No NGO rescue boats between Libya and Italy

Thousands of migrants risk dying at sea because of a clampdown on NGO rescue ships, which has left the central Mediterranean without humanitarian rescue ships since 26 August, the Guardian reported.  

There has not been any such length of time when humanitarian rescue ships were absent since they began operations in late 2015. After a new far right government’s policies in Italy banned humanitarian rescue ships from the country’s ports, the NGOs operating them have been finding it increasingly difficult to continue their work. Malta soon followed suit and closed its ports to rescue ships rejected by Italy.

Without the NGO boats, the seas off Libya are being patrolled by the Libyan coastguard, which struck a deal with Italy in 2017 to bring those attempting to cross to Europe back to the North African coast. However, once in Libya, migrants are often  put in detention and face inhumane conditions and treatment.

According to figures from the International Organization for Migration (IOM),  2,383 migrants died in shipwrecks in 2017, compared with 100,308 arrivals in Italy. In 2018, with NGO boats under pressure from Maltese and Italian authorities, the number of victims has reached well over 1,500, compared with just 20,319 who have landed in the country.

IOM’s data shows that the death toll among migrants crossing the Mediterranean has fallen in the past year, but the number of those drowning as a proportion of arrivals in Italy has risen sharply in the past few months, with the possibility of dying during the crossing now three times higher.

One week ago, six Tunisian fishermen were arrested at sea and charged for enabling smuggling by the Italian police after their trawler released a small vessel it had been towing with 14 migrants onboard, 24 miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa. The men’s lawyers say they saw a migrant vessel in distress and a common decision was made to tow it to safety in Italian waters, the Guardian reported.

“Rome has managed to get rid of the eyes of the NGOs, who could testify to the abuses of the Libyan coastguard. Today, only merchant vessels and fishermen remain and fortunately some of them continue to respond to the laws of the sea, putting their lives at risk,” said Fulvio Vassallo, an asylum law professor at the University of Palermo.

Meanwhile, during a meeting of African and EU ministers in Vienna to discuss migration, the interior ministers of Italy and Austria have backed a proposal to process the asylum claims of migrants on ships in the Mediterranean.

“For those who manage to make it into a European state’s territorial waters and are then picked up by a ship, we should use the ships to carry out the appropriate checks on whether they deserve protection,” Austrian interior minister Herbert Kickl said during a press conference following the meeting.

“You are well looked after on a ship,” Kickl said and added that the checks “should last a few days” after which those whose chances of being granted asylum in Europe are too low would be denied entry.

“Once people have set foot on the continent, you can only remove them with great difficulty and much expense,” Kickl said.

The Austrian interior minister believes it should be made “impossible to claim asylum except from outside the EU, and that claims be decided outside the EU.”

TMP – 21/09/2018

Photo Caption: The Proactiva Open Arms boat, seen here leaving the port of Barcelona in July is now docked back in the port after Italy banned rescue boats. The NGO which operates it believes it cannot sustain long stays in the open sea, especially as the winter approaches.