The Case Against "search and rescue operations (SAR)" NGOs in the Mediterranean Sea

This text is an excerpt from a report trying to defend SAR NGO. Only adjectives have been removed to make the report less unbiased:

"The argument [against] NGOs operating SAR in the Mediterranean for enabling the arrival of illegalised migrants on European shores had been until recently confined to the conspirationist discourse of small groups (...). On 15 November 2016 for example, GEFIRA, a Dutch-based think-tank, published an article with the (...) title: “Caught in the act: NGOs deal in migrant smuggling” in which it accused NGOs of being “part of the human smuggling network”. On 5 December 2016 the same organisation published another article titled: “NGOs are smuggling immigrants into Europe on an industrial scale”, arguing that NGO SAR operations amounted to an “illegal human traffic operation”. The article, which as the previous one was quickly picked up in several (...) news outlets, was accompanied by the release of a video monitoring the activities of SAR NGOs through AIS vessel tracking data.

These (...) arguments however remained confined to the limited audience of these groups until the publication of an article in the Financial Times on 15 December 2016. The piece was based on “confidential reports” by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which according to the journalists accused the NGOs of “colluding” with smugglers (see Annex). The article mentioned a particular incident that the agency considered to be “the first reported case where the criminal networks directly approached an EU vessel and smuggled the migrants directly into Europe using the NGO vessel”, a claim we will assess within this report. It further reported the agency deploring that “the number of rescues triggered by a distress signal fell from roughly two-thirds of all incidents this summer to barely one in 10 in October (…). This drop-off coincided with a jump in the number of rescues carried out by NGOs in the central Mediterranean.” Despite a partial retraction that forced the Financial Times to admit that it had “overstated” its accusations, Frontex would consolidate its critique of SAR NGOs in subsequent publications in early February 2017.

On 15 February 2017, Frontex published its annual Risk Analysis Report, in which it made publicly accessible several of the claims that had been echoed by the Financial Times. (...) With regards to the central Mediterranean, Frontex notes in its annual report that “important changes were observed on this migratory route in 2016”. However, of the many evolutions that the agency might have mentioned based on the reports available to it and that we will discuss in more detail further on, Frontex focuses on one – the role of NGOs in SAR activities. It first observes the decrease in satellite phone calls to the Italian Coast Guard Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Rome to trigger rescue operations, which makes detecting and rescuing migrants more difficult and may result in vessels not being rescued. It then implicitly draws a “parallel” between this decrease and the increasing presence of SAR NGOs, suggesting a correlation – also shown in the graph reproduced below (...).

Frontex’s report then continues to draw a second “parallel”: “NGO presence and activities close to, and occasionally within, the 12-mile Libyan territorial waters nearly doubled compared with the previous year, totalling 15 NGO assets (14 maritime and 1 aerial). In parallel, the overall number of incidents increased dramatically”.

Frontex then generalises its critique of SAR to all actors operating close to the Libyan coast (...): “Libyan-based smugglers (…) heavily relied on the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), and associated SAR as well as humanitarian assistance efforts, turning it into a distinct tactical advantage. (…) Dangerous crossings on unseaworthy and overloaded vessels were organised with the main purpose of being detected by EUNAVFOR Med/Frontex and NGO vessels”.

The section of the report concludes that:

“Apparently, all parties involved in SAR operations in the Central Mediterranean unintentionally help criminals achieve their objectives at minimum cost, strengthen their business model by increasing the chances of success. Migrants and refugees – encouraged by the stories of those who had successfully made it in the past – attempt the dangerous crossing since they are aware of and rely on humanitarian assistance to reach the EU.”
Frontex, 2017 Annual Risk Analysis report.

Map and figures of the situation in the central Mediterranean between January and December 2016. Within the considered timeframe: migrants were rescued increasingly close to Libyan shores, as shown by Frontex and Coast Guard data; Frontex’s Triton operational area and EUNAVFOR MED’s operations area remained unchanged; Search and Rescue NGOs deployed a maximum of 12 vessels, and became the largest SAR operator in the central Mediterranean; crossings were comparable to 2014 and 2015 over most of the year, apart for the months of October and November which saw far more crossings then in previous years; deaths reached a record high and mortality rates peaked in Spring and Autumn. Credit: Forensic Oceanography. GIS analysis: Rossana Padeletti. Design: Samaneh Moafi.

Map of SAR events between 2014-2016, showing that they grew closer to the Libyan coast. 

AIS tracks of NGO ships contained in the final document produced by the Defence commission of the Italian Senate.

The United Nations Special Representative for International Migration lying

Incidentally as the transcript of the House of Lords will testify I never said that the EU should undermine the homogeneity of Member States

— Peter Sutherland (@PDSutherlandUN) 31 d’agost de 2015

He was probably referring to this news from BBC.

What he said: "The United States, or Australia and New Zealand, are migrant societies and therefore they accommodate more readily those from other backgrounds than we do ourselves, who still nurse a sense of our homogeneity and difference from others.
And that's precisely what the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine."

You can see and hear the man himself saying from the Partliamennt TV.

Refugees

[Original Spanish Version]

It might seem a taboo subject. It is an inappropriate question. But, nevertheless, it remains there: can a migration of the magnitude that we are witnessing in the recent months from Syria to Europe occur spontaneously? And this question needs to be raised.

In our society, there are everyday more taboo subjects, and this is one of them. If refugees came from Eastern Europe we could easily raise this question, but as they are mainly Muslims simply asking this question, it is an act of xenophobia/racism...

But when some issues are swindled from the public, certain groups "fish in troubled waters" and take advantage of them. Depriving society of a serious debate on inmigration has enabled far-right groups to appropriate of this debate and make it theirs. So an "official truth" and a "the alternative truth" have been created; perhaps the two concepts further from the real truth.

Iker Jimenez, Spanish journalist, head of "Milenio 3" radio show and "Cuarto Milenio" tv show, can be criticized for many reasons, but there is a merit that he takes pride of, and that can not be denied: he has touched many issues that never appear in other programs in Spanish mass media, simply because they are uncomfortable. It will do better or worse, but he dares with them. Surely his aura of "freakism" plays against him in terms of credibility, but it also protects him from corporate censorship (official line of the company you work for), and political correctness censorship.

Thus, it appears that is the only known journalist (famous or notorious), who dared to ask this question. In the debate on the refugees drama held in "Cuarto Milenio" (video at the end of this post), some wild ideas were raised, and at some point, some reprehensible statements, but there was also interesting information, such as the reference to Peter Sutherland (that we will discuss later).


So the big question is, who would want this massive refugee arrival?

There is an obvious answer: those Muslim countries that promote Islam in the world. The existence of these countries and their willingness for global Islamisation is undeniable:

"...the best known mosque in our country [Spain], colloquially dubbed as the "mosque of the M-30". A luxury complex of 12,000 m2 and 6 plants built entirely with Saudi money. The Arab country gave 12 million euros to erect its most faithful representation in Spain: gleaming marble walls, a splendid minaret and exhibitions of the prophet's life or the different versions of the Koran. Several guards guard the premises and men in suits come and go without stopping. The center management is provided by the Arabic country that sends its own staff and teaches its doctrine to interpret Islam.

And it is that Saudi Arabia has financed several mosques in our country. Some of the most luxurious are located in Malaga, Fuengirola or Marbella, the prince himself Abdul Aziz Al-Saud had built it to pray during his vacation. But within the community, many fear that the petrodollars bring with ideological wills, that is, the spread of the Wahhabi current: a very conservative vision of Sunni Islam,"
[¿Quién paga las mezquitas? Las finanzas del islam en Europa.]

Is it the same in other European countries? Obviously yes:

"According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, "the public authorities contribute 30% of the construction of places of worship", according to an estimate from the French Interior Ministry. 70% is distributed among the faithful and "the great patrons," reveals Jalul Siddiq El Confidencial, a worker at the Great Mosque of Paris, "governments like Algeria, Morocco and Saudi Arabia paid great works".
(...)
Yahya Birt, director of "City Circle", an association of Muslim professionals in England, said that "the Saudi religious abroad spending is between 2 and 3 billion dollars per year. (...) That has been invested in 1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, schools and Muslim schools”. 
(...)
In other European countries with large Muslim communities, such as Belgium and Germany, they receive large sums of nationalities of its immigrant community and the Maghreb and Turkey, respectively."
[¿Quién paga las mezquitas? Las finanzas del islam en Europa.]

This article from El Confidencial updates what already was denounced in the the article by Juan de la Cal in El Mundo in 2005 "El promotor de mezquitas".

To end this subject, two stories that have taken place in recent days, in relation to the arrival of refugees:

"Saudi Arabia offers Germany 200 mosques – one for every 100 refugees who arrived last weekend."

"Norway Refuses Millions of Dollars From Saudi Arabia for Mosque Building."


But that doens't answer another question, probably more intriguing: why European governments are so ineffective in front of a disaster of the magnitude of this one (and has no prospects of being solved, but on the contrary, as the New York Times noted, and we will explain later)? Moreover, are the Western powers collaborating in this movement?

Let's remember what happened in Spain during the housing boom: the false Spanish economic growth (based on the housing bubble) was made possible by the arrival of immigrants, who, as was repeated insistently, came to develop "the jobs that Spaniards didn't want to do" and "were essential to sustain that growth". In retrospect, it is clear that this arrival, that supported this false growth, (which was actually only inflating the bubble), was a mistake, Therefore, the arrival of immigrants was not only unnecessary, but counterproductive.

Was it simply an act of political and economic blindness, or was something else? We might think that it was the former (the Spanish government has given big evidence of political blindness with subsequent consequences (see its management of "the Catalan question"), but relevant events in other countries, make us suspect that it may be the latter.

The arrival of immigrants in recent months, and the response of Germany, welcoming immigrants without even considering any measures to stop this migration (as did, right or wrong, Russia), and deciding to force all countries in the EU to "take over" "a proportionate share", leads us to think not.

And here is where the aforementioned reference to Peter Sutherland, that can be checked from the BBC, can bring a new light on this matter:

"EU should 'undermine national homogeneity' says UN migration chief".
Now check Peter Sutherland's CV:

- Special Representative for Migration, of the United Nations.
- Honorary Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (2010 -).
- Director-General of the World Trade Organization (formerly G.A.T.T.).
- Non-executive Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

And formerly:

- Chairman of the Committee that produced The Sutherland Report on the completion of the Internal Market of the EEC.
- Non-executive chairman of BP.
- He served on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, until May 2014.
- European Commissioner for Competition (1985-1989).
- Attorney General of Ireland (1981-1982).
- Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (Europe) (2001–2010).
- Vice chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists (2006–2009).


The big question is, why the powers that be would want to destroy the homogeneity of the European countries? The economic arguments do not hold up at all.

Sutherland's argument, opposing the US, Australia and New Zealand versus the European Union

is unfounded: for these three countries are former colonial countries, countries of immigration since its formation, that is, beyond which the identity their "founding fathers" wanted to create, they never had a previous identity to its creation as states.

So if the economic explanation is not real, what is the real reason? Hard to imagine, but here's a theory, similar to what I've been thinking, but better exposed:

"So if radically open borders make no sense in terms of prosperity, then why push for them? Perhaps it's a case of multinational big business chafing against any types of restrictions on its operations. Perhaps those who see themselves as international movers and shakers see the more closed loyalties of the nation state as limiting the control of a globalist bureaucracy. Perhaps too it's the enduring influence of a right liberal ideology in which what is thought to matter is a self-determining life and so it's thought to be immoral for something predetermined, like ethnicity, to influence where we might choose as individuals to live or to work." [Mark Richardson]


Peter Sutherland is the head of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), a "UN initiative" that has been proposed to carry out the goal stated by Sutherland:

"The Civil Society sub-committee of the GFMD meeting in Istanbul has already been tasked with achieving that ambition. According to its published five-year plan, the committee will work towards enhancing migrant labour “mobility”, “migrants’ rights protection” and “regulation of migrant labour recruitment processes”.

Defusing “tensions between the Western and the Islamic worlds” is another key theme of GFMD while “eliminating hate speech” is also high on the agenda.

It would be easy to dismiss the GFMD as a spectacularly funded debating society with little prospect of influencing national policies but it does have the ear of the UN and is granted its own special envoy in the form of Mr Sutherland.

Given that Turkey now plays host to an estimated 2 million migrants en-route to new homes in Europe, courtesy of the illegal migration path across the Mediterranean and Angela Merkel’s offer of a home in Germany to anyone who turns up on that country’s border, don’t be surprised if some of the ideas discussed in Istanbul quickly turn up on the UN’s own agenda." [Breitbart]


And if you think this is going to end soon:

The New York Times warning that more refugees are going to come:

"There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history — 60 million in all — and they are on the march in numbers not seen since World War II. They are coming not just from Syria, but from an array of countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Haiti, as well as any of a dozen or so nations in sub-Saharan and North Africa. They are unofficial ambassadors of failed states, unending wars, intractable conflicts.

The most striking thing about the current migration crisis, however, is how much bigger it could still get.

While the flow of migrants to Europe this year already represents the biggest influx from outside the Continent in modern history, many experts warn that the mass movement may continue and even increase — possibly for years to come. “We are talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said in a recent Twitter posting."

Cuarto Milenio: Refugiados, La realidad oculta 25-10-2015.