Showing posts with label Joseph Muscat. Show all posts

Saturday, June 30, 2018

BREAKING: Italy, Malta in fresh stand-off over boat carrying 59 migrants

July 1, 2018 04H:23 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Rome

ROME - A rescue boat saved 59 migrants at sea off Libya on Saturday and Italy immediately said it would not welcome them, setting up a fresh stand-off with Malta and adding to tensions among European governments over immigration.

The migrants on board Open Arms, a boat run by the Spanish Proactiva Open Arms charity, include five women and four children, said Riccardo Gatti, head of the organization’s Italian mission.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing League Party, said there would be no exception to his policy of refusing to let humanitarian boats dock in Italy and added that Malta was the nearest port of call.

“They can forget about arriving in an Italian port,” he tweeted.

inRead invented by Teads

Maltese Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia, shot back on Twitter that the rescue had taken place closer to the Italian island of Lampedusa than to Malta.

He told Salvini to “stop giving false information and involving Malta without any reason.”

Gatti told Italian radio broadcaster Radio Radicale that the migrants on board included Palestinians, Syrians and Guineans and were all in good condition.

He later told us at Reuters that Open Arms had received no authorization from any country to dock, and did not know where it would take the migrants.

On Wednesday Malta let the German charity ship Lifeline dock in Valletta with 230 migrants on board, after it was stuck at sea for almost a week following Italy’s decision to close its ports to rescue vessels run by non-government organizations.

However, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the gesture was a one-time “ad-hoc” resolution to the crisis and the following day Malta announced it would not allow any more charity boats to dock.

European Union leaders on Friday came to a hard-fought agreement over migration that Salvini and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said was positive for Italy.

However, the agreement does not oblige other EU states to share the burden of sea rescues.

More than 650,000 migrants have come ashore in Italy since 2014, mostly after being rescued at sea off the Libyan coast by private and public groups. Italy is sheltering about 170,000, but the number of arrivals has plummeted this year.

Despite the decline in arrivals, there are still daily stories of disasters as migrants make the perilous crossing from Africa to Europe. The Libyan coastguard said around 100 were thought to have drowned off Tripoli on Friday.

That tragedy raised the political temperature in Italy, where the government dismissed opposition accusations that it was responsible due to its crackdown on NGOs, and said the best way to save lives was by preventing departures from Libya.

“The fewer people set sail, the fewer die,” Salvini said.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Migrant rescue ship Lifeline enters Malta port

June 27, 2018 22H:34 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, France24, Valletta, Malta

Latest update : 2018-06-27

A rescue boat stranded for nearly a week in the Mediterranean with over 200 migrants docked in Malta Wednesday, after a deal was struck between a group of EU states to take them in.

Lifeline, a vessel for the German charity Mission Lifeline, has been waiting to be allocated a port for six days after rescuing 234 migrants off the coast of Libya last Thursday.

The migrants on board will be distributed among eight EU nations who have agreed to take them in, Maltese Prime minister Joseph Muscat said Wednesday.

So far Malta, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium and France have agreed to welcome some of the migrants.

ADVERTISING

inRead invented by Teads

Muscat said that after the migrants had disembarked, the Lifeline ship would be impounded in order to carry out an investigation into its legal status and actions on the night of the rescue.

However, Muscat warned that the situation was "unique" and could not be considered a blueprint for handling future rescues.

Mission Lifeline has come under fire from EU leaders who accuse it of contravening international law by rescuing the migrants when the Libyan coastguard was already intervening.

Belgium and Luxembourg said they would each take 15 of the Lifeline migrants. The Netherlands will take 20.

Theo Francken, Belgian minster for asylum and migration, tweeted that Belgium would help Malta but that it must be one-off operation.

Many passengers were suffering from seasickness and three were in the ship's hospital facility, according to Lifeline. One passenger has been evacuated, leaving 233 currently on board.

The eight EU nations agreed to take in a share of those on board after days of bickering over the migrants' fate.

The NGO's co-founder Axel Steier blamed Germany's failure to participate in the deal on the country's hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.

Seehofer has taken a strong stance on immigration and given German Chancellor Angela Merkel an ultimatum to curb arrivals to Germany.

Playing into smugglers' hands

Mission Lifeline has hit back at criticism levelled at it by EU leaders.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the charity had contravened "all the rules" by rescuing the migrants when the Libya coastguard was already intervening.

Macron accused Mission Lifeline of "playing into the hands of smugglers".

But the charity denied breaking the law in a statement on Wednesday.

"There have been a number of false accusations that Lifeline ignores orders by different MRCCs (maritime rescue coordination centres)," said Steier.

Lifeline argued the migrants would not be safe in Libya, where they have faced abuse and rape in holding centres, and that returning them there would breach international refugee law.

"The only order the ship denied was to hand over people to the so-called Libyan coastguard, as this would have been not in line with the Geneva Refugee Convention and therefore criminal."

'The doors aren't open'

The vessel's fate had been hanging in the balance since last week as bloc members remained at loggerheads over how to handle the influx of people trying to reach the continent.

Malta and Italy initially refused to take in the migrants, but on Tuesday Valletta agreed to let the ship dock when other EU states confirmed they would help.

Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had hailed the news that a second migrant ship he had turned away was being taken in elsewhere.

Earlier this month, Rome rejected the Aquarius ship carrying 630 migrants, forcing it to eventually dock in Spain.

"For women and children really fleeing the war the doors are open, for everyone else they are not!" Salvini tweeted.

The decision by Italy's new hardline government to turn away rescue vessels has plunged Europe into a political crisis over how to collectively handle the huge numbers of people migrating from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Italy and Malta say they are unfairly bearing the brunt of the new arrivals, while other European countries are urging more forceful policies to block their entry.

Sixteen EU leaders held emergency talks in Brussels on Sunday in a bid to break the longstanding deadlock over who should take in the migrants.

A full EU summit is scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

Date created : 2018-06-27

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Italy says Malta will take in migrant rescue ship

June 26, 2018 20H:32 GMT/UTC/ZULU TIME

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters, Rome

ROME - Malta will let the rescue ship Lifeline dock after Italy refused it entry, ending the vessel’s near week-long wait in the Mediterranean with more than 230 migrants on board, Italy’s prime minister said on Tuesday.

FILE PHOTO - Migrants are seen on the deck of the Mission Lifeline rescue boat in the central Mediterranean Sea, June 21, 2018. Picture taken June 21, 2018. Hermine Poschmann/Misson-Lifeline/Handout via REUTERS

The offer resolved a standoff with Rome, where a new populist government, co-led by the anti-immigrant League party, has shaken European migration policy by announcing it will no longer let in ships operated by charities that rescue migrants.

The dangerous sea route to Italy has been the main route into Europe for asylum seekers from Africa, many thousands of whom have died at sea over the past few years. Lifeline said overnight one person had to be evacuated for medical reasons and that general conditions on board were worsening.

Mission Lifeline, the aid group that runs the ship, welcomed Malta’s offer but said on Twitter “we now need EU countries to welcome the people.”

Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said his Maltese counterpart Joseph Muscat told him about his decision in a phone call.

The Lifeline has already spent five days stuck in international waters. After reaching Malta, the migrants will be divided up among European Union members who are willing to take them in, Conte said. He did not say when it would arrive.

“Italy will do its part and welcome a portion of the migrants who are on board Lifeline in the hope that other European countries do the same,” he said.

Conte said the ship would then be impounded and its captain investigated over reports that he ignored instructions to let the Libyan coastguard pick up the migrants.

The Maltese government issued a statement opening up to the possibility of allowing the ship to dock, but not confirming it, and confirming possible legal action against its crew.

“In the event that the vessel enters Maltese ports, there shall be investigations and possible action taken in regards to the MV Lifeline,” it said.

An ad hoc agreement was being negotiated to distribute the migrants among willing EU countries, the statement said, adding that four member states had already confirmed their participation, while another two were considering it.

It did not name the countries.

AQUARIUS

Immigration has become an urgent political issue across Europe in recent weeks, since the new government took power in Italy and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition split over the issue.

Europe took in more than a million migrants, mainly asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, in 2015. Since then, the numbers have fallen sharply.

One main route, from Turkey to Greece, was largely shut in 2016, and numbers have fallen to tens of thousands so far this year, a 77 percent decline on 2017, when almost 120,000 came to Italy.

But the issue still sharply divides European governments and has led to a surge in anti-immigrant and far right political movements across the continent.

Countries that have taken in large numbers of asylum seekers want other EU countries to share the burden. Eastern European states, which have taken in among the smallest numbers so far, refuse to accept more and have turned the issue into a central focus for nationalist governments.

Leaders of the European Union failed on Sunday to come up with a joint position to tackle migration and will try again at a summit at the end of this week.

Also on Tuesday, Malta denied charity ship Aquarius access to its port for re-supply and a crew change, without providing any explanation for the decision, humanitarian group Doctors without Borders (MSF) said on Twitter.

A private Danish cargo ship, the Alexander Maersk, carrying more than 100 rescued migrants and not covered by Italy’s ban on charity ships, was permitted to dock on Tuesday in the port of Pozzallo on the Italian island of Sicily.

Biodun Iginla, BBC News