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MIGRANT CRISIS

Two migrants dead and 20 missing in Med near Italy: NGO

At least two migrants have died and around 20 others are missing after their vessel sank in the Mediterranean between Tunisia and Italy, German aid group ResQship told AFP Sunday.

Published: 10 April 2023 07:36 CEST
A general view of the so-called migrant
A general view of the so-called migrant "hotspot" operational processing facility on the southern Italian Pelagie Island of Lampedusa. Thousands of migrants have been taken there in the last few days. Photo: Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP

The group’s ship, the Nadir, rescued another 22 people and took them to the Italian island of Lampedusa, said Stefen Seyfert of ResQship. Their boat sank overnight Saturday to Sunday.

Among those rescued were men, women and children from Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Mali, Ingo Werth, captain of the Nadir, told AFP.

A pregnant woman was among those saved, while the boat’s crew also recovered the bodies of two men.

In all, around 40 migrants were on the boat when it left Sfax in Tunisia, said Seyfert.

“We did everything we could to save more people, but didn’t manage to,” he added. He acknowledged the “good cooperation” with the Italian coastguard.

According to the Italian news agency ANSA, nine women were among the survivors. It put the number of missing at 18.

The migrants are believed to have paid 3,000 Tunisian dinars (about $980) each to get passage on the vessel.

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

Describing their operation earlier Sunday on Twitter, ResQship said that when they arrived at the scene of the wreck, the migrants had already been in the water for about two hours.

An ‘unspeakable tragedy’

As well as rescuing 22 people, they had recovered two bodies, they said.

“This is an unspeakable tragedy that could — and should — have been prevented by a humanitarian approach to migration instead of barb-wiring the European borders,” the group added.

READ ALSO: Italy impounds Banksy-funded migrant rescue boat under new rules

In the last few days, thousands of migrants have landed on Lampedusa, which lies only about 150 kilometres (90 miles) from the Tunisian coast.

This incident is the latest in a series of disasters in the Mediterranean Sea, where dozens of migrants attempting the crossing have drowned and dozens more have had to be rescued from flimsy vessels.

They are increasingly being used as a springboard for the perilous attempts by West Africans, Sudanese and others to reach safety and better lives in Europe.

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

Italy has been complaining for some time about the numbers of migrants arriving on its shores.

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 who arrived in 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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