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MIGRANT CRISIS

Italy’s coastguard races to rescue 1,300 migrants in the Mediterranean

Italian coastguard authorities were rushing to save some 1,300 migrants in the Central Mediterranean on Friday, just two weeks after a deadly shipwreck killed more than 70 people.

Published: 10 March 2023 18:11 CET
Italian coast guard at sea
Italy's coastguard was involved in emergency rescue operations on Friday, March 10th. Photo by Alessandro FUCARINI / AFP

Photographs released by the coastguard showed three overcrowded boats heading towards the southern region of Calabria.

The massive rescue operation came as Italy’s right-wing government defended itself from accusations that it failed to prevent a deadly shipwreck that killed over 70 people last month.

Friday’s operations were “particularly complex due to the large number of people present on board the drifting boats”, the coastguard said.

The navy said one of its ships was “proceeding at maximum speed” to help the coastguard, which it said was “in difficulty”.

READ ALSO: Italian PM vows to crack down on traffickers at migrant shipwreck site

Rescuers were assisting one boat with an estimated 500 people on board some 70 nautical miles (129.64 km) south off Crotone, the coastguard said.

Others were assisting two other boats further south, off Roccella Ionica.

At least 73 people died in a shipwreck near Crotone in the early hours of February 26th, after an overcrowded boat which had set off from Turkey sank in stormy weather.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has recently denied responsibility for the disaster amid accusations it treated the boat rescue as a law enforcement issue rather than a humanitarian emergency.

READ ALSO: ‘Political stunt’: Protests as Italian ministers visit deadly migrant shipwreck site

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which won national elections last year, has promised to curb arrivals, but Italy has recently seen a sharp rise in the number of migrants attempting to reach its shores.

The interior ministry says more than 17,500 people have arrived by sea so far this year – almost three times the number for the same period last year.

The number of arrivals through the Central Mediterranean route rose by 116 percent in January and February compared to the same period last year, EU border agency Frontex said Friday.

And the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, which sits some 113 kilometres off the North-African coast, recorded 41 boat arrivals on Thursday, a record number for one day, according to Italian media reports.

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POLITICS

Italy considering ‘reciprocal plan’ to swap refugees with US

Italy and the United States are drawing up a plan to exchange a small number of refugees in a reported bid to deter illegal migration, an Italian government source said on Friday.

Published: 31 May 2024 17:13 CEST
Italy considering 'reciprocal plan' to swap refugees with US

“A reciprocal plan is currently being studied, according to which the US would host refugees present in Libya who want to go to Europe,” a source in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said.

At the same time, “some European Mediterranean states would host a few dozen South American refugees”, the source said.

The source was responding to a report by CBS News in the United States, which suggested that President Joe Biden’s administration was also in talks with Greece.

CBS said refugees would be selected at immigration offices set up by the United States last year in four Latin American countries.

It said 500 people could be sent both to Italy and Greece, though the source in Meloni’s office said that figure was “completely misleading”.

Rome is looking to accept “about 20 Venezuelan refugees of Italian origin” who would be able to work in Italy, the source said.

The plan would be “very advantageous for Italy and the European states of first arrival”, the source said, without elaborating.

A separate source at Italy’s interior ministry said Rome would “never assent to the relocation of hundreds of people on its national territory in view of its already considerable efforts in receiving migrants”.

In Athens, Greek migration minister Dimitris Kairidis dismissed the report.

“The CBS report is untrue. There is neither an agreement nor a request from the US to resettle legal immigrants in Greece,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

More than 2.4 million migrants crossed the southern US border in 2023 alone, largely from Central America and Venezuela, as they flee poverty, violence and natural disasters exacerbated by climate change.

Meanwhile Italy is among the first ports of call for migrants crossing from North Africa into Europe, recording almost 160,000 irregular arrivals by boat across the central Mediterranean last year.

Meloni’s government has made stopping irregular migration into Italy a priority.

It has sought to speed up asylum processing requests while signing new deals with departure countries.

It has also tried to deter migrants by setting up a new processing centre in Albania and limiting the activities of charities that operate rescue boats in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nearly 21,000 migrants have landed on Italy’s shores so far this year, compared to more than 50,000 in the same period last year, according to government data.

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