Boat plight betrays humanitarian failure
Print Edition
A migrant rescue boat turned away by Italy and Malta arrived at the Spanish port of Valencia yesterday, ending a voyage which has made it a symbol of Europe’s failure to agree on immigration.
Spain swooped to help 629 mainly sub-Saharan Africans on board the Aquarius last week after Italy’s new government, asserting its anti-immigrant credentials, refused to let it dock. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who took office two weeks ago, took the opportunity to show a more liberal stance.
But the plight of the Aquarius, run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) with Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee, highlighted the European Union’s failure to agree on how to manage the huge influx of people fleeing poverty and conflict.
The Aquarius arrived carrying 106 people rescued from unstable boats near Libya. The others had been transferred to an Italian coast guard vessel and a ship belonging to the Italian navy to make the journey safer.
Doctors Without Borders tweeted a photo of one of its team telling the people on board what they could expect. “People are calm and pleased to be arriving in Spain,” the group said.
Crowded conditions
Valencian local government officials said none of the people who arrived on the first boat showed signs of serious illness, but many had indeed suffered from crowded conditions and high temperatures in recent days.
Anti-migrant feeling has surged in Italy, where more than 600,000 people have arrived by sea over the past five years, helping to propel the nationalist League into a coalition government.
Far fewer have come to Spain, but the numbers are rising fast. Spain’s coast guard rescued almost 1,000 people on Friday and Saturday.
Most Spaniards support the idea of welcoming and helping to integrate refugees, pollsters say. That allowed Sanchez, a socialist, to offer migrant-friendly policies to voters who felt previous governments did not do enough.
France, which chided Italy for turning away the Aquarius, has offered to take in any passengers who qualify for asylum and want to go there.
An Italian naval vessel is due to bring the remaining migrants into port later in the morning.
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