Italy 'to continue migrant rescues in Mediterranean' Accessibility 

From The BBC

28 October 2014

The Italian navy says it will continue search and rescue missions for migrants in the Mediterranean in parallel with an EU operation starting on Saturday. The navy has been picking up migrants in an operation called Mare Nostrum off the Libyan coast for a year. But this year has seen a surge of migrant boats heading for Europe and at least 3,000 migrants have drowned.

A new EU's operation, Triton, will have only a third of Mare Nostrum's budget, raising concern about future rescues. Triton will focus on border control - tasks such as vetting asylum seekers once they are ashore, and coastal patrols - rather than search and rescue in international waters. But Italy's Admiral Filippo Foffi told the BBC that EU-Italian naval co-operation must continue in international waters. There has been no order to stop Mare Nostrum yet, Adm Foffi said. However, Italian officials have made it clear that they intend to scale down their operation, as the EU's Frontex border agency puts Triton into action. Mare Nostrum was launched after hundreds of migrants drowned off the isle of Lampedusa, and was only intended to be a temporary mission. Italy has urged more EU help to cope with boatloads of migrants from northern Africa.

So far EU countries have pledged to give Operation Triton six ships, two planes and one helicopter. Many more operational details are yet to be hammered out - including how much time they will spend in international waters. "If we are only in territorial waters we won't see people in danger and if they die we won't see it," Adm Foffi warned. He said he was waiting to see what resources Italy's EU partners would offer to Frontex, and stressed that Frontex was currently involved in search and rescue work, alongside the Italian navy. Frontex "is not the owner of the capability" - it relies on member states offering personnel and equipment, he explained.

The UK has said it will not support future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants drowning in the Mediterranean. Foreign Office minister Baroness Anelay said such operations could encourage more people to attempt to make the dangerous sea crossing to enter Europe. There has been a rise in the number of migrants trying to reach Italy in the past year, with many setting sail from Libya packed into unseaworthy boats. About 150,000 migrants - mostly fleeing violence in the Horn of Africa and Middle East - have been rescued by Italian ships over the past 12 months.

[So just as Fire Services encourage people to be careless and cause fires – and therefore should be withdrawn immediately (obviously) - the provision of search and rescue in the Med encourages refugees to flee from starvation, unrest and Civil war in North Africa. It would seem that the Foreign Office has given up on the ideals of common humanity (or what was once common apparently) because rescued refugees might, at some point in the future, become a political or economic inconvenience to the present UK Government. Then again this should come as no great surprise as this is the same government which is openly thinking about unilaterally withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights which, apparently, is a reasonable response to a vanishingly small number of legal inconveniences and political embarrassments. Needless to say I was sickened and angry when I read the comments attributed to Baroness Anelay who, I think should resign from her post as she already appears to have resigned from the human race. God help us all if clowns like this manage to form the next government. For the last few days I have been officially ashamed to be British.]