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ROME – Italy has ordered the seizure of Aquarius, a rescue ship at the center of international criticism of its government's hard line against migration, claiming that the ship illegally disposed of potentially infectious waste.
Prosecutors in the Sicilian city of Catania on Tuesday accused 24 people of "systematically sharing, planning and executing a project of illegal removal of illegal waste" in the ports of southern Italy. between January 2017 and May 2018. They have garbage include contaminated clothing, food scraps, medical supplies and syringes.
Among the defendants were members of Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the aid groups managing Aquarius, and officials of a Sicilian company that manages waste disposal. According to a statement by the prosecutors, Aquarius and VOS Prudence, another rescue vessel operated by Médecins sans frontières, illegally coordinated with the Sicilian company, did not declare the "presence of hazardous sanitary waste with an infectious risk".
In a statement released Tuesday, Doctors Without Borders denied the accusation, saying it "firmly condemned" the Italian order to seize Aquarius. She described this measure as a disproportionate response to criminalize humanitarian and medical missions at sea. The group said it would appeal in an Italian court.
The ship is already idling, sitting in a French port since September as no country has agreed to register it. The Italian order means that if she were to resume her activities, she would not be able to enter Italian waters without risking being impounded.
In Italy, Aquarius has become the symbol of a confrontation between rescue ships, which have saved tens of thousands of shipwrecked migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, and government officials who have compared ships to ships taxis-water and say they are accomplices. human smuggling.
In June, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-immigrant party, said: refused to allow Aquarius to land at a time when it had more than 629 migrants, including 123 minors, 11 young children and seven pregnant women. This decision triggered a confrontation with the European Union that only increased Salvini's popularity at home. (Spain finally welcomed the migrants.)
On Tuesday, the minister celebrated the order against Aquarius and his own actions against non-governmental organizations rescuing people at sea.
"I did well to block the N.G.O. ships, I stopped not only the smuggling of illegal immigrants, but also that of toxic waste, "he wrote on Twitter. He concluded with the hashtag "closedports".
Salvini, whose party came to power this year promising to crack down on immigration, drew on a deep store of frustration and anger, with several Italians saying their country was inundated with people. he was left behind. itself by the European Union.
He maintained his hard line against what he called an "army of fake refugees" while seeking to soften his image last week by going to a military airport near Rome to accommodate a group of 51 migrants , mainly women with children. , evacuated from Libya via Niger by the UN refugee agency.
"For women and children in trouble, the only way to get there is by plane, not by dinghy, because dinghies are operated by criminals who, in exchange for a traffic of money. buy weapons, "said Salvini.
The Interior Minister has begun in recent weeks to target the European Union with the bulk of its rhetorical firing, especially as the number of migrant arrivals has dropped .
Mr. Salvini took credit for this decline, but his critics attributed it to transactions that Marco Minniti, his predecessor of the previous center-left government, went to Libya with militias, where many migrants embark for Italy. (Mr. Minniti has also worked to limit lifeboat operations and has also been criticized by humanitarian groups.)
But Mr Salvini gave even more authority to the Libyans. Humanitarian groups have decried the more important role played by Libya, saying its treatment of migrants was far from reaching acceptable standards.
The UN refugee agency noted that even though the number of arrivals is declining, people who undertake to cross the Mediterranean to Europe have twice as likely to die in the attempt this year than in 2017.
The Aquarius had encountered several problems since it became the center of Italy's anger, including the revocation of its registration by Panama in September.
But the announcement Tuesday that Italy would seize Aquarius when it next entered Italian waters was a major escalation. The government has also seized bank accounts of Doctors Without Borders, said the group.
"After two years of judicial investigations and accusations of collusion with human traffickers, bureaucratic obstacles, shameful and never confirmed, have now accused us of belonging to a criminal organization for dealing with waste," said Karline. Kleijer, Head of Emergency Services for Physicians. Without limits.
"This is the extreme and disturbing attempt to stop, at all costs, our search and rescue missions at sea."
The group said that it had always followed the standard procedures and that the competent authorities had never expressed any concerns about its practices since the beginning of its missions in 2015. It said that he would cooperate fully with the Italian authorities.
"The only crime we see today in the Mediterranean is the total dismantling of the search and rescue system," said Gabriele Eminente, director general of Doctors Without Borders in Italy.
"Today," he said, "political pressure has led Aquarius to be" stuck in the port of Marseille ".
