EU ‘finally’ awake to migrant crisis
Shipwrecks in the past week may have claimed the lives of 1,300 people fleeing Libya
MILAN— Shaken by the feared drowning of as many as 900 people in the latest Mediterranean tragedy, European leaders struggled Monday for an adequate response in the face of unremitting migrant flows and continued instability in Libya that has given free rein to human traffickers.
Even as the search continued for victims of the weekend disaster, coast guard ships rushed to respond to new distress calls on the high seas — two off Libya and a third boat that ran aground near Greece.
Italian Premier Matteo Renzi urged Europe to put the focus on preventing more boats from leaving Libya, the source of 90 per cent of migrant traffic to Italy.
“We are facing an organized criminal activity that is making lots of money, but above all ruining many lives,” Renzi said at a joint news conference with Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat.
The European Union foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, said this weekend’s appalling human toll — which, if verified, would be the deadliest migrant tragedy ever — had “finally” fully awakened the European Union to the evils of human trafficking.
The EU has been under increasing criticism for lagging in its response to the crisis, with two shipwrecks believed to have taken the lives of as many as 1,300 migrants in the past week. Some 400 people are believed to have drowned in another capsizing on April 13.
Stopping the traffickers will be a key item on the agenda when EU leaders meet in an emergency summit Thursday in Brussels, along with a proposal to double spending on sea patrols off Europe’s southern border. The 10-point plan includes a proposal to take “civil-military” action modelled on Europe’s anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia, to capture and destroy boats used by traffickers.
Even as European leaders grappled with how to respond to the crisis, more unseaworthy boats were setting off Monday on the perilous journey. Renzi said Italian ships were rushing to respond to distress calls from an inflatable life raft near the Libyan coast with 100 to 150 migrants on board and to another boat carrying about 300 people.
The International Organization for Migration earlier said its Rome office had received a distress call from three boats in need of help. The group says the caller reported 300 people on his sinking boat, with about 20 fatalities. No details were available about the other boats or their location, and it was not clear if they were the same rescues to which Renzi referred.
In a separate incident, at least three people, including a child, were killed and 93 others were rescued when a wooden boat carrying dozens of migrants who had departed from Turkey ran aground off the Greek island of Rhodes.
Prosecutors in Palermo, meanwhile, said a trafficking ring they had cracked had generated transactions worth hundreds of thousands of euros crisscrossing Europe as migrants paid not only to cross the Mediterranean but also to join relatives in northern Europe.