ROME (AP) — A flotilla of flimsy boats, crowded with migrants and
launched from Tunisia, overwhelmed a tiny southern Italian island on
Wednesday, taxing the coast guard’s capability to intercept the
smugglers’ vessels and testing Premier Giorgia Meloni’s pledge to thwart irregular migration.
Compounding the political pressure on Italy’s first post-war far-right leader
were vows by France and Germany to rebuff migrants who arrive by sea on
Italian shores, and, in defiance of European Union asylum system rules,
head northward to try to find jobs or relatives.
Starting early
Tuesday, the unseaworthy, overcrowded iron boats, came one after the
other in what appeared to be almost a procession to onlookers on
Lampedusa, a fishing and tourist island south of Sicily. Around 6,800
migrants came in a span of just over 24 hours — that number is a few
hundred higher than the isle’s full-time population.
In all, by Wednesday evening some 120 boats had arrived, Transport Minister Matteo Salvini said.
With Lampedusa-based Italian coast guard and border patrol vessels
unable to intercept all of the smugglers’ boats offshore, dozens of
migrants temporarily eluded authorities by climbing up Lampedusa’s rocky
shores on their own.
When the coast guard tried to assist one boat early Wednesday, the
smugglers’ vessel tipped over, and a mother with her five-month-old baby
fell into the sea, Italian Rai state TV said, reporting from Lampedusa.
The woman, who is from Guinea, was rescued, in shock, but the baby
died, Rai said.
Some migrants scuffled over food and bottles of
water being distributed by the Red Cross, Giornale di Sicilia, a
Sicily-based newspaper said. At one point, police waved their batons at
the migrants to make them move back, so others could be put on buses to
other points of the island to ease the crowding.
Other migrants jumped into the sea to cool off, only to be coaxed back onto the dock by port officials, the newspaper said.
Provoking the increase in numbers was a bottleneck in Tunisia’s ports
caused by rough seas that meant the smugglers hadn’t been able to
launch their boats for days, according to Italian authorities.
With
Lampedusa’s sole migrant residence having a capacity of about 450 beds,
authorities scrambled to transfer the migrants via commercial ferries
or coast guard vessels or planes to Sicily or in Calabria in the
southern toe of the Italian mainland.
“Our aim is to transfer them as fast as possible,’' said Filippo
Romano, the prefect of Agrigento, the province in Sicily which includes
Lampedusa. He noted that on some days last month,
more than 4,000 migrants stepped ashore, and authorities were able to
transfer the people elsewhere, where their asylum requests can be
initially processed.
According to the Interior Ministry, by early
Wednesday morning, nearly 124,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea
this year, roughly double the number by the same time last year.
Italy
saw the highest-ever number of sea arrivals in 2016, when some 181,400
migrants arrived, according to figures from the U.N. migration agency.
Meloni made stopping the arrivals a main plank of her successful campaign to win office almost a year ago.
While she initially advocated a naval blockade of northern Africa’s
Mediterranean shores to foil smugglers, once in office, Meloni shifted
her focus to seeking deals with countries, notably Tunisia, where most
of the boats are launched lately, to clamp down on migrant departures.
In June, Meloni joined European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a visit to Tunisia,
holding out the promise of more than 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in
financial aid to rescue its teetering economy and better police its
borders, in an effort to restore stability to the North African country —
and to stem migration to European shores.
On Wednesday, von der
Leyen said that the EU’s determination to manage migration “needs
endurance and patient work with key partners” and spoke proudly of the
Tunisia partnership.
In a speech to the European Parliament, von der Leyen also spoke of the need for unity within the EU on migration.
But solidarity seemed to be fraying.
On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin visited the town
of Menton to announce tough new measures, from policing to
technological means like drones, aimed at stopping migrants from making
their way from Italy to France. The presence of police and gendarmes
will be doubled: 70 police reservists will be added, along with soldiers
from the Sentinelle force that combs French cities against terror
attacks.
Darmanin is sponsoring an immigration bill that appears
to be aimed at responding to pressure from French right and far-right
forces demanding get-tough policies on immigration.
In Berlin on
Wednesday, an interior ministry spokesman, Maximilian Kall, said that
Italy, as well as other EU states, aren’t taking back asylum-seekers who
made it to Germany, but who, under EU rules, are the responsibility of
the first EU country where they set foot.
“Out of more than 12,400
takeover requests to Italy this year until the end of August, 10
transfers have taken place so far,’' Kall said, saying that was why
Germany was temporarily suspending acceptance of asylum-seekers under a
”voluntary solidarity mechanism.”
Asked about Germany’s move, Meloni said in a state TV interview that
Italy had informed its EU partners that with its migrant reception
centers overcrowded “we could no longer automatically take back” the
asylum-seekers.
“We can’t do this work if Europe doesn’t give us a hand to defend our external borders,’' Meloni said.
Opposition
lawmakers put the blame on the premier. It’s Meloni’s fault that “Italy
today is isolated in Europe. Berlin and Paris are slamming the door in
our face on immigration,’' said Sen. Dolores Bevilacqua, with the
populist 5-Star Movement.
Salvini, who leads the anti-migrant League, a government coalition party, blamed Europe for Italy’s woes over migrants.
“The
boat landings at Lampedusa are the symbol of a Europe that’s not there,
that’s so distracted it leaves countries to their own” devices, Salvini
told a news conference with foreign correspondents in Rome.
Many
migrants head to border points with France, Switzerland or Austria, in
hopes of reaching the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany or
Scandinavian countries.
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