Open Arms’ migrants arrive in Barcelona after being refused by Italy and Malta

A rescue ship carrying 60 migrants arrived yesterday in a Spanish port after being refused entry by Italy and Malta, the second time in a month that a humanitarian group has been forced to travel for days to unload people rescued in the central Mediterranean.

The Italian government is blocking private rescue boats that it blames for encouraging human traffickers to launch unseaworthy boats loaded with migrants toward Europe.

But the aid groups deny having any link to smugglers in Libya or elsewhere, and say they are being forced to leave unattended the busy migrant sea transit route where deaths are mounting.

The Open Arms rescue ship completed a four-day journey to Barcelona, in north-eastern Spain, after it saved 60 people Saturday from a rubber boat floating in waters north of Libya.

On Saturday Italy’s right wing Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the boat “can forget about arriving in an Italian port”. He claimed the boat should go to Malta, the nearest port. But Malta swiftly retorted that the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, was closer.

Salvini has vowed that no more humanitarian groups’ rescue ships will dock in Italy. In recent years, private rescue vessels brought many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants saved from smuggler boats to Italy.

Salvini contended on Twitter that the Open Arms had taken on the migrants before a Libyan motorboat, in Libya’s search-andrescue zone, could intervene.

But the ship’s captain, Marco Martinez, said he had informed the Rome-based Maritime Rescue Coordination Center and was instructed to call Libyan maritime authorities, who didn’t answer either phone or by radio. The captain said officials in Rome then told him it was up to him to decide whether to carry out the rescue or not.

An AP journalist who was aboard a nearby companion vessel when the dinghy was spotted reported that a Libya coast guard vessel was seen approaching the Open Arms, but just as it came close to the rescue, it made a U-turn and left, ordering the Open Arms to return to Spain.

Malta’s interior minister, Michael Farrugia, tweeted back his retort to Salvini. “Quit spreading incorrect news, dragging Malta into it for no reason,” he wrote, attaching a map which he said indicated the rescue occurred in Libya’s search-andrescue area and in waters between Libya and Lampedusa.

Farrugia said that Lampedusa, which is Italian territory, is closer to the area where the SAR operation took place. The map shows that Lampedusa is 124.99 nautical miles away from the site, while Malta is 141.02 nautical miles away.

The migrants come from 14 different countries and include five women, a nine-year-old boy and four older teenagers, some of them unaccompanied. The Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms said they were generally in good health but some may have fuel burns.

The migrants were going through health checks and identification procedures. Authorities granted them a 30-day permit to apply for residence or asylum in the European Union. Many have relatives in Germany, Belgium and France.

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 500 people have died trying to cross from Libya since the Aquarius, another charity rescue ship, was blocked from ports in Italy and Malta in early June. The 630 migrants were finally taken in by Spain and France.

Doctors Without Borders blamed the deaths on the European Union’s inaction.

“The EU is abdicating their responsibilities to save lives, blocking search and rescue and condemning people to be trapped in Libya,” the group said in a tweet Wednesday. “Any deaths caused by this are now at their hands.”

In all, IOM says 1,405 people have died in the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing this year.

The Open Arms docking in Barcelona was followed closely by the Astral, a sister boat run by the same organisation where four European Parliament lawmakers witnessed the rescue operation.

Lawmaker Javier Lopez of Spain said the rescue boat’s arrival was a reason “to celebrate life” but deplored the mounting death toll in the Mediterranean.

Lopez said Europe should be able to manage the number of migrants arriving by sea this year— around 50,000 so far into Spain, Italy and Greece.

“Aren’t we, 500 million Europeans, able to manage the arrival of 50,000 people?” he said.