Press Release - Over the weekend of 16-17 March, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team on board the rescue vessel Geo Barents witnessed two violent incidents involving the European Union (EU) funded Libyan Coast Guard that deliberately endangered the lives of hundreds of people seeking safety.
Over the weekend of 16-17 March, the Médecins Sans Frontières team on board the rescue vessel Geo Barents witnessed two violent incidents involving the European Union funded Libyan Coast Guard that deliberately endangered the lives of hundreds of people seeking safety.
On Friday 15 March, our team witnessed a pushback by the EU-funded Libyan Coast Guard. This happened in international waters, clearly outside the Libyan Coast Guard area of responsibility, in the Maltese search and rescue region. We had already started to transfer people on to the Geo Barents when the Libyan Coast Guard attempted to stop the rescue and forcibly board one of our rescue boats, while directly threatening MSF staff with reprisals, as well as to take everyone to Libya.
"When we arrived on the scene, the situation was critical. The boat was already sinking. People were terrified," says Virginia Mielgo, MSF project coordinator on board Geo Barents. Since 2017, the EU and Italy have spent at least 59 million euros supplying and training the Libyan Coast Guard to stop arrivals to Europe. Instead of investing in proactive search and rescue capacity or coordinating with NGO rescue vessels to bring people to a place of safety, the EU has deliberately chosen to facilitate the forced return of people to Libya, where they face physical and sexual violence, forced labour and extortion.
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