Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi/MOAS
Germany said Friday that it has asked the European Union to find safe port for a German humanitarian group’s rescue boat carrying 64 migrants following appeals both from the NGO and Italy’s hard-line interior minister, who refuses to allow them to land.
German Interior Ministry spokesman Stefan Ruwwe-Gloesenkamp said Friday that Berlin has asked the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, to coordinate the search for a safe port. He said Germany trusts that “a large number of member states” will be prepared to take in migrants and Berlin is ready to do “its part.”
The German humanitarian group Sea-Eye said Friday that it was appealing to Berlin to use diplomatic channels to find a safe port for the migrants it rescued off Libya on Wednesday.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said that his ministry sent a formal letter on Thursday to the German government telling them the ship cannot dock in Italy and asking them to intervene.
Salvini reaffirmed his hard line toward similar actions of the NGOs operating in the Mediterranean Sea speaking at the G-7 in France, saying “that clearly not all NGOs, but some of them, are accomplices” in human trafficking.
Sea-Eye spokesman Carlotta Weibl said Friday that the rescue boat Alan Kurdi remains in international waters off Lampedusa and will not approach Italy’s southernmost island until it has permission. Conditions on board were worsening and a storm was approaching, she said, adding they have asked Germany’s Foreign Ministry to intervene.
Malta and Italy have been refusing to open ports to humanitarian rescue ships, saying their activities encourage smugglers to pack unseaworthy rubber dinghies with migrants looking for sanctuary in Europe.
Salvini said in France that Sea-Eye put the migrants’ lives at risk by traveling north toward Europe after rescuing them 25 miles from the Libyan coast.
However, international norms on sea rescues require migrants be brought to a safe port. Multiple bodies including the EU have declared that Libya does not meet the definition of a safe port due to ongoing lawlessness and reports of abuse and torture inside migrant detention centers.