I help rescue migrants in the Mediterranean. Here's why we won't cooperate with the Libya coast guards

Rescuing in the Mediterranean Sea is not the same as rescuing in other waters. It has become an act subject to suspicion and defiance from European authorities.

Attempts are made to disincentivize our actions, and the most vulnerable are targeted. Many of the people rescued by NGO ships in the last year have been punished with weeks of waiting at sea, on overcrowded boats in critical conditions, with unnecessary delays in granting a safe port at which to disembark.

All of this has happened because we firmly refuse to bring the rescued back to Libya.

"The Libyan coastguard is doing a good job and we will keep supporting them,” declared the new Italian minister of Interior Luciana Lamorgese in September, straight after a meeting with her German and French counterparts in Malta.

However, those of us who are conducting rescues in the central Mediterranean refuse cooperation with the so-called Libyan Coast Guard for good reason: because we know who they are, and what they are capable of.

Since June 2018, the International Maritime Organization has recognized Tripoli as an official and reliable Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC). An MRCC is responsible for all rescue operations in a specific assigned area of international waters (also known as SAR – search and rescue – zones), and for providing efficient rescue interventions at sea and a port of safety. According to the United Nations, however, Libya cannot be considered a port of safety.

Multiple reports from human rights monitors state that the so-called Libyan Coast Guard is actually formed of de facto local militias currently involved in the country’s raging civil conflict, providing evidence of their systematic involvement in human rights violations against migrants and refugees. Regardless of such violations, European governments continue providing consistent support to them in exchange for their commitment to intercept boats attempting to leave Libya.

We were there on 17 July 2018, when the Open Arms NGO found one survivor and two bodies, including a child, apparently abandoned in open sea by the Libyans.

We were there on 15 August 2017, when the self-declared Libyan Coast Guard threatened the Golfo Azzurro rescue ship to change its route towards the port of Tripoli or risk becoming a target.

We were there on the Sea Watch fast rescue boats, on 6 November 2017, and witnessed 20 people drown alongside the Libyan patrol boat Ras Jadir.

I was there myself, as part of the medic team of a humanitarian vessel, listening to the testimonies of sailors on the deck of the Nuestra Madre de Loreto, a small fishing boat from Santa Pola, Spain. “I cannot believe what I saw,” I remember the bosun telling me. “We spotted the overcrowded rubber boat at night and were reassured when the coast guards arrived”. He was in shock when relating what he and his crew had witnessed, telling us how the Libyan Coast Guard had approached the rubber dinghy only few miles from them at night. His account echoes reports by Amnesty International.

“When they reached the dinghy, they started screaming and beating people, many of whom jumped in the water, some trying to swim in our direction. There were so many people still at sea when the patrol boat left! We only managed to rescue twelve. Most of the others, we saw drowning”.

And I was there this summer, when we crossed route with the Libyan patrol boat Tallil 267, approaching at high-speed as we were completing the evacuation of 53 people from a faltering rubber boat.

The Tallil 267 is a Dutch ship known to be main vessel of Abdou al Rahman al-Milad, the commander of the regional unit of the Libyan Coast Guard in Zawiyah. Some of the people we had on board after that rescue told us about him.

“There was a Libyan who lacked two phalanxes in his right hand” a young boy told us after leaving the Libyan Al-Nasr detention center. “This man is known by his nickname: Al Bija,” he continued, “That man was in charge of moving us to the beach, deciding who would embark to Europe and who would stay. He is a violent man, always armed; we are all afraid of him.”

For years al-Bija has been playing a double game with European authorities, managing the Libyan coastguard whilst also organizing trafficking himself.

In June 2017, al-Bija was listed in the sanction list of the Security Council Committee of the United Nations for been “consistently linked with violence against migrants and other human smugglers”. At the beginning of 2017, journalist Nancy Porsia was the first to report the testimony of whistle-blowers from the Libyan security forces in Zawyia declaring that "al-Bija is the undisputed leader of migrant trafficking".

Nonetheless, shortly before the inclusion of al-Bija’s name on the UN sanction list, he attended a high-level security meeting with Italian intelligence officials in Mineo, Sicily, negotiating alongside other North-African authorities to strategize how to best block the departure of migrants from the African coasts.

This information was released by an inquiry led by Italian journalist Nello Scavo for the newspaper Avvenire, soon reaching major international media. Just a few days ago both Scavo and Nancy Porsia were assigned personal special security by the Italian police, after receiving threats by al-Bija for their reports.

If this summer we had reached that faltering rubber boat just a few minutes later, al-Bija’s ship would have taken those 53 people back to a migrant detention center in Libya, where they would have likely been incarcerated again, detained and abused before being put on a boat once again.

Luckily enough, the militia arrived after us. Finding no one on board, they settled for taking back the engine. Why would a coast guard patrol ship be interested in retrieving the engine of a derelict rubber boat, would be a legitimate question? The answer is obvious to those who are most familiar with the situation in Libya. To use it again.

In the name of security, Europe has backtracked from its moral duty to provide safety and rescue to people running away from the hell of Libyan prisons, deciding instead to cooperate with smugglers, militias and traffickers. As the price paid is levied on human lives, it is clear to us such strategies have been far from acceptable.

There is a clear reason why we will not cooperate with the Libyan Coast Guard. That is because allowing them to take migrants back to Libya is no rescue: it is an illegal action, banned by international law and the most basic human principles. This is a crime against fundamental human rights that we cannot tolerate. No matter the cost.

Valeria Alice Colombo is an Italian Doctor and crew member on Open Arms, Alan Kurdi and Sea Watch 3. She is also a member of the journalistic collective Brush&Bow