Global Courant 2023-05-24 22:47:44
Some 500 refugees and migrants are aboard a boat in distress in the Mediterranean after leaving Libya for Europe, humanitarian organizations say.
The Italian NGO Emergency said on Wednesday that the ship — with 45 women and 56 children on board, including a baby born overnight at sea — was on the water.
It said its rescue vessel Life Support was on its way to the boat but still needed 10 hours to reach the location in Maltese waters.
The nationalities of those on board remain unknown.
“It’s a race against time in an effort to save as many lives as possible,” Albert Mayordomo, head of mission on the Life Support, said in a statement to Al Jazeera. “The lack of coordination on the part of the authorities is a serious violation of maritime law.”
Emergency said it had contacted Maltese authorities, in accordance with maritime procedures, but had received no response since Tuesday when the vessel was flagged by Alarm Phone, a non-governmental organization that relays distress calls from the Mediterranean to emergency services .
~500 people adrift in the Central Mediterranean!
Alarm Phone was alerted by a large boat in distress. The people report that they have fled #Libya few days ago & that their engine has stopped. Authorities are aware – rescues are urgently needed without delay! pic.twitter.com/WqkgFSSaqO
— Alarm Phone (@alarm_phone) May 23, 2023
Emergency said it had also forwarded a request for help to Italy’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, which responded by saying the matter falls under the mandate of the Maltese authorities.
The Maltese Coast Guard did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment, while Italian authorities declined to comment.
Life Support captain Paolo Fusarini said his crew was preparing for a difficult nighttime rescue.
“Weather conditions are not favorable,” he said in a statement to Al Jazeera. “We are heading towards waves of 1.5 meters that make the operation more difficult.”
Fusarini said he had little hope of reaching the site in time and feared many people would drown before Life Support got there.
Alarm Phone said on Tuesday that local authorities had been notified of the boat’s presence without specifying whether they were Maltese or Italian officials.
Shortly afterwards, the German NGO Sea-Watch said it sent its light observation aircraft, Sea Bird, to locate the ship.
On Wednesday, Alarm Phone announced that it had lost contact with the boat.
“We lost contact this morning, after constantly alerting and updating the authorities in #Malta and #Italy,” it said. “500 people can’t just disappear!”
Sea-Watch was unable to locate the boat and said in a tweet: “The fact that the Maltese Sea Rescue Coordination Center ignored our calls is unacceptable. We demand immediate clarification.”
More than 45,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Italy across the Mediterranean so far this year, the highest number since 2017.
About 1,090 people have been killed or missing in the Mediterranean since January, according to the International Organization for Migration.
‘Italy postpones, Malta ignores’
This month, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, a European network of 105 NGOs in 39 European countries, summed up the situation in the Mediterranean: “Italy is delaying, Malta is ignoring, Tunisia and Libya are retreating and abusing.”
“The Italian authorities are continuing the policy of allocating distant ports to NGO rescue vessels for the disembarkation of survivors,” the statement said. “Malta failed to rescue more than 7,000 people in distress in the country’s SAR (search and rescue) zone by 2022 and reports of non-response tactics continue to rise.”
On January 2, the Italian government passed legislation requiring rescue vessel captains to request port immediately after a rescue, rather than continuing at sea and assisting with multiple distress calls.
Authorities are increasingly allocating distant ports for disembarkation, which NGOs say increases costs and reduces efficiency.
An estimated 1,090 people have been killed or missing in the Mediterranean since January (Faras Ghani/Al Jazeera)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has dismissed claims that government policies to discourage migration played a role in a shipwreck off the country’s southern coast in March that killed at least 72 people.
Nearly two weeks after the shipwreck, the Italian Coast Guard carried out a major rescue operation, bringing to safety more than 1,000 people stranded on three boats in distress.
The Maltese government was also criticized. a report published in March this year by the Civil Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, a network of non-governmental actors involved in search and rescue activities in the Mediterranean, concluded that “Maltese authorities at sea regularly assist those in need of rescue in the abandon”.
According to the report, by 2022, Maltese authorities ignored more than 20,000 people in distress, 413 boats carrying people in need of assistance were not helped and only three boats were rescued by Malta’s armed forces.
“No aid is now a routine part of a series of deadly measures to reduce arrivals in Malta,” the report said.
So far in 2023 only 92 people have been rescued by the Maltese authorities.
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