Italy fears surge of migrants will only grow
|
Version 0 of 1. CATANIA, Sicily — Italy struggled to cope with a surging number of desperate and sick migrants arriving on its shores Wednesday, deeply concerned that the numbers will only continue to multiply as the summer approaches. Nearly 1,000 migrants came ashore on Wednesday alone, many of them suffering from scabies, which prompted health officials to put them in isolation under a tent on the main deck of the Italian navy ship that rescued them. Wednesday’s new surge came as Italian officials were still dealing with the aftermath of the disastrous shipwreck off its shores Sunday that killed up to 850 people — the worst single death toll among refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. “We prefer to die trying [to migrate] than stay back there and die,” Emmanual, a Nigerian migrant who recently arrived in Sicily, told the Associated Press. “Stay at home and get shot dead or maybe burnt to death, I just prefer to die while trying to survive.” Other migrants told similar stories of desperate survival — and of witnessing grisly, watery death all around them. “When we saw the lights of the rescue boat, everyone rushed to one side, and the boat just turned over,” a 16-year-old Somali survivor of Sunday’s capsizing told aid agency officials. The boy, whom they’ve called Said to protect his identity, was one of four minors who managed to live through Sunday’s horror at sea. Traffickers hadn’t locked him below deck on the three-tiered vessel, like the majority of those who perished. “I passed out. And when I woke up, I was here,” the traumatized teen told officials from Save the Children at the holding center in Catania, where he was taken. “Now, I’m just so tired.” Two of the surviving teens were Somalians and the other two Bangladeshis, the aid agency said. Only 28 migrants survived. The ship’s captain and a crew member have been taken into custody in Italy on criminal charges. Said told officials with Save the Children that the traffickers initially tried to cram about 1,200 people into the vessel, hitting them to make them pack into the overcrowded ship. Aid officials speculated that the vessel should have held only about 50 people. Said told Save the Children that he traveled from Somalia through Sudan and the African desert to Libya to embark on the fateful sea journey toward Italy. He spent nine months imprisoned in Libya waiting for his parents to get the money the traffickers demanded for passage. Because Italy is the first European Union country where the migrants set foot, they stay in reception centers, sometimes for years, while their requests or appeals for asylum are processed. Migrants deemed ineligible for asylum are ordered expelled, but many run away and head to Northern Europe to reach relatives. Said told Save the Children that he was heading to Norway to live with relatives in Oslo. As the migrant problem seemed to grow by the day, Italy pressed for a coordinated international military intervention and other measures by the E.U. and the United Nations to stem the surging tide of beleaguered refugees reaching its shores. Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti said that Italy was willing to lead any military intervention if it was carried out as an international endeavor backed by the United Nations. “We know where the smugglers keep their boats, where they gather,” Pinotti said in Rome. “The plans for military intervention are there.” “We’re ready to do our share,” she told the Sky TG24 news channel. “We’re the country closest to Libya.” The vast majority of smugglers’ boats are arriving in Italy from Libya, where lawlessness has taken root and Islamist militants and people traffickers have gathered strength after the ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011. Pinotti made her comments one day before E.U. leaders were to hold an emergency summit meeting in Brussels, called after Sunday’s shipwreck. Meanwhile, the migrants just keep coming. On Wednesday alone, an additional 986 asylum seekers arrived in two southern Italian ports. Italian officials are deeply concerned that the approaching calmer summer weather could bring tens of thousands more and are pleading with the E.U. to help shoulder the increasing load on its southern flank. An Italian naval vessel docked in the Sicilian port of Augusta with 446 people — 59 of them children — who had been rescued off the southern coast of the Italian peninsula. And 540 migrants arrived on Italy’s picturesque coastline near the southern city of Salerno, many of them with scabies. The health threat to Italy prompted Italian Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin to convene a summit of E.U. health ministers in Rome to coordinate health measures for the migrants. Italy has saved about 200,000 migrants’ lives at sea since the start of 2014. Besides military intervention, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called on the E.U. and the United Nations to quickly adopt a long-range, comprehensive policy on the growing problem mostly facing his country alone. “When a person has to risk his life because he needs to escape from a situation where they are chopping off the heads of those near him, you cannot discourage departures with a generic statement,” Renzi told his country’s Parliament. “You can do it by putting the [U.N.] High Commissioner for Refugees in Niger, Sudan” and elsewhere in Africa. Italian media reports said Italian government officials were considering proposing that refugee camps, under U.N. auspices, be set up in Niger, Tunisia and Sudan so migrants’ applications for refugee status could be handled there. Read more A global surge in refugees leaves Europe struggling to cope U.N. estimates up to 850 migrants perished in capsized boat off Libya Faced with questions on migrants, Italy’s Renzi points fingers about Libya |