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Post by Admin on Apr 19, 2015 21:28:41 GMT
Italian PM Matteo Renzi has led calls for more European Union action on sea migration after the latest deadly capsize of a boat in the Mediterranean. Demanding a summit on the issue, Mr Renzi said trafficking was "a plague in our continent" and bemoaned the lack of European solidarity.  The 20m (70ft) long boat was believed to be carrying up to 700 migrants, and only 28 survivors have been rescued. Up to 1,500 migrants are now feared to have drowned this year alone. Human smugglers are taking advantage of the political crisis in Libya to use it as a launching point for boats carrying migrants who are fleeing violence or economic hardship in Africa and the Middle East. Presidents, prime ministers and the Pope have all described their horror at the massive loss of life and spoken of the need to do something quickly to stop it. But will their powerful and emotional statements lead to a new EU approach to tackling the migrant crisis, including the provision of more ships capable of search and rescue?  Deep divisions between the 28 EU member states were laid bare last year when Italy stopped its search-and-rescue operations after plucking more than 100,000 people from the sea. The EU replaced it with a much smaller operation run by its border control agency Frontex, which has a limited mandate, a third of the budget and a fraction of the manpower used by the Italian navy.  Some Italian politicians had called for a naval blockade but Mr Renzi said this would only help the smugglers as there would be more ships to rescue migrants. Urging the EU summit, Mr Renzi said: "It is unthinkable that in the face of such a tragedy, there isn't the feeling of solidarity which Europe has shown in other instances." He added: "We ask not to be left alone, not so much when it comes to emergencies at sea, but to stop the trafficking of human beings." He said the trafficking was "a plague in our continent - the slavery of the 21st Century". |
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Post by Admin on Apr 21, 2015 21:24:27 GMT
The captain of the boat that capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa last week killing hundreds of migrants has been charged along with a member of the crew, media reported on Tuesday citing Italian officials. The 27-year-old Tunisian captain Mohammed Ali Malek was charged with reckless multiple homicide, and along with Mahmud Bikhit, a 25-year-old Syrian member of the crew, was also charged with favouring illegal immigration, BBC reported.  The two were among the 27 survivors who arrived in the Italian island of Sicily late on Monday. According to the authorities, the accident was a result of the mistakes made by the captain and also because of the ship being overcrowded. Prosecutors in the Sicilian port of Catania said the boat collided with a Portuguese container ship just before it capsized, but absolved the merchant vessel's crew of any responsibility. They said the boat had keeled over after the collision, which had been caused by steering mistakes by the captain and the panicked movements of the migrants on the 20-metre boat. Carlotta Sami of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Italy was in Catania to meet the survivors. About 800 people were believed to have died in the accident, she said.  There were nationals of Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Mali, Sierra Leone and Senegal on board, according to the report. "They left on Saturday morning around eight o'clock in the morning from Tripoli (in Libya), and they started to have problems, and they were approached by merchant vessels during the night around 10 o'clock."  Search-and-rescue operations would be stepped up, and there would be a campaign to destroy traffickers' boats, the report said. A homicide investigation has been opened into the disaster. The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it supported launching a military operation to capture vessels used by human traffickers in the Mediterranean Sea, similar to the counter-piracy operation carried out in the Indian Ocean, Spanish news agency Efe reported.  Separately, two of those rescued from a vessel that ran aground off the Greek island of Rhodes on Monday would be taken to the prosecutor's office, BBC said. It is believed that the two men, both Syrians, were in charge of the boat. They will face charges linked to illegally transporting people to Greece, and for being responsible for the deaths of three passengers. |
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