What Will Happen To The World If Saving Lives Becomes A Crime?

After a two-year wait, two humanitarian volunteers arrested on 14 January 2016 have been acquitted of the charge of attempting to traffic asylum seekers.

The volunteers came from the Spanish PROEM-AID and the Danish Team Humanity, two of the many humanitarian NGOs working to help people arrive safely in Lesbos. The Spanish volunteers are professional firefighters.

"This marks a rare defeat for the policy of criminalising refugees and humanitarian volunteers,” write the authors in this article in the New Internationalist ("a leading independent media organisation dedicated to socially conscious journalism and publishing", I read on their website).

The court is only a few kilometres from the Moria camp where asylum seekers, trapped for months in very poor conditions, remain a continuing reproof to the failings of the EU/Turkey’s ‘deal’ which seeks to block migration to Europe.

One of the lawyers said the message of the court’s decision is: "That justice works in Greece, first. And secondly, that being a volunteer or trying to help someone who is in danger, is not criminal. Being a volunteer, you are not a criminal."

However, the journalists write: “Europe appears determined to continue criminalising humanitarian volunteers and migrants.”

Along with the prosecutions throughout Europe, the seizure of NGO life-saving ships is another legal strategy increasingly being deployed against humanitarian volunteer work. For example, on 17 March 2018, Open Arms, the life-saving ship of the association ProActiva, was seized in Pozzallo, Italy after it had brought 216 people to safety.