Around 30 migrants were found dead on a boat packed with people off the coast of Sicily, Italy’s navy said yesterday after rescuing thousands more trying to leave North Africa over the weekend.
The dead are thought to have either drowned or suffocated on the overcrowded vessel, said the force.
If, when facing immigration tragedies, we are told, ‘this is not our problem’, then I say keep your single currency and leave us our values
At least 50,000 migrants have reached Italy from North Africa so far this year, many fleeing war and forced conscription, say authorities. At that rate, the figures should soon pass the record of 62,000 people stopped on the sea route in 2011 in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East. The Italian navy said it rescued 5,000 people over the weekend.
Ten people drowned after their overcrowded boat sank off the Libyan coast two weeks ago, adding to a death toll which has steadily climbed since hundreds died in two disasters last year, prompting Italy to set up the naval rescue mission Mare Nostrum or “Our Sea”.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last week said Europe must take responsibility for rescuing boat migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Africa by making a “significant investment” in the region’s border control agency, Frontex.
“A Europe that tells the Calabrian fisherman that he must use a certain technique to catch tuna but then turns its back when there are dead bodies in the sea cannot call itself civilised,” Renzi said in Parliament.
The 39-year-old Prime Minister said: “If, when facing the tragedies of immigration, we are told, ‘this is not our problem,’ then I say keep your single currency and leave us our values.”
Though about two-thirds of those who are rescued move on quickly to other EU countries, member states have offered Italy little help with Mare Nostrum, and Frontex has provided only limited air surveillance.
Italy – along with Spain, Greece and Malta – have been left mostly on their own to manage the growing number of migrants who seek to enter the EU in boats departing from North Africa, partly because increasing anti-immigrant sentiment in countries like Britain and France makes it unpopular to help out.