🔶Press Release!
TWELVE DEATHS and a SECRET PUSH-BACK TO LIBYA - How Malta and EU authorities left people to die at sea and returned survivors to war. @RescueMed @seawatch_intl
alarmphone.org/en/2020/04/16/…
The boat drifted within in the #Malta SAR zone, south of #Lampedusa, for days. European authorities failed to intervene & used #COVID19 as an excuse to breach the law of the sea, human rights & refugee conventions. @Armed_Forces_MT & the EU are responsible for these deaths.
#AlarmPhone, @seawatch_intl & @RescueMed mobilised all their forces to prevent these deaths, but in vain. This case, as well as several other distress cases that the Alarm Phone reported on, highlights once more the devastating effects of #EU border policies on migrant lives.
In this report, we reconstruct the distress case of the missing ~55, showing how it unfolded, how #Malta and other #EU authorities refused to rescue the people in distress. We gathered evidence from our direct exchanges with the people in distress & survivors returned to #Libya.
A survivor told us: "We shouted for help and made signs. Three people tried to swim to the big boat as it started moving away. They drowned. We made signs to the aircraft with the phones and we held the baby up to show we were in distress."
Families and friends will never get their loved ones back. But we promise to them that, together with the #CivilFleet, we will keep on fighting back so that authorities are held accountable for their crimes at sea and for this to never happen again.
#LeaveNoOneBehind
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.