Mare Liberum is a Berlin-based human rights organisation founded in 2018. Since then, Mare Liberum e.V. has been monitoring human rights in the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

, which is part of an escape route from

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

to the

Greek islands Greece has many islands, with estimates ranging from somewhere around 1,200 to 6,000, depending on the minimum size to take into account. The number of inhabited islands is variously cited as between 166 and 227. The largest Greek island by ...

, on which part there are frequent drownings. The organisation runs two ships, the ''

Mare Liberum ''Mare Liberum'' (or ''The Freedom of the Seas'') is a book in Latin on international law written by the Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius, first published in 1609. In ''The Free Sea'', Grotius formulated the new principle that the sea w ...

'' which operates under the German flag, and the sailing yacht, '' Sebastian K''. On 1 May 2023, Mare Liberum was dissolved and ceased operations citing "sabotage, obstruction, and, repression" from the conservative government of Greece and a current impossibility to continue its role safely in observing the border authorities.

Monitoring refugee events

The Mare Liberum association was able to document a total of 321 incidents between March and December 2020, in which 9,798 refugees were forcibly driven back to Turkey. The Greek coast guard would have been the main protagonist and, according to survivors,

Frontex The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, commonly known as Frontex (from French ''frontières extérieures'', "external borders"), is an agency of the European Union headquartered in Warsaw, Poland. In coordination with the border and coast gu ...

and

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

were also involved in some cases.

Vessels

In 2018 the Mare Liberum e.V. association acquired the ship ''

Sea-Watch Sea-Watch is a German non-governmental organisation that operates in the Mediterranean Sea, notably by commissioning ships to rescue migrants. History On 6 November 2017, the crew of a Sea-Watch ship rescued 58 people in an operation hindered b ...

'', which was renamed ''Mare Liberum''. Since then, the ship has been carrying out human rights monitoring at sea. In 2020, Mare Liberum e.V. additionally acquired the 14.5m

Beneteau Beneteau or Bénéteau () is a French sail and motorboat manufacturer, with production facilities in France and in the United States. The company is a large and recognized boat builder, with its holding company (Groupe Beneteau) now also holdin ...

sailing yacht, '' Sebastian K'' for further human rights monitoring. The ''Mare Liberum'' was detained in port in 2019 because the German Ministry of Transport (BMVI) had changed the Ship Safety Ordinance and NGO ships that are used for humanitarian or similar purposes are now confronted with requirements in terms of construction, equipment and crew that otherwise only commercial shipping must meet. So there was a request for a corresponding ship safety certificate from Mare Liberum for ''Mare Liberum''. At the beginning of September 2020, the ''Mare Liberum'' was searched by Greek border guards in

Perama Perama () is a coastal town and a suburb of Piraeus and belongs to the Piraeus regional unit and is the southwestern limit of Athens urban area. It lies on the southwest edge of the Aegaleo mountains, on the Saronic Gulf coast. It is 8 km ...

Lesbos Lesbos or Lesvos ( ) is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of , with approximately of coastline, making it the third largest island in Greece and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, eighth largest ...

. The activists themselves complained about the "criminalization of human rights work" by the Greek authorities. On September 28, the Greek police announced in a press release that 35 people and four NGOs were being investigated on Lesbos. Mare Liberum e.V. was not officially named, however. On October 2, 2020, the Hamburg Administrative Court declared the Ministry's detention order inadmissible because the Ministry of Transport had failed to inform the EU Commission of the draft of the amended regulation before it was enacted.

External links

Official website
('Mare Liberum - Human Rights Monitoring in the Aegean')
Information on the use of the ship from Mare Liberum

References

{{Reflist European migrant crisis Immigrant rights activism Humanitarian aid organizations in Europe Refugee aid organizations in Europe