Tuesday, May 13, 2014
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Catania (Italy) (AFP) - Italy threatened to send asylum-seekers across Europe on Tuesday without more help to prevent arrivals as a warship bearing the 17 victims and 206 survivors of the latest migrant boat shipwreck headed for Sicily.Ten hearses and medical personnel could be seen waiting in the port of Catania where the frigate was expected later on Tuesday, as officials struggled to find room in badly overcrowded immigrant centres in the region.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano urged more assistance from Europe for border patrols, threatening that otherwise Italy would defy EU asylum rules and allow migrants to travel on to other countries in Europe.
"We'll just let them go," he said, although the Dublin Convention states that migrants must remain in the country in which they arrive and make their asylum application until their status as refugees is approved.
Alfano also said the EU should intervene in Libya to stop the migrants from leaving in the first place and called for the EU's Frontex border agency to be moved from Poland to Italy to improve coordination.
The ministry reported 36,000 migrants landing so far in 2014 -- many from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria -- compared to 42,925 for all of 2013, 13,267 in 2012 and 63,000 in 2011 at the height of the Arab Spring revolts.
Hundreds, and sometimes thousands, drown every year.
Countries in southern Europe complain they are shouldering the burden of migrant arrivals but northern European states take in more confirmed refugees, while the EU's border agency Frontex is stretched thin.
"Europe is leaving us on our own," Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has promised to make immigration a top priority during Italy's EU presidency this year, said on ReteQuattro television after Monday's disaster.
"It can't save governments and banks and then let mothers and children die," the prime minister said.
The Italian navy on Tuesday said a rescue operation involving warships, coast guard and border patrol vessels as well as merchant ships had been completed.
The UN refugee agency said that 12 of the victims were women, three were children and two were men.
It estimated 170 people have died at sea trying to reach Europe this year off Greece, Italy and Libya as well as in international waters.
UNHCR said search and rescue operations should be "further strengthened" and asked for the international community to find legal alternatives like resettlement to stop refugees from making dangerous journeys.
- 'Nearly didn't make it' -
Italian media cited coast guards as saying that around 400 asylum-seekers may have been on board the boat, which would leave dozens still unaccounted for.
But Mauro Casinghini, the director of rescue services in Italy for the Order of Malta, which had a doctor and two nurses assisting survivors with the coast guard at the scene, said there were some 250 people on the boat.
He said most of the migrants on the rickety fishing boat, which most likely departed from Libyan shores, were from Eritrea, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria.
Casinghini described to AFP scenes from the shipwreck as recounted to him by the doctor, Antonella Godino.
A Somali woman, Amina, was found gripping a piece of wood floating in the water and holding on to her four-month old baby after the boat capsized and sank in international waters between Libya and Italy.
"She nearly didn't make it. The waves were lapping at her chin and she was barely holding her baby above the water," he cited Godino as saying.
"When we held the little baby, we were afraid his heartbeat would not come back. We dried him, wrapped him up in a thermal blanket and put him in the warmest place we could find -- next to the engine room."
The La Repubblica daily said the migrant boat did not sink right away and rescuers managed to board it to evacuate people before it capsized at around 1100 GMT.
"They managed to rescue dozens of people who were terrified below deck or gripping the handrail or in the water trying to stay afloat," the report said.
The Italian navy launched a large-scale operation to rescue migrants and deter traffickers following two separate shipwreck tragedies in October 2013 in which more than 400 people drowned off Italy's shores.