The External Surveillance System (SIVE) presented with great fanfare in Lanzarote just three years ago is starting to resemble a Gila joke. And it is that detecting boats it will not detect, but it is certainly taking many doses of ...
The External Surveillance System (SIVE) presented with great fanfare in Lanzarote just three years ago is starting to resemble a Gila joke. And it is that detecting boats it will not detect, but it is certainly taking many doses of humor. Thus, at least, the indignation produced by a millionaire investment that has not served for anything is better borne. Or for very little.
When the SIVE was launched, the toughest stage of boat arrivals had already passed. However, when there are upticks like the one being experienced now, with almost one boat a day on the coasts of Lanzarote, the system is completely exposed.
After months of silence from the Civil Guard and the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands and Lanzarote, while boats were arriving without being detected, the news is finally on the table: at least one of the system's radars is not working. Without a doubt, it was obvious that something was failing, but until now they had resisted confirming it, and even refused to make statements on the subject.
Now, when newspapers, radios and televisions have already managed to confirm that there are serious flaws in the SIVE, the first pronouncements finally arrive, through the Government Delegation. Although instead of clearly explaining what is happening, they try to minimize the problem and affirm that in "a matter of days" it will be resolved.
Obviously, letting the news that the system is not working transcend entails a danger because it can become a call effect on the African coasts. However, the silence could be understood if we were talking about a failure of a few days or even a few weeks. But when we have been months without finding out who is approaching our coasts until they are already on land, that excuse is too poor.
Unless they intend to leave the SIVE as a simple deterrent placebo effect, what they should have done a long time ago is to solve the problems it may have or implement other complementary systems, and not say now, when they can no longer hide the news, that the problems will be solved in "a few days".
Evidently, there are issues in which security may be above the right to information of citizens, but that does not justify everything. And even less, the millstones that it is trying to make us swallow in recent days. Although only one of the boats that arrived in Lanzarote in the last week was detected at sea, the message they are trying to transmit (now that they do talk about the issue) is that in reality all have been located. And that, no matter how much they try to say it to cover up the system's failures, sounds even worse.
Wednesday morning in Famara. The Local Police of Teguise receives a call from a neighbor warning of the arrival of a boat. When the agents move to the place, and initially detain two immigrants, they contact the Civil Guard and they tell them that they already knew that the boat was arriving. Did they know and not notify other security forces, as the usual protocol of action in these cases dictates? Did they know and fail to intercept it before it reached the coast? Is the SIVE really an agent on a mountain with binoculars and a bicycle?
Friday, October 15. A boat manages to evade the system and, when a neighbor warns of its arrival, the Civil Guard says that it has deployed a tracking team to locate the immigrants. That same afternoon, a fisherman has to call again from the same area. He has found a "small detail" that, apparently, had gone unnoticed by the "tracking team". No less than 300 kilos of hashish.
If it were not for the seriousness of the issue, it would be comical. "The SIVE is not working" or "IF YOU SEE a boat, notify", are just some of the jokes that have begun to become common, and soon we will imagine Zapatero or his representatives in the Canary Islands calling the African coasts, in the style of "is it the enemy?", to ask what time the boat intended to leave, and telling him that this morning is not good for them, because the device that detects them has broken.
However, behind all this nonsense there is a lot at stake. On the one hand, borders over which there is evidently not enough control, and which are a real sieve for anyone who wants to come, whether they are immigrants in search of a better life, or drug traffickers or anything else. And of course, there are also lives at stake.
The failures of the SIVE that have now been put on the table are not really something new. In fact, the greatest tragedy that the coasts of Lanzarote have experienced, with the dramatic shipwreck of a boat in Los Cocoteros, occurred when this system was supposedly already working. However, it was not detected either.
Then there was already talk that there are "shadow zones" that the radars do not detect, although the official version, provided by Rubalcaba himself, was that they mistook it for a recreational boat, because it was too close to the coast, and that the bad weather that day at sea made detection difficult. A year and a half later, the excuses are still just as absurd, implausible and bloody.
