Scott Warren, Carole Rackete and Pia Klemp are just three of the many courageous anti-racists who have been arrested and charged by the imperialist ruling class for rescuing migrants from sickness and death. Their humanitarian acts are deemed a threat to a barricaded system of privilege and plunder that is driving millions to flee from the consequences of imperialism.
Scott Warren is a volunteer with the US organisation ‘No More Deaths’, who was arrested on 17 January 2018, for providing humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the Sonoran desert in Arizona. This arrest came just hours after ‘No More Deaths’ published incriminating video footage of Border Patrol agents destroying water jugs left for migrants, which went viral.
In June 2019 Warren was tried on two charges of harbouring and one charge of conspiracy to transport ‘illegal aliens’, which carried a possible sentence of 20 years in prison. After a seven-day trial, the jury – a number of who were clearly troubled by what they were being asked to do – was unable to agree on a verdict; however on 2 July, the federal prosecutor announced that Warren would face a retrial starting in November on the two ‘harbouring’ charges. Warren points out that: ‘In the time since I was arrested in January 2018, no fewer than 88 bodies were recovered from the Arizona desert.’ More than 3,000 migrants have died since 2001 trying to cross the harsh conditions of the Sonoran Desert.
All of this is taking place at the behest of the racist Trump regime. Such attacks on the humanitarian aid work that provides migrating workers with a critical lifeline are part and parcel of the regime’s sustained racist assault on Central and South American migrants. At the same time, it is increasingly clear to the ‘humanitarians’ that it is the system of imperialism, and its plunder and destruction of the countries from which the migrants flee that is the direct cause of all this misery. Appealing to ‘humanity’ alone – the appeal to sympathy – will not actually solve these crises. Imperialism does not respect ‘humanity’; on the contrary it lives off the masses, and unceasingly demonstrates its systematic contempt for human rights.
Pia Klemp is the German captain of the search and rescue ship Iuventa, which was seized by the Italian authorities in August 2017. Along with nine others, she faces possible charges which could result in up to 20 years in prison for saving 6,000 migrants from the sea. The vicious attitude of the Italian ruling class towards humanitarian ships in the Mediterranean is demonstrated by the tactics it has used to criminalise the crew of the Iuventa and other such ships, including the use of undercover informants posing as defenders.
In March 2018 Marc Reig, head of Spanish charity ‘Proactiva Open Arms’, took 218 rescued migrants to Sicily; his ship was seized and three crew members put under investigation. Released, he continues his work, work that the racist Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is determined to stop.
Carola Rackete – captain of the NGO rescue ship Sea-Watch 3 – is ‘under investigation’ by Italian authorities for aiding illegal immigration and entering territorial waters without permission. By early July international solidarity had crowd-funded over €500,000 to support her. Rackete’s ‘crime’ is bringing 42 survivors of a failed Mediterranean crossing through an Italian naval blockade into Lampedusa port on 28 June 2019. The survivors were all in critical medical conditions after nearly three weeks at sea. Rackete had refused to take them to Libya, where the UN has said that the EU’s policy since 2017, of paying the Libyan authorities to intercept migrants and return them to detention, is ‘inhuman’.
Such migrants face imprisonment and torture, including electric shock treatment, as well as reports of trafficking into forced labour and sexual exploitation. In early July, 53 migrants were killed and 130 severely injured in an air attack on a migrant detention centre – part of the on-going civil war in Libya which is the result of imperialism’s deliberate destruction of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in 2011. The British government funds these detention centres and helps train the Libyan coastguard to return people forcibly to them.
In October 2013 the EU ‘declared war’ on human traffickers; not only does this detract from the real cause of the migration disaster – the imposition of huge debts on African states, enforced by the mixed bag of criminals and cronies that govern Africa with the full support of imperialism – but it also provides legitimate cover for a strengthened relationship between the EU and these criminal partners.
So far in 2019, over 3,000 migrants have been forcibly returned to Libya. Salvini announced a new security decree just after the Sea-Watch rescue, introducing heavy fines for such actions. This follows his 2018 decree, closing Italian ports to migrant lifeboats. On 9 July, Salvini’s right wing Lega Nord party tabled further amendments to security legislation, increasing fines for ships carrying migrants to up to €1,000,000, and making seizure of ships easier.
On 7 July 2019 another vessel, the Alex, run by the ‘Mediterranea Saving Humans’ campaign, landed twice in Lampedusa with 40 migrants saved from the sea, before they managed to disembark. The ship was seized by police, the captain was put under investigation for allegedly aiding illegal immigration, and Mediterranea was fined €16,000. On the same day, the NGO Sea-Eye’s ship, the Alan Kurdi, landed in Malta, carrying 65 migrants rescued off the coast of Libya, having been refused permission to dock in Italy.
It is obvious that in all these tremendous humanitarian efforts to soften the consequences of imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, these NGOs are openly obstructed by imperialism. It is imperialism which is the fundamental challenge to humanity. Given the threats and penalties imposed upon these brave organisations and volunteers, they must receive the unconditional support of all socialists.
Alvaro Michaels
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 271, June/July 2019
