Brass-knuckled negotiating tactics
Spain offers to take migrant ship amid Italy-malta standoff
Spain stepped up Monday and offered to take in a rescue ship carrying more than 600 migrants after Italy and Malta refused. The diplomatic standoff had left the migrants stranded at sea and revealed the brass-knuckled negotiating tactics of Italy’s new anti-immigrant government.
Italy and Malta thanked Spain’s new Socialist prime minister for the offer to receive the SOS Mediterranee rescue ship Aquarius at the port of Valencia. But it wasn’t immediately clear if such a voyage was feasible given the distances involved — the ship is now more than 1,400 kilometres from Valencia. The Aquarius said it had received no instructions yet to head to Spain.
The UN refugee agency, the European Union, Germany and humanitarian groups had all demanded that the Mediterranean countries put their domestic politics aside and urgently consider the plight of the rescued migrants, which included children, pregnant women and people suffering from hypothermia.
“The duty of a democratic government is not to look away” in a humanitarian crisis, said Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, who also offered her port as a potential solution to the standoff.
Doctors Without Borders, which has staff aboard the Aquarius, said the rescued migrants were stable for now but that food and water on the ship would run out by Monday night. It said some of the passengers were suffering from water in their lungs as well as chemical burns caused when gasoline mixes with seawater. Seven are pregnant.
But Italy and Malta held firm despite the heavy diplomatic pressure, with Italy’s new interior minister, Matteo Salvini, clearly using the high seas drama as a pretext to force the hand of Italy’s European neighbours. Italy has long demanded that the EU change its migration policy and make good on promises to accept more refu- gees, saying that Italy has been left alone to co-ordinate rescues and accept tens of thousands of migrants a year for asylum processing.
“Enough!” Salvini said Monday. “Saving lives is a duty, but transforming Italy into an enormous refugee camp isn’t.”
He tweeted: #Chiudiamoiporti. “We’re closing the ports.”
The migrants had been rescued from flimsy smugglers’ boats in the Mediterranean during a series of operations Saturday by Italian maritime ships, cargo ves- sels and the Aquarius itself. All passengers were offloaded to the Aquarius to be taken to land.
Italy claimed that Malta should accept the Aquarius because Malta was the safest, closest port to the ship.
Malta said Italy co-ordinated the rescues and that it has had nothing to do with it.
Maltese Premier Joseph Muscat accused Italy of violating international norms governing sea rescues and said its stance risked “creating a dangerous situation for all those involved.”