Sea-Watch 4 on departure
Photo: JOSE JORDAN / AFPThe sea rescue ship "Sea-Watch 4", supported by the Protestant Church, has set off for its first mission in the Mediterranean. The ship left the shipyard in Burriana, Spain, on Saturday and is on its way to the area of operation in international waters off Libya, as announced by the United4Rescue and the aid organization Sea-Watch.
The "Sea-Watch 4" is a joint project of United4Rescue, Sea-Watch and Doctors Without Borders and is currently the only rescue ship that is in use on the Mediterranean. According to information from non-governmental organizations, this is mainly due to obstruction by the Italian and Maltese authorities.
The rescue ship was bought with donations from the United4Rescue alliance in January and christened in Kiel in February. After the transfer and renovations, it had to wait several months for the first departure due to the corona pandemic. The operation is managed operationally by Sea-Watch and medically supported by Doctors Without Borders.
"The politics of looking the other way will not be accepted idly"
The "Sea-Watch 4" is the first civilian sea rescue mission to be carried out by a broad civil society alliance: more than 550 alliance partners are currently supporting United4Rescue. "They are all united by the conviction that you shouldn't let people drown. You have to save them. You are running out now," said the chairman of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, in a video message to the crew .
The starting point for the establishment of the alliance was a resolution passed at the German Evangelical Church Congress in 2019, which called on the EKD and its member churches to send a ship to rescue at sea in the Mediterranean. The EKD Council and Synod had decided to take on this task within the framework of a broad civil society alliance.
"Europe should see that the policy of looking the other way is no longer simply put up with," said Bedford-Strohm. The use of the ship is a humanitarian aid measure, but also a political sign that "we will continue to interfere".
Icon: The mirrorssu / AFP / dpa