Twenty NGOs launched an “urgent appeal” on Monday November 7 to offer a safe harbor to the hundreds of “Mediterranean survivors” who remain stranded aboard four humanitarian ships inside or outside Italian waters.
This text transmitted by SOS Méditerranée and signed in particular by Oxfam France, Action Contre la Faim, Emmaus International, Médecins du Monde, Human Rights Watch and the Norwegian Refugee Council, “urges Italy, Malta, the European States and the European Commission to facilitate the immediate disembarkation, in a safe place, of all survivors currently stranded aboard the rescue ships Ocean Viking, Geo Barents, Humanity 1 and Rise Above in the central Mediterranean.”
“Malta’s silence and Italy’s general policy of delaying the disembarkation of survivors prolong the suffering of these people in search of safety,” these NGOs insist.
They point out that “for several months, the delay in the designation of a place of safety has increased worryingly.”
If the Italian authorities authorized two of these ships to enter the port of Catania, in Sicily, they refused to let all the migrants picked up on board disembark after having stranded in the central Mediterranean in improvised boats from the Libyan coast.
A strongly criticized classification
Thus, only 357 people, including children, were able to disembark from the Geo Barents, a Norwegian-flagged MSF ship that had docked on Sunday afternoon, leaving another 215 confined on board. Likewise, 144 were able to disembark from the Humanity 1, operated by the SOS Humanity charity, under the German flag, with another 35 adult migrants, all male, having been forced to remain on board.
This classification “does not comply with maritime conventions”, insists this appeal. Likewise, the request by the Italian authorities to these two ships to depart with their unwanted passengers “constitutes a violation of international law and is simply unacceptable from an ethical, moral and security point of view,” these NGOs accuse.
Two other ships, the Ocean Viking, operated by the NGO SOS Méditerranée based in Marseille, with 234 migrants on board, and the Rise Above of the NGO Mission Lifetime, also under the German flag, are still looking for a port to enter.
“We, the signatories, (…) are dismayed by the disregard for the dignity and safety of the 573 survivors on board the four ships by Italy, Malta and their European partners,” these humanitarian organizations continue.
Since the beginning of the year, 1,765 migrants have disappeared in the Mediterranean, including 1,287 in the central Mediterranean, the world’s most dangerous migration route, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Source: BFM TV
