“They will only see Italy on a postcard”: Italy turns away another migrant ship

**wvwvw** · 06-22-2018, 06:07 PM

Imagine: a government that puts its own citizens first.

Migrants on board the rescue boat operated by the German NGO Mission Lifeline yesterday

'They will only see Italy on a postcard': Country's interior minister refuses to let rescue ship carrying 224 migrants dock, a week after turning away vessel with 630 people on board
Matteo Salvini denied entry to the 224 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean
He said German NGO Mission Lifeline had been told to leave the rescue to Libya
Hard-line minister Salvini said the migrants would 'only see Italy on a postcard'
The Aquarius travelled 932 miles to Spain after Italy and Malta denied it entry
By TIM STICKINGS FOR MAILONLINE and AP and AFP
PUBLISHED: 11:59 BST, 22 June 2018 | UPDATED: 17:22 BST, 22 June 2018

Italy's hard-line interior minister has refused to let a rescue boat with 224 migrants on board dock in Italy, saying those on board 'will only see Italy on a postcard'.

Matteo Salvini's latest move to clamp down on arrivals from the Mediterranean comes a week after he turned away another foreign ship, the Aquarius, which was carrying 630 migrants and had to reroute to Spain.

Salvini said the latest ship, operated by German aid group Mission Lifeline, had loaded the migrants in Libyan waters against the instructions of Italy's coast guard.

Mission Lifeline denied Salvini's claims, saying it conducted the rescue in international waters and asked for a safe port, which had not been assigned.

The interior minister, who is urging Malta to take in the Dutch-flagged ship as he pressures European partners to share the burden, said today: 'We cannot take in one more person. On the contrary: We want to send away a few.'

The Mission Lifeline rescue boat, pictured yesterday, was carrying 224 migrants but was refused port in Italy by the country's hard-line interior minister Matteo Salvini

The migrants wear life jackets after being rescued from the Mediterranean by a German NGO

Salvini added: 'For the safety of the crew and those rescued we humanly and politically ask Malta to finally open one of its ports, and then seize the ship and its crew.'

He said: 'Italian ports are no longer at the disposal of traffickers. Open the Maltese ports! Open the French ports.'

The Aquarius, operated by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders, took the migrants to Spain, travelling an additional 932 miles, after Italy and Malta refused to let them land.

Salvini has likened such rescue ships to taxi services that finish the job for migrant smugglers.

He also has pointed out the failure of other European Union nations to take their share of migrants headed for Europe, a point that Italy will press in forthcoming EU meetings.

Salvini has threatened that Italy will withhold its payments to the EU if it does not get more help on the migrant issue.

Italy's transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, said the Lifeline remained in Libyan waters and would be seized by Italian authorities if it arrived in Italy.

A Libyan coast guard vessel is seen next to the Mission Lifeline rescue boat yesterday

Salvini, leader of the right-wing League party, has been leading efforts to reduce arrivals from migrants rescued in the Mediterranean.

Standing next to two bus drivers who were allegedly assaulted by four migrants he boasted to reporters today that the four 'fake asylum-seekers,' whose bids for asylum had been rejected, would be rapidly deported back to Gambia and Nigeria.

'These guys won't be taking the bus in Como anymore,' Salvini vowed.

Some 640,000 migrants have landed in Italy since 2014. The numbers are down dramatically this year, to some 14,500, more than 80 per cent lower than in 2017.

An SWG poll this week showed two-thirds of Italians agree humanitarian boats should not be allowed in the country's ports.

But off the Libyan coast, where people smugglers operate with impunity, the U.N. refugee agency said an estimated 220 migrants drowned this week.

The ship's current position was not clear. The group said in a statement: 'Mission Lifeline fears that a similar situation to the Aquarius ... could be on the horizon.'

'Therefore the NGO calls on the competent authorities to swiftly react to their obligation to designate a place of safety.'

A source close to the Maltese government said that Valetta had not yet received any official request from Rome, nor had Lifeline itself sought any permission to land.

Spokesman Axel Steier said that the condition of the migrants was 'OK,' but said migrants coming from Libya typically faced 'torture, rapes, slavery'.

He said the passengers need protection and that the group was looking for a safe port 'such as Lampedusa or Pozzallo', both in Sicily.

'We never were in Libyan waters,' he said.

The vessel Lifeline belonging to the German NGO pictured in the Mediterranean yesterday

Migrants are hauled aboard the Dutch-flagged vessel Lifeline after being rescued from the sea

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said today his country was ready to start turning away migrants if Berlin and Vienna do so, as Germany's interior minister proposed earlier this week.

'We can expect that Austria will take the same measure and in that case, we'll do the same thing,' Babis told reporters.

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned on Monday that he would give German Chancellor Angela Merkel a fortnight to find a European deal to curb new arrivals by a June 28-29 EU summit, failing which he vowed to order border police to turn back migrants.

The Social Democrats, who also share power with Merkel's conservative bloc - comprising the CSU and her own Christian Democrats (CDU) - said they were ready for a new election.

Merkel said today: 'The meeting on Sunday is a consultation and working meeting at which there will be no concluding statement.'

'It is an initial exchange with interested member states.'

She said conditions in Syria were not yet right for refugees to return. Germany has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrians and others since 2014, and migration policy is threatening her ruling coalition.

Italy also took offence on Friday when French President Emmanuel Macron likened rising nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment in Europe to 'leprosy'.

'One day, he's saying that he doesn't want to offend Italy, and then the next, he's talking about leprosy,' said Italy's other deputy prime minister and head of the populist M5S party, Luigi Di Maio.

Salvini said: 'We may be leper populists. But I take the lessons from those who open their own ports. Welcome thousands of migrants and then we can talk.'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets Lebanese and Syrian refugees in Beirut today where she said this weekend's meeting of EU leaders would not produce final results

Salvini: The EU could collapse within a year

Matteo Salvini has questioned whether the deeply divided EU will survive the events of the coming year.

'Within a year it will be decided whether there will still be a united Europe or not,' Salvini told German news weekly Der Spiegel.

It will become clear in EU budget talks and ahead of 2019 European elections 'whether the whole thing has become meaningless', he said.

The new populist government in Rome accuses fellow EU members of abandoning Italy as it tries to cope with migrants making the perilous journey from Africa across the Mediterranean.

'We cannot take in one more person,' the German magazine quoted Salvini as saying. 'On the contrary: we want to send away a few.'

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing domestic pressure on immigration, is seeking deals to send back to Italy and other frontline countries arriving asylum seekers already registered there.

Salvini, asked whether his stance could contribute to toppling Merkel, said that this was not his intention, even though Rome and Berlin were also 'far apart' on other issues, from bank reform to Germany's huge trade surplus.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK's refugee and migrant rights director said: 'European governments are once more revealing where their true priorities lie: namely shutting off the central Mediterranean route, with scant regard to the suffering caused.

'Europe's first responsibility should be to ensure that the women, men and children who are escaping violence, torture and exploitation in Libya and are in danger at sea are rescued, and brought safely to land.

'This month has already seen 233 lives lost in the central Mediterranean. The urgent need for coordinated and collective search and rescue efforts, including the vital contribution of NGO charity ships, remains as important as ever.'

In March, a boat operated by the Spanish aid group Open Arms was impounded after NGO workers refused to hand over migrants to the Libyan coastguard, instead delivering them to the Italian island of Sicily.

Last year, the Iuventa, chartered by German NGO Jugend Rettet, was also seized.

Salvini also sparked outrage on Monday when he promised a head count of Italy's Roma community and to throw out those without legal status.

His call was blasted as unconstitutional by rights groups and even criticised by members of his own coalition government, with some in Italy drawing parallels with measures targeting Jews under fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ants-dock.html