The Italian authorities have rejected the request of the rescue ships ‘Geo Barents’ and ‘Ocean Viking’ for the assignment of a nearby safe harbor following the rescue in the last hours of more than a hundred migrants in the Mediterranean and have designated Ancona, more than 1,000 kilometers away, as the port of destination for both ships.
Humanitarian organizations have warned that it is an illegality not to assign the nearest safe port to a ship that has carried out a rescue at sea and have also warned of an imminent worsening of conditions in the Mediterranean due to the proximity of a storm.
«Our request has been rejected. The Italian maritime authorities have confirmed Ancona as a safe port despite the danger of such a long voyage due to the weather forecast,» explained the organization SOS Mediterranée, responsible for the ‘Ocean Viking’, through a message on Twitter. Ancona is located in the north of the Italian Adriatic coast, far away from the rescue area.
«This order goes against the interest of the survivors, the laws of the sea and means leaving the central Mediterranean without NGO rescue ships,» the group has denounced.
From Doctors Without Borders, responsible for the ‘Geo Barents’, have mentioned the same arguments and have warned that sailing to Ancona would be «extremely difficult». «It is not acceptable,» has reiterated the NGO, which recalls that it has also asked Rome without success to transfer the rescued migrants to a Coast Guard ship.
«Sending two rescue ships simultaneously to a distant port shows the authorities’ intention to reduce the time we spend in the rescue area,» MSF has lamented.
The weather forecast for the coming days includes strong winds and waves that could reach five meters across the Mediterranean, so the government’s decision has been described as a «spite» by media such as the newspaper ‘La Reppublica’.
The NGOs recall that the two boats are safe and pass recurrent revisions, but also warn that some of the 37 survivors rescued by the ‘Ocean Viking’ were soaked in gasoline, many of them with chemical burns, so making them go through a storm means «forcing them to gratuitous suffering». Another 73 migrants were rescued by the ‘Geo Barents’.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
