What was supposed to be a media propaganda operation organised by the Italian government to give a humanitarian image to the criminal Italian-Libyan pact against migrants has turned into a boomerang.

Activists from many social realities in the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions took up Mediterranea's call to protest against the handover of a new naval vessel to the so-called Libyan coastguard. It is a class 300 patrol boat costing 2.5 million euros, the first of three to be paid for by the European green light fund for cooperation with Africa. It will be followed by two more units of the Corrubia class, former patrol boats of the Guardia di Finanza, to be refitted by the same shipyard.

These units will not be used for rescue purposes, but to increase the capacity to intercept, capture at sea and deport to Libyan prisons thousands of men, women and children who try to reach the Italian and European coasts every day.

The ceremony was to be the stage for Italy's "new" policy of mass refoulement, prohibited by the Geneva Convention but systematically practised since 2017 through dirty work contracted out to Libyan militias. A strategy articulated in two combined devices: the criminalisation and forced removal of non-governmental civilian rescue vessels from the SAR zone under Libyan jurisdiction, and the strengthening of a ferocious border police disguised as a 'coastguard'.

Instead, the protest disrupted the government's plans, bringing reality onto the stage set for the ministers.

At 3 p.m. on Monday 6 February, about a hundred activists arrived at the "Vittoria" shipyard in Adria (in the province of Rovigo), which is building the new deportation boats and at the same time maintains the patrol boats of the Tunisian navy, which uses force at sea against boats trying to reach Lampedusa. The police, who were present in force, blocked access to the site with barriers and armoured vehicles. At one point, when the procession of the authorities' "blue cars" arrived, the Lǝ protesters broke through the blockade and came even closer. They threw eggs with red paint on the structures of the construction site, symbolising the blood of the innocent victims of the policies that are causing the humanitarian tragedy in the central Mediterranean, and shouted their indignation against these policies of death and their shameful celebration. The Lǝ activists held up photographs of Libyan lagers (provided by refugees in Libya) so that the many journalists called in by the government could film them. In this way, the news of the 'celebration' could not be separated from that of the protest.

The stage, which was only meant to host the government's rhetorical show, has become a successful opportunity to continue to denounce the horror of what is happening to migrants in Libya and the Mediterranean. Of course, the danger to human life posed by the government's practices, which cause death and suffering to so many people every day, remains. But it is good and right to continue the necessary collective action, at sea and on land, to sabotage this criminal plan of human rights violations. In the face of those who produce death, all together, on both shores of the Mediterranean, by any means necessary.

Like Mediterranea, we thank the comrades of the Social Centres of the North-East, of Officina 31021 of Mogliano Veneto, of the trade union ADL cobas, of Don Nandino Capovilla of Pax Christi, of Sinistra Italiana of Rovigo and of all the people of good will who joined us in what was simply the right thing to do.