Sea-Watch 3

In 2015 the ship was sold to Doctors Without Borders Spain (Médicos Sin Fronteras España) in Barcelona.[5] The non-governmental organization used it as Dignity I for the rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean.

In 2017, the Sea-Watch Association took over the ship, replacing the smaller Sea-Watch 2. Pia Klemp was a short-term member of the crew.[6][7]

On 6 November 2017, several people died in an incident at sea. They fell or jumped into the water when the Sea Watch 3 and a Libyan boat got in each other's way while rescuing castaways.

In June 2018, the ship was arrested by the Maltese authorities in the port of Valletta because it was allegedly not properly registered under the Dutch flag. Although the proper Dutch registration had already been clarified in July, the Sea-Watch 3 was refused permission to leave Valletta until October for political reasons.[8][9][10] In December 2018, Sea-Watch filed a lawsuit against the Maltese Ministry of Transport for arbitrarily preventing the Sea-Watch 3 from being freely available.[11]

In January 2019, Italy refused to allow the Sea-Watch 3 to enter one of its ports with several rescued people on board, as the nearest safe port to the rescue location was in Tunisia. Ten days after the rescue of the 47 people, in response to a lawsuit by the captain of Sea Watch 3 and several rescued people on board, the European Court of Human Rights decided that Italy had to provide the people on board with food and medical care. The minors on board must also be provided with legal assistance. The applicants had actually requested that the migrants be allowed to leave the boat. The court did not comply.[12] A little later it became known from those around the Italian government that representatives of Germany, France, Portugal, Romania and Malta had agreed to accept the people.[13]

In mid-May 2019, the crew of the Sea-Watch 3 rescued 65 people, 60 kilometers off the Libyan coast. The Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, issued a ban on sailing into Italian territorial waters.[14] A little later, the injured and their families were taken in, 18 people went ashore in a coast guard boat. The ship itself remained outside Italian waters, 15 nautical miles from Lampedusa. According to the activists, some of the remaining 47 people then considered suicide if they were not brought ashore as well.[15] Finally, on 18 May, despite the ban, the crew headed for Italian territorial waters.[16] Humanitarian reasons as well as the psychological condition of the "guests" compelled this and the boat claimed the right to call at the next safe haven.[17] The people were brought ashore off Lampedusa by the Italian coast guard and the Guardia di Finanza. The ship was confiscated as a precaution. Salvini demanded the ship's decommissioning and sinking.[18] He accused the public prosecutor who ordered the landing of "aiding and abetting illegal immigration to Italy". The interior minister threatened to take action against anyone who did such a thing.[19] On 1 June 2019, the ship was released again by the authorities.[20] Subsequently, the chairman of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, visited the ship, which was not yet docked, to express his support for the crew.[21]

The Sea Watch 3 with twenty-two crew members[22] and two employees of the NDR, including Nadia Kailouli, on board, saved 53 people from Libya.[23] According to the crew's guest coordinator, there were thirty-eight men, nine women, three unaccompanied minors and three children, most of them from Ivory Coast or Ghana, some from Mali, Guinea, Egypt and Libya.[24] First ten,[25] and later another three people were brought ashore to Italy, mostly for medical reasons, while forty (thirty-two men, six women and two unaccompanied adolescents) remained on board[24] while the ship entered Lampedusa without a permit. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini described the ship as a pirate ship.[25][26][27] The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration appealed to European states to take in the rescued.[28] On June 21, Captain Rackete and several nationals from various African countries applied to the European Court of Human Rights for an interim order to force Italy to allow the ship to enter.[29] However, the court rejected the urgent application on 25 June 2019, as provisional measures are only provided if there is an "immediate risk of irreparable damage". The situation on board the ship currently did not justify any coercion against Italy. Italy was informed that the court was relying on the necessary help from the authorities in relation to "those in the situation of vulnerability".[30][31][32]

On 26 June 2019, the ship entered Italian territorial waters despite the threat of high fines, because after two weeks on the ship the migrants “couldn't take it anymore” and “some threatened to jump overboard”.[26] Salvini called on the judiciary to act quickly [33][34] and said that Italy was not a "landing stage for illegals".[35] "It is a Dutch ship from a German non-governmental organization that has taken in migrants off Libya." According to Salvini, nobody understood why Italy and its citizens should be responsible for it and should pay for it.[33] The ship was stopped by the coast guard.[36] Several Italian MPs then stayed overnight on the ship out of solidarity.[37]

The Archbishop of Turin, Cesare Nosiglia, meanwhile offered that his church could look after the people without burdening the state.[38] In addition, several German cities had also agreed to accept them. For this, however, the approval of the federal government would be necessary,[35] because the federal government assumes around 90% of the costs for accommodation and living costs of the admitted refugees. The mayor of the Sicilian capital Palermo, Leoluca Orlando, made the ship's crew honorary citizens.[39]

On the night of 29 June the captain surprised the security forces with a mooring manoeuvre in the port of Lampedusa. A state patrol boat tried to prevent this and was pushed against the pier. A Sea-Watch spokesman justified the action with: “It was the last desperate attempt to ensure the safety of the people.” However, a political solution for the migrants had already been agreed at that time: Several EU states, including Germany, had offered to take in those seeking protection. Italy's Interior Minister Salvini, however, demanded appropriate guarantees, without which the ship would not have been allowed to land. A few hours after the mooring manoeuvre, the rescued migrants were allowed to go ashore.[40][41][42] The arrested captain faced a fine of up to 50,000 euros for violating the port and water closures and between three and ten years in prison for resisting and using violence against a warship. The Interior Minister announced that if she was not convicted, she would be deported for endangering national security.[42]

The house arrest was lifted on July 2 by an investigating judge in Agrigento.[43] According to the MDR court ruling of the regional court, the judge ruled that the obligation to rescue at sea according to international maritime law should be assessed more strongly than the legal regulations in Italy that were changed by Interior Minister Salvini. The captain acted “in the fulfillment of a duty”. The extent of the collision with a boat of the Guardia di Finanza moored on the quay wall was exaggerated. Rackete was relieved.[44] After the judge was verbally attacked by the media and Salvini, the Italian judges' association ANM accused Salvini of nurturing a climate of hatred and aversion.[45] The UN human rights experts of the UN Human Rights Council condemned the criminalization of sea rescue and the intimidation of the independent Italian judiciary by the media and Salvini on July 18. The judicial decision aligned with the established international legal norms on sea rescue.[46] On 25 September 2019, the Agrigento public prosecutor's office reimposed the seizure of the ship in order to preserve evidence. The ship was not allowed to sail because it would have violated the security decrees issued by Salvini. In mid-December, a court in Palermo released the Sea Watch 3 so that it could leave the port of Licata at the end of 2019 and resume sea rescue operations.[47][48]

Nele Matz-Lück, professor of public law with a focus on the law of the sea at the University of Kiel, sees a legal gap in the conventions on the law of the sea. The coastal states are not automatically obliged by their sovereignty to let rescued persons ashore, but could instead provide them with medical care on board, for example.

Valentin Schatz, Chair of International Maritime Law at the University of Hamburg says that Italy should have assigned a port. A return of refugees to Libya would be illegal, so it is understandable to head for the nearest port of Lampedusa. The ship is not designed for a further non-stop voyage to its flag state of the Netherlands. "The law is somewhat more on the part of the NGO, but ultimately the international law of the sea does not regulate how this situation is to be resolved".[62]

From 26 to 28 February 2021, after a seven-month break, the Sea-Watch 3 rescued 317 people from drowning off the Libyan coast. A week earlier, the ship had left the port of the Spanish city of Burriana to patrol the Libyan coast.[63]

The Italian coast guard interned the Sea-Watch 3 on 21 March in Augusta. The ship was heavily overloaded when 363 shipwrecked people were rescued on 3 March and had violated regulations when entering Augusta and the crew had contaminated port facilities with hydraulic oil from a crane. During the ship inspection, deficiencies in fire and environmental protection measures were found. A spokeswoman for SeaWatch stated that the allegations were already known from the last internment and were politically motivated.[64][65]