Displaying items by tag: Matteo Salvini

Deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini has banned the Alan Kurdi, carrying forty migrants, from entering Italian waters. The boat, run by a German charity, had hoped to dock at Lampedusa. This rescue mission comes shortly after over one hundred migrants disembarked from a different boat in Sicily, but only after a new deal was reached with the EU to distribute those on board between five nations - Germany, France, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Ireland. A Sea-Eye spokesperson said migrant rescue boats had to respond immediately to situations, as soon as there is an emergency at sea, and political calculations should not play any role whatsoever. It is critical that all migrants be allowed to dock at Lampedusa to receive future treatment. In July authorities arrested the captain of another rescue ship after it docked there without prior permission.

A German humanitarian group operating a rescue boat with 42 rescued migrants on board was in limbo in the Mediterranean for two weeks after Italy ordered it not to enter its territory. The captain ran out of options and turned the boat towards Lampedusa. He said, ‘I know what I'm risking, but the survivors are exhausted. I'm taking them to safety.’ Italy's hard-line anti-migration interior minister Matteo Salvini vowed fines, arrests, and a boat seizure. He said that other European countries should take responsibility for the migrants; in this case Germany, where the NGO has its headquarters, and the Netherlands, because the vessel flew a Dutch flag. On 27 June the boat reached Lampedusa and law-enforcement officers boarded it. By then the migrants were ‘desperate’. Salvini wants Italy to ignore European rules and refrain from registering and identifying future new arrivals.

In a dusty Roma camp, life goes on despite threats of an ethnically-targeted census and deportation by Italy's new hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini, who recently refused to take in a rescue ship carrying 630 migrants. He intends to throw out Roma people without legal status. His call was blasted as ‘unconstitutional’ by rights groups and criticised by members of his own government. Some are drawing parallels with measures targeting Jews under fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini. ‘If Salvini comes here, we will welcome him with kindness. He needs to see how we live’, says Habibi Mehmedi, a teenager in a camp outside Rome's main ring-road - away from the eyes of the office workers and tourists. ‘Some do bad things, but most of us are Italian and have not committed any crimes.’ Despite the Roma community making up at most 0.3% of Italy's population, they are subject to extreme hostility from the general public. The Joshua Project states that the Italian Roma people’s primary religion is Christianity.