Italy has threatened to close its ports to aid groups rescuing migrants off Libya’s coast as it struggles to cope with the highest rate of rescues this year, officials said.
The country’s representative to the EU, Maurizio Massari, said the situation ‘has become unsustainable’ as it emerged 10,000 refugees have tried to cross the Mediterranean in the last four days.
Italy’s former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said citizens were ‘exasperated’ and a fresh strategy was needed.
Massari is said to have met the European Commissioner for Immigration, Dimitri Avramopoulos, to insist that the latest wave of people saved from rickety vessels could not go on.
Rome is threatening to deny the landing of boats that have picked up people setting off from crisis-hit Libya and are not flying Italian flags, the reports said.
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Italy was ‘asking certain European countries to stop looking the other way, because we cannot go on like this’.
The threat follows a poor performance by the ruling centre-left Democratic Party (PD) at local elections this weekend, where it lost heavily to the centre-right Forza Italia and the anti-immigrant Northern League party.
The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), which is running neck-and-neck in national polls with the PD, has followed the Northern League in demanding a stop to new arrivals – particularly in the capital Rome.
‘I wonder whether the proposed measure is legal at all,’ said Mattia Toaldo, an expert on Libya at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
‘Denying docking rights to ships who have rescued people in distress at high seas (a legal obligation for all vessels, including commercial ships) sounds dubious.
‘It sounds more like a desperate way to get Europe’s attention than a real measure that can be implemented,’ he said.
More than 10,000 people were pulled to safety between Sunday and Tuesday off Libya – including 5,000 on Monday alone.
While the Italian coastguard coordinates the operations, many ships sailing under foreign flags take part including several aid ships chartered by privately-funded organisations from France or Germany.
The NGOs have already faced a fierce campaign to discredit them this year after an Italian prosecutor alleged their collusion with smugglers – an accusation they said was political and designed to thwart their rescue efforts.
Critics have said the NGOs attract traffickers by sailing close to the Libyan coast. They insist they have no choice, because smugglers put the migrants out to sea in flimsy vessels that sink as they reach international waters.
The Maltese organisation Moas was the first to launch a private rescue vessel in the summer of 2014.
By last summer close to ten different NGOs, financed mainly through private donations, were taking part in migrant relief operations off Libya.
Those with one or more boats in the area in 2016 included German NGOs Sea Watch, Sea Eye and Jugend Rettet, as well as the Dutch Lifeboat Project, the Spanish Proactiva Open Arms and Moas.
France-based Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also carries out rescues with two aid vessels, one of which is run in partnership with SOS Mediterranee.
Rome has complained for years about being abandoned to face alone the worst migrant crisis since World War II and has repeatedly demanded Europe do more to take in migrants setting off from the coast of Libya.
Over 73,300 migrants have landed in Italy since January, a 14 percent increase from the same period last year.
Just over 2,000 people have died attempting the crossing or are missing, feared drowned, since the beginning of 2017, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
Refugee charities are paying people smugglers to ferry migrants to their rescue boats patrolling off Libya, it was claimed earlier this month. A senior Libyan coastguard official told The Mail on Sunday he had evidence that aid agencies were stumping up cash for migrants desperate to reach Europe but who cannot afford to pay ruthless traffickers.Colonel Tarek Shanboor said he had obtained bank details and phone records that proved the charities were making payments to criminal gangs who have put hundreds of thousands of migrants into unseaworthy boats – leading to thousands of deaths each year. Charities patrolling off northern Africa claim they are only there to rescue migrants.But Colonel Shanboor said aid agencies were now encouraging more and more migrants to make the perilous trip. He claimed he had handed evidence of collusion between charities and traffickers to EU border security officials in Brussels, though he refused to go into detail. Refugee charities are paying people smugglers to ferry migrants to their rescue boats patrolling off Libya, it was claimed earlier this month (file picture)Speaking exclusively to the MoS he said: ‘The non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are adding to the crisis by actively encouraging increasing numbers of migrants. Now we have the evidence they are in cahoots with the smugglers. We have evidence the smugglers call the NGOs directly and there are business deals between them.’Col Shanboor claimed charities were paying up £450 for each migrant’s passage. He believes their motives are well-meaning but misguided.Col Shanboor’s extraordinary accusation comes just months after an internal EU report revealed charity officials in boats were in direct contact with migrant vessels and even gave them precise directions to find rescue vessels. This year has already seen record numbers of migrants attempting the perilous crossing from Libya to Lampedusa and Sicily, turning Italy into the front line of the crisis.A Sicilian prosecutor, meanwhile, has launched an investigation into alleged collusion between traffickers and charities and accused NGOs of fuelling the migrant crisis in Europe. Charities operating in the central Mediterranean all denied claims they had any contact with smugglers and dismissed suggestions of payment.
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