Remains of immigrants found

Italian coastal patrols continued the search on Friday for the remains of 73 migrants reported to have died aboard a boat which ran out of fuel while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

The search got underway following the rescue of five Eritreans off the coast of the southern island of Lampedusa on Thursday who said that their fellow passengers had died of hunger and thirst during the three weeks in which their ship was adrift at sea. The five survivors said they had cast the bodies of overboard.

The migrants had set off from Libya – the usual departure point for boats trying to reach southern Italy – on July 28.

Maltese authorities confirmed Friday that border patrol aircraft had spotted eight bodies but that they had drifted into Lybian territory and could not be recovered.

The migrants said on Friday that a patrol boat from another country had intercepted them prior to their rescue on Thursday, but failed to help. One of the migrants told Italian officials that the crew of an unidentified patrol boat intercepted them on Tuesday – two days before the Italian coast guard – , gave them fuel and told them to continue towards Lampedusa. He said he could not identify their nationality, saying only that they wore ”shorts and dark-coloured shirts”. ”They even provided us with five life jackets… one of the crew turned on the motor because we were too weak, and then indicated the route we were to follow. Then, mindless of our condition, they left.” Speaking to Italian rescue workers on Thursday, the migrants said several other boats had spotted them during their twenty days at sea, but had not stopped to help.

Italian coastal patrols pulled the five from the 12-metre-long boat on Thursday morning, as soon as Maltese authorities reported a sighting. Officials in Valletta told ANSA – Italian news Agency – on Friday that a Maltese patrol boat had intercepted the migrants after they were spotted by a plane flying for the EU border agency Frontex. ”The required assistance was provided, in keeping with Malta’s international obligations…Maltese officials did not influence the (boat’s) destination,” he said. The Italian interior ministry stressed in a statement on Friday that Italian patrol boats in the Mediterranean had not spotted the migrants prior to Malta’s alert. Italian boats carried out 13 rescue missions from June 1 to August 20 in the waters off Sicily and Sardinia, helping 420 people, the statement said. The ministry said it had asked prosecutors in the Sicilian city of Agrigento and police to investigate the migrants’ report.

News of the tragedy sparked a wave of condemnation from the Church and migrant organizations. The President of the Episcopal Commission on Immigration Mons. Bruno Schettino told reporters on Friday that the death of immigrants trying to reach Sicily ”represented a grave offence to the Christian value of life”.

Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano observed that helping immigrants in distress was a moral duty and expressed concern about possible ”violations of human rights” and over the ”indifference” of those who could have given them aid.

In a front-page editorial in its Friday edition, Italian Catholic daily Avvenire accused the West of closing its eyes to the plight of immigrants at sea just as it had towards the victims of the Holocaust. ”When we read about the deportation of the Jews during the Holocaust, we ask ourselves how anyone could say they didn’t notice the voices and cries coming from the trains at stations along the way.

”Then it was terror and totalitarianism which shut their eyes. Today it is quiet indifference, if not irritated distaste.” Christopher Hein of the Italian Refugee Council has suggested that it was improbable for ”a 12-metre-long boat to remain adrift for so long without anyone noticing”.

”These people were deliberately left to meet their fate,” Hein said. A spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Andrj Mahemic, expressed concern on Friday that Italy’s tough new immigration policies were discouraging ship captains from stopping to help boats carrying immigrants.

Boat migrant landings in Italy have dropped significantly since the start of the government’s new ‘push-back’ policy in May. Nearly a thousand people have been sent back to Libya so far as part of an agreement between Rome and Tripoli.

 

Source:

www.ansa.it