Itamar Mann

So eager are some European governments to dodge their own human rights obligations, they have equipped and armed Libyan militia, ignoring their rampant use of torture.

This is also why, since January 2014, more than 34,000 migrants have died by drowning in the Mediterranean.

And since COVID-19 began, the militarized border in the Mediterranean has become in some ways even more extreme.

But how does the militarized border cause deaths by drowning?

I'd like to illustrate by reference to a case I'm currently working on.

On November 6, 2017, a group of asylum seekers left the Libyan coast and traveled through the Mediterranean, hoping to reach Europe.

As the overcrowded boat started to break down, they sent a distress signal.

And under international law, states are obligated to facilitate the rescue of vessels in distress.

Now, a strange confrontation followed.

Two vessels, not one, came to pick up the asylum seekers in distress.

One of them was sailing under a European flag, its crew in civilian clothing.

The other was a Libyan vessel, its crew armed and in the very uniform of the government that these people had fled.

For the asylum seekers, the choice was clear.

Many jumped into the water, determined at all costs not to let the Libyans pick them up.

Twenty people drowned, victims of a contemporary struggle for liberation across borders.

What I didn't predict a few years back was the courageous response of civil society volunteers, such as members of Sea Watch.

who have literally inserted their bodies between the Libyan forces and the migrants in the water.

Crucially, they've also brought back images from cameras on board and body cams.

These images allowed my colleagues, Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pisani, to visually reconstruct the events of November 2017.

When they came to my team and me asking that we go back to the European Court of Human Rights, I was hesitant.