NGOs in Italy angry with Meloni over new restrictions on ships rescuing migrants

The Italian government on Thursday approved a decree aimed at greatly limiting the search and rescue operations carried out by ships non-governmental organizations in the Mediterranean, in its attempt to reduce the flows of migrants and refugees to its shores.

International aid organizations did not hide their outrage at the measures announced by the far-right coalition government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The decree stipulates in particular that after any rescue operation, the vessels must immediately sail to the ports indicated to them, not to offer assistance to other migrants in danger at sea.

Usually, ships carry out several operations before requesting a port to disembark the rescued, which in recent years has been more often received by Italy.

In addition, it is stipulated that immigrants and refugees must declare while still on board whether they intend to apply for asylum – and in which European Union country – and that they have completed the documents before docking .

In case of violations of the new rules, the government in Rome is threatening to impose fines of up to 50,000 euros on the captains of the NGO ships, and that in the event of a repeat violation, the non-governmental organizations’ vessels will be seized and kept immobilized in Italian ports.

Yesterday Thursday, during a press conference for the end of the year, Italian Prime Minister Meloni stated that her government has brought immigration back on the international agenda.

She also said her government’s new decree forces NGO ships to comply with international law when carrying out rescue operations.

The decree’s main purpose is to “drown” refugees and migrants, argued Oliver Kulikowski of the German NGO Sea-Watch, which often carries out such missions in the central Mediterranean, as reported by international agencies and relayed by the Athens News Agency.

“Forcing ships to go to ports violates the duty of rescue if there are other people in danger at sea. We will oppose this attempt to criminalize civilian rescue operations at sea and deprive refugees of their rights,” he said.

The organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also strongly criticized the new measures.

The aim is “to force us to leave the rescue zone in the Mediterranean unguarded, which will lead to an increase in the number of deaths,” Marco Bertotto of the Italian branch of Doctors Without Borders told La Stampa newspaper.

NGO ships have long been targeted by the Italian right.

In November, Rome decided to ban two ships from carrying people rescued off the Italian coast.

While lately, authorities have been pointing to distant cities as safe ports to make things more difficult for refugees and crews, aid workers point out.

The Ocean Viking, the SOS Méditerranée ship, is currently traveling 900 nautical kilometers from southern Italy to Ravenna (north), in the Adriatic, to disembark 113 refugees and migrants it rescued.

The Italian government complains that the operations of these ships “invite” illegal immigration, that the organizations are playing the game of traffickers if they do not cooperate with them. NGOs reject Rome’s accusations.

The issue caused diplomatic tension between Italy and France in November when the Ocean Viking was forced to take 230 refugees and migrants it rescued in territorial waters between Libya and Italy to Toulon after a three-week odyssey in search of a safe port.

Since the beginning of the year, some 2,000 migrants and refugees have been lost in the Mediterranean, including nearly 1,400 in the central Mediterranean, the world’s most dangerous maritime migration route, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Every year, tens of thousands of people fleeing their countries to escape armed conflict or poverty try to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya, whose shores are some 300 kilometers from Italy.