ALTERNATIVE LEGAL SUPPORT FOR CRIMINALISED PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
People on the move are often arrested and imprisoned for driving boats bringing people to Europe. They are accused of human smuggling, often without access to adequate legal assistance, information about their basic rights, or any form of support. The ‘Captain Support’ Network is a platform in solidarity with those accused of driving the boats to Europe, and to connect them to local support networks and lawyers. You can reach out for support by sending us a private message. Activists and volunteers will reply by providing helpful information and connecting people to lawyers and social support if needed.
What is Captain Support?
Over the past years, all over the EU and its externalised borders, thousands of people have been arrested and put on trial for exercising freedom of movement or for facilitating it. This process of criminalisation is the systematic result of racist laws and bordering practices, and it often affects the lives of criminalised people all over their lifetime.
❗️If you or a friend or a family member has been arrested on the charges of “facilitating illegal immigration”, contact the Captain Support network via Facebook and Instagram to ask for adequate legal assistance and support.
Campaigns
The criminalisation of people on the move is too often invisible, and their voices are silenced through detention and imprisonment. This invisibilisation and silencing allows the authorities of the EU and it’s Member States’ to further violate their rights and to exercise the worst violence on them, even after their release.
Free Pylos 9
Nine Egyptian survivors were arrested and charged with smuggling, aggravated by the deaths of passengers, causing a shipwreck, irregular entry, and forming and membership of a criminal organization.
Free El Hiblu 3
In Malta, three African teenagers stand accused of terrorism.
Free Homayoun
Homayoun Sabetara, a migrant fleeing Iran, was arrested by Greek authorities in Thessaloniki after having driven a vehicle across the Turkish-Greek border.
Decriminilize Facilitation
As a group of activists based mostly in Europe, we stand in solidarity with all the people criminalised for facilitating freedom of movement, and towards all the people on the move.
Captain Support
This video informs about European practices to criminalize people for driving boats to Europe and about the rights of the accused and the other passengers.
Update and News
- Jury convicts Ibrahima Bah:
Statement from Captain Support UKFollowing a three-week trial, Ibrahima Bah, a teenager from Senegal, has been convicted by an all-white jury at Canterbury Crown Court. The jury unanimously found him guilty of facilitating illegal entry to the UK, and by a 10-2 majority of manslaughter by gross negligence. This conviction followed a previous trial in July 2023 in which the jury could not reach a verdict. - Evidence from Courtwatching: Documenting the Criminalisation of People seeking Asylum in the UKSince 2018, the number of people crossing the English Channel on ‘small boats’ in search of safety has risen year on year. As others have argued, including elsewhere on this blog, this is a manufactured ‘crisis’ of the British government’s own making. Decades of securitisation in the juxtaposed controls in Calais have continually forced people trying to reach the UK to use dangerous routes to evade enforcement measures. With no other means of reaching the UK (contrary to the government’s narrative, access to so-called ‘safe and legal routes’ is extremely limited), irregular journeys by sea have become, for most, the default option.
- Solidarity as ‘Organised Crime’: the Criminalisation of Facilitation in ItalyAn important aspect of bordering processes in Italy is to criminalise the facilitation of migration. The first notable instances date back to the 1990s, when people were fleeing political unrest and economic crisis in Albania. It is in these years that the term “scafista”, a derogatory term to describe migrant boat drivers, or captains, was coined and gained popularity in the media and political discourse. Italy’s closing of the border and active hindering of the maritime crossings culminated in 1997 with the Katër i Radës shipwreck. The captains of both ships were put on trial and sentenced.
