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LONDON – The saga of the Aquarius rescue ship that was beached at sea for 10 days after he was repeatedly denied permission to park illustrates the toughening of views on migration in Europe. Europe
A few days after coming to power, the new Italian populist government last month marked its red lines towards the European Union by closing its ports to the ship, which was carrying 630 migrants who had been kidnapped off the coast. Libyan coasts.
Malta followed suit, claiming that it had nothing to do with the rescue mission and had no legal obligation to take the migrants. Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the country was saying "no to illegal immigration".
The Rome authorities have since banned several other similar rescue vessels carrying migrants from disembarking. Italian soil
The policy change raises questions about how rescue vessels run by volunteers who have traditionally been in the vanguard to save lives will be able to continue their work. About 27,000 migrants have died attempting to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean since 1993.
Salvini has regularly accused aid ships of complicity with smugglers – who often put migrants in overcrowded and wobbly boats. He also said that the crews of humanitarian relief vessels had to be stopped and their ships sank.
"Aquarius has made visible something that's been happening for a few months, which is an attempt to criminalize the role of NGOs." Nando Sigona, a researcher on migration at the University of Birmingham, using an acronym for non-governmental organizations.
Last month was the deadliest in the last four years in the central route of the Mediterranean between According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 563 people died or went missing in North Africa and in Italy. There were more than 250 additional deaths on this road this month
A Spanish aid group accused the Libyan Coast Guard of abandoning a woman and a young child after intercepting a boat carrying 160 people 90 nautical miles from the sea. Libyan coast.
Alina Krobok deputy spokesperson for Sea-Watch, a non-profit group that conducts search and rescue operations from Malta, said that it was becoming increasingly difficult for organizations to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean.
"They are trying to prevent lifeboats from doing their job," Krobok said. "There is a definite relationship between us who are not there and people who are dying."
Italy has in recent years taken hundreds of thousands of migrants from the countries of Southern Europe on the front lines of the migration crisis in Europe. According to the European Council, the number of illegal border crossings detected in the EU has dropped by 95% compared to its peak in October 2015.
While the new Italian coalition government is going ahead. was committed to taking a migration approach, Salvini's decision to deny Aquarius access to the ports of his country translated this rhetoric into action.
"It's Salvini who keeps his election promises," said Craig Damian Smith, associate director of the Global Migration Lab at the University of Toronto. 19659004] He added that the new Italian approach could bankrupt some humanitarian organizations because ships will now have to spend more time at sea because Italian ports "
" It costs something like $ 30,000 a day to manage one of these ships and it is NGOs that survive donations, "said Mr. Smith, Dillon, spokesman for the IOM. the presence of rescue vessels may be a contributing factor to the high number of deaths, but there are too many variables to make "cause-and-effect conclusions".
Italy's growing hostility to the rescue of boats In 1965-19004, German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders of her country to accommodate about one million asylum seekers in Italy. 2015. However, its refugee policy is widely blamed for having supported the far-right alternative for Germany (AfD), which became the main opposition party after the elections of last September.
Neighbors like Poland, Austria and Hungary have also experienced a rise of populism and anti-immigration sentiment.
At a meeting last month, US leaders agreed to toughen their approach to migration by increasing border protection and improving return and admission procedures.
The 28-country bloc also said that it would study the possibility of using third countries to assess migrants' eligibility.
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