Further informations about the project “Flotilla of Solidarity” (including the different press-releases) can be found in french, english and italian on the website of boats4people (even if it takes some time to finde the different documents).

By Helmut Dietrich, in: ak 574, 17.8.2012

This summer, the Boats4People campaign succeeded in building another transnational network across the western Mediterranean Sea. Last year, the West African Caravan from Bamako to Dakar had taken the first step. Now the Mediterranean Sea: the campaign’s first goal is the installation of an alternative emergency call system for boat people. In the longer term, the aim is to connect social struggles around the Mediterranean. Revolts against pauperisation, as they are currently happening in Greece and Spain, have been taking place for decades further south. This is the background of the EU’s sealing off against the South.

On April 2011, 63 migrants died in a boat in the waters off the coast of Libya. Military forces of several states were present in Libyan waters at that time. They received migrants' SOS. But no one assisted them. Dan Heile Gebre testifies.

The signatory organizations named below demand that the European Union provide a unified response to the tragedy in the Mediterranean. We insist that migrants and refugees who risk their lives crossing the sea must be admitted onto European soil.

In response to the systematic failure of European ships to rescue shipwrecked migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, people across Europe and Africa cried out for justice. Finally, on July 11th a Spanish ship used by NATO forces, called the Almirante Juan de Borbón, came to the rescue of more than one hundred women, men, and children of sub-Saharan African origin [1], whose makeshift boat was sinking in international waters. These shipwrecked migrants had set out from Libyan ports [2], but they never made it to European soil. [3].

On Sunday, the 18th. of December 2011, the International Day for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees, about 150 to 200 families of so-called „disparus“ (missed boats people), together with members of many different associations held a Sit-in in front of the Palais de Congres in Tunis, to point to the fate of their missed relatives and friends. They held fotographs and banners with the picture of their missed brothers, sisters, sons and daugthers, and demanded clearing-up about their whereabouts. They were very angered and emotional, many of them cried, temporarilly even blokking the bypassing traffic. Most of these families were residents arround the region of Tunis, but some also coming from much further locations. There had been many more people willing to come, but being hindered by bad weather conditions on their way.