THERE is nothing to celebrate about Europe’s treatment of refugees at its external borders, said migrant rights organisations on International Migrants Day today.

Alarm Phone, an activist network that runs a hotline for refugees in distress at sea, called on the European and Libyan coastguard authorities today to release the results of their investigations into the estimated 91 people who went missing in the central Mediterranean 10 months ago.

The 91 people departed from Garabulli, Libya, in a rubber boat late at night on February 9.

Alarm Phone’s activists received a call from the boat in the early hours the following morning and reported it to the Libyan, Italian and Maltese coastguards.

In its last contact with the boat, Alarm Phone says that “the people were panicking, saying that their engine was not working, that water was entering the boat, and that some had gone overboard.”

Nothing has been heard of the 91 since and no search for their bodies was ever launched. And yet, Alarm Phone says, the families of the missing have asked its activists for updates every week since.

“The families of the missing have also reached out to the Maltese and Italian authorities, as well as to international organisations, asking for answers, but they have never received a response,” Alarm Phone said today.

“The Missing Migrant Project of the International Organisation for Migration searched for some of the people in Libyan detention centres, but they were nowhere to be found.

“Almost a year after Alarm Phone received the distress call and alerted all relevant authorities, there is still no answer as to what happened to this boat and to the people on board.”

Elsewhere, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), a human rights organisation monitoring violations at Europe’s borders, published a book entitled The Black Book of Pushbacks documenting hundreds of cases across Europe of the illegal practice of sending refugees back to danger over the last four years.

BVMN spokesperson Hope Barker said: “Although these accusations are met with denial from the perpetrating countries, what we provide within these pages is an analysis of patterns and photo evidence that reveal an ongoing systematic practice.

“And these are just the stories that the network has managed to record, the reality is much wider and more far-reaching.”

Volumes I and II of The Black Book of Pushbacks can be found at mstar.link/BBPI and mstar.link/BBPII.