ROME (Portal) – Three charity boats carrying nearly 1,000 rescued migrants urged Italian or Maltese authorities on Wednesday to welcome them to one of their ports, saying those on board urgently needed help.
The Doctors Without Borders (MSF), SOS Mediterranee and SOS Humanity ships have been at sea for more than a week. They said all their docking requests have so far been unsuccessful.
“572 men, women and children are still waiting for safe haven,” MSF wrote on Twitter, referring to the ship Geo Barents.
In comments emailed to Portal, SOS Humanity said it had 179 people on board its ship Humanity 1, which is off the east coast of Sicily. The German charity said it had been sending docking requests to state authorities for the past 11 days.
The ship, operated by SOS Mediterranee, currently carries 234 people.
In an interview with the daily Corriere della Sera, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi did not respond to a question about whether the migrant boats would be allowed to dock, but said Rome could not deal with migrants rescued by “foreign boats” at sea.
There was no immediate response from the Maltese authorities to a request for comment.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s new right-wing government is threatening to ban charity boats from its waters as Rome tries again to take a tough stance on boat migrants.
In comments to be included in a book, corroborated by her staff, Meloni accused sea rescue organizations of violating international law by operating as a “shuttle” between Africa and Europe.
She insisted that the flag states of the charity ships in question – Germany and Norway – should look after the migrants currently stranded at sea, rather than Italy or Malta.
“If an NGO ship, say, flies the flag of Germany, there are two options: either Germany recognizes it and takes care of it, or that ship becomes a pirate ship,” Meloni told author Bruno Vespa.
(Reporting by Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini, editing by William Maclean)