18.248 – that is the official number of refugees who during the last 5 years drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean, according to the newest report by the United Nations. The dark figure is likely much higher. Organizations like Sea Bridge have been trying to rescue as many as they could, but their work has been made increasingly difficult by the political right wing forces in Europe.

The official E.U. Marine rescue boats were already withdrawn when the new Italian government refused to allow any more refugees on land. The E.U. states could not agree on a distribution quota that would have swayed the Italians. Now private rescue operations are brought to a halt as well.

People who use their own boats to fish drowning refugees out of the water are threatened with up to 20 years in prison and insane fines for supporting “illegal immigration.” Last Tuesday the captain of the boat “lifeline” was sentenced to a 1o.ooo Euros fine in Malta for rescuing 230 migrants and bringing them on land.

That same approach to “deterrence” is of course also happening here in the US: the criminalization of humanitarian aid has progressed under the Trump administration to destroy potentially the lives of those trying to prevent deaths along the Southern Border. Whether you leave water for those trying to cross the desert, or pick them up in your car to bring to social services, you can be charged with federal crimes like trafficking. (This last article on the treatment of organizations that try to save lives is frightening.)

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In a statement last year the European rescuers declared: SEEBRÜCKE is an international movement, supported by several civil society alliances and people. We declare our solidarity with people who are forced to flee their homes. From German and European policy makers, we demand the establishment of safe routes for refugees, to stop the criminalisation of sea rescue and to receive them in a humane way whilst respecting their rights.

Last year, protest actions organized by Seebrücke were held in Greece and several German and Swiss cities. This week, there was a protest in Berlin.

One of the city’s landmarks, Molecule Man by Jonathan Borofsky, was clad in an orange life vest and black blindfolds by art activists. The 30 meter high sculpture was installed in 1999 and strategically placed in the river Spree where the former East and West Germany met. Refugees had sewn the huge (48 square meters) life vest by hand according to a pattern devised by a Syrian mathematician, also a refugee. Banners along the bridges proclaimed: Build Bridges not Walls!

Here is a fascinating, short video documenting the action.

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Here is another of Borofky’s Molecule Man, this one located in L.A. Any clever suggestions how to decorate that one to draw attention to the plight of those crossing the Sonoran Desert? And those trying to prevent them from dying of thirst? Garments of canteens, anyone?

Photographs today are of desert plants I’ve encountered in the US.

 

And here is some desert music although from a desert in a different continent.