202 People Rescued by Life Support Disembark in Ravenna

This morning at the port of Ravenna, EMERGENCY's search and rescue vessel, Life Support, completed the disembarkation of 202 people rescued on 5 April in the Libyan SAR region. Nationalities of the survivors - including 15 women and 18 minors, eight of whom were unaccompanied - are Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Ghana, Pakistan, Palestine and Syria.

"My father died seven years ago. My mother is very ill, she is 70 years old. She needs very expensive medical treatment and I could not afford it with my job in Bangladesh," says a 35-year-old Bangladeshi man rescued by Life Support. "I decided to go to Libya, where I wanted to work. As soon as I arrived, the Libyan militias kidnapped me and took me to prison. I had to pay thousands of dollars to be free. Almost every fortnight, they moved us from one prison to another. They are horrible places, they would feed us every two or three days. Every night they beat us to get our families to send more money. My mother had to sell her house to allow me to get out of that place. After my family paid the ransom, one night some men came to get me. Instead of freeing me, they decided to put me on the boat and cross the Mediterranean. I do not know why. They covered my eyes and loaded me onto a car. I did not know where we were going. When they took off the blindfold, we were on the beach in Zawiya. They put us on a boat that was very small for the number of people we were. If you refused to get on, they threatened you with guns. We all got on. I saw almost nothing on the way because I was in the inner hold. The smell of petrol was unbearable and the position I had to hold was very painful. Luckily, you found us. The only thing I can think about now is calling my family to tell them that I am OK and that I am no longer in Libya."

The rescue of the 202 people took place on the morning of Friday 5 April in international waters. They were travelling on two different boats, about 10 and 12 metres long, that had departed from Sabratha and Zawiya, Libya. Both boats, overcrowded and in precarious conditions, had been detected by radar. It took four days of sailing to reach the port of Ravenna, the Place of Safety assigned by the Italian MRCC (Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre).

"The boat trip was really scary, we did not know what to expect," says a man from Syria. "They told us to go to the lower deck of the boat. There were too many of us and we had to squat on each other's legs. After half an hour, I already had very bad pain in my legs and arms. I couldn't move and water started coming in from the bottom of the boat. We cut some bottles in half to use them as containers to bail the water out: we did this for hours to make sure we didn't sink. We were exhausted. I left Syria in 2016 because there was no possibility of having a life in my country. Families in Syria only manage to survive because they have relatives abroad who send money to eat. I myself have been living in Lebanon since 2017, working as a delivery boy in a restaurant to be able to send money to my parents who are very elderly. I had to leave Lebanon because the people who were hosting me had to leave the country and I had nowhere else to stay. There is a big economic crisis and even Lebanon is not the right place to try to build a new life. I am travelling with my older brother and his young son, my nephew. I want to build a new life in Europe, I want to live in freedom."

Life Support, consisting of a team of 29 crew, doctors, mediators, and rescuers, has completed its 18th mission in the Central Mediterranean, having rescued a total of 1,544 people.