Tuesday, 29th April 2008 - 17:37CET

Second boatload of migrants arrives

A second boatload of illegal migrants arrived in Malta this evening.

The boat, which like the first one was located south off Birzebbugia, carried 26 people, six of them women, one of whom needed hospital treatment.

The first boat, escorted to shore by an AFM patrol boat in the afternoon, carried 27 migrants, including seven women.

The migrants in the first boat claimed to have been at sea for five days having cast off from Libya. They claimed they were Somalis.

Comments

victor pulis (2 weeks, 1 day ago)

The latest batch of 26 migrants to arrive did so on a boat barely 4 metres long and they said that they had been 5 days at sea. they would have found it difficult to cross grand harbour in that kind of boat let alone sail all the way from libya unaided. They must have had help to reach our territorial waters.

S.Forinte (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

With Malta joining Schengen zone there might be a lot more coming lured by the fact that once their detention is over they can move about the EU freely. That will turn Malta it into an attractive transit country. Malta is now part of the mainland as much as Lampedusa. Hungary is experiencing the same phenomenon after joining Schengen.

I.M. Dingli (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

No need to worry about the matter, I’m pretty sure Neil Falzon from UNHCR will come up with a plausible solution!!!

Edmund Azzopardi (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

So what is wrong with stopping illegal immigration? We have to start stamping our feet as talk is getting us nowhere. We talk and talk and they keep on coming. Solidarity my foot? If we go on like this we should stop thinking of Smart Island!!! And what about the latest news regarding Greece? We should do the same.

Sandro Pace (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

Soon this will become unsustainable. The few other countries are taking from us will have no effect. And we should not expect them to take them neither. They will have their limits too. Massive immigration will have a destabilising effect on our society and country. UNHCR does not care.

All efforts should be diverted to sending them back to libya. Immediately. Only fools still believe in a European solution.

victor pulis (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

This problem must be stopped at its source.I can almost see Gaddafi laughing his head off. Libya is shirking its obligations. We should give the migrants all the aid they need in the form of food, drink and medical care and then point them towards Libya.

Mark Aloisio (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

Malcolm Seychell, you were harping about this "doing it on our own" all night yesterday on Bondi Plus. What exactly do you propose should be done that neither the Maltese government nor other governments abroad have managed to do?

Malcolm Seychell (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

Burden Sharing will not happen. Eu countries do not want them. They have more then enough and nobody is happy with them.

We have to do it on our own and if action is going to be taken everyone must back the government.

a baldacchino (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

Hypocritical - interesting choice of word really.
would it also be hypocritical to ask other EU member states to enter into some sort of burden sharing agreement, as suggested by Dr. Busuttil and many others?

surely if the government is seeking "burden" sharing, then there is tacit acknowledgment that they are, in fact, a burden.

Andrew Borg-Cardona (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

No, any number of game birds don't come before human lives, Andrew Gatt, but stopping "THIS Spring Migration" (quoting you) won't in itself save any human lives, either. What you seem to want is stopping immigration, so why not say that and save yourself appearing hypocritical?

Andrew Gatt (2 weeks, 2 days ago)

If only the ECJ and EU devote as much energy to stop THIS Spring Migration as they did to stop Spring hunting...........I guess they have their own priorities........and 2 game birds seem to come before human lives.

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Article © Allied Newspapers Ltd., printed on Friday, May 16, 2008. This article is for personal use only, and should not be distributed.

Second boatload of migrants arrives

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