Salvini blasts actor’s appeal for safe port
ROME: Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini suggested Richard Gere fly 160 migrants stranded off the Italian coast back to Hollywood on his “private jet” after the actor made a plea to European leaders to find a port for the ship.
Gere joined representatives from the non-governmental organisation Open Arms at a press conference on Saturday on the Italian island of Lampedusa to appeal to take in the ship. Mr Salvini has refused to allow the vessel into Italian waters, the latest episode highlighting Europe’s divisions over immigration.
“As the generous millionaire airs his demands about the fate of the Open Arms immigrants, we thank him: he will be able to bring everyone in his private jet to Hollywood and keep them in his villas,” Mr Salvini said in a statement after Gere’s press conference.
Mr Salvini has made a flagship policy of refusing to allow the migrant vessels, coming mostly from nearby North Africa, to enter Italian waters. Now in the first steps of a months-long electoral campaign, Mr Salvini is likely to double down on the anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s made him Italy’s most popular politician for now.
The migrants were rescued in international waters and have a right to safe harbour and to apply for asylum in Europe, Oscar Camps, founder of the Open Arms movement, said at the news conference. The vessel is floating in international waters near the island, which is located about half-way between Tunisia and the southern Italian coast.
Gere, 69, who went aboard the Open Arms vessel on Friday to deliver food and water, sat nearby and also called on European leaders to find a solution.
“The most important thing,” he said, is for the rescued migrants “to be able to get to a free port, to be able to get off the boats and get on land and start a new life.”
Malta has said it will accept 39 of the migrants, who were rescued on Friday, but other European governments have refused to allow the rest to disembark, Mr Camps said on Twitter.
Mr Salvini has dubbed the request to disembark a “provocation” and called on Spain, the country where the boat is registered to take them in.