• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Sunday, July 20, 2025
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Opinion

Kidnapping Migrants at the Mediterranean: How Rescue Becomes Capture

Martina Tazzioli by Martina Tazzioli
04/25/19
in Opinion
Migrants wait to be rescued by the Aquarius rescue ship at Mediterranean Sea

Migrants wait to be rescued by the Aquarius rescue ship at Mediterranean Sea. Photo: Angelos Tzortzinis, AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Afraid to be returned to Libya and end up in terrible conditions in detention centers, 108 migrants took matters in their own hands. At the end of March, they hijacked the merchant ship that rescued them in the Mediterranean Sea.

Matteo Salvini
Matteo Salvini. Photo: AFP

Maltese authorities eventually gained control over the vessel and allowed the migrants to disembark on the island. Italy’s far-right and anti-immigrant Minister of Interior Matteo Salvini swiftly condemned the migrants’ actions, describing the group as “pirates.”

Imprisoned, tortured, and blackmailed in Libya or taken hostage by E.U. member states at sea: migrants’ lives are currently kidnapped in the Mediterranean Sea and at the frontiers of Europe.

Notably, rescue has become a mode of capture: the migrants who are not left to die and are rescued in the Mediterranean are kidnapped – either by being taken back to prisons in Libya or by being detained and exhausted for days on the vessels until some E.U. member state authorizes the disembarkation.

Twofold Policy of Containment

The repeated kidnapping of migrants on the northern and southern shore of the Mediterranean is the result of a twofold policy of containment.

On the one hand, since the signature of an Italy-Libya migration deal two years ago, the Libyan Coast Guard is in charge of rescuing migrants at sea and bringing them back to Libya. Upon landing, migrants are usually taken to detention centers where they are subjected to sexual violence, police blackmailing, and torture.

Migrants on a boat
Photo: AFP

On the other, over the last six months, European states have constantly hampered people seeking asylum from disembarking on their territories. They have repeatedly done that by detaining the migrants for days or even weeks on board of the vessels that rescued them, either outside the harbor or in the open sea.

Importantly, even if Italy and Malta had been the states most involved in detaining migrants on the boat, such kidnapping strategies should not be seen as a sole Italian and Maltese affair but as a European matter. 

Migrants and Counter-Kidnapping

Seen through the lens of these ongoing kidnapping strategies by the E.U., one can argue that the “pirate migrants” engaged in a collective act of counter-kidnapping. To some extent, they mutinied themselves in their role of shipwrecked subjects and became agents of their own liberation.

For their collective refusal to be effective, the migrants had to pro-actively obstruct the merchant vessel’s crew, who were subjected to the orders of Maltese and Italian coast guards. Politicians immediately criminalized the migrants’ counter-kidnapping act, and soon after disembarking, three of the migrants were arrested on charges of terrorism.

This episode shows that when migrants act, they are often turned into seditious subjects. This is particularly the case when they are deemed to be vulnerable subjects or bodies to be rescued as well as when migrants protest not “just” by claiming rights but by directly preventing abuse and exploitation.

By hijacking the vessel that rescued them, the migrants refused both to be taken back to Libyan prisons and to be detained at sea for days, preventing any standoff. 

Kidnapping of Solidarity

It is not just migrants that are kidnapped and criminalized. The non-state actors monitoring activities at the Mediterranean and preventing migrants from dying face the same fate. 

Sea-Eye, Sea-Watch, and Mediterranea are the only three independent actors left conducting search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. They have been repeatedly seized by Maltese, Spanish, and Italian authorities.

For example, Italian authorities ordered the seizure of Mediterranea’s migrant rescue ship Mare Jonio in March, accusing the crew of facilitating “clandestine immigration.”

In this moment, the very presence of non-state actors at sea should be regarded not only as a way of preventing deaths but also as a way to pro-actively disrupt migrants’ kidnapping – both at sea and in the Libyan prisons.

Rescue as Capture

Rescue should not become a form of capture. Kidnapping, in its multiple articulations, appears today as one of the main tactics used by states to contain and obstruct migration movements, transforming refugees into hostages of E.U. politics and shipwrecked subjects into seditious individuals.

An African migrant is rescued from the Mediterranean sea
A migrant is rescued from the Mediterranean Sea.
Photo: Aris Messinis, AFP

To disrupt the widespread migrant kidnapping, we need to move beyond an exclusive focus on the sea and rescue operations and interrogate how to connect these with the spaces before crossing and after landing where migrants remain entrapped.

Both critical analyses and political actions should prevent that rescue becomes a form of kidnapping and capturing migrants.

Ultimately, the group of migrants that hijacked the merchant vessel has forcibly shown that the claim “open the harbor” cannot be detached from practices of liberation from the kidnapping of migrant lives.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
ShareTweet
Martina Tazzioli

Martina Tazzioli

Lecturer in Political Geography at Swansea University, Wales

Related Posts

A man holds a Romanian national flag during an anti-corruption demonstration in Romania's capital Bucharest.
World

Russia Denies Interfering in Romania Elections

by Staff Writer with AFP
December 5, 2024
Ukraine invasion
World

EU Lawmakers Approve New $38B Loan for Ukraine

by Staff Writer with AFP
October 22, 2024
Central American migrants traveling in the "Migrant Via Crucis" caravan sleep outside "El Chaparral" port of entry to the US.
Opinion

How Technology Helps to Criminalize Migrants

by Stephen J. Lyons
August 6, 2024
Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán
World

Will Hungary Hijack the EU During Its Presidency?

by Staff Writer with AFP
June 24, 2024
Ukraine children
World

Slovakia Split Over Ukraine in Presidential Vote

by Staff Writer with AFP
March 18, 2024
Ursula von der Leyen
World

EU Asks Member States for €50B to Support Ukraine

by Staff Writer
June 20, 2023
Next Post
Rohingya refugees

Gangs Taking Control of Bangladesh Rohingya Camps, Report Warns

Indian Muslims hold placards outside the Sacred Heart Cathedral as they pay tribute to the victims of the Sri Lankan terror attacks, in New Delhi on April 23, 2019.

Scared Muslim Refugees Flee Sri Lankan Homes Over Attack Fears

Recommended

Lula da Silva

Brazil’s Lula Calls Trump’s Tariff Threat ‘Unacceptable Blackmail’

July 18, 2025
People from Nordic countries participate in the 2025 WorldPride DC parade and celebrate LGBTQ rights in Washington DC, USA, Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Sweden Cuts Red Tape for Changing Legal Gender

July 16, 2025
Ursula von der Leyen

EU Ministers Weigh Response to Latest Trump Tariff Threat

July 14, 2025
UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese

UN Says US Sanctions on Expert Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent,’ Must Be Reversed

July 11, 2025
Women in Afghanistan wearing a blue burqa

ICC Seeks Arrest of Taliban Leaders Over Persecution of Women

July 9, 2025
Kenya, Nairobi, 2024-07-16. Protesters in the streets

Nairobi Tense as Kenya Marks Democracy Uprising

July 7, 2025

Opinion

Donald Trump

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

June 18, 2025
Tens of thousands of protestors shut down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday, April 5, 2025, protesting the Trump administration's abuse of the separation of federal powers as well as the deep cuts to governmental services overseen by presidential advisor Elon Musk.

Civil Society Is Holding the Line. Will Washington Notice?

June 17, 2025
A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

April 2, 2025
Bust of Deputy Rubens Paiva in the Chamber of Deputies

Democratic Brazilians Are Still Here

March 18, 2025
A woman from Guatemala

Dispatch From Central America

January 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump

Dear Trump Supporters: Is This the America You Wanted?

January 28, 2025
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post