Italy refuses safe harbour to charity ship carrying migrants

The Aquarius, run by Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders (MSF), picked up the people in two separate operations and is now in international waters between Italy and Malta.

Malta said on Saturday it would not welcome the ship while Spain said its ports were not the safest destination for the vessel.

More than 650,000 migrants have come to Italy’s shores since 2014, prompting Rome to accuse its EU peers of not sharing the burden of caring for those who arrive on the bloc’s southern border.

The Aquarius spent nine days at sea in June after Italy’s new populist government took office and shut its ports to all humanitarian boats, calling them a “taxi service” and accusing them of helping people smugglers — charges the charities deny.

“It can go where it wants, not in Italy!” far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said of the Aquarius on Twitter on Monday, mentioning France, Germany, Britain or Malta as destinations.

“Stop human traffickers and their accomplices,” he wrote.

Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli, who oversees ports and the coast guard, said the ship’s flag country, which is Gibraltar, should take responsibility.

“At this point, the United Kingdom should assume its responsibility to safeguard the castaways,” Toninelli said on Twitter.

The British foreign office was not immediately available for comment.

The European Commission was in touch with several EU states and trying to help resolve the “incident” with the Aquarius, a spokesman in Brussels said. She added that while Britain could theoretically be considered as a destination port, it was not practically feasible to bring the ship there.

Malta’s rescue coordination centre told the Aquarius on Saturday that it would not welcome the ship, according to the charity ship’s online log.

On Monday, Malta’s armed forces said that it rescued 114 migrants from a rubber dinghy taking on water 53 nautical miles south of the Mediterranean island. The migrants will be brought to Malta in the afternoon, sources said.

In June, the Aquarius ended up taking some 630 migrants to Spain, which welcomed it. But on Monday, Madrid did not repeat its offer, with a government spokeswoman saying: “At the moment, Spain is not the safest port because it is not the nearest one” for Aquarius to dock.

Due to pressure from Italy and Malta, most charity ships are no longer patrolling off the coast of Libya.

Though departures from Libya have fallen dramatically this year, people smugglers are still pushing some boats out to sea and an estimated 720 people died in June and July when charity ships were mainly absent, Amnesty International estimates.

“Aquarius is now standing by at 32 Nautical miles from the European coast,” the ship’s digital log said on Monday.

“Aquarius already requested a place of safety to Malta and Italy,” it said. “Both refused to coordinate the disembarkation of the survivors to a place of safety.”

Protracted feuds between EU states over how to handle immigrants have thrown the issue back onto the European agenda. That is despite overall Mediterranean arrivals having dropped sharply since the 2015 peak when a million people arrived.

EU border agency Frontex said on Monday it counted 73,500 “irregular border crossings” into the bloc so far this year via the sea and the Western Balkans route, more than 40 percent fewer than in the first seven months of 2017.