Carola Rackete, a sea captain and pro-migrant activist, has demanded that the European Union defund its border agency Frontex, claiming that the political bloc and several of its member states are preventing migrants from being transported to Europe.
The German national, who last year rammed Italian border patrol vessels to force her ship full of migrants into an Italian port, said that Frontex must be defunded and accused the EU of wanting to see migrants drown in the Mediterranean sea.
Rackete said migrants were drowning in the Mediterranean, “because the European Union wants them to drown, to scare those who might attempt to cross. They drown because Europe denies them access to any safe routes and leaves them no options other than to risk their lives at sea,” Infomigrants reports.
She went on to accuse Frontex of facilitating “the racist border policy of European states. We have to tear down Fortress Europe, created to let the poor die off the Mediterranean shores where no one sees them.”
Referencing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, Rackete said that activists should not only defund police but defund Frontex as well. “If #BlackLivesMatter in the US demands to defund the police departments, we consequently have to demand to #DefundFrontex in Europe,” she said on Twitter. A Frontex spokesman called the idea “nonsense”.
The remarks are not the first controversial statements from the far-left activist. Last year, Rackete demanded the EU take in at least half a million migrants from Libya and said Europe should take in “climate refugees”.
“The collapse of the climate system causes climate refugees, which we naturally have to absorb. In some African countries, caused by industrialised countries in Europe, the food base is being destroyed,” she said.
Rackete, who was formerly a captain of a vessel belonging to the German NGO Sea-Watch, had also come into conflict with populist Italian Senator Matteo Salvini. The populist had served as Interior Minister when she rammed border police boats last year and enforced a policy blocking migrant transport NGOs from Italian ports.
In July of last year, Rackete announced she would be pursuing defamation charges against Salvini who did not hesitate to criticise her actions on social media, accusing her and Sea-Watch of human trafficking.