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Prologue A Tale of Two Ships

Let me begin with two stories.

The first is the tale of the German ocean liner MS St Louis, which departed from Hamburg on 13 May 1939 carrying 937 passengers; nearly all of them were Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. The passengers had, for the most part, already applied for US visas and had landing permits or transit visas for Cuba, where they intended to disembark and wait for visas to enter the United States. It was a two-week transatlantic voyage and the trip was pleasant, offering music, dance and Friday night prayers (during which the portrait of Adolf Hitler was removed from the dining room). Unknown to the passengers, their voyage had already attracted considerable media attention in Cuba: ‘Even before the ship sailed from Hamburg, right-wing Cuban newspapers deplored its impending arrival and demanded that the Cuban government cease admitting Jewish refugees.’¹ The director general of the Cuban Immigration Office was forced to resign over the illegal sale of landing permits, and in the week before the ship sailed the Cuban president issued a decree ‘that invalidated all recently issued landing certificates’.² Refugees from Europe were portrayed by right-wing populist movements as threatening Cubans’ economic security by taking scarce jobs away from natives.³ When the St Louis arrived at Havana on 27 May, only 28 passengers (22 of whom were Jewish) were held to have valid papers and allowed to disembark – alongside one other, who tried to commit suicide and was hospitalised in Havana.

The fate of the passengers on the St Louis was now a major story in newspapers across Europe and the Americas. Appeals to the US government were made to no avail. The United States operated a quota system for immigration that was based on the size of existing US population groups; and the combined German Austrian quota of 27,370 for 1939 not only was filled, but left a long waiting list. Moreover, there was no political will to admit higher numbers:

A Fortune Magazine poll at the time indicated that 83 percent of Americans opposed relaxing restrictions on immigration. President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to admit the St Louis refugees, but this general hostility to immigrants, the gains of isolationist Republicans in the Congressional elections of 1938, and Roosevelt’s consideration of running for an unprecedented third term as president were among the political considerations that militated against taking this extraordinary step in an unpopular cause.⁴

With no other choice available, on 6 June the St Louis set sail to return to Europe. The worst fear of the passengers was a return to Germany, but the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (alongside other Jewish organisations) was able to use its funds to arrange visas to four other European states: Great Britain (288), France (224), Belgium (214) and the Netherlands (181). The passengers admitted to Great Britain were the lucky ones, as only one was killed during the war in an air raid; of those trapped on the continent, 87 manged to leave Europe again before the German invasion in 1940, but 532 did not – and 254 were killed in the Holocaust: ‘84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and 86 who had been admitted to France’.⁵

The second story is that of the MV Aquarius, run by SOS Méditerranée and Médecins Sans Frontières. Since 2016, this ship operated as a search-and-rescue vessel for asylum seekers and migrants in danger of drowning in the crossing from Libya to Europe, working in cooperation with the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre. On 10 June 2018, Matteo Salvini, the interior minister of Italy’s newly formed right-wing populist government, refused permission for Aquarius to dock with 629 rescued persons (including 123 unaccompanied minors, 11 younger children and seven pregnant women). Salvini claimed, contrary to the international law of rescue at sea, that Malta rather than Italy should accept those rescued – a demand that Malta vehemently rejected. Buoyed by popular support in Italy for a tough anti-immigrant policy, Salvini maintained his refusal, proclaiming that ‘Italy was saying “no to human trafficking, no to the business of illegal immigration”’.⁶ The stand-off was resolved only when Spain gave permission for Aquarius to dock in Valencia and agreed to accept those rescued persons on board. Italy’s actions took place against the background of economic austerity that followed the effects of the 2008 financial crash and the emergence or consolidation of right-wing national populist movements in the EU, as well as the failure of the Common European Asylum System to secure fair refugee responsibility sharing across its member states, a failure that had seen frontline states such as Italy under particular pressure.

After these events Aquarius encountered further problems. First Gibraltar and, next, Panama, perhaps under pressure from the Italian government, revoked the registration it required to operate under their flag. In November 2018 Italian prosecutors, somewhat arbitrarily, ordered the seizure of the Aquarius to investigate charges that it had illegally dumped potentially hazardous waste at Italian ports (a charge rejected by SOS Méditerranée and Médecins Sans Frontières); the effect of this order was to deny Aquarius access to Italian waters. Such measures increased the pressure on the inadequately resourced Libyan coastguard at a time when the death toll from attempted crossings was, not coincidentally, at its highest in history. On 7 December, having been stranded in Marseille since early October, the Aquarius officially ceased operations with Médecins Sans Frontières, blaming this on ‘sustained attacks on search and rescue by European states’.⁷ During this period of stasis, an estimated 389 persons seeking to cross the Mediterranean have drowned, although the figure may well be higher.⁸ (It is likely that, by the time this book is published, things will have got worse, given the deteriorating situation in Libya.)

While the contexts in which these two sets of events took place are different, there are significant parallels, notably that, under conditions of economic austerity, potentials for national hostility towards people seeking refuge were mobilised by right-wing populist actors, cultivated for domestic political advantage and made to support restrictive policies against those in flight. However, whereas the story of the St Louis may be seen as one of far too many that contributed to motivating the establishment of the international refugee regime in the aftermath of the genocidal murders and mass displacements of the Second World War, the story of the Aquarius speaks to the contemporary limitations of this regime, in particular in securing international cooperation between states and safe passage for refugees. It is against the background of such stories that the question of what is owed to refugees and how their protection can be secured acquires its ethical urgency and its political salience.

Notes

1 1. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ‘Voyage of the St Louis’. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis.

2 2. Ibid.

3 3. Ibid.

4 4. Ibid.

5 5. Ibid.

6 6. ‘Italy’s Matteo Salvini Shuts Ports to Migrant Rescue Ship’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44432056.

7 7. ‘MSF Ship Aquarius Ends Migrant Rescues in Mediterranean’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46477158.

8 8. Visit https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean.