Spain offers help as Italy gets tough on immigrants
ROME — Italy’s new “Italians first” government claimed victory Monday when the Spanish prime minister offered safe harbor to a private rescue ship after Italy and Malta refused to allow it permission to disembark its 629 migrant passengers in their ports.
The Aquarius, a rescue vessel operated by aid group SOS Mediterranee, has been stuck in the Mediterranean Sea since Saturday, when Italy refused its crew permission to dock and demanded that Malta do so. Malta refused on Sunday.
Spain’s new Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez stepped in Monday, ordering authorities in Valencia to prepare for the ship’s arrival.
“It’s our duty to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and offer a secure port for these people,” Sanchez said.
Both the ship and its passengers were caught up in a political dispute that might not have happened weeks ago.
One of the coalition partners in the populist government that took over in Italy on June 1, the right-wing League, promised voters other European Union countries would be made to share the burden of caring for asylum-seekers who set out for Europe on unseaworthy smugglers’ boats.
“Evidently it pays to raise one’s voice, something Italy hasn’t done as long as one can remember,” Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, the League’s leader, said Monday .
For those aboard the Aquarius, Spain’s offer of docking rights at the port of Valencia was welcome news, although it did not provide a quick or easy solution. By Monday evening, the ship was more than 750 nautical miles from Valencia and still awaiting formal instructions to head to Spain as weather forecasts predicted worsening conditions.
It was unclear if the days of sailing west it would take to get to Spain were feasible, SOS Mediterranee Maritime Operations Manager Antoine Laurent said. The traumatized, exhausted passengers include 120 minors, many of them traveling alone, and seven pregnant women.
The vast majority of the people traveling on the Aquarius — 400 — were rescued by Italian coast guard and navy vessels as well as cargo ships in the waters off Libya. They were transferred to the Aquarius on Saturday before the standoff developed.
Even as the Aquarius’ crew grappled with the logistics, Italy vowed to block other rescue boats, including the Dutch-flagged SeaWatch 3, another aid group’s boat.
Even as Italy’s government drew its line, an Italian coast guard vessel with 936 migrants and two migrants’ bodies on board was headed toward Catania, Sicily, where it was expected to dock on Tuesday evening, Italian news agency ANSA said.
Under a European Union agreement, the country where asylumseekers arrive and are identified must care for them until their asylum requests are decided, a process that can take a couple of years.