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MIGRANT CRISIS

Italy’s coastguard battles to save over 3,000 migrants at sea

Italy's coastguard said it was trying on Monday to rescue 1,200 more migrants aboard two boats on the Mediterranean Sea after saving about 2,000 already over the weekend.

Published: 10 April 2023 17:35 CEST
A migrant reacts aboard the Ocean Viking ship in the Mediterranean Sea, after being rescued by NGO SOS Mediterranee
A migrant reacts aboard the Ocean Viking ship in the Mediterranean Sea, after being rescued by NGO SOS Mediterranee in October 2022. On Monday, Italy's coastguard said it was working to save thousands of migrants at sea. Photo: Vincenzo CIRCOSTA / AFP

The rescue of about 800 migrants aboard an overloaded fishing boat was ongoing, the coastguard said.

The boat was located in Italian waters more than 120 miles (190 kilometres) southeast of Syracuse, in Sicily.

The operation — involving three patrol boats and a merchant ship, all coordinated by the “Nave Peluso” coastguard boat — was described as “complex” due to the overcrowding.

A second fishing vessel carrying 400 migrants and also in Italian waters had been intercepted by the coastguard ship “Diciotti” 170 miles southeast of Capo Passero, at the southernmost tip of Sicily.

Two merchant vessels were assisting in that rescue, the coastguard said.

Alarm Phone, a hotline used by migrants in distress, said on Twitter on Monday that the people on board were “in panic”.

Alarm Phone tweeted on Sunday that, according to a woman onboard, the boat that had set off from Libya was missing its captain, and several people onboard needed medical care, including a child, a pregnant woman and a disabled person.

Three people in distress had jumped overboard and one fell unconscious, it wrote. 

READ ALSO: ‘More will drown’: Italy accused of breaking international law on migrant rescues

The coastguard said that besides the ongoing operations about 2,000 people had been saved since Friday in “a large number of rescues”.

Thousands of migrants have landed on Italy’s shores, especially the island of Lampedusa, in recent days after making the dangerous journey aboard flimsy vessels from North Africa. 

On Sunday, German aid group ResQship said at least two migrants had died and about 20 others were missing after their vessel sank overnight Saturday to Sunday after leaving Tunisia.

READ ALSO: Anger as Italy accused of illegally rejecting migrants rescued at sea

ResQship told AFP its charity boat had rescued 22 people from the shipwreck and took them to Lampedusa, helped by “good cooperation” with the Italian coastguard.

According to interior ministry figures, more than 14,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year –significantly more than the 5,300 who had arrived over the same period in 2022 and the 4,300 during 2021.

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MIGRANT CRISIS

Italy joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

Italy is one of 15 EU member states who have sent a joint letter to the European Commission demanding a further tightening of the bloc's asylum policy, which will make it easier to transfer undocumented migrants to third countries, such as Rwanda, including when they are rescued at sea.

Published: 17 May 2024 11:59 CEST
Italy joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

The countries presented their joint stance in a letter dated May 15th to the European Commission, which was made public on Thursday.

It was sent less than a month before European Parliament elections across the 27-nation European Union, in which far-right anti-immigration parties are forecast to make gains.

Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania signed the letter.

In it, they ask the European Union’s executive arm to “propose new ways and solutions to prevent irregular migration to Europe”.

They want the EU to toughen its asylum and migration pact, which introduces tighter border controls and seeks to expedite the deportation of rejected asylum-seekers.

The pact, to be operational from 2026, will speed up the vetting of people arriving without documents and establish new border detention centres.

The 15 countries also want to see mechanisms to detect and intercept migrant boats and take them “to a predetermined place of safety in a partner country outside the EU, where durable solutions for those migrants could be found”.

They said it should be easier to send asylum seekers to third countries while their requests for protection are assessed.

They cited as a model a controversial deal Italy has struck with Albania, under which thousands of asylum-seekers picked up at sea can be taken to holding camps in the non-EU Balkan country as their cases are processed.

READ ALSO: Italy approves controversial Albanian migrant deal

The European Commission said it would study the letter, though a spokeswoman, Anitta Hipper, added that “all our work and focus is set now on the implementation” of the migration and asylum pact.

Differences with UK-Rwanda model

EU law says people entering the bloc without documents can be sent to an outside country where they could have requested asylum – so long as that country is deemed safe and the applicant has a genuine link with it.

That condition differentiates it from a scheme set up by non-EU Britain under which irregular arrivals will be denied the right to request asylum in the UK and sent instead to Rwanda.

Rights groups accuse the African country – ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Kagame since the end of the 1994 genocide that killed around 800,000 people – of cracking down on free speech and political opposition.

The 15 nations said they want the EU to make deals with third countries along main migration routes, citing the example of the arrangement it made with Turkey in 2016 to take in Syrian refugees fleeing war.

Camille Le Coz, associate director of the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, said: “In legal terms, these models pose many questions and are very costly in terms of resource mobilisation and at the operational level.”

The opening date for migrant reception centres in Albania set up under the deal with Italy had been delayed, she noted.

With the June 6th-9th EU elections leading to a new European Commission, the proposals put forward by the 15 countries would go into the inbox of the next commission for it to weigh them, she said.

She also noted that EU heavyweights France, Germany and Spain had not signed onto the letter.

“For certain member countries, the priority really is the implementation of the pact, and that in itself is already a huge task,” Le Coz said.

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