Open Arms celebrates 10 years with 72,000 rescues: "We will fight fascism by saving lives."

BarcelonaTen years ago, when the world was shocked by the photograph of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy who drowned on a Turkish beach as his parents tried to take him to Europe, two lifeguards from Badalona decided to go to the Greek island of Lesbos to do what they knew best: save lives in the water. It was the first step in what would later become one of the NGOs rescuing people in a Mediterranean that had become a mass grave due to the closure of safe routes for migrants with fewer resources. "A few years ago, they gave us prizes. Now they criminalize us," Oscar Camps, founder of Open Arms, recalled this Tuesday in the port of Barcelona. A good summary of the change of winds blowing in Europe. Since 2015, they have rescued 72,000 shipwrecked people in the Mediterranean. Now they are launching a new mission in a new setting: the Canary Islands.

Ten years in which they have been awarded and recognized, but also criminalized and blocked, how this diary was documented, embarked on the organization's 46th mission, the first in which the Italian authorities, then led by the far-right Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, ordered the detention of the old tugboat converted into a rescue ship for men, women, and children that Fortress Europe wanted removed from its frontlines. The criminalization and rescues continued, until today's outbursts by Santiago Abascal, who has put the NGO in the crosshairs of his hate speech.

Social support

Seeing them on the Moll de la Fusta, a group of pedestrians on bikes approach to greet them: "Congratulations!" Camps waves: "This is the real world, not the world of social media," he concludes. Accustomed to all kinds of insults and threats, the Badalona native and his team don't flinch. "We have the support of civil society, and without it, none of this would have been possible." With the confidence of someone who feels they are doing what they have to do, he summarizes his thesis in a sentence: "You don't argue with fascism: you fight it. And we will fight it by saving more lives." The EU, with the rise of the far right everywhere, is preparing a new directive to further limit the reception of migrants. It won't make it easy.

The NGO's long history has not only seen rescues at sea. They work in Senegal, explaining in schools the dangers of launching a small boat. They have also worked with the Rohingya in Burma, with the DANA in Valencia, and have worked in Ukraine and Mozambique. And they were the only ones who were able to send humanitarian aid to the beaches of Gaza, in what was supposed to be a humanitarian corridor pompously announced by the European Union. There was no corridor, and that mission foundered when Israel killed seven aid workers from the NGO World Central Kitchen while driving their clearly branded vehicles and after having reported their movements to the Israeli authorities. Camps sent a message of support to the flotilla advancing towards Gaza, which was also expressed with a large Palestinian flag on the stern of theAstral, the sailboat with which the NGO first ventured into the Mediterranean.