The ‘COVID Excuse’: EUropean Border Violence in the Mediterranean Sea

In “The ‘COVID Excuse’: EUropean Border Violence in the Mediterranean Sea,” British scholars Maurice Stierl and Deanna Dadusc—both affiliated with the WatchTheMed Alarm Phone network—examine how COVID-19 public health measures were weaponized to justify intensified border control in the central Mediterranean. Focusing on Italy, Malta, and Libya, they argue that the pandemic served as a pretext for EU member states to expand exclusionary practices under the guise of crisis response. Italy closed its ports, while Malta used emergency public health rhetoric to block disembarkation and outsource pushbacks to private vessels operating covertly. One such incident involved the illegal return of migrants to Libya, resulting in 12 deaths despite the presence of EU surveillance aircraft. The article also details how both countries confined migrants to offshore quarantine ships, with inadequate medical support, where several died or drowned trying to escape.

Stierl and Dadusc situate these actions within a longer history of EU border violence but underscore how COVID-19 narratives enabled states to intensify and legitimize harmful practices. Their work contributes to pandemic storytelling by showing how the language of health crisis was mobilized to obscure human rights violations and deflect accountability. Rather than enhancing public health, these measures produced preventable deaths and prolonged suffering. The article offers a critical intervention into how COVID-19 intersected with racialized border regimes and calls for an end to policies that criminalize mobility and evade rescue obligations in the Mediterranean.