The NGO Doctors Without Borders has denounced on Saturday that the crew of its rescue ship ‘Geo Barents’ has not received a response from the Italian and Maltese authorities to its request for a safe harbor for 572 people on board saved from the waters of the Mediterranean for almost a whole day.
MSF’s head of operations on board the ship, Ricardo Gatti, warns that among the rescued migrants there are people with skin and respiratory infections, which makes it imperative for the ship to enter port, after ten days of navigation.
«We have requested daily to the Italian government and before to the Maltese government a port for disembarkation. A port that does not arrive,» said the head of MSF. Among those rescued, as the NGO explained yesterday, there are three pregnant women and more than 60 minors.
«The last request we made last night at 10 pm. We have not received any response, no indication about it,» he added in comments posted on the official Twitter account of the NGO.
The Italian authorities, already under the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, expressed on Wednesday their refusal to allow the entry of migrants rescued by ships of various NGOs in the Mediterranean and have asked that it is precisely the countries whose flags these vessels fly that take in the migrants in question.
«We cannot bring in migrants who are rescued at sea by foreign ships operating without any coordination with the authorities,» asserted the brand new Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, in comments reported by ‘Corriere della Sera’.
Precisely Piantedosi has faced this Saturday a controversy over the entry into port on Friday of a rescue ship of a German NGO.
POLEMIC DISEMBARKATION IN CATANIA The German aid organization SOS Humanity has denied the version of the Minister of the Interior that the ship ‘Humanity 1’ had entered by force in Italian waters, with African refugees on board.
«We never intended to sail to Catania without port assignment from the competent authorities,» spokeswoman Petra Krischok told DPA on Saturday.
The ship, with nearly 180 rescued migrants on board, sailed off the eastern coast of Sicily towards Italian waters due to bad weather, Krischok specified. However, it only did so after the port authority of Catania had «expressly allowed» it to do so.
The authorities demanded that the ‘Humanity 1’ not sail within six nautical miles of the coast, which the crew complied with, according to Krischok.
Minister Piantedosi noted Friday night that the government had «ordered» the ship to anchor off Catania. As a result, the authorities were to check on board to see if there were people who needed to disembark due to health problems. The minister did not explain when this assessment would occur.
