The search for a safe harbour by Silke Müller

The search for a safe har— bour | Silke Müller AN ILLUSTRATED ATTEMPT TO FIND A POSITION

55째 42' 18,8'' N 21째 7' 19,2''E

Intro

The search for a safe harbour Silke Müller (Germany | Austria) resided in Klaipėda | Lithuania from Sept 6th to 30th 2014. She was taking part in an artist-in-residence programme as well as participating in the project “Travel Agency” at KCCC in Klaipeda. Silke Müller (b. 1980) is an illustrator, graphic designer and free broadcasting journalist. Her studio is based in Linz | Austria since 2010. The illustrator spent a year on "the search for a safe harbour”. As a European citizen she tried to find 26 + 1 position marks between public and private concerning the idea of "free mobility" among and besides the European Union. Through drawing an illustrated research, she wants to pin a position on a map, where so-called Western humanity and privileges are setting horrifying borders.

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October, 3rd, 2013

September 1th—15th 2014

A Libyan migrant ship, on voyage from Misurata, Libya to Lampedusa (Italy) with about 500 Eritrean and Somalian migrants, lost power, caught fire and sank after capsizing.

During the time Silke Müller stayed in Klaipeda as artist in residence more vessels sank on their way to Lampedusa. To Europe. Because of two accidents, over 600 people lost their lives over the 15 days between September 1st—15th, 2014.

1 1/2 nautical miles (nm) away from the safe harbour of the European island Lampedusa, 1/2 nm before the shore of Isola dei Conigli. Most of the passengers paid between $8.000 and $12.000 for the transfer to Europe. 366 people drowned. They could see land. 155 people survived. Lampedusa developed into a symbol for European Tragedy in the last 20 years.1

1 cf. Ulrich Ladurner, Lampedusa Große Geschichte einer kleinen Insel, Residenz Verlag, St. Pölten, 2014

A Spokesperson for the Italian Red Cross reported: "From 1st to 15th September we had 17.000 migrants’ arrivals, 130.000 from January. The evaluated (number) of drowned is more than 600. Among the migrants there are a lot of children. Yesterday also a pregnant woman, who gave birth a few hours after landing in Italy." In finally the origin’s countries are: Eritrea and Syria (almost 50%) and then Sub-Saharan Africa and Mali.”2 2 Mail correspondency with Italian Red Cross, September 17th 2014

boxas 1 container in exhibition hall, 13 qm Klaipeda Culture Communication Center KCCC | Lithuania

The container

The private

The public

The private

The PUblic 13 qm If the box, where you are in right now, would be a boat or a dinghy on the Mediterranean Sea on its way from Libya to Europe, there would be around 40—65 individuals with you in the same space. An impossible guess: if the boat handles that journey at the speed of 9 Knots – and there would be no waves on The Med, neither wind – the trip would take at least 18 hours.

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27 positions marks cardboard and transparent paper, coloured and carbon pencils

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The PUblic

35째 30' 35'' N, 12째 36' 0'' E Lampedusa island | October 3rd 2013 366 position marks millimetre paper and carbon-paper

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Von:

Laura Bastianetto <laura.bastianetto@cri.it>

Betreff: R: R: Lampedusa

Datum:

17. September 2014 15:10:06 MESZ

An:

Silke Müller · Radio FRO 105.0 <silke.mueller@fro.at>

Antwort an:

laura.bastianetto@cri.it

Dear Silke, a lot of your questions should be addressed to the Navy which is providing to rescue human lives with Mare Nostrum1 operation. I can help you about our task. First of all you have to know that in this moment Lampedusa isn't involved in landings anymore because the Navy leaves migrants directly in Sicily or in another towns of Italy (Brindisi, Taranto, Salerno). In Lampedusa we are trying to open a local committee of Italian Red Cross. When there was the emergency in lampedusa (for example last year) we had there an AMP, advanced medical place with at least 2 doctors and other workers and volunteers. At this moment Italian Red Cross is in every town of Italy where the Navy leaves migrants. Our assistance is continuous for the health care, food and water at the moment of landing. Then police brings them to the shalters placed in several part of Italy. I know the numbers of this year about arrivals and shipwrecks. For example just Today morning we have others 1000 migrants arrived to Palermo and Reggio Calabria. Italian Red Cross is involved in the first aid at the moment of landing, in the assistance and transport, and in some cases also in shelters. From 1st to 15th September we had 17.000 migrants’ arrivals, 130.000 from January. The evaluate of drowned is more than 600. Among the migrants there are a lot of children. Yesterday also a pregnant woman who gave birth a few hours after landing in Italy. In finally the origin’s countries are: Eritrea and Syria (almost 50%) and then subsaharian Africa and Mali. I hope I have been helpful for you. Laura 1 Mare Nostrum rescue Operation started last October 18, 2013 in Southern Mediterranean with the participation of personnel, naval units and aircraft from the Italian Navy, the Army, Air Force, Carabinieri, Customs Service, Coast Guard, as well as Police officers onboard the Units, and other national agencies, with the aim to control migration flows. www.marina.difesa.it/EN/operations/Pagine/MareNostrum.aspx, 17.10.2014

Try to find a position Research | mail correspondency, maps, statistics, news articles, notes, screenshots

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Klaipeda

Linz

Lampedusa

The PUblic Curonian Spit | Lithuania & Russia 55째 16' 28'' N, 20째 58' 15'' E Location: Baltic Sea Area: 90 km2 Length: 98 km

Lampedusa | Italy 35째 30' 35'' N, 12째 36' 0'' E Location: Mediterranean Sea Area: 20.2 km2 Length: 8 km Width: 3 km Population: 5.000

Neringa | Lithuanian part of Curonian Spit Length: 52 km Width: 3 km Neringa Population: 2.500

The Public Sicilian Town on Migrants’ Route Cares for the Living and the Dead By JIM YARDLEYSEPT. 17, 2014 New York Times POZZALLO, Sicily — The 18 coffins were placed in two neat rows beneath the late-afternoon sun as the mayor and other dignitaries took their seats inside the hilltop cemetery. A Catholic vicar-general offered a homily. A Muslim imam unfurled a small rug and knelt in prayer, his singsong voice rising above the stone mausoleums toward the blue of the Mediterranean.

Over the past three years, Italian authorities have swung from a hard-line policy to “push back” migrant vessels to Libya, to a search-and-rescue program to deliver them safely to Italian ports like this one. Migrants still keep coming. Today, Europe finds itself caught between a backlash at home against the rising numbers of migrants flooding the continent and international pressure to provide a humane response to a crisis that includes refugees from wars in the Middle East.

“It is a river of people coming in,” said Daniele Carrozza, who They had come to mourn strangers. runs one of the many holding Inside the coffins were the bodies of centers in Sicily that house Africans who died in August, collected migrants, among them several from the smuggler boats that were thousand unaccompanied minors. carrying them into Europe. Eight of the “For the next few years, we coffins bore small plaques that stated, are going to have an exponensimply, “Sconosciuto,” or “Unknown.” tial increase.” “The opposite of love is not hatred,” Msgr. Angelo Giurdanella said toward the end of his homily, “but indifference.” No one could accuse Pozzallo of indifference. This small Sicilian town, like Italy itself, has staggered its way through a skyrocketing migration crisis in the Mediterranean that has seen roughly 120,000 migrants rescued by Italian ships this year, almost triple last year’s figure, while nearly 2,800 have died in shipwrecks or in transit, a fourfold increase. And more bodies may be coming. Rescuers are searching in the waters near Malta after reports this week that more than 750 people may have died in two shipwrecks in recent days.

Until three years ago, Europe mostly acted to deter migrant boats, as Italian ships and those of Europe’s border agency, Frontex, pursued the “pushback” tactics along the Libyan coastline. But the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2011 changed the strategy, as well as public attitudes. Waves of refugees risking their lives to make passage to Europe stirred global sympathy. In response, Italy suspended the pushback operations, and then a landmark 2012 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights barred Italy from continuing the tactic. We can’t have people fleeing war - young children, fathers, mothers - and drowning within sight of Europe,” said Leon-

ard Doyle, spokesman for the Genevabased International Organization for Migration. “It just isn’t acceptable.” After a shipwreck last October, in which more than 300 migrants died within a few hundred yards of the Italian island of Lampedusa, the government announced the creation of Mare Nostrum, the search-and-rescue program. With Italian leaders loudly calling for help and money, European officials last month announced that Frontex would be expanded in November to include rescue efforts. But few details have been provided, even as Italian officials say the new initiative will allow Italy to end Mare Nostrum.

before paying smugglers to reach Italy in August. Asked why he had originally left Gambia, Ibrima lifted the back of his shirt to show a gruesome scar on his back. He said his father had two wives, and the second wife, jealous of Ibrima’s mother, doused him with scalding oil. “Here is now my country,” he said of Italy. “I want to stay here.” Out on the commercial ports of Augusta and Pozzallo, the Italian naval frigates deliver newly rescued migrants almost every day. Migrants cling to suitcases or plastic bags bearing their remaining worldly possessions. A handwritten note, scrawled in Egyptian dialect on a torn cigarette pack, was discovered on the ground last week in Pozzallo as migrants filed off a ship. It was from someone initialed “A” to someone else initialed “R.”

“The Italian government is telling Italians that Mare Nostrum will be replaced,” said Bruce Leimsidor, an expert on European asylum law at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. “But if you look at the statements by European officials, they are talking “I wanted to be with you,” about supplementing. They are not read the note. “Don’t you talking about replacing Mare Nostrum.” dare forget me. I love you very much. My wish is for you Along the southeastern coast of not to forget me. Be well my Sicily, small cities have hurriedly love. A loves R. I love you.” opened holding centers, including an abandoned school in the port city of One man on the ship, Mohannad Augusta that now houses unaccomSharouf, 38, an English teacher, had panied teenage boys. Many of them fled Swedea, in Syria, because he said had left Gambia and Ghana, and even he became a target of the security Bangladesh, to work as migrants in forces of President Bashar al-Assad. oil-rich Libya. But as Libya has stead- “Even if the E.U. takes different measily unraveled into anarchy and vioures, they can’t stop immigration,” he lence, they feared for their lives. said. “They can kill you at any moment, any second,” said Ibrima, a 17-year-old “In Syria, I had my fiancée, my from Gambia, who worked in Libya family and friends. 25

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I had my whole life there. Do you think, had I a choice, I would have left?” Down the coast in Pozzallo, another major processing point for incoming migrants, Mayor Luigi Ammatuna and his chief of staff, Virginia Giugno, now spend much of their time dealing with the bureaucratic and emotional tasks of migration. Mr. Ammatuna has gone on Italian radio to debate immigration opponents, asking if they have ever seen what he sees every day. Ms. Giugno, who has two children, is now listed as the legal guardian of all the roughly 150 unaccompanied minors who have arrived in Pozzallo. “I can’t imagine what mothers and fathers go through when they put an 11-year-old boy on a boat and say, ‘Good luck,’ ” she said. “They know they will never see them again, that they may die at sea.” Death has become one of the city’s bureaucratic tasks. In July, the Navy rescued a wooden ship overcrowded with migrants. When the hatch was opened, Navy sailors discovered that 48 people inside the hull had suffocated. Pozzallo officials created a makeshift morgue by attaching refrigeration units to an empty room at the city’s civil protection center. Bodies were also placed inside a refrigerated truck ordinarily used to transport freshly cut flowers.

distribute some of the dead for burial at cemeteries in nearby towns such as Ragusa and Modica. The two men buried in Modica, Moussa Conde, 23, and Amadou Conde, 24, from Conakry, Guinea, may have been related. Sicily has known suffering and deprivation, and once saw its own youth flee poverty to emigrate to better opportunities, in places including the United States. Monday’s funeral in Pozzallo was held outdoors because there were too many bodies to fit into the cemetery’s small chapel. A few dozen residents joined the officials, including Claudia Scala, 42, who felt compelled to come since the families of the migrants could not be there. “These people have nobody,” she said. “So I thought, ‘At least they can have me.’ ” The service was especially bittersweet for Vincenza Angieleri, 64. Her husband died working on an oil tanker that wrecked off the coast of North Carolina 37 years ago. Search crews never found his body. “It is a duty for people who live here to come to this funeral,” she said. “It doesn’t matter the color of their skin. It saddens us that something like this happened in our village.” Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Pozzallo and Augusta, Italy, and Lynsey Addario from Pozzallo. www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/world/europe/

The bodies from Monday’s funeral arrived on a migrant boat in August. So many migrants have now been interred in Pozzallo that officials had to

sicilian-town-on-migrants-route-cares-forthe-living-and-the-dead.html?_r=0, 18.9.2014

The Public

Human Development Index 2014, hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI

The Public

27th position mark Human Developement Index 2014 wrecksite.eu information about Migrants Boat | captain: Khaled Bensalam google entries related to Khaled Bensalam comments on news article about Lampedusa tragedy October 3rd 2013

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The Public Private

embrace 47 metres deep | October 3rd 2013 Lampedusa migrants shipwreck A female and a male body seem to be embracing underwater. Filmstill | police divers' footage ÂŠ Repubblica TV

The Public Private

"A makeshift wooden boat trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea carrying 400 people who don't know better than to start cooking fires."

comments | related article includes the picture "embrace" "A tragic young couple is seen among the many Somalis and Eritreans who lost theirs lives when the vessel caught fire on its way to Italy last October." BY Lee Moran NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, May 16, 2014, 7:49 AMwww.nydailynews.com/news/world/graphic-video-footage-revealsdivers-search-wrecked-migrant-boat-mediterranean-sea-article-1.1794563, 10.9.2014

The private

The Private 2013—2014 In search for a safe harbour 26 position marks of free mobility black&white print outs, drawings on blue framed office paper with carbon paper and 2 coloured pencils – flesh & prussian blue – glue with charcoal dust, glued, yellow paper

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Ferry GER â&#x2020;&#x2019; LT

Hotel

Car

Kitchen

Train

The private

Rubrikport home The private

The private

26th position

The Public

From: Pocius Nerijus [mailto:nerijus.pocius@vsat.vrm.lt] Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 2:16 PM To: skaiste@kkkc.lt Subject: FW: dėl nelegalių migrantų 2010-2013 m.

Labas Siunčiu informaciją apie nelegalius migrantus 2010-2014 m. Uosto užkardoje per 2010 metus nustatyti 3 nelegalūs migrantai: 2 bėgliai iš Maroko, laive „NEW HIROTSUKI“ (Panamos vėliava), atvykusiame į Klaipėdos valstybinį jūrų uostą 89 krantinę ir 1 Malio pilietis, nelegaliai patekęs į laivą -„KAGU“ (Dominikos vėliava, 17 kr.) Mauritanijoje. 2011-2014 m. nelegalių migrantų neturėjome.

VSAT prie LR VRM Pakrančių apsaugos rinktinės Sienos kontrolės skyriaus vyriausiasis specialistas Nerijus Pocius Tel. (8 46) 466274 Mob.tel. +370 686 53151 el.p. nerijus.pocius@vsat.vrm.lt

Mail correspondence with coast guard Klaipeda, September 23th 2014 VSAT at the DEPARTMENT of MIA Coast Guard team Border control Division Chief specialist Nerijus Pocius

"The search for a safe harbour" part of a-i-r programm "Travel Agency" KCCC | Klaipeda

friendly support

LinzEXPOrt

Lithuanian Council for Culture

project tumblr http://a-safe-harbour.tumblr.com

about exhibition @ KCCC www.kulturpolis.lt/menas/silke-muller-ieskant-uosto-kuriame-saugu-visiems

Thank you! Skaiste Marciene | KCCC, Laura Bastianetto | Italian Red Cross, Tina Auer | Time's Up, Alexander Glandien, Antje Godgl端ck, Jerneja Zavec, Leonie Reese, Markus Luger, Peggy Wellert, Pippa Buchanan, Regina und Jana M端ller, Sophia Pfitzer and the FIFTITU% - Newsletter.

2014 Klaipeda | Linz Silke M端ller www.popilke.de

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* Stowaways

The coast guard of Klaipeda states: in port territory of Klaipeda there had been 3 illegal migrants in 2010: 2 refugees from Morocco (ship with Panama flag) and 1 citizen of Mali got illegally into ship in Mauritania (ship with Dominican flag). In 2011—2014 no ilgal migrants were reported. a person who hides aboard a vehicle, ship, or aircraft in order to gain free passage

55° 42' 18,8'' N 21° 7' 19,2''E 54