DThe new government in Rome apparently wants to return to the policy of closing ports for private rescue ships in the Mediterranean, as was the case for former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini from June 2018 to September 2019. The non-party Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi reiterated in an interview with the newspaper “La Stampa” on Wednesday that the German ship “Humanity 1” and the Norwegian “Ocean Viking”, which are currently undertaking rescue operations in the central Mediterranean, are not in line with European and Italian security and border control norms operated.
Above all, he wanted to remind of the responsibility of the flag states of the ships concerned, said Piantedosi and hinted that the Italian authorities could refuse the two ships entry into Italian territorial waters and Italian ports.
The organization SOS Méditerranée announced on Wednesday afternoon that the “Ocean Viking” had picked up around 60 more men, women and unaccompanied minors in international waters near the Italian island of Lampedusa from an overcrowded wooden boat in distress on Wednesday night. After previous rescues, there are around 200 boat migrants on board. According to the German aid organization SOS Humanity, the “Humanity 1” took 180 people on board by Wednesday. The crews and operators of the rescue ships had not received any official notification of the closure of the ports or territorial waters by Wednesday.
Meanwhile, ships of the Italian coast guard took around 1,160 boat migrants on board their ships off Sicily on Wednesday. Two people were found dead, the Coast Guard said. In the meantime, another 500 migrants landed in Lampedusa, who reached the southernmost Italian island in the Mediterranean under their own power in rubber dinghies and wooden boats. Almost 80,000 boat migrants have been registered so far this year, according to the Interior Ministry. In the same period last year, it was almost 52,800.
In recent years, about twelve percent of boat migrants in the central Mediterranean have reached the Italian coast on board private rescue ships. 88 percent land directly in Italy in their refugee boats or are rescued by the coast guard from distress at sea. Since the beginning of the year, 1,762 boat people have been reported missing in the Mediterranean Sea.
