More than 2,200 refugees have died according to UN figures, last year in the Mediterranean sea – drowned when attempting to get on the water to Europe. In the year before it was even over 3000. The Figures reveal the scale of the disaster that is happening since years in the Mediterranean sea, and yet they remain, as it now once, in the abstract. No matter how many refugees you know personally learn how many of them are portrayed in the media: The Trauma of the Crossing, danger to his life is to all who haven’t experienced it, remain always inaccessible.
The rescue organization Sea-tried to Watch, to empathize with one Experiment, people from Germany in the Situation of refugees on the Mediterranean sea. With an elaborately created action a ride in a boat under similar conditions, such as on a flight, Mr, was simulated. The Video for “Lifeboat Experiment” with further information available online.
40 people simulate a flight over the Mediterranean sea
A dark room, the participants are poorly equipped with life jackets and a man with a scary tone of an order on a small boat chasing. The waves make the boat rock, it’s pitch dark. The 40 people who have embarked on the Experiment, are Volunteers: students, school pupils, a police officer, merchants. But in these moments, you will experience what it means to be in a physical and nervous state of exception.
the “Lifeboat Experiment was Designed” with the refugees who had to make these experiences under real-world conditions. The psychologist Michael Thiel and the Oscar-nominated Director Skye Fitzgerald. The change of perspective was the Central aspect of the experiment, says Thiel: “We can understand the Situation of a refugee better if we have someone like we see in its location. The Experiment shows, what makes us human: the ability to feel empathy.”
Seawatch wants to blunting counteract
Exactly this empathy is lost in the countries which aspire to the refugees, more and more Refugees Were 2015 of many at train stations and borders welcomed, abgeebt this encouragement now. Right-wing populist parties win with the propaganda against migrants votes.
Interview, search and rescue, Simon, has quit his Job in order to save on the Mediterranean sea refugees. Why?
And also in humans, where the fate of the Refugees is actually close to, a habituation effect: There is no shortage of shocking images, Figures and stories, but when the recipient is less and less. Polls show the dulling according to a Sea-Watch in order to survey the extent of the refugee catastrophe is 85 percent of Germans are not aware of.
Seven of the participants had to cancel the Experiment
The rescue organization wants to create with the Experiment, more understanding. In fact, the mood in the documentary seems oppressive, the reports of the participants move. And yet, everything remains only indirectly, as long as you remain on the good, safe side of the screen. Even for the participants of the experiment, the boundary has experience a net: The Mediterranean sea is in this case only a hall in Schleswig-Holstein, the waves are mechanically generated.
Nevertheless, several of the participants broke out on the boat in tears, many were plagued by Nausea, Sea-Watch. Seven of them withdrew from the Experiment prematurely. But they had to leave, only to fall into the water and then were picked up by rescue divers, then your safe life went on. For refugees, this means death. Because, as it says at the end of the documentary: “What is happening on the Mediterranean sea, is not an Experiment.”
