The ship MEDITERRANEA set sail this morning from the port of Trapani for its second mission of observation and monitoring in defense of fundamental human rights, and for search and rescue operations at sea to safeguard human life. Within the next twenty-four hours, the ship will reach the SAR (Search and Rescue) operational area south of the island of Lampedusa.

“We are returning to the sea,” said Laura Marmorale, president of Mediterranea Saving Humans, “thanks to the decision of the Trapani Court, which suspended the administrative detention of the ship under the Piantedosi decree, instead recognizing the full legitimacy of our actions when we refused the distant port of Genoa and set course for Trapani. We acted in this way to ensure proper medical care for the rescued people, who had been thrown into the sea like ‘bags of garbage’ by Libyan traffickers.”

“We are setting out again,” added Sheila Melosu, mission leader on board, “because we feel the need to intervene in a dramatic situation in the central Mediterranean: in just the past two weeks, there have been reports of four shipwrecks with tragic consequences—two near Lampedusa, one off the Tunisian coast of Mahdia, and one on the Libyan shores of Sabratha—with dozens of lives lost at sea. Data published yesterday by United Nations agencies confirm more than 1,400 victims since the beginning of the year, not counting those who are captured at sea and taken back to prison camps or abandoned to die in the desert.”

“It is an unacceptable situation,” Marmorale concluded. “Women, men, and children fleeing from Libya and Tunisia should be able to reach Europe through humanitarian corridors, safe and legal access routes. Instead, our governments—the Italian government and European institutions—continue to strengthen their collaboration with militias and criminal regimes responsible for every kind of unspeakable violence. As Pope Francis reminded us last Thursday, we cannot accept that migrants are treated as ‘garbage.’ We cannot accept that our Mediterranean Sea is turned into a war zone against humanity. That is why we return to rescue—and we will continue to intervene there until things change.”