Episode 47: 'Remove the rescue equipment or we will arrest you'

In this episode, we speak with Serena from Mediterranea: Saving Humans, an Italian refugee rescue organisation.    Serena tells us how the Italian authorities have prevented the organisation's ship, the Mare Jonio, from going back to sea to save lives for over a year.    She also tells how the authorities recently ordered the Mare Jonio to remove all of its rescue equipment or face arrest.    --Get in touch---   Twitter: @FleetCivil   Mastodon: @[email protected]   Instagram: thecivilfleet   [email protected]   civilfleet.com   Support:  ko-fi.com/civilfleet ---Show Notes--- Visit Mediterranea: Saving Human's website here: mediterranearescue.org/en   Follow Mediterranea: Saving Humans on Twitter: @RescueMed   For more on Mediterranea: Saving Humans, and the ongoing pretrial case against it, check out Episode 18 with Iason Apostolopoulos   Read The Civil Fleet's stories about Mediterranea: Saving Humans, here: https://thecivilfleet.wordpress.com/tag/mediterranea/   Ben and Serena mention Matteo Salvini. He is Italy's transport minister, former interior minister, and the leader of one of the country's far-right parties.    Mare Nostrum was an Italian-state-run refugee rescue mission in the central Mediterranean. Read this Guardian newspaper report from 2014 on its end: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/31/italy-sea-mission-thousands-risk   Article 98 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea requires all ships to "render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost to proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress..." Read that here: https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf    Ben mentions UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman a few times in this episode. Earlier this week, she outlined her ambition to overhaul international refugee conventions during a speech in the United States.    Read about that here in the Morning Star newspaper: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/shameful-cruel-and-dangerous   And read in the Guardian newspaper about how even members of her own right-wing party think she has gone too far: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/28/tory-mps-criticise-suella-braverman-alarmist-speech-on-migration    Ben and Serena breifly touch on the EU's deals with Tunisia. Read this article by Human Rights Watch calling on the EU Commission to stop ignoring Tunisia's abuses of migrants: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/09/28/eu-commission-should-stop-ignoring-tunisias-abuses-against-migrants   Maersk Etienne, check out episode 18. And/or, read about it here: https://thecivilfleet.wordpress.com/?s=Etienne    For more on the Iuventa, check out Episodes 2, 24 and 36.   For more on Lampedusa, see Episode 46 with Maldusa's Jasmine