Salvini backs plans to ignore distress calls
Italy’s new hardline interior minister suggested that its navy and coast guard should no longer respond to distress calls from refugees boats in the Mediterranean yesterday, and proposed the creation of migrant processing centres along Libya’s southern border.
Matteo Salvini, who has come to dominate Europe’s first populist government since it was formed three weeks ago, put forward the migrant centre proposal during meetings in Tripoli with his Libyan counterpart, Abdulsalam Ashour, and Ahmed Maiteeq, the vice-president of the internationally recognised government in the fractious north African state.
On his return to Rome he said he supported proposals for Italy’s maritime authorities to ignore distress calls from migrant boats, suggesting that the Libyan coastguard, which the Italian navy helps to train, was capable of patrolling its coastal waters.
Asked what he thought of reports that the minister of transport was preparing to issue orders for migrant SOS calls to be ignored, Salvini said: ‘‘If that was the decision, it would have my full support.’’
Salvini has already refused to allow charity ships to deliver migrants to Italian ports, claiming that the ships entice people to set sail across the Mediterranean.
He said he hoped to see migrant processing centres established under United Nations and EU auspices in the countries bordering Libya to the south. Similar plans had already been under discussion in Brussels but it was time to finally turn words into actions, he said. ‘‘There are European countries, including France, who propose the creation of reception hot spots in Italy,’’ Salvini wrote on Twitter. ‘‘This would be a problem for us and for the Libyans. Instead we have proposed reception centres along the southern borders of Libya to avoid Tripoli becoming a bottleneck, like Italy.’’
Over the weekend the Libyan coastguard rescued about 1000 would-be migrants and took them back to Libya after the Italian coastguard handed responsibility for search and rescue to the Libyan authorities and effectively forbade charity rescue ships from helping.
A Dutch-registered charity ship, Lifeline, with more than 200 migrants on board, was waiting for instructions off the coast of Malta, and a Danish cargo ship, the Alexander Maersk, was off the Sicilian port of Pozzallo with more than 100 migrants.
Critics of Italy’s refusal to take migrants picked up in the Mediterranean have included Nathalie Loiseau, France’s minister for European affairs.
Salvini hit back at her, saying: ‘‘The French minister is ignorant, in the sense that she ignores the situation of the Lifeline, an outlaw ship. Wherever it docks it should be seized and its crew detained.
‘‘I’m surprised by the nastiness of the French, who are the best in Europe when it comes to words. Let them open the port of Marseilles.’’
A total of 616 migrants on board about 20 vessels, including a kayak carrying three young men, were rescued yesterday off the coast of Spain, the national rescue service said. –