Oscar Camps: "From an office you can't tell the smell of death."

BarcelonaOscar Camps (Barcelona, ​​1963) was shocked in September 2015 when he saw the image of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian refugee child who drowned on a beach in Turkey as his parents tried to bring him to Europe. He owned a lifeguard business and decided to go to the Greek island of Lesbos to do what he knew how to do: save lives in danger at sea. Ten years later, the NGO Open Arms is one of the leading humanitarian rescue organizations in Europe, having saved more than 72,000 lives. These times have been full of life experiences and have contributed to shedding light on the Central Mediterranean, bringing journalists from all over the world aboard the ship, including those from the ARA. He reviews this decade in an interview aboard the ship Astral, in the port of Barcelona.

Open Arms turns ten. What has been the most important thing?

— The decision to get up from the couch. After seeing Aylan Kurdi's photo, I spent two weeks thinking, "What can I do?" And it turns out that when you get up from the couch and do it, you're not alone. You find that there are so many people, like you, who had the same idea, who have the same concerns, and who also want to help. And that's how we started ten years ago in Lesbos. I think having broken away from that inertia of the couch, which is our safe space, is what makes me feel happiest. It's obviously satisfying to save a life, and even more so to do it with your own hands: it's the most important thing one human being can do for another. And at sea, we've had so many experiences, both good and bad.

What has been the most difficult moment?

— Being blocked by my government: five months. My own government, my own country. It was very difficult for me. I complained a lot, made many trips to Madrid, trying to understand why. Then they blocked us in five European Union countries. We're not naive, and we know that nervousness we generate every time our ship starts its engines and leaves a port. I'd say ours is the most closely watched ship in the entire European Union.

Do you have any regrets?

— If only I hadn't done it before. I'd always wanted to do international cooperation, and I thought that at some point, when my life was more peaceful, when my children were older, I would do it. In 2015, my son was three years old, the same age as Aylan. I still think Aylan would be thirteen now if we had been able to save him. We couldn't save him, like the 3,500 children who have died in the Mediterranean these past ten years, according to UNICEF. But we've saved 72,000 people. Losing lives or not finding them is very hard. It's nerve-wracking when you're in the middle of the sea and you see all its immensity—many people don't understand the grandeur of the Mediterranean—hundreds of miles from the coast, you've received an emergency call from a small boat and you can't find it, you see that the weather is changing and that in a few hours that boat won't hold up... These are moments. And when you find it, in his case, they are moments of great joy. From the offices, you can't tell what smells like death, what smells like a boat. But in the offices, decisions are made that have built a migration necropolitics. If [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen were to board our ship, the whole narrative about the mafia's pull effect would fall apart. [The European border protection agency] Frontex started in 2015, like us, with a budget of €130 million. Now it amounts to more than €1 billion. If in these ten years they haven't been able to locate the mafias involved in trafficking, how do they allow them to criminalize us by calling us traffickers? We live with them at sea; they fly over us every day, several times. And they even give us the locations of boats through which we rescue them. But when they attack us, they say nothing and let this narrative sink in.

Why is the discourse of migratory invasion, fear, and hatred encouraged?

— Frontex is racist. The European Union is racist. The far right is xenophobic and racist. It seems like small boats are invading us, but less than 10% of undocumented immigration arrives by sea. We brought 2,000 people from Ukraine here by plane. And no one has said anything. And I've only landed in Spain twice: once with 200 people and the other with 59. And because of these landings, they say I'm filling Spain with Muslims and criminals.

What do we do about this drift that is taking Europe towards xenophobia, towards racism?

— When civil society, which is slow to mobilize, will change this trend, because there are many of us, we are the majority. They are allowing a minority to control digital power and fill the heads of our teenagers and young women with racist and xenophobic discourse devoid of values. We have already seen this with the mobilizations against Israel's participation in the "Vuelta." But we must not wait until there are 65,000 dead, 300 journalists, 300 aid workers, 20,000 children. Society is somewhat anesthetized, because they want us to be individualized, they want us to be divided, they want us to be afraid. And we must combat all of this.

The Open Arms was in Gaza when the EU announced it was opening a maritime humanitarian corridor. In fact, they were the only ones to deliver aid by sea. Now the Flotilla is sailing there.

— It's all very well for civil society to take action. And the Flotilla is one of them. The problem is that the risk is high. We had all the necessary permits from Israel and had followed their instructions in detail, however painful they were. And yet, seven of us were killed, aid workers from World Food Kitchen, because Netanyahu decided to target their cars with missiles. I can't put my team's lives in danger again. I met with the Palestinian ambassador in Madrid, and we pledged to help him when there's another fire and a peace plan. I admire the courage of the people on the Flotilla because they're putting themselves at risk. Perhaps they should take more action here on the ground. I hope and wish them the best, and above all, be careful, because Netanyahu has no values, no principles, and can do anything.

Abascal, and the European far right in general, has targeted him.

— He says we're a slave ship, that we're getting rich... If he said that in German, everyone would think he was Goebbels. He's a fascist, and his backside is showing. Let the third-largest political force in the country demonstrate its lack of respect for democracy, for values, for ethics, using confrontation, lies, insults, and generating hatred... Where's the prosecutor's office? We have people in prison for less. He's targeted us. They did it once before, when they published photos of my house, scratched my car, and threw bags of paint at my wall. I receive many threats on social media every day, in many languages.

Not only the far right, the language of the European institutions is very similar.

— The EU is discussing a new directive imposing provisions that violate humanitarian law and compromise rescue organizations. The only thing missing is for us to be arrested for saving lives. We've been involved in the three or four largest migratory flows of the century. With the Rohingya, in Greece, in the central Mediterranean... Now, in retrospect, do you think the rescuers on Lesbos acted as a call to a million people to come to Europe? Do you think they crossed because we were there? It's ridiculous. Behind every person who flees, there's a devastated territory, a forgotten conflict, or a chain of economic and political decisions that put these people in an impossible situation. And they flee. And they'll continue to flee. Whether there's someone in the Mediterranean to rescue them or not. Most boats arrive by their own means. Only a few remain in the middle of the sea. The problem isn't those people, the problem is bank profits, the lack of resources for education, the privatization of healthcare, job insecurity, access to housing...

And how should immigration be managed? What's the alternative?

— I'm a rescuer. Politicians are the ones who should find solutions. But I can say what shouldn't be done, because it's been proven that it doesn't work, and yet they continue to do it. And what shouldn't be done is to fund militias, to fund countries without any democratic guarantees, and to shower them with millions so that they violate the human rights of all those people who want to flee. We saw this ten years ago. We saw how Erdogan received six billion from the European Union, and then Libya. And then Tunisia. And now comes Algeria. And so on to Morocco. I think serious international cooperation is necessary. To generate stability and generate security. To get on a boat and set out to sea under these conditions with your family, you must be in danger on the ground. This is what's appropriate, yet we continue to pursue these colonialist policies.

What are your next projects?

— The Open Arms can't be in the Mediterranean because we risk a permanent detention, which would be a triumph for [Italian Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni. We can't afford to risk the ship. Now we'll take it to the Canary Islands, a region suffering from migratory pressure, especially with minors. It has nearly 5,000 minors in its care. There's a great lack of solidarity in this country: many communities that don't want to accept their share of the responsibility. We can't allow the Canary Islands to sustain all this pressure because we've seen it in Malta, Lampedusa, or Lesbos: when you overload an island, social instability and conflicts arise, and that's what the far right wants. In 2016, Spain complained about Europe's lack of solidarity, and now the same thing is happening between autonomous communities. We can't leave the Canary Islands alone.