Some 150 mainly Eritrean migrants stuck on board the coast guard ship Diciotti in the Catania port have started a hunger strike, Democratic Party (PD) Senator Davide Faraone said Friday.
“There is tension on board and visits to inspect the migrants’ conditions have been suspended,” he said.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has said the migrants, who have been in the port for three days and on the ship for eight, cannot land until the EU agrees to redistribute them.
The European Commission will be holding a mini-summit on Friday, August 24, to discuss solutions concerning ports where migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea could be disembarked. The EU is working on the Diciotti case, it said, but noted that ad hoc measures were not enough and that there is the need for ”structural” solutions. The Migration and Home Affairs Directorate-General is holding the meeting, to which the advisors for European Affairs of 12 countries known as the ‘axis of the willing’ have been invited: Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Malta, Greece and Ireland. Several similar cases in recent weeks – such as those of the Aquarius, Protector and Monte Sperone ships – required EU intervention.