communication<\/a> to the International Criminal Court citing crimes against humanity perpetrated against migrants and refugees in Libya. \u201cAs a next step,\u201d West adds, \u201cwe are now examining ways in which European institutions and actors may be complicit in such crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n
\n Impossible Fortress<\/h2>\n \n
West, along with the crew and their lawyers as well as activists and supporters, gather in Palermo the night before the trial begins. There’s a solidarity event in Arci Porco Rosso, a space run by local leftists and anti-fascists. On another evening, Palermo\u2019s Senegalese community center looks after this sudden influx of foreigners. If nothing else, this case has brought together a range of people across borders and backgrounds, with an equally diverse range of approaches to resisting the rising border violence.<\/p>\n
The morning of the trial, we board a hired coach for Trapani. It feeels incongruously like a tourist excursion, with the coach hurtling along a vertiginous coastal road where lush green hills rise to pale purple mountains under a white moon in morning haze, with the sea sparkling on the horizon. The activists disembark onto the waterfront under the watchful eye of carabinieri <\/em>(Italian police), while a cutter from the Guardia di Finanza patrols the dockside. Banners go up. We are banned from such displays of solidarity outside the court, yet some kind of show is expected.<\/p>\nInstead, the mood is subdued. Kathrin Schmidt is too honest for tub-thumping:<\/p>\n
I don’t see things improving. I don’t see things getting better; I’m too much of a realist for that. Things have gotten considerably worse over the last seven years. But then I continue doing this job, being an activist and dedicating my life to it. So in some regard, I must be optimistic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What\u2019s it like to have your life on hold for years for a trial like this? \u201cIt\u2019s a hard question to answer. We are probably all asking ourselves, was it worth it?\u201d Kathrin\u2019s voice gets more certain. \u201cYes, it was worth it. Yes, we would do it again. No, we don\u2019t regret one single minute on the ship. We know we\u2019re on the right side.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trapani courthouse is a squat cubic building with the Italian and European flags drooping over the entrance. Just behind it sits il Bastione dell\u2019Impossibile<\/em>, the old city wall. It is a remarkable feat of military engineering, getting its name from the marshy and inhospitable ground its parapets were raised out of. But search-and-rescue volunteers being tried in the name of Fortress Europe, in the shadow of a giant wall named \u201cthe impossible fortress,\u201d feels a bit on the nose.<\/p>\nBut today, the impossible fortress is no more. There is an elevator to its summit, where a pleasant veranda provides a view of the boats coming and going in the port, including another volunteer search-and-rescue vessel still defiantly moored here. A light summer breeze breaks the still heat. There are sprays of summer flowers bursting out of the ruins of the ramparts \u2014 now just a monument to past violence, a crumbled relic that has long outlasted its purpose. Perhaps one day, the fortresses of our own time will join it.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n
\n \n\n\nThis post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a summer morning in August 2017, Kathrin Schmidt was notified of a distress call. The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) directed her volunteer search-and-rescue ship, the Iuventa, to an incident where two people had been taken aboard a larger coast guard boat. The Iuventa was asked if it could convey the pair to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1727,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682052"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1727"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682053,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682052\/revisions\/682053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}