The Aquarius.

[motorbiking]

There immigration status is unchanged by who/how they are rescued. The basic principle here is that passenger ships are responsible for ensuring their passengers etc have a legal right to travel. If they don't they are responsible for returning them to origin and often get fines too. Merchant ships giving rescue have protection under the SOLAS conventions given them a right to disembark their rescued passengers without being subject to these responsibilities. The idea of the SOLAS conventions is that everyone is compelled to help and does so with immunity and without hindrance.

There is an argument though that the individual had no choice where they ended up, but then I doubt very much they'd be keen to get home unlike most rescued sea fearers.

According to some reports these are mostly foreign (to Libya) workers looking for a back door in to Europe.

At £1500 a pop, I'm very tempted to set up my own service. A day's charter of a 50' luxury cruiser would be about £1,800, Fuel to France and back would be about £600 - I could get at least 15 passengers and serve them champaign and a 3 course meal.

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

The issue is its status.. A normal ship is obliged to rescue a vessel in distress and is protected - As soon as its your stated aim, you sit somewhere between private coast guard and traffickers mate.

http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Facilitation/personsrescued/Pages/Default.aspx

I'm surprised they haven't ended up in Gibraltar

The IMO guidance, in your link makes no distinction of state or purpose of the ships carrying out the rescue.
Therefore your claim, "As soon as its your stated aim, you sit somewhere between private coast guard and traffickers mate." is purely your opinion, and not based on that guidance.

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

Collect them, provide food and shelter and medical treatment then some money and back to where they came. Also to take their ID in the form of iris scan and finger prints.

My apologies to those with reduced ability to concentrate for more than a few words.

You are all failing to see the bigger picture, and picking out the bits that support your own individual arguments.

Migrants will continue to attempt the crossing. This is for a whole range of reasons. If you were the head of a family of say 4 or 5 children, all of you were suffering from war, famine, deprivation, or whatever, and you saw no release from these pressures in the future. What would you do? Probably the same as is happening now: select the strongest, bravest of your teenage children and put them in the care of the people traffickers who, for a tidy sum, promise you they will deliver them safe and sound to a better life elsewhere. They fail, of course (they are criminals), to mention the hazards and dangers that will be met along the way.

EU countries operate well organised and equipped coast guard fleets. However, each of these EU countries are unwilling to venture too far out in order to conduct SAR missions, because that would add to the number of migrants in those individual countries, (and some argue that it encourages the flow of migrants).

Libya has (or had) no coastguard. The state had been bombed into becoming a failed state. EU is now financing and training a fledgling Libyan coastguard.

Any vessel that carries out a SAR mission is probably refused permission to land those rescued in any of the N African countries.

Therefore we have a situation that migrants will continue to attempt the crossing in unseaworthy vessels, and many of them will drown. N African countries do not have the wherewithall to prevent those crossings, and prevent any attempt to land those rescued. EU countries are unwilling to carry out dedicated SAR missions. That leaves a very big and inhumane gap.
Do we pretend the problem does not exist? Leave these poor individuals to drown, claiming it is their own fault?

SOS mediterranee (founded in 2015 for this particular reason), and Medicines San Frontieres could not simply ignore the plight of the migrants.

From MB's link:

from January 2014 until the end of June 2017, an estimated 14,469 – over 11 per day – lost their life in deadly shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, and an unknown number died but their bodies never recovered.

To simply ignore the plight of these migrants is callous and inhumane. It is not the answer, traffickers will continue to not advise those wanting to make the crossing of the dangers. To tackle the problem at the root of the cause is the answer.
To take a simple analogy in medicine, do you treat the cause of an infection and ignore the symptoms? Or do you do both, especially if the symptoms are painful, debilitating or potentially fatal?

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

civilised Europe

A civilised Europe that blatantly ignores the plight of drowning people and argues that people should be left to drown in the Mediteranian?
That is your version of civilisation?

 

[transam]

bit like the civilised Europe / EU who stood around scratching there a*** ends while concentration , execution and torture camps were present in the Balkans

Eventually the Americans had to sort it

 

[SirGalahad]

A civilised Europe that blatantly ignores the plight of drowning people and argues that people should be left to drown in the Mediteranian?
That is your version of civilisation?

I perfectly understand their is a disconnect between domestic and foreign policy which has contributed to this, But what is your answer which you fail to mention?

Are you for open borders?

The problem of these migrants will only be resolved in the places where they live. I do not doubt they are doing this to better their miserable existences but we cannot and should not be some sort of destination for all of the troubles in these far lands even if we have contributed to these problems.

The only long term viable solution is solving the problems in Africa / Middle East.

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

I perfectly understand their is a disconnect between domestic and foreign policy which has contributed to this, But what is your answer which you fail to mention?

The problem of these migrants will only be resolved in the places where they live. I do not doubt they are doing this to better their miserable existences but we cannot and should not be some sort of destination for all of the troubles in these far lands even if we have contributed to these problems.

The only long term viable solution is solving the problems in Africa / Middle East.

I thought I had intimated that I agree, the root cause of the migration needs to be tackled, but not at the cost of ignoring the symptoms.
However, to bomb a state into a "failed state" cannot be considered as "tackling the root cause" by any stretch of imagination. (Not just Libya, Syria also, where many of the migrants emanate from.)
If one has to make a choice between one or the other, then it would have to be to treat the symptom, i.e. rescue the migrants from drowning.

To simply ignore the plight of these migrants is callous and inhumane. It is not the answer, traffickers will continue to not advise those wanting to make the crossing of the dangers. To tackle the problem at the root of the cause is the answer.
To take a simple analogy in medicine, do you treat the cause of an infection and ignore the symptoms? Or do you do both, especially if the symptoms are painful, debilitating or potentially fatal?

Are you for open borders?

Irrelevant in this context. There are no open borders between EU and wherever the migrants emanate from. There may well be porous borders, especially in Africa, N Africa, but they are not 'open'.
A porous border is a very different problem. It needs resources to reduce the porosity, not political decisions.

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

bit like the civilised Europe / EU who stood around scratching there a*** ends while concentration , execution and torture camps were present in the Balkans

Eventually the Americans had to sort it

Suggesting the EU should poke its nose into any conflict, (if it had the resources to so, and it does not. Or if it had the legal authority to do so, and it did not), is an absurd suggestion and absolutely nothing to do with rescuing of drowning people.
Further conflating a war can hardly be considered civilised.

 

[JohnD]

I believe Transam thinks that the EU should become a military alliance.

But we already have NATO to do that

Unelected, obviously, and run by bureaucrats

Just the sort of thing Brexiteers love.

NATO was highly ineffectual while the slaughter rolled on, as a result of the reluctance of national governments to move beyond the hand-wringing stage. Tranny is old enough to remember that the same thing happened during WW2 and the Cold War.

Maybe Brexiteers will be agitating for the UK to leave NATO next.

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

I would suggest that people read some of the many stories of refugees escaping from their own country.
Then they might understand the 'migrants' point of view a little more.
"Khaled Hosseini tells Nalene’s Story"

"John Obi Mikel wants you to share Bushra’s Story""

"Emma Freud tells her Dad’s refugee Story"

"Neil Gaiman tells Ayman’s Story"

"Sarjida’s Story: Fleeing by boat to Malaysia"

There are many, many more stories, of people fleeing conflict, conflict of all sorts, going back as far as one can remember.
We also have the mass graves of those that were unable to flee.
The current Mediterranean problem is not the first that those fleeing, risk death to escape. For those fleeing, it is either die at home, or risk death to escape.

 

[motorbiking]

The IMO guidance, in your link makes no distinction of state or purpose of the ships carrying out the rescue.
Therefore your claim, "As soon as its your stated aim, you sit somewhere between private coast guard and traffickers mate." is purely your opinion, and not based on that guidance.

Did you read the links - did you search up the conventions it was referring to and the amendment? Do you have any marine law expertise or qualifications? SOLAS Ch 5 reg 33, obliges all ships to assist or log why they couldn't. It further states which government organisation is responsible based on the location of the vessel in distress. These NGO ships are picking boats up off libya (avg. is reportedly to be 50nm) and transporting them 130+ nm without the agreement of the receiving authority. SOLAS does not place an obligation on an authority to process/assist vessels who's status is to help migrants make safe passage to their destination.

EU countries operate well organised and equipped coast guard fleets. However, each of these EU countries are unwilling to venture too far out in order to conduct SAR missions, because that would add to the number of migrants in those individual countries, (and some argue that it encourages the flow of migrants).

Given how busy the waters are, a couple of NGO ships will make no real difference to the chances of rescue. A hand held radio has a max range of about 13miles when talking to a land based vhf with a 100ft mast.

see live data : https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:13.5/centery:34.5/zoom:7

 

[motorbiking]

If anyone has any doubt about the game the NGOs are playing you can see they've been tracked here:

Pretty clear that their goal is taxi

 

[JohnD]

who do you think are "the European authorities?"

do you think there is an EU Coastguard?

 

[motorbiking]

No idea what they mean - I pretty much ignored the propaganda text, the AIS logs however, show a pattern.

You could track them yourself for a few days if you wanted. Its fairly easy.

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

Did you read the links - did you search up the conventions it was referring to and the amendment? Do you have any marine law expertise or qualifications? SOLAS Ch 5 reg 33, obliges all ships to assist or log why they couldn't. It further states which government organisation is responsible based on the location of the vessel in distress. These NGO ships are picking boats up off libya (avg. is reportedly to be 50nm) and transporting them 130+ nm without the agreement of the receiving authority. SOLAS does not place an obligation on an authority to process/assist vessels who's status is to help migrants make safe passage to their destination.

It still makes no differentiation between a ship going about its normal business and a ship designed to for the purposes of initiating rescue.
Otherwise lifeboats, etc would be under different rules to any other ships effecting rescues.
It is only your interpretation that makes any distinction. Furthermore your description of the rescue ships as 'taxis' gives a whole emotional description to them.
They are taking the rescued migrants to a place of safety, wherever they are allowed to land, not "assisting them to their journey's end".

Given how busy the waters are, a couple of NGO ships will make no real difference to the chances of rescue.

If the other ships that are making it a busy place, cannot or will not effect a rescue, it does not really matter how many ships are there.
If the coastguards of the EU countries avoid being in that area, they cannot effect a rescue.
The NGO ships cannot hope to rescue all of the migrants in danger, but they feel the need to do something.

A hand held radio has a max range of about 13miles when talking to a land based vhf with a 100ft mast.

see live data : https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:13.5/centery:34.5/zoom:7

What relevance is this?
The migrant boats are hardly likely to be equipped with navigation equipment.
You have demonstrated, however, that you are seeking arguments from far-right organisations to support your assumptions.