During the four days of the Easter weekend, 8,300 people were rescued in the Mediterranean: 1,300 by Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency) and the others by several NGOs in coordination with the Italian Coast Guard. The small Iuventa ship alone assisted 2,147 people, both taking them on board and with its life jackets and rafts. The Iuventa is a small fishing boat that has been adapted for rescue missions by the German NGO Jugend Rettet, one of the smallest organisations involved in humanitarian operations in the search areas of the Mediterranean. While much of the media and some politicians echoed the generic accusations of Catania’s prosecutor according to whom NGOs "attract" and sometimes even collaborate with smugglers controlling the flow of migrants, thousands of lives were saved from certain death by drowning, hypothermia, hunger, and thirst on the open sea. Our reporter Giulia Bertoluzzi was on board the Iuventa and kept a logbook for Open Migration.
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