Displaying items by tag: Lampedusa

The Aurora, a former RNLI lifeboat, was sold to the British charity Search and Rescue Relief. After they had rescued 85 people in a sinking skiff off the north African coast on 29 May, Italian authorities gave them permission to land on Lampedusa Island. Two days later, the UK’s maritime and coastguard agency gave the charity notice that prevented Aurora going back to sea, claiming it was operating ‘beyond the geographical limitations’ of the Rescue Boat Code under which it is certified. The Aurora, which is operated by the international non-governmental rescue body Sea Watch, has been stranded at the island for nearly a month. 45 people have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean in that time. The ban comes after the European Court of Human Rights stopped asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East in the UK being sent to Rwanda. Migrants from these countries hoping to reach the UK via the English Channel must first cross the Mediterranean.

The Italian coastguard rescued 539 migrants crammed onto a decrepit fishing boat off the tiny southern Italian island of Lampedusa. A Médecins Sans Frontières nurse said the passengers included three women and several unaccompanied minors in the dangerously packed boat which would have travelled about 300 kilometres from the Libyan coast to Lampedusa. At least twenty of the migrants who were examined by medical personnel had scars from torture. ‘They had burn wounds, firearms wounds. They were very worn down, some were dehydrated.’ Local reports suggest some of them had been falsely imprisoned in Libya. Italian prosecutors have opened an inquiry into what may have happened. The nurse said she didn’t know how long the fishing boat had been at sea, but they had spent weeks or even months in Libya awaiting passage in traffickers’ boats in hopes of reaching Europe.

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.