The new Alarm Phone 8-Week Report is out. It covers the period 28 October to 22 December 2019. We engaged in 95 distress cases in the #Mediterranean, involving around 3,184 migrant travellers, of whom about 1,869 reached Europe. Over 300 people lost their lives or went missing. This report offers merely short summaries of and statistics on Alarm Phone cases – we know that it cannot mirror the thousands of individual struggles and stories that are behind these figures. Thousands of individual and collective fates are bound up with the violent European border regime that continues to force people onto dangerous sea routes and that continues to kill.
Aegean Sea: 60 distress cases, involving over 1,347 individuals. 38 boats with over 834 individuals on board reached Greece. 22 boats with over 513 individuals were returned to Turkey. We fear that at least 5 cases involved illegal push/pull back practices.
Central Mediterranean: 19 distress cases, involving about 1,269 people. 13 boats with 786 people on board were rescued to Europe, 9 of them by the civil fleet. 3 boats with about 219 people were returned to Libya. 3 boats with 264 people on board capsized or went missing.
Western Mediterranean: 16 distress cases, involving about 568 people. 9 boats with about 249 people were rescued to Spain, 7 to the Canaries. 6 boats with 246 people on board were returned to Morocco, including one that capsized, leaving 7 people dead. 1 boat with 73 people went missing.
Over the past 8 weeks, we have once more documented how Europe and its allies engaged in grave human rights violations at sea, such as push/pull back operations in the central and eastern Mediterranean, refoulement by proxy, or delayed rescue operations.
The report can be found on our Website, on Facebook and Twitter:
https://alarmphone.org/en/2020/01/01/alarm-phone-in-contact-with-3184-people-in-95-distress-situations/?post_type_release_type=post
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/watchthemed.alarmphone/posts/2551328965141331
Twitter: https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1212661590446821379