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NGO rescuers demand new EU Council presidency compels member states to abide by refugee laws

THE GERMAN government must use the next six months as president of the Council of the European Union to adopt a human rights-based approach to migration, civil refugee rescue organisations demanded today.

Leadership of the Council of the European Union, the legislative body where member-states meet to discuss and amend laws, rotated from Croatia to Germany today.

The new EU Council presidency was greeted this morning with two separate lists of demands regarding the bloc’s treatment of refugees by Sea Watch and Mare Liberum, two German refugee organisations that operate in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas respectively.

Sea Watch urged the German government to put an end to EU member states flaunting international laws and conventions regarding sea rescues and refugee rights — in particular those that forbid states from returning people to countries where they could face persecution.

“The support and finance provided to the so-called Libyan Coastguard would have to be stopped immediately,” Sea Watch’s list of demands reads.  

“The non-assistance of EU member states and the complicity of EU agencies in human rights violations would need to be prosecuted, and EU missions in the Mediterranean such as [Operation] Irini would need to be equipped with a mandate to rescue.”

The charity also called on the new presidency to “define the mass drowning of people on the move in the Mediterranean Sea as a ‘crisis,’ and enable the financing of a civil sea rescue mission in the Mediterranean.”

The Mare Liberum hit out at the German government’s role in the controversial EU-Turkey migrant deal, for failing to take in enough children from Greece’s overcrowded migrant camps on the Aegean islands, and for ignoring the many allegations of refugee pushbacks to Turkey by the Hellenic Coastguards.

“A recent law change by the German ministry of transport prevents us from going out to sea to continue our human rights monitoring mission, even though the Hellenic Coastguard is performing violent pushbacks against refugees en masse,” a spokeswoman for the charity said in a video message from the Mare Liberum’s deck this morning.  

“Only on Monday four people drowned after being pushed back to Turkish waters by the Hellenic Coastguard. The tubes of their dinghy were cut open, and they were just left in the open sea.

“So, Germany is now taking the presidency of the council. Now would be the time to abolish this deadly policy of deterrence and turn towards a humane migration policy.”

Mare Liberum called on the German EU presidency to investigate the Hellenic Coastguard, evacuate Greece’s migrant camps, extend the right to freedom of movement to migrants and refugees and to defund Frontex, the European Border and Coastguard agency.

Both charities also called for the reforming of the Dublin Regulation, which forces refugees to claim asylum in the first EU-member state they are registered in.

Meanwhile in the central Mediterranean, 43 people rescued earlier this week by Italian organisation Mediterranea Saving Human’s ship, the Mare Jonio, were disembarked in Sicily today.

The Ocean Viking, a ship operated by European charity SOS Mediterranee, said its fifth request for a place of safety for the 180 rescued refugees it has on board has been ignored once again.

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