EU Plans Stepped-up Sea Patrols After Lampedusa Tragedy
Tue, 8th Oct 2013 14:11
ROME/LUXEMBOURG (Alliance News) - European Union patrols along the Mediterranean would be stepped up in response to last week's migrant shipwreck off Italy, the worst in recent history, according to a plan to be considered by the bloc Tuesday.
The news came five days after the October 3 accident, as the death toll continued to ratchet upwards, to at least 249. The boat was believed to be carrying 400-500 people when it sank off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa. There were 155 survivors.
A team of 40 scuba divers were still working at a depth of around 50 metres to recover more bodies.
"We have to operate delicately, recovering the corpses one by one," Italy Coast Guard official Gianni Dessi told the SkyTG24 news channel, adding that there was "no exact estimate" on the total number of victims.
In response, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom called for "a big safe-and-rescue operation in the Mediterranean Sea" that would be launched by the EU border protection agency Frontex.
She spoke ahead of a meeting in Luxembourg of the bloc's interior ministers, which was due to consider her proposal. The Lampedusa tragedy was put at the top of the ministers' agenda following a request from Italy for more EU help.
"It is a good signal, a concrete and significant signal," Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said as he arrived for the talks. He has also called for more financial aid, greater burden-sharing of asylum seekers, and cooperation deals with North African nations.
Malmstrom called on EU nations "to do their utmost ... to share the responsibility" when it comes to asylum seekers in Europe, noting that "today there are six, seven countries who take all the responsibility."
However, there is little appetite in the bloc for dramatic asylum reforms, with Germany among those speaking out Tuesday against a change to the so-called Dublin rules, which force asylum seekers to apply for protection in the first country of arrival.
German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich rejected claims that Italy was "overloaded," noting that it had about 260 refugees per 1 million inhabitants, compared to his country's 946.
In Italy, prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, said the captain of the sunken Lampedusa ship had been detained and investigated for multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter and causing the October 3 shipwreck.
Officials said that each migrant paid between 1,600 and 2,000 dollars to get on board, which meant that human traffickers who organized the trip were estimated to have earned up to 1 million dollars.
Tunisian-born Kaled Bensalam, 35, was also suspected of having commanded another boat trip on April 11, when 250 migrants arrived in Lampedusa.
The other survivors, all from Eritrea, were protesting against poor conditions in an overcrowded migrant reception centre, which was hosting almost 1,000 people against a regular capacity of 250.
"The condition of extreme neglect in which the reception centre currently finds itself in, with entire families forced to sleep in the open under pouring rain for the past three days, is absolutely unacceptable," UNHCR, the UN agency for refugees, stated.
Despite the tragedy, migrants continued to land on Italy's shores. Nearly 400 people, claiming to be from Syria and the Palestinian Territories, were rescued overnight by two cargo ships off the coast of south-eastern Sicily.
According to official figures, 30,100 would-be asylum seekers arrived in Italy from January to September, compared to less than 8,000 during all of 2012. The inflow intensified during the past two months, especially from Syria, Somalia and Eritrea.
Each year, thousands of people from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere try to reach Europe via Italy and Malta, in search of a better life. Many of them end up in Lampedusa, which is roughly halfway between Sicily and Tunisia.
On Wednesday, Malmstrom was expected to visit the tiny island with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and Alfano.
http://www.lse.co.uk/AllNews.asp?code=b29t6m3k&headline=EU_Plans_Steppedup_Sea_Patrols_After_Lampedusa_Tragedy
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/131008/eu-demands-extra-mediterranean-patrols-after-lampedusa-tragedy
Received on Wed Oct 09 2013 - 11:22:27 EDT