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Three young African men face terrorism charges in a Maltese court. In March 2019, they were one of 108 asylum seekers rescued by the tanker ElHiblu1 from a rubber boat floating in the Mediterranean.
Although the crew of the tanker promised the rescued that they would be safe in Europe, ElHiblu1 still headed south. The captain followed the instructions of the patrol aircraft of the EU Eunavfor Med operation to Tripoli, Libya. The rescued people protested after learning that they had been illegally sent back to Libya, begging the captain not to force them to return to the place of torment they had just fled from.
The three rescued people, all teenagers at the time, were mediating between the asylum seeker and the crew. In the end, the captain gave in and diverted the tanker to the north for Malta. As one of the defendants later wrote in a letter to the public: “In order to defend our lives, we resisted through protests. I worked as an interpreter with the other two because we have some basic knowledge of English. We are like this. There is no malice in doing so, and there is no plan to pose a threat or danger to the people of Malta.”
After arriving in Valletta, the three teenagers-“ElHiblu3”-were arrested and charged with various crimes, including acts of terrorism. Today, after two and a half years, the trial of the three has not ended. If convicted, they could face life imprisonment.
We are part of a newly formed initiative: “ElHiblu3 Freedom Committee”. Together with the captain, religious leaders, legal experts, public intellectuals and humanitarian organizations, we condemn the serious injustice experienced by the three defendants and call for the trial to be revoked immediately.
Their case is a symptom of worrying developments throughout Europe. Asylum seekers who drive unstable boats and land on Greek islands or Italy are sentenced to years, sometimes decades of imprisonment. The captains of humanitarian ships carrying out large-scale rescues in the Mediterranean are threatened with prosecution and are often prevented from leaving European ports.
In the UK, boat drivers across the English Channel face criminal convictions, and the chances of obtaining asylum are diminishing. Even mayors who support immigrants and refugees face serious prison sentences.
At the same time, despite violations of international law and the principle of non-refoulement, anti-immigration violence and “fight back” operations are becoming more and more normal on the external borders of Europe. In the Aegean Sea, the engines of ships carrying asylum seekers were disabled by the Greek Coast Guard, and their passengers were threatened and abandoned at sea. In the central Mediterranean, tens of thousands of people who tried to flee were forced to return to Libya through collective law enforcement on the Libyan-Europe border.
This year alone, along the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands, NGOs have recorded more than 2,000 asylum-seekers’ deaths at sea. On the borders of Croatia, Poland or Lithuania, we saw images of immigrants’ bodies with traces of violent beatings. In the English Channel, the British border guards are already conducting counterattacks and collective deportation training.
The case of ElHiblu3 reflects these systematic attempts in Europe to violently prevent asylum seekers from reaching EU territory and criminalize those who do arrive. We cannot stand by and watch as the rule of law is further undermined in Europe and its external borders. The criminalization of obscenity for those most in need of protection is for all of us: we need to establish a Freedom Committee for everyone who has been unfairly tried in Europe.
For us, the Freedom Committee is a tool to open up a wider space for political action and promote a complete transformation of European immigration and border management. At the same time, this means challenging and changing Europe’s position in the world under the current situation, and ultimately fighting for new civil and social rights politics in Europe.
We believe that “ElHiblu3” are brave people and they should be praised for preventing illegal withdrawals to Libya. Due to their actions, 108 people were not sent back to the place where they would face torture and rape in an inhumane detention center.
For those who have no choice but to embark on a dangerous sea journey, boats are a desperate means of seeking freedom and safety. In the past few years, tens of thousands of people have been killed in attempts to escape, while hundreds of thousands have survived. Continued deaths and prosecutions of survivors of sea crossings require civil society to act and resist in a transnational and collective manner.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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