In this week’s Maine Sunday Telegram I profile Tim Harrison, a veteran Medecins sans Frontiers nurse from Union, Maine who has spent decades saving lives in some of the most dangerous and unstable parts of the world. Now he’s on an MSF rescue ship off the coast of Libya, saving thousands of migrants fleeing war, torture, and sex trafficking in their home countries, which are spread across the Eastern Hemisphere.
European governments, for their part, tried to shut them down, refusing scheduled refueling stops or even threatening prosecution (because the rescuers don’t return migrants to Libya, the lawless country they are fleeing from in overloaded rubber rafts.)
Details in the story.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.