Italy detains two NGO vessels for defying new migrant rescue law

World
By William

Rescue ships Sea-Eye 4 and Mare*Go have been blocked for 20 days for flaunting Italian law they call ‘unjust’.

Italy’s coastguard has detained two vessels belonging to non-governmental organizations operating in the Mediterranean after finding them in violation of a new law that prohibits vessels used to rescue migrants from carrying out multiple operations in a row .

A detention of 20 days was imposed on the German rescue ships Sea-Eye 4 and Mare*Go on Friday evening, according to the organizations Sea-Eye and Sea-Watch that operate the ships.

The law passed in Italy on February 24 prohibits rescue ships from carrying out multiple consecutive rescues. Under a decree named after the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, rescue vessels are required to apply for the allocation of a port and to sail there immediately after each rescue.

NGOs say the measure is designed to curb arrivals as they are prohibited from carrying out multiple missions and often have to travel to distant ports, which increases operational costs and reduces time for rescues.

They also argue that the law violates international law, according to which it is a duty to rescue persons in distress at sea.

Sea-Eye 4 was detained for disobeying an “unjust law aimed at criminalizing solidarity,” Giorgia Linardi, a Sea-Watch spokesperson in Italy, tweeted on Saturday.

‘Criminal rescue at sea’

Sea-Eye 4 was detained after rescuing 17 people in the Libyan search and rescue zone and a second consecutive rescue operation in the Maltese zone soon after, without first going to the assigned port of Ortona, in the central region of Abruzzo.

The NGO said the ship later responded to a distress call from a boat with more than 400 people on board in the Maltese zone and decided to turn back because no government had confirmed coordination for the emergency.

Italian authorities told Il Giornale newspaper that Sea-Eye 4 violated the order to reach Ortona and instead sailed towards the boat, which was already under surveillance by the coast guard.

Gorden Isler, chairman of Sea-Eye, said in the statement that the distressed boat eventually reached the Italian search and rescue zone under its own power and that the passengers were only rescued by the Italian coastguard shortly before they reached Sicily.

“It is therefore incorrect for the Italian Coast Guard to claim that a patrol boat was already on its way. People first had to reach the Italian search and rescue zone on their own to get help there,” he said.

“Italy’s new strategy is insidious and transparent. The long journeys to assigned, distant ports will always mean deciding along the way whether to respond to more incoming distress calls,” Isler said.

He added that the law creates the “public impression that our action is illegal”, which was “another reprehensible attempt to criminalize rescue at sea … to justify increasingly brazen state action”.

‘Post-fascist government’

On Friday, Mare*Go, a four-meter pleasure craft built in 1917 for its first mission, contacted Italian authorities after it rescued 36 people. It warned them that it would not be able to overcome the distance to reach the assigned port of Trapani, on the western coast of Sicily.

Officers from the Italian Coast Guard and the European border agency Frontex were waiting for the ship as it entered the port of Lampedusa shortly before midnight.

“This current new law is another tool to get more people drowning at sea along the way,” the organization said in a statement, calling Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government “post-fascist.”

Italy’s anti-migrant league party, led by Matteo Salvini, told Il Giornale that it was satisfied with the way Italian law was being enforced. “Foreign NGOs don’t respect Italian laws? A hefty fine and detention of the vessel,” the statement said.

“Norms and borders must be respected, both in Italy and around the world.”

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