SEARCH and rescue group SOS Mediterranee called today for an end to Fortress Europe border policies, calling the more than 1,500 drownings in the Mediterranean this year “a humanitarian disaster and a political scandal.”

The Berlin-based group, which said it will change its name to SOS Humanity on January 1, appealed to the new German government to “advocate for a change of policy. The EU’s inhumane sealing of the borders must be ended.

“The funding of the Libyan coastguard, which intercepts refugees on the high seas and illegally returns them to Libya, must be stopped,” managing director Maike Roettger said.

The group says that more than 32,000 refugees were forcibly returned to Libya this year and that “most of them are subjected to torture and other human rights violations in inhumane detention camps.”

The NGO, which has six years of experience in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean — the European Union ended its own search and rescue missions in 2019 — said it had raised funds to buy a new, faster ship that would likewise be christened The Humanity and hoped to deploy it by the middle of the coming year. 

But it would also be “significantly strengthening” its political work, Ms Roettger said.

“We need to save lives not only at sea but also on land. We will hold political decision-makers accountable. It is not enough to provide purely humanitarian rescue and thus mitigate the deadly consequences of a failed migration policy.”

The EU has thrown its weight behind the Polish government’s decision to militarise its border to keep out mostly Iraqi and Afghan refugees seeking entry via Belarus, and has suggested funding construction of a border wall to keep them out. Hundreds of refugees remain stranded in the forests along the Poland-Belarus border.

Some EU states have also sought to prosecute rescuers on charges of having trafficked the refugees they save from drowning. Greece, which earlier in the year charged aid worker Sean Binder and 24 others — including a Syrian refugee who helped pilot a sinking boat to land — with people-smuggling, announced on Monday that it was charging three individuals with murder over the deaths of 16 refugees whose boat capsized. The three were among the 63 people rescued from the incident last Friday.