This extremist group is trying to block rescuers from saving refugees in the Mediterranean

As Donald Trump was greeted with a Confederate flag during his visit to Poland this week, Vox reports on a reprehensible group of European, anti-Muslim extremists who have been crowd-funding money in order to ultimately block humanitarian efforts to rescue refugees and migrants making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe. Just like Jesus would do.

Despite the fact that it’s barely July, over 2,200 migrants have drowned in the sea this year. In 2016, that number topped 5,000 people, including untold numbers of children. Humanitarian groups have attempted to rescue refugees and migrants in crisis, who are almost overcrowded into boats “scarcely worthy of bathtubs.” Now the white nationalist “Generation Identity” group directly stands to contribute to more deaths by purposefully blocking rescues:

“We are blaming those NGOS for luring people into the sea,” Martin Sellner, a founder of the Austrian branch of the movement, told me in a Skype interview. “We think those NGOs need to be stopped.” He and his colleagues believe the NGOs are, in essence, enabling the human traffickers by meeting the boats that capsize or break apart on the sea.

Sellner explains that the group wants to hire boats to trawl the coast of Italy, thwarting the NGO ships (though at least for the moment, that’s not something they can fully afford to do). They promise to then pick up anyone in distress — a requirement of international maritime law — but say they will then bring them to the African coast rather than escorting them to Europe. It is “not likely at all that we could actually prevent someone from rescuing someone in distress from the sea,” he insists.

“Saving people’s lives appears to be an afterthought to [their] primary goal of preventing people from entering Europe,” UK group “HOPE not hate” told Vox. “In fact, by delaying or impeding rescue missions, it seems far more likely that [they’re] putting more lives at risk on the high seas, particularly vulnerable women, children, and the elderly.”