Interview: „Mission Lifeline“

„ I’m sure there will be judgements from human rights courts in a few years‘ time that will prove us right, but in the meantime people are still drowning.“

Markus from „Mission Lifeline“

You can’t just go and say hello… After spending half a day walking and ferrying around the Maltese ports of Sliema, La Valetta and the Three Cities , we finally found the „Lifeline“ ship belonging to the sea rescue organisation „Mission Lifeline“. Behind a fence lies the ship, which seems almost tiny next to a huge industrial vessel, guarded by the Maltese harbour police. We are not allowed to approach. Eventually, the engineer of the „Lifeline“ approaches us and we exchange email addresses. With the help of the crew, we manage to obtain official authorisation to visit the ship the following day.

A few days later, we had an appointment with Tamino from Seawatch on the ship Seawatch 3. This visit was also only possible after applying for an official visit permit from the authorities in Malta, which the crew of the „Seawatch 3“ kindly arranged for us.

In addition to the interviews, we had the opportunity to inspect the ships. The rescue procedures were also explained to us. For example, we learned that a large proportion of the refugees initially lose circulation after being rescued as soon as the adrenaline runs out, and that the most common injuries suffered by the refugees are sometimes severe burns to the abdomen caused by a toxic mixture of petrol, salt water and excrement floating in the boats. The special situation of refugee women, who almost always become victims of rape and sexualised violence during their escape and therefore need a special shelter – separate from the men – after being rescued, is also addressed. There is even a small infirmary on the „Seawatch 3“. The smaller „Lifeline“ also has a medical treatment room. It’s impressive what can be done in the confined space of a ship.

The crew members themselves all work on a voluntary basis, some even full-time. We also got to know people on the ships who have cut their businesses back to the bare minimum in order to save people from drowning.

At the time of the interviews, the ship „Aquarius“ from „SOS Mediteranée“ and „Doctors Without Borders“ rescued 141 people in distress at sea and then had to wander around the Mediterranean for days until Malta finally released the harbour in La Valetta. Some of the people on the ship were severely traumatised and reported torture and inhumane conditions in the Libyan camps. The injuries of the people identified by the doctors of the organisation „Doctors without Borders“ speak for injuries caused by torture and ill-treatment.

M: That was the Dresden-Balkan convoy. Nico was even there at the time. That wasn’t the founding of Lifeline, but it was the same people who got it off the ground.

N: On 1 April 2016, I came to Idomeni (Greece) with the Dresden-Balkan convoy and in 2015/2016 we drove along the Balkan route in caravans and organised tea tents in various places. We thought that the Arab people would enjoy getting together over tea and that we could help them in this way. We started by making tea with a goulash cannon, travelling to the camps and distributing tea. In the end, we ended up in Idomeni on the border with Macedonia and set up a large tea tent with another organisation, where we served tea for 20 hours a day in three shifts. This then became a central meeting point in the camp, as people picked up their pots of tea in the evening so that they could sit together with their families. Of course, we also talked to the people and they worked with us in the tea tent, so that it increasingly became a community project. When I went down in April, I had already heard that some people from the organisation wanted to charter a ship, which ultimately resulted in „Mission Lifeline“. The camp was evacuated in May 2016 and we helped until the summer. Then we couldn’t find enough people who wanted to go there. Unfortunately, the Dresden-Balkans convoy no longer exists in this form, but there are still a few people travelling to Italy, for example, to set up showers in „wild camps“.

M: That was simply due to necessity. Although there were already a relatively large number of NGOs with their ships, there were far too few in the SAR zone(1) to maintain a decent presence. They realised this and made this decision based on the actual mass deaths.

M: That’s outside the Libyan border area. There is a 12-mile zone, that is 12 nautical miles from the coast, which is territorial waters. This is where all sovereign rights are exercised by this country. Then there is the 24-mile zone, the so-called contiguous zone, where the state can exercise certain control rights, but it is no longer a territorial area. The state has the right to carry out customs controls there in order to ensure border protection in the 12-mile zone. Outside the 24-mile zone, it is then international waters where no state has any special rights.

It used to be the case that people travelled relatively close to the 12-mile zone to search for refugee boats. However, due to the build-up of the Libyan coastguard in the meantime and the massive aggression that they have since unleashed – NGO ships have also been shot at and the „Seawatch“ was almost rammed at one point – the situation was that everyone was actually operating outside the 24-mile zone, which corresponds to around 45 kilometres. They only entered this 24-mile zone when they received a specific order from the MRCC(2). For example: „We have a sighting of a rubber boat by a reconnaissance aircraft“. And if an NGO ship was closest, it was given the task of rescuing these people.

T: We have been operating since June 2015; we were founded in 2014 after Mare Nostrum(3) – the marine rescue organisation – was discontinued. Especially since there were extremely large shipwrecks in spring 2015. The idea behind Sea-Watch – hence the name – was originally to observe how sea rescues were carried out by state/official organisations. Then there was less and less state sea rescue, so that we then rescued more and more ourselves. Our first ship (the „Seawatch 1“, ed.) with a crew of 8 was a fishing boat only 23 metres long, which is not a rescue ship – in contrast to what we operate today. We’ve been here in Malta since 2016, originally with the „Seawatch 2“ (now the „Lifeline“, ed.). The Seawatch 3, which we have been operating since 2017, is designed to carry out professional sea rescues and bring people to a safe harbour. This has changed politically in recent years to such an extent that we have had to adapt our operations.

T: Together with the Aegean mission, we rescued over 35,000 people in 2015 / 2016.

M: Mare Nostrum had completely different possibilities. It was an operation by the Italian navy and coastguard, who worked with different resources and infrastructure. When Mare Nostrum was officially over and the NGOs such as „Seewatch“, „Sea-Eye“, at some point „Mission Lifeline“ and the many other organisations from other countries that existed in the meantime and still exist to some extent, always worked very closely with the Italians. On the one hand, there was the control centre in Rome and on the other, the coastguard and the navy, and then there were the various missions such as Operation Sophia3 and Operation Triton3. These were basically the same people as before Mare Nostrum, they were still on the ground, just without this big sea rescue mission. The Italian coastguard always did a lot, they were still on the ground in this sea area and gave us massive support and help and we worked hand in hand with them.

Without this cooperation, none of the NGOs would have been able to do their work. In the beginning, the NGOs carried out a kind of „first responder“ activity, i.e. they made sure that people didn’t drown, stabilised rubber dinghies, distributed life jackets, rescued medical emergencies and, in some cases, women with children. As a rule, larger ships were then sent from the control centre in Rome to pick up the people and bring them to Italy. These were usually ships from the Italian navy or coastguard. And if there were days when it was very, very busy, when there were a lot of people on the water, they were always there too and with much bigger and better ships than „Seawatch“ has, for example. Without them, none of this would have been possible. But we also supported them in their work by working closely together.

When you leave Malta, for example, you report to the control centre in Rome: „All right, we’re leaving and will be in the SAR area in around 20 hours and plan to go there and back“. Every three hours there is an update to the control centre with the current coordinates and course. We were very well integrated into the operations.

This co-operation was increasingly reduced by the Italian side. We noticed that the people from the central control centre, the coastguard and the navy were increasingly being urged by the authorities to stop working with us, as was normal before.

M: In principle, that was the first really tough means of exerting pressure that was used. In 2017, the Code of Conduct(4) was drawn up in Italy and pressure was exerted on the NGOs to sign it. It contains many obvious things, but also some less obvious ones. In the course of this, it was then stipulated that whoever takes in people must also bring them to a safe harbour. It’s just that many NGO ships are not really suitable for transporting large numbers of people. So if there are 200 people here on the Lifeline who can’t go below deck but have to stay on deck and then there’s bad weather with waves more than three metres high, it’s obvious that we can’t transport them for 30 to 40 hours.

And the other thing is: we do a mission like this exclusively with volunteers, we all do it for free. That’s why we have to stick to the times when changing the crew, otherwise it becomes really, really difficult for the volunteers and their jobs.

When we set off from Malta, it takes 20 hours to get to the area of operation, depending on the destination and the weather. Then there are sometimes only very, very few people on a boat, for example 7, and you then sail with these 7 people to Sicily, for example, and then the lifeboat is virtually immobilised for this mission. It also takes 2 to 4 days until they are disembarked and customs formalities are completed and then you are forced to go back to Malta to wait for the new crew, as you no longer have time to go back to the SAR area.

This was the first way to ensure that there are fewer ships in the operational area.

M: I think so. „I don’t think Médecins Sans Frontières has signed it.

M: No, I don’t think so. Those who signed were not treated any better. The way I see it, this was primarily a purely populist means of presenting ourselves, look, we want to impose rules on the NGOs. For 90 per cent of the things that were in there, there were already previous agreements that said the same thing. And then there was a bit of nonsense in there, such as sailing to a safe harbour ourselves and that we have to take armed police officers on board… But these are all things that were never implemented. It was more propaganda than an attempt to really change the way the NGOs operate.

T: I don’t think so, because we signed a version of the Code of Conduct that we renegotiated with the Italian Ministry of the Interior, and we deleted all passages that would contradict maritime law or international law, and large parts of the Code of Conduct contain things that had already been implemented operationally anyway. In addition, there are legal assessments that this Code of Conduct is not legally binding for us, although it was signed by the Italian Ministry of the Interior and us. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any situation where the Code of Conduct has restricted us in any way and would now say that it was an election campaign tool of the then Ministry of the Interior before the parliamentary elections.

M: Because FRONTEX doesn’t do it! Plain and simple!

T: Unfortunately, FRONTEX is not there to carry out sea rescues! FRONTEX is a border protection agency that is there to ensure that as many people as possible CANNOT come. Their area of operation is also designed so that they are not where people are in distress at sea. FRONTEX is not a sea rescue mission! There is no European or other governmental sea rescue organisation that takes care of this problem and therefore NGOs are needed to do so.

M: They are there to secure the EU borders and not to carry out sea rescues. The Frontex ships have largely withdrawn from this SAR area since the end of 2016. Operation Sophia has now been almost completely suspended. So they are operating at the European borders (i.e. 12/24 mile zone from Lampedusa or Malta). And if you look at the refugee boats, they are not even able to make it that far. As a result, FRONTEX no longer has the embarrassment of having to rescue people.

I’m assuming that the FRONTEX crew wouldn’t let anyone drown if it happened right in front of them, as that would also be a violation of international maritime law. But the strategy is clearly to stay so far away that you don’t even have the embarrassment of having to rescue people. Any European sailor or captain would be liable to prosecution if he/she did not rescue people in distress at sea. And the people drown on the way to Europe.

T: Although we are not part of an organisation, we coordinate a lot of our work with each other. On the one hand at sea, but also in the European Parliament or through joint media work. We are also logistically networked here in Malta. So there is a lot of dialogue.

M : This is partly for organisational reasons, as they are also from different countries. Many have seen the need, set up organisations, collected money and bought ships etc. And it’s also the case that different NGOs do different work. For example, the ship „Aquarius“ is able to provide proper medical care. The ship is also correspondingly large and can transport a lot of people. In comparison, „Lifeline“ is certainly not the smallest ship that operates and has a great rescue team on board, but the organisation is certainly not in a position to do this like the „Aquarius“(6). But you need both on site. To bring all that under one roof… It would take years… We work together hand in hand on the water and there is also more and more networking on land. We coordinate with each other about who goes where and we support each other as best we can in appropriate cases.

There are also a lot of people among the crews who sometimes sail under this organisation and sometimes under that organisation, we exchange ideas, learn from each other and cooperate with each other.

M: That is certainly one reason for the broader positioning. We hope that we won’t be able to stop them all at the same time. For example, „Open Arms“ can continue to operate and the „Aquarius“(6) is also currently operating in the Mediterranean.

T: If the organisation is under investigation, you can probably do that. But what’s happening at the moment is that we’re being detained here even though we’re not under investigation and nothing has happened. It is being communicated behind closed doors that we are being held here until the proceedings against „Mission Lifeline“ are concluded. And this is not only a different ship, but also a different organisation with which we have absolutely nothing to do in legal terms.

M: Of course, that’s all complete rubbish and can also be refuted. There are even claims that we get money from them. I personally know a lot of people at „Lifeline“, „Seawatch“ and „Sea-Eye“ and I can vouch for the fact that nobody has accepted a single cent. We are volunteer crews. Until the current situation, where we have been detained here, „Mission Lifeline“ always had the problem that there was no money. So the ship was completely dismantled and maintained by a volunteer crew in winter. They were all people who worked for months without earning a cent. They put an incredible amount of heart and soul into it.

Now the donations have gone up due to the current political discussion, the confiscation and the associated attention… But when we were still travelling, there was a lack of money everywhere. And the funding came entirely from the organisation (Lifeline e.V.), so it’s understandable that we didn’t receive any money from traffickers.

Then there’s the operational behaviour. We are operating in international waters and the law of the sea clearly stipulates the obligation to rescue. The navy also confirms that almost every boat that sets sail from Libya is ALWAYS in distress because they are overloaded, not manoeuvrable, have no engine, no crew and are not suitable for the open sea, regardless of whether they are inflatable boats or wooden boats. We are not making this up. This has also been confirmed by the German admiralty, the Italian coastguard and the navy. If such a boat is spotted, it must be assisted immediately because it is in distress at sea. And that is provided for in maritime law. We don’t do any of this and have never done it without consulting the control centre in Rome. At the times when we were operating in this sea area, there was no MRCC in Libya because Libya is not in a position to do so. There are no state structures in Libya. That’s why Italy took on this task. All operations and rescues in this area would always be in consultation with the control centre in Rome. If you find such a rubber dinghy, the first thing you do, apart from the initial stabilisation of the boat, is to inform the control centre by radio or satellite phone.

This was always the case and the control centre never claimed otherwise, there are also official statements or documentation of our missions in this regard, some of which have also been published. The accusation ultimately came from Salvini’s side via Twitter and is nothing but populism.

The only thing we are doing is invoking international law: We call the relevant control centre and announce „there is a maritime emergency here“. Then the order comes to rescue the people and a safe harbour is assigned or a larger ship comes to take over the people. We then work as instructed.

T: We don’t work with traffickers, we work with the relevant authorities. We rescue people in distress at sea, regardless of nationality, faith or anything else, as required by maritime law. Many people don’t realise that. We rescue in consultation with the sea rescue control centres, which instruct us to rescue and also to which safe harbour we have to bring the people. It’s not as if we can somehow choose this ourselves. How should we co-operate with tugboats, how should that be possible?

M: It is relatively easy to calculate how far you can see a light signal, taking into account the curvature of the earth. Light signals cannot be seen 24 miles away. We look for the boats with binoculars and radar, but they are often so small that our radar misses them. At night, we usually sail a little further away from the 24-mile zone. This accusation is simply physically impossible.

T: Yes, there is this light signalling thing, which is also in the Code of Conduct. That also clearly comes from this right-wing populist argument. We would set light signals and then people would drive to us to be rescued. That’s rubbish, because light signals from our ship wouldn’t arrive in Libya at all due to the curvature of the earth.

During a rescue operation, we are allowed to set as many light signals as we want. The law of the sea explicitly mentions light signals as a means of deployment. And this is also one of the points where the Code of Conduct contradicts international maritime law. We have also had this removed because it is immensely important that we use searchlights during a rescue at night in order to find the people we are supposed to rescue. So if we receive an order from the MRCC Rome with a specific position, then the refugee boat will continue to move during this time, whether it’s because they still have a working engine or because the wind and waves are pushing the boat along. So when we arrive at the specified coordinates, the target, as we call it, is no longer exactly there and we have to switch on searchlights to search for it.

T: During the entire rescue operation, we are in constant contact with the control centres, for example by radio telephone and email. We report how many people we have taken in and provide information, for example, how many women, how many men, how many children or pregnant women, are there any medical emergencies, so that the authorities can also prepare for them. The control centre is then obliged to assign us a safe harbour. If we get it, we go there and coordinate our arrival time with the control centre.

T: According to maritime law, there are no safe harbours in Libya! The same applies to Tunisia! We are often accused of not taking people to the nearest safe harbour in accordance with maritime law, which is where the accusation that we are a shuttle service to Europe comes from. None of this is true. There is no safe harbour in Libya under maritime law and that rules out the possibility of us travelling to Libya.

According to maritime law, there is a safe harbour in Tunisia for some people. The law of the sea is already looking at who we rescue there. If we rescue German sailors off Tunisia, then we can rescue them to Djerba because they can go to a hotel in the evening and then take their flight to Germany. But we have people on board who tell us that they want to apply for asylum and then not only maritime law applies, in this case it is SOLASR(7), but then the Geneva Refugee Convention (GRC) also applies and according to § 33 of the GRC we are not allowed to take people anywhere where they cannot do this and also not to take them to where they come from, in this case Libya. In this case, Tunisia would also be excluded as a safe harbour because there is no asylum system in Tunisia, which means that these people cannot apply for asylum in Tunisia and therefore we are not allowed to take them there.

Thinking even further: if we have around 100 people on board, we can’t check why they want to apply for asylum. We don’t have the capacity to do that and we’re not allowed to. With 100 people, you can assume that some have also fled because they are gay, lesbian or queer and are being persecuted as a result. In Tunisia, these people would continue to be persecuted. Here, too, it is quite clear that we cannot bring people to Tunisia under the law of the sea and the GRC. Incidentally, it would be exactly the same with a gay Swedish sailing couple that we rescue.

Quite apart from that, we don’t choose the harbour, it is assigned to us by the authorities and the authorities know exactly what rights have to be observed there.

T: We work together with various organisations, in particular „Safe the children“, which is very active in the ports and also provides medical care. When we have treated people, we provide them with the treatment records and the necessary information. This is then not only passed on to the authorities, but also to organisations such as „Safe the children“ or „Doctors without Borders“, who are also on site in the ports. We don’t work with people who provide legal advice, but there are many organisations that do. We specialise in sea rescue.

M: The authorities of the relevant country are then waiting, in the past always Italy. In some cases, people are registered on the ships and usually taken to an initial reception centre, as used to be the case on Lampedusa, until it was closed due to overcrowding; recently it has always been Sicily.

Our mission is to save people from drowning.

Which is hard to imagine: The crew members on the ships have very different opinions on the subject of asylum, migration and the right to stay. Here, you’ll find very conservative Christian people from the depths of Bavaria alongside radical left-wingers from Berlin, so there is no uniform opinion. But that has nothing to do with our ships and our task. We all want – and this is our common denominator – to prevent these people from drowning.

M: The „Lifeline“ has always sailed with a Dutch pleasure craft registration under the Dutch flag. And this registration has now been called into question, since „Sea-Eye“, for example, has also been operating as a „Lifeline“ with two ships and the same registration for some time. Over 20,000 other civilian ships of a similar size continue to sail with this registration. The Netherlands has now said that this recreational craft registration is not a proper flag, which is correct in principle, but it still works for the other 20,000 ships. While Mission 6 was running this year and we already had 234 rescued people on board, this problem suddenly arose, the ship was at sea and no longer had a flag. Then there was the long back and forth off the Maltese coast, after European countries agreed to take in these people, our ship was allowed to enter Malta after a week. The ship was then confiscated and charges were brought against the captain, Claus-Peter Reisch. Claus-Peter is accused of entering Maltese waters with a ship that was not properly registered. And that would of course be illegal.

The ship „Lifeline“ is now a kind of piece of evidence in this trial, which is why we are now stuck in this fenced-off area with police protection outside the door. The last day of the trial is set for 11 September, until then we are stuck here.

T: The situation has changed radically in that we are no longer allowed to carry out sea rescue operations because we were detained by the authorities in Malta at the end of June on the grounds that they wanted to check our registration. This is also a pretextual justification, because the registration can also be checked while the ship is carrying out sea rescue operations in international waters. We were prevented from leaving and the Dutch authorities were told to check our registration. They did that. A report was written, which was also sent to the Maltese authorities in mid-July. This report was extremely favourable. Firstly, it was established that we are properly registered and that we are authorised to fly the Dutch flag. It was also established that we are extremely well equipped for what we want to do with this ship, namely sea rescue.

Nevertheless, Malta is still trying to shift the responsibility administratively to the Dutch, although they have already confirmed that they have no concerns about our registration.

T: Here, too, we have not been given any legal justification. The „Moonbird“ is also not restricted, we are allowed to fly it anywhere north of Malta. But we are not allowed to fly it into the operational area. There is no legal basis for this ban.

Why do you think Malta is doing this?

T: On the one hand, Malta has a vested interest, they are extremely afraid that it will become the norm for rescued people to be brought here. But that hasn’t been the case since 2013. The other is the enormous pressure on Malta from other EU countries, especially Italy. Italy has closed the harbours and is also trying to push the coordination role that it has taken on in recent years away from itself. And then Malta is the next state where they want to shift responsibility. And then there is a lot of pressure on Malta not to let us enter and (above all) not to let us leave.

M: The „Kolibri“(8) has been flying again for some time and is supported by „Seawatch“. „Open Arms“ from Spain continues to sail with the „Open Arms“ and the „Astral“ and the „Aquarius“ continues to sail. However, the organisation no longer sails from Malta, but always from Spain, which of course means much longer arrival and departure routes. The number of ships for this huge search area and the number of people was already ridiculously low before, and the journey times from Spain of up to a week make sea rescue even more difficult. There is virtually no presence on the ground.

T: There are just 2 organisations that are still allowed to sail. One is „Pro-Activa“ / „Open Arms“, which would also have been detained in Malta if they hadn’t been outside, they were no longer allowed in. As a result, „Open Arms“, as a Catalan organisation, moved its base to Barcelona, which is total madness from an operational point of view if you look at the distances on the Mediterranean. Barcelona is one of the cities in Europe that declares its solidarity with refugees and civil sea rescue. As the „Open Arms“ is also sailing under the Spanish fleet, coordination is taking place with the MRCC in Madrid. The rescued people are then brought to Spain, which means that they are at sea for 5 to 6 days longer.

The other ship that is currently back at sea is the „Aquarius“ from „SOS Mediteranée“ and „Médecins Sans Frontières“. They are currently back in action and have almost 150 rescued people on board and have the problem that has repeatedly arisen in recent months, namely that no authority feels responsible and therefore the organisation does not know where to take the rescued people because no port of safety has been allocated.

T: In the sea area where these maritime emergencies occur, there is only shipping traffic that is actually travelling there, for example to oil platforms on the Libyan coast, and they can’t change their routes. The other maritime traffic is far too far north for them to notice much.

What you can definitely say, however, is that the proportion of sea rescues by commercial shipping has increased enormously since Mare Nostrum was cancelled at the end of 2014. This has led to what scientists have labelled „death by rescue“ because commercial ships are simply not equipped to carry out this form of sea rescue. Since NGOs have been rescuing people, not only has the proportion of sea rescues carried out by state authorities such as the coastguard or navy decreased, but the involvement of commercial shipping has also decreased, which has contributed to greater safety for migrants.

This has now completely reversed, as rescues by commercial shipping are on the rise again, due to the „rescue gap“ that has emerged in recent weeks because civilian sea rescue is being prevented.

T: Yes, that was a while ago. The point is that it quickly becomes very expensive for them… Merchant shipping in particular has tight time slots that they have to adhere to in the harbours in order to unload their goods or take on new ones, and if they miss them, because a rescue can take several hours, they can’t unload their goods etc… Then the planning for several months is lost. If there are also perishable goods on board, they can be disposed of immediately. This can quickly lead to millions in losses.

Do you think that the court judgement against Klaus-Peter Reisch, the captain of „Mission Lifeline“, at the beginning of September will change the situation?

T: Personally, I don’t believe it will, as I’ve just seen how arguments are being made about the aircraft. One argument is used, then another as soon as one argument is refuted. It’s the same with the ship now. At the beginning it was said that there were doubts about our registration, now that has been refuted with a multi-page report from the Netherlands and we were still not allowed to sail, then something new kept coming up. I am sure that even if Claus-Peter Reisch is acquitted, which I assume and expect, we will still not be allowed to operate again. But hope dies last.

T: It would definitely make sense. At the moment, it’s not just us who are totally blind, but also the civilian population in general. It’s impossible to say how many people are dying because there are simply no more civilian observers on the ground. And we are all working flat out to ensure that we not only become active again with the ships we have, but also with new ships. „Sea-Eye“, „Seawatch“ and „Mission Lifeline“ are also currently participating in the „CivilFleet“ project(9). Sea-Eye is also looking for a new ship with the aim of becoming operational again as quickly as possible.

M: It is of course an act of desperation, because we have ships that are operational at the start and could set sail tomorrow. But as we are being prevented from leaving by bureaucratic means that are not necessarily at a high legal level, we are collecting money for a new ship. We are all going in personally, as we know what is happening out there and are not allowed to go. Of course we are fighting the current situation with all legal means at our disposal. But it’s frustrating. People are being blocked and delayed while people are drowning.

I’m sure there will be judgements from human rights courts in a few years‘ time that will prove us right, but in the meantime people are still drowning.

What we want is to save people and the quickest possible solution at the moment seems to be to get other ships. The EU will probably come up with something for these ships too. But if that’s our only option, then so be it. We want to save lives with all the resources we have.

M: We don’t have to pay for the pitch at the moment, but we assume that we will have to after the judgement. What is a huge problem for us is that we are not moored in a shipyard, which means we have no electricity and no water, which means we have to use a generator for the power supply and have fresh water delivered. Everything we get delivered, be it diesel or water, has to be authorised by the court beforehand, which sometimes takes a month. That drives up the costs.

M: We’ve called in a lot of lawyers in various countries to deal with the current situation. Of course, we are also doing a lot of public relations work and supporting the current Seebrücke campaigns to increase the pressure on politicians.

But as an organisation, we were not prepared for this situation either. We are not, for example, Amnesty International with a professional media team and so on. We are in a very good position to maintain this ship and operate with it, but not much more. There are offers of support coming from all corners, but blowing up an organisation like „Mission Lifeline“, which consists of a handful of people and is designed to operate a sea rescue ship like this, within a week with public relations work, for example, can only be done step by step.

We’ve just received money through donations, but it’s not our intention to use it for campaigning, it’s for sea rescue and that’s why we got the money.

It feels like the situation is changing every day and it’s very difficult to deal with.

M: Normally there are 19 of us when we are fully staffed. There’s the medical team with two doctors and paramedics, then the rescue teams for the two inflatable boats, the cook, the so-called „deckhands“ (the people who work around the ship), as well as the engineer, captain, head of mission and first officer. In other words, the nautical team, rescue team, medical team and supply team. As long as you don’t have any refugees on board, you do everything else too, depending on your skills and qualifications.

T: We have 22 crew members, that’s three on the bridge, three in the engine room, three medics and the remaining positions, which are made up of cultural mediator, guest coordinator, cook and deckhands as well as RIB driver and the bosun who coordinates all the work on deck.

M: Of course, anyone can apply, but qualifications are also taken into account. But there are also these so-called deckhands who do everything that comes up. A lot of people have joined the team without key qualifications. There is a questionnaire on our website that you can use to apply. Basically, everyone is welcome. Of course, people with key nautical qualifications such as captain or engineer are always very much in demand.

Some of the captains receive an expense allowance, as they are often in charge of more than one mission, but here too there is no serious payment.

T: We have a crew form online that you can fill in and it goes to the crewing department, who then get in touch with the people. We are fully crewed for this calendar year. Crewing for 2019 has not yet been opened.

M: We are very enthusiastic about the Seebrücke(10) campaigns. Of course, we need political support and public relations work and, of course, donations. And we also need people to be very aware of the importance of sea rescue. Any form of education and public relations work, such as lectures or information stands, are a great support.

T: There are many forms of support, apart from donations. For me, it is very important that people inform themselves and discuss this burning issue, that people speak to their MPs, their MEPs, their MEPs so that they can then campaign for us to be allowed to set sail and rescue again. You can sign petitions. And then there are the Seebrücke campaigns and that is a very important signal from the civilian population in Germany to take a stand.

A European solution to this problem would be important, but one that would also allow the Italian military or coastguard, for example, to land in Italy again with refugees and that there would then be a distribution mechanism for the people. But I don’t really see that happening at the moment. I am therefore all the more pleased that protests are coming from below from the population and that individual municipalities and cities are showing solidarity and signalling their willingness to take people in. This also increases the pressure on Interior Minister Seehofer, who I also perceive as a central blocking figure, also in the Lifeline case. Then I also see the SPD and wonder how they want to position themselves on this whole issue…

M: It’s also about informing ourselves and others, we can’t have enough people on the road… here, in Germany and throughout Europe.

Thank you for the interview and your tireless commitment to human lives and human rights!

The interview with Markus (M) and Nico (N) from „Mission Lifeline“ was conducted on 10 August 2018 on the ship „Lifeline“ in Malta, the interview with Tamino (T) from „Seawatch“ on 13 August 2018 on the ship „Seawatch 3“, also in Malta. The interviews were conducted separately and later combined.

Interviews : Aaron Collette (pupil) and Daniela Collette (doctor)