Giuseppe Conte’s new government and his policy towards the influx of migrants have been defied by the German NGOs whose ships – the Sea Watch and the Sea-Eye – have purposefully ignored the rules that are to be binding in the Mediterranean: the body of water has been divided into areas for which respective – Italian, Maltese and Libyan – maritime authorities are responsible. Hence, NGOs have no business to operate there.
Yet NGOs are above law, and so they are on their mission irrespective of everything and anything. Two recent events with the Sea Watch and the Sea-Eye are case in point.
One. A signal is picked up by the Sea Watch that an inflatable boat, crammed with migrants, finds itself in the waters under the jurisdiction of the Libyan Coast Guard. The Sea Watch responds to the dispatch, but Rome denies her permission to “rescue” the people because the Libyan patrol boat is operating there already and this is the area for which the Libyan coast guard is responsible. Despite that, two Sea Watch rescue boats are launched and approach the boat with the human cargo. At that time the patrol of the Libyan Coast Guard heaves into sight. Seeing which, the migrants, not wishing to be taken back to Libya (after all, they paid the traffickers up to 6,000 euros to arrive in Italy) throw themselves into the sea to reach the NGOs rescue boats because they are aware that the NGO will take them to Sicily. At this point, the Libyan Coast Guard leaves the rescue area, and so the German NGO begins to take migrants on board to ferry them to Sicily.
Two. The Sea Watch and the Sea-Eye are already “casually” in the position with the inflatables crammed with migrants, and without waiting for the directives from the Libyan Coast Guard or Rome they begin to transship the migrants. The Libyan Coast Guard say that they received the report of 2 inflatables and, arriving on the scene, found the NGOs within Libyan territorial waters. One of the inflatables was near the ship of one of the NGOs. The Libyan patrolmen warned the NGO ship to stop dragging the dinghy, assuring it that the Libyans themselves would take care of the rescue. Yet, when the Libyan patrolmen started the operation, one of the “volunteers” on the NGO boat shouted to the migrants to throw themselves into the sea and so about 30 people jumped into the water. Did they want to create “strategic deaths” (deaths to be attributed to the Libyan Coast Guard) and thus induce gullible Europeans to support them? Did they want to prove that governments cannot cope with the problem?
3 comments on “The NGOs challenge the Italian government”
Un cordon sanitaire autour de l’ Afrique!
L’ Afrique aux africains nous chantaient ils en 1960. Ils l’ont qu’ils la garde et se démerde!!!
Sink them. You only have to do it once, and the message will be understood.
Issue letters of marque and solve the problem quickly and economically