Aid ship offers hope to Mediterranean migrants
ABOARD THE OPEN ARMS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA — The full moon was the only light as a terrified 9-yearold boy from Central African Republic climbed into a rubber dinghy held together with duct tape, risking death in the dark waters off Libya along with his parents and 57 other trafficked migrants.
After a long night on the Mediterranean Sea, a Spanish rescue boat spotted them on the horizon after dawn.
“People were screaming; I was afraid,” said the boy, Krisley Dokouada. “But after seeing the rescue boat, I knew there was no more danger.”
Their savior Saturday was the Open Arms, which became the third rescue ship run by humanitarian-aid groups to draw the ire of Italy’s anti-migrant interior minister, Matteo Salvini. He has vowed that Italy’s new populist government will no longer allow such rescue boats to dock in Italy, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued at sea in the past few years.
By nightfall Migrants aboard a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast receive aid Saturday from rescuers aboard the Open Arms aid boat.
Saturday, Spain agreed to let the Open Arms dock in Barcelona, where the humanitarian-aid group that operates the vessel, Proactiva Open Arms, is based.
The Open Arms and its companion ship, the Astral, will likely need four days to reach Barcelona, said the Astral’s captain, Riccardo Gatti.
Also Saturday, in an unrelated rescue much further west, Spanish authorities reported saving 63 migrants trying to reach the country’s southern coast from North Africa.
While European politicians bickered about where migrants should go, those rescued by the Open Arms were jubilant — jumping, chanting and hugging their rescuers.
Krisley’s tensions
melted when he was allowed to sit for a few minutes in the captain’s seat. The only child among the migrants smiled shyly after the rescue crew called him “captain.”
For months, his family had lived in Libya, while they awaited their chance to make the Mediterranean crossing. His mother, Judith Dokouada, said she never left the shelter for fear of being kidnapped or sold as a slave, a fate many African migrants have spoken of.
“There is war at home. They kill people, they beat people, they rape women, they kill boys,” said Dokouada, 32. “We don’t have peace.”
She expressed hope the family could apply for refugee status and settle in Spain.