Maurice Stierl is involved with Alarm Phone, a rescue hotline for refugees in distress at sea.
Photo: Maurice Stierl
For every single grave that is created in the Mediterranean, there is a grieving family in the background. What opportunities do relatives have to find out more about the whereabouts of their missing person?
Relatives have very limited options when looking for their family members. Bodies rarely wash up anywhere: we estimate that about nine out of ten people who disappear at sea are not found. So it’s already difficult to find these people anyway. At the same time, state authorities are making the search more difficult. That is why many of the bereaved keep contacting small activists. However, the search for the missing is a mammoth task and often impossible to manage at all. So activists have to deal with the burden of maintaining hope for loved ones on the one hand, and knowing that finding answers is often not possible at all on the other. Alarm Phone also gets a lot of inquiries that we cannot answer. We are primarily a sea rescue hotline and not a search hotline. In a few cases, however, we have actually managed to find out the identities of missing persons.
How does the reconstruction of a boat accident work in a specific case?
I can relate an example that happened in February 2020. We were called by a group of 91 people. It was 4 a.m. and the people were on a black rubber dinghy off Garabuli in Libya. They were panicking but managed to relay their GPS position. We then passed on the coordinates to the Italian and Maltese authorities. We also alerted the so-called Libyan Coast Guard. The boat was still relatively close to the Libyan coast, so we had to try to exhaust all possibilities. It was around 5:30 a.m. when people called us one last time. In the days that followed, it became clear that they were nowhere to be found. After asking all possible informants, nothing indicated that these people had landed anywhere. At the same time, we received more and more inquiries from relatives who told us that their relatives were at sea at the time. We also spoke to someone who missed many of his friends. So we were then able to reconstruct some of the identities. We also tried to put pressure on the authorities. Ten months later, Frontex actually sent us a picture showing a half-submerged dinghy. There were no human remains to be seen. Nevertheless, we feared that this was the boat of the 91 people. It is often the case that bodies float on the water for a few hours, but then sink. Once they have sunk, they cannot be spotted from the air. We saw that as further evidence that all of those 91 people actually drowned. And in contact with the bereaved, we were able to determine over 60 identities. We then organized protests together with the relatives. However, we were still unable to assign the identities of more than 30 people. This shows that even in such a case – in which we have received information from the authorities, albeit fragmentary – and in which we have been directly involved from the start – it is extremely difficult to reconstruct a boat accident.
What options are there for relatives to bury the deceased in their home country?
Often only a few limbs are washed up on the beach. Opportunities to carry out DNA identification on site are usually not available. We have a friend in Tunisia who often finds people’s remains, buries them and tries to document their identities. But that is very complex. And even if a body is recovered, it is difficult to bury it in its home country. Repatriation is very expensive, costing several thousand euros. In addition, the local authorities have to agree – that’s not so easy either. Due to the financial hurdle in particular, the corpses are often buried in the places where they were found. Unfortunately mostly without the respective culture-specific rituals. Remains, such as a tooth, are also often sent to the bereaved so that they have something to use for a burial.
February 6th was declared the International Day of Commemor Action. What is this day about?
There are so many different dates that are significant to loved ones as memorial day – most often the day their children went missing. At the same time, we have tried to agree on a date each year that can become an international day of commemor action. This day is about combining anger at the border regime and the violence at the borders with mourning. I remember encounters in 2012 with the parents of mostly young men who disappeared on the Mediterranean route from Tunisia to Italy. That year, shortly after the Arab Revolution, saw a record number of deaths. As a result, many of the mothers joined forces to take action against the failure of the European authorities to provide information. We traveled to Italy together to demand clarification, access to information and data on shipwrecks. For several years we have been calling this type of protest Commemor Actions because this word combines the two dimensions so well: action out of anger and commemoration of the dead and missing. With these actions, a kind of promise is also made. On the one hand, that the fight against the violence that led to the deaths continues. But also that the people who have disappeared will not be forgotten.
Grief and activism: How do you think that goes together?
Protests fueled by grief have been around for a long time. There are also many examples from contexts other than migration. For example, mothers from Argentina who mobilized to protest against the regime that was largely responsible for the disappearance of their children. From this desperation, which affects individual families, they have built something collective. For me, this grief activism is something very creative and special. Judith Butler has already spoken about treating grief not as something non-political, but as a resource for a different kind of politics. That mourning is not something that only happens in private and is therefore depoliticized, but also that a new political community can be created through mourning activism. For me, what is so crucial about the CommemorActions is that they have a different dimension than, for example, the Alarm Phone activism in the Mediterranean, which has to take place every day in an emergency dynamic.
In initiatives like Alarm Phone, the state of emergency is part of everyday life. How do you stand it – and what keeps you going?
It is true that for us at Alarm Phone, the state of emergency has become everyday life. At the same time, we try to remind ourselves again and again that this should not be normal. We are working on ensuring that we no longer have to exist as a network in the long term. Activists should not have to operate an emergency phone day and night to initiate rescues in the Mediterranean or to uncover or even prevent human rights violations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to finish our work within the next few years. So we will continue to be on the phone, 24 hours a day. What keeps me going is the international solidarity in the Mediterranean – which saved so many people who would otherwise have drowned.
