More than 3,000 migrants have arrived in Italy in the last few hours of intense activity for the Italian coast guard, which has rescued numerous boats in distress in the Central Mediterranean, while the government of the far-right Giorgia Meloni studies measures to toughen current legislation.
In two complex and long operations, not yet completed, the Coast Guard intercepted on Monday two ships carrying 800 and 400 people in waters close to Sicily and Calabria (south), who have added to the nearly 2,000 people who Italian authorities had already bailed out in other operations since Friday.
The fishing vessel with nearly 800 migrants was intercepted more than 120 miles southeast of Syracuse (Sicily), in an operation complicated by overloading on board and which was coordinated at sea by the Coast Guard ship Peluso, with the support of three motor sailers and the assistance of a merchant ship present in the area, reported the coast guard.
In the other rescue, with 400 people on a second fishing vessel, reported by the telephone alert service for migrants at sea, Alarm Phone, the Italian ship Diciotti participated, off Ionian Calabria (south).
Regarding the situation on the island of Lampedusa, about 1,700 migrants arrived on the island in 48 hours, with the access point collapsed with about 1,900 people, five times the capacity, according to local media, while in Catania they are hastily building two structures to accommodate some 700 migrants saved in the Ionian in the last hours.
In support of the search and rescue operations at sea, the air assets of the Italian Coast Guard and Frontex have also participated in a few days of numerous arrivals of immigrants in Italy, despite the efforts of the Government of Meloni to suppress irregular immigration .
This Tuesday the examination of the Executive Migrants Bill, which increases prison sentences for traffickers and complicates the work of rescue NGOs at sea, resumes in the Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, while the Ministry of the Interior It is already studying some amendments to toughen the legislation “taking into account the special relevance of the current migratory flow,” according to Undersecretary Nicola Molteni.
Molteni plans to meet this afternoon with the law’s rapporteur to strengthen in particular the special protection of asylum seekers and the repatriation of illegal immigrants, according to the media.
The Vice President of the Italian Government and leader of the sovereignist League, Matteo Salvini, assured today that Italy is “absolutely incapable” of managing “a thousand daily arrivals” of migrants and that “it is crucial that Europe wake up and intervene.”
“He has been chatting for years, but he has never lifted a finger, and it is time to show that there is a community, a Union, and that solidarity is not only the responsibility of Italy, Spain, Greece or Malta. Because a thousand arrivals a day we are absolutely incapable to support them economically, culturally and socially,” Salvini said hours before a Council of Ministers in which a state of migratory emergency could be decreed, according to local media.
“It is a very probable assumption. Yesterday I spoke with my colleague from the Interior, (Matteo) Piantedosi. There is an absolute emergency,” said the Minister of Civil Protection and Maritime Policies, Nello Musumeci, in statements to the RAI public channel on Tuesday.
The good weather has encouraged a greater number of boats, most of them from Tunisia, to undertake the route that connects North Africa with the coasts of Lampedusa and Sicily, in the central Mediterranean.
Arrivals in Italy amounted to 28,000 in the first three months of 2023, 300% more than the 6,800 in 2022 and at this rate, projections point to 430,000 landings by the end of the year, so the Government intends to accelerate initiatives to stop departures especially from Tunisia and Libya
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