.[1]

The response given by the EU to the public outcry caused by this tragic
event is, once again, appalling. Instead of questioning the very
migration policies which in the past twenty years have produced more
than 14.000 deaths at the maritime borders of Europe[2], the EU makes
yet another call to increase militarisation and border control. North
African states are urged to crack down on migrants leaving their shores.
Frontex, the European border agency - recently denounced for tolerating
the frequent use of push-backs in the Aegean Sea[3] – is called upon to
extend its operations to the whole Mediterranean. A new surveillance
tool is deployed: Eurosur.

As a “system of systems” linking up all border-control authorities’
surveillance means, Eurosur is essentially an information exchange
platform intended to provide the most precise “situational awareness“ so
that border guards can “detect, identify, track and intercept” irregular
migrants, thus preventing them from entering EU territory undetected
and, so it is said, allowing to save their lives. But how can more
surveillance help save lives when it is the denial of legal access to EU
territory and the militarisation of borders that force migrants to
resort to clandestine and dangerous means of crossing in the first
place? How can we accept the idea that more surveillance will offer a
solution when the 3rd of October shipwreck occurred after the boat
passed through the many layers of surveillance surrounding Lampedusa –
making these the most controlled waters in the Mediterranean?[4]

11th of October 2013. A boat carrying more than 400 people sinks after
it is shot by a Libyan vessel. Despite Italy and Malta being warned of
the imminent distress of the passengers, rescue is delayed and patrol
vessels arrive 1h after the boat sinks. More than 200 people die, only
212 people are saved.[5]

This case reveals the real face of surveillance and the effects of the
militarization of the Mediterranean. On the one hand, this incident
reveals the violence that migrants are subjected to as a result of the
EU’s pressure on North African states to block all migrants departing
from their coasts. Over the last 10 years the EU and members states have
provided military equipment to Libya including several patrol boats,
despite the full knowledge of the systematic violations of migrants’
rights perpetrated by the Libyan authorities. On the other hand, this
case demonstrates that the knowledge of the migrants’ distress which
Eurosur promises to enhance is not sufficient to avoid this tragedy. As
the investigation to which WatchTheMed has contributed has shown, the
delay in the rescue is less an accident than the product of the
reluctance of EU states to accept migrants on their territory, and the
ensuing attempt to evade the responsibility to operate rescue. As a
result, several vessels – including those of the Italian navy and coast
guard - remained in vicinity but did not intervene until it was too late.


5th of December. Today, the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Council will
meet in Brussels and discuss further measures to combat “illegal
migration” and avoid the deaths of migrants at sea. Eurosur was
officially launched three days ago, after being in operation already
since several months. While it is claimed that Eurosur will help save
lives, the conditions of the deaths of over 600 migrants in the two
shipwrecks described above reveal this as a fallacy for all to see. The
European public should no longer be blinded by the humanitarian varnish
painted over policies of closure and militarisation.

Migrants’ rights organisations choose this day to launch their
counter-Eurosur.

While EU states and border agencies are handed a new tool that will help
them detect acts of clandestine mobility, civil society on both sides of
the Mediterranean refuses to leave the militarisation of borders, deaths
and violations of migrants rights in the darkness. To exercise a
critical right to look at the EU’s maritime borders, migrants’ rights
organisations, activists and researchers are launching an online mapping
platform called WatchTheMed (WTM).

This tool allows these actors to monitor the activities of border
controllers and map with precision the violations of migrants’ rights at
sea in the attempt to determine which authorities and actors at sea have
responsibility for them. By interviewing survivors as well as using some
of the very same technologies used by EUROSUR – vessel tracking
technologies, satellite imagery, georeferenced positions from satellite
phones - and spatialising the data that emerges from these sources, WTM
is able to ask some of the following questions: in which Search and
Rescue (SAR) zone was a vessel in distress and which state was
responsible to operate rescue? Which vessels were in vicinity? If it was
rescued, were the passengers brought to a territory in which they could
apply for international protection of were they pushed back?

WTM then operates as an online and participative maritime control room,
albeit with the opposite aims of border controllers: it seeks to enable
critical actors to pressure authorities to respect migrants’ rights and
denounce their (in)actions when they violate them. Though WTM, we aim to
bring the deaths of migrants at sea to an end and promote another vision
of the Mediterranean. Instead of the deadly policies of closure of
borders, openness and solidarity must shape the future of the
Mediterranean area. It needs bridges instead of walls for a new
African-European relationship through which the sea and beyhond it
Europe may become a place of freedom, security and equal rights for all.

Militarisation and surveillance are the problem, not the solution!

Border controlers, as long as you will be controlling the Mediterranean,
we will be watching you!

Afrique-Europe-Interact, Boats 4 People, Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht &
Migration, Welcome to Europe

PRESS CONTACT:
info at watchthemed.net
DE : Helmut Dietrich, 0049 (0)176 358 77 605
ENG : Lorenzo Pezzani, 0044 7503 908 720 / Charles Heller, 00216 53 273 938
FR : Violaine Carrère, 00 33 (0)1 43 14 84 88