Arrested for Being Human
Kaya Purchase / Oct 1 / Human Rights
Sean Binder and Sarah Mardini
The criminalisation of humanitarian work endangers more than just the lives of volunteers
Sean Binder faces a potential twenty five years in prison. He was arrested for volunteering with an NGO in Lesbos, Greece, where he used his skills as a lifeguard to assist refugee boats in distress.
He was charged with smuggling, espionage and money laundering and spent more than 100 days in pre-trial detention. Such ludicrous charges are mere thinly-veiled attempts to penalise volunteers in a xenophobic attempt at border control. What is essentially a flawed immigration response policy has resulted in the criminalisation of what is intrinsic to human nature: helping others. According to the International Organisation for Migration ‘over 1,000 migrants died on Mediterranean routes in 2019’. Those who are helping people to reach safety are essential. Their presence is not political; theirs is the neutral stance that, in Sean’s words, “people shouldn’t be drowning; it’s as simple as that.”
Growing up by the sea, Sean was always interested in Search and Rescue. At university he studied European Defence and Security Policy which brought to his attention to the problematic way in which the European Union refers to the so-called ‘migrant crisis.’
“When you say ‘migrant’ it seems so benign but it isn’t. You are implying that this is an issue of undeserving people. When we strip away the fact that these people are asylum seekers, fleeing actual conflict, we allow the EU to respond to it as a problem to be stopped, rather than a humanitarian crisis.”
“When you look at the correlation of how the crisis unfolds in 2014, you have this spike in people arriving and then at the exact same time European rescue efforts are cut, like the Italian navy operation Mare Nostrum.”
The Navy originally responded to this crisis with search and rescue. Then the EU bolstered FRONTEX, which is The European Border Control Institution. Whilst they still provide some search and rescue, their primary mandate is to disrupt smuggling networks.
“So at the peak moment of people drowning we had this shift. The EU now saw migration as a problem to stop.”
Such revelations prompted Sean to combine his training in Search and Rescue with his education in border policy and offer his skills to ERCI (Emergency Response Centre International).
Since Sean’s arrest the media narrative around his volunteer work has been polarised, portraying it as either heroic or criminal. His response has been to reject the tabloid depiction of himself as a hero, publicly insisting that ‘helping others should be normalised.’
“We’re essentially saying that it’s not normal to help people, because normal people do not commit crimes and normal people aren’t heroes. That is absolute rubbish.
The problem is that the people that end up in prison who are lucky enough to get a platform continue to get that platform. When we elevate people we lose sight of the fact that a huge amount of people help others to some extent. A huge amount of people are also being harassed for it. My experience is not unique.”
“I am incredibly thankful for the support that I got after being imprisoned. Without it, I would have been in pre-trial detention much longer. However, I also feel guilty about the publicity, because I am not deserving of it. There are people who have done much more than me. Most of the time, I just handed out blankets to people or smiled. On the one hand, people shouldn’t underestimate the power of smiling at people when they have faced nothing but institutionalised xenophobia while trying to survive. A smile is hugely important, but on the other hand, that’s all it was and that shouldn’t be celebrated.”
It’s interesting that there is also a polarised portrayal of refugees in mainstream media.
“The stereotypical approach towards asylum seekers, that they are either a terrorist or a victim is misrepresentative. Both representations are untrue and both can be true simultaneously. You can have someone who has fought for militia for example – I am not saying I have experienced this, but I’m sure it has happened – whose family is now under threat and who has decided to leave and they might now be in trouble in the Mediterranean. They still deserve to be helped and then their asylum will be assessed. We need to be able to respect existing human rights law. You can be what I would consider not a wonderful person and still not deserve to drown.”
The cost of a polarised representation of real people is a loss of empathy. Media consumers become alienated from relatable human experiences as those involved in the story are morphed into predictable stereotypes.
“Labelling allows us to not engage,” says Sean. “It mainly amplifies the echo chambers that we respectively live in. There’s a need for us to step outside that.”
So how do we address such issues?
“We don’t put enough emphasis on marketing, the value of words,” Sean explains. “I’ve been working with an organisation called Migration Policy Group based in Brussels. It tries to show how those who truly suffer are asylum seekers, not the humanitarians who we all talk about. Prison is not as bad as death. The real people who need a platform are those who are seeking asylum in the first place. What they’ve realised however is that even if you talk about migration in positive terms it will still cause people to feel negative thoughts towards migration. This shows that we have not been able to market the story correctly. We need to make sure that the electorate cares about this issue in the right way.”
Even in such a polarised world, it’s difficult to understand how a position that saves lives such as Search and Rescue could ever be controversial. The explanation lies in the presumption of a ‘pull factor.’ European Border Policy considers that the presence of lifeguards at the border encourages refugees to travel to Europe.
Sean insists, however that there is ‘no credible evidence of a relationship between the amount of search and rescue boats and an increase in asylum-seeking vessels.’
“Yet, there’s an assumption that it exists and that’s built on the foundation that what volunteers like me do does not comply with international law. That’s not the case. Every single bit of international law requires that if a sea captain is able to do so they should proceed with all haste to assisting a boat in distress.
When you stop putting Search and Rescue into a body of water through which incredibly precarious journeys are undertaken by people who have no idea how to drive a boat, you will end up with people drowning. Then, when our response is to try and identify them and stop them from making it to safety we are just exacerbating the problem.
By only securing our border, Europe forces people to take illegal journeys and as a result European policy enable smuggling. In this ironic twist the securing of our borders produces the need to secure our border. The collateral damage of that policy is deaths at sea and by extension, the criminalisation of humanitarians.”
The criminalisation of search and rescue along the coast of Greece has resulted in wiping out the NGOs that provide these services. The authorities have essentially achieved their goal of removing the ‘pull factor’. Yet, people are still drowning with no one to help them.
“The point of this prosecution isn’t necessarily to find us guilty. It’s to put in a chill factor to dissuade people from participating in volunteer work. To dissuade people all you need to do is to have this incredibly long and costly process because NGOs are not then going to provide any services.”
Sean does not deserve to be imprisoned for helping people. On a more universal level, it is essential that we defend Sean’s innocence not just for him as an individual, but to support the presence of search and rescue operations wherever there may be migrants in need of assistance.
If you’d like to support Sean there is an Amnesty International petition which you can sign here.
There is also a fundraiser to help cover expensive legal costs.