Open Access Report The Critical Risk of Disinformation for Humanitarians – The Case of the MV Aquarius Sean Healy Head of Reflection and Analysis, Médecins Sans Frontières Operational Centre Amsterdam; [email protected] Victoria Russell Communications Adviser, Médecins Sans Frontières Operational Centre Amsterdam; [email protected] Abstract The search and rescue of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants on the Mediterranean has become a site of major political contestation in Europe, on the seas, in parliaments and government offices and in online public opinion. This article summarises one particular set of controversies, namely, false claims that the non-government organisations conducting such search and rescue operations are actively ‘colluding’ with people smugglers to ferry people into Europe. In spring and summer 2017, these claims of ‘collusion’ emerged from state agencies and from anti-immigration groups, became viral on social media platforms and rapidly moved into mainstream media coverage, criminal investigations by prosecutors and the speech and laws of politicians across the continent. These claims were in turn connected to far-right conspiracy theories about ‘flooding’ Europe with ‘invaders’. By looking at the experience of one particular ship, the MV Aquarius, run in partnership by MSF and SOS Méditerranée, the authors detail the risks that humanitarian organisations now face from such types of disinformation campaign. If humanitarian organisations do not prepare themselves against this risk, they will find themselves in a world turned upside-down, in which their efforts to help people in distress become evidence of criminal activity. Keywords: disinformation, conspiracy theory, search and rescue, refugees, Mediterranean, criminalisation, social media, far right, Médecins Sans Frontières, SOS Méditerranée Introduction homelands’ (statement by Defend Europe, quoted in Holthouse, 2017). From December 2016, this conspiracy This is the story of a meeting between a humanitarian theory spread from the far-right anti-immigrant fringes, operation and a conspiracy theory, and what happened was bolstered by the statements of the European border next. The operation was a search and rescue mission run control agency Frontex, caught fire on social media, was on the Mediterranean by many different non-govern- then repeated by major media outlets, politicians and mental organisations (NGOs), including Médecins Sans prosecutors, and eventually became policy of the then- Frontières,1 aiming to save the lives of migrants, refugees government of Italy, under Interior Minister Matteo and asylum seekers lost at sea. The conspiracy theory2 Salvini. It achieved its moment of (temporary) victory in was that this operation was the opposite of what it 2018 with the closing of Italian ports to NGO vessels and seemed: that it was actually a plot in which search and the halting of search and rescue operations by NGOs on rescue organisations were actively and directly colluding the Mediterranean. The collision of these two wildly with people smugglers to ferry ‘migrants’ from Libya to different points of view provoked significant political Europe. And even that this was only part of a deeper plot and humanitarian consequences across Europe. to ‘invade’ and ‘flood’ the continent and make ‘we There is, of course, nothing new about disinformation, Europeans … a minority in our own European or its use in conflict and crisis, or its implication of 28 Journal of Humanitarian Affairs Volume 3, No. 1 (2021), 28–39 © The authors http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/JHA.056 This is an Open Access article published under the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence https://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/4.0 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 10/01/2021 10:56:26AM via free access The Critical Risk of Disinformation for Humanitarians humanitarians. The aphorism, ‘In war, the first casualty rescue operations, all prompted into doing so by two is truth’, goes back to World War I, or perhaps horrific shipwrecks in April 2015 in which 1200 asylum Aeschylus. Throughout their history, humanitarian seekers drowned (Heller and Pezzani, 2016). actors have worked in many conflicts deeply marked The MSF adviser replied that NGOs were in no way not only by the clash of metal and bodies, but also by the colluding with people smugglers but were rather simply din of conflicting words, claims and narratives. But the doing their job of saving lives – and that perhaps Frontex forms that this disinformation has taken have constantly might be better off doing the same (Ponthieu, 2016). This changed as technology has changed, from printing exchange between MSF and Frontex, in public and via presses to wireless and TV and now to social media. the media, and later also in private, was not the first such The rapid growth in internet penetration and social dispute, but it would prove to be the opening salvo in a media usage worldwide has made it easier and quicker to two-year-long propaganda campaign. access and share vast quantities of news, information and entertainment – and this has proved fertile ground for all The Claims kinds of political propaganda, conspiracy theories, Opponents of dedicated search and rescue (SAR) disinformation campaigns and hybrid warfare. missions in the Mediterranean had long criticised such This case of the MV Aquarius highlights the increas- efforts for being a ‘pull factor encouraging more ingly dangerous environment that humanitarians are migrants to attempt the dangerous sea’ (House of now operating in in the early twenty-first century: Lords, 2016)3 or a ‘magnet’ (Farrell, 2014)ora‘bridge’ meaning not the Mediterranean, but the emerging (Anetzberger, 2014) for migrants, refugees and asylum information space. If humanitarian organisations do seekers. Before the arrival of NGO vessels, this same not ready themselves for this space, they will find claim had been made against naval SAR operations such themselves in a world turned upside-down, in which as Mare Nostrum.4 their principles have no meaning, in which suffering is Naval and NGO rescuers and their supporters have, in the fault of those suffering and the responsibility of no- reply, argued that the numbers of people attempting the one, and in which their efforts to help people in distress Central Mediterranean route is largely driven by ‘push become evidence of criminal activity. factors’ such as conflict in the countries of origin, violence in Libya, the closure of other routes and lack The Case of the MV Aquarius of safe and legal pathways. The principal effect of reduced SAR resources, they have claimed, is not reduced numbers of people attempting the journey, but It Begins an increased risk of death. On 13 December 2016, a humanitarian adviser at MSF in For example, MSF conducted its own research Brussels received a call from the correspondent of the (Arsenijevic et al., 2017) into this claim of a ‘pull Financial Times. He wanted to know if MSF had any factor’ which compared the trends in attempted sea comment on a report he had received confidentially from crossings and adverse sea outcomes over three time within the European border agency, Frontex. With a periods: during Operation Mare Nostrum (dedicated headline alleging that search and rescue organisations on SAR mission but no NGO presence), during the period the Mediterranean were actively colluding with people of Operation Triton5 but before the start of NGO smugglers, the eventual article read: operations, and following the start of NGO SAR missions. It found that there were only 1.6 per cent Frontex put its concerns in a confidential report last more attempted crossings in the period of NGO month, raising the idea that migrants had been given ‘clear involvement than during the period of Triton-only indications before departure on the precise direction to be followed in order to reach the NGOs’ boats’. SAR resources. It also found a reduction in adverse sea outcomes (deaths and missing) from 39/1000 attempted The agency made the accusation explicitly in another crossings to 16/1000. Other analyses by different report last week, which stated: ‘First reported case where the criminal networks were smuggling migrants directly on researchers (Steinhilper and Gruijters, 2017; Villa, an NGO vessel’.(Robinson, 2016) 2020) have reached broadly similar conclusions. The commanders of the naval missions have argued likewise, At that point, MSF had been running search and such as Operation Sophia’s commander, Admiral Enrico rescue operations since mid 2015, with three ships then Credendino (quoted in Floris and Bagnoli, 2017). operational on the Mediterranean: the Bourbon Argos, The claim of ‘collusion’, however, made in the the Dignity I and the Aquarius, the latter run in confidential Frontex report and carried by the Financial partnership with SOS Méditerranée (Figure 1). The Times, was an escalation. A ‘pull factor’ might operate organisation was only one of many running such despite the intentions of the rescuers and be simply the 29 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 10/01/2021 10:56:26AM via free access (2021) 3/1 Journal of Humanitarian Affairs Figure 1: MSF search and rescue operations – overview Source: MSF, http://searchandrescue.msf.org/ (accessed 28 March 2021). unfortunate side-effect of a well-meaning endeavour. Maritime Traffic website, with the daily arrival figures ‘Collusion with people smugglers’, ‘trafficking’ and from the UN High Commissioner