Libya’s UN-recognised government in Tripoli has declared its own seaports unsafe and has said it will not authorise the landing of migrants stopped at sea and sent back to Libyan territory by its coastguard vessels.
The Libyan coastguard rescued around 280 migrants on Thursday, but when it attempted to return them to Libya, the country’s authorities refused to let them disembark, according to the UN migration agency OIM.
Authorities in Tripoli said that “due to the intensity in shelling, some of which previously targeted the capital’s main port, Libya is not considered a safe port”, the UN said.
Since a deal signed with the Italian government in 2017, the Libyan coastguard has stopped migrant boats heading to Europe at sea and sent their passengers back to Libya, where aid agencies say they face torture and abuse.
Libya’s refusal to take migrants back comes at a time when European governments have been taking harsher measures to stop migrants since the start of the coronavirus crisis, leaving no option to asylum seekers escaping from torture and wars, who despite the fear of Covid-19 continue to risk their lives at sea in order to reach Europe.
In an unprecedented move on Tuesday, the Italian government also declared its seaports “unsafe” because of the coronavirus pandemic and said it would not authorise the landing of migrant rescue boats until the end of the emergency.
Last week, Malta’s government took a similar measure and also declared its seaports closed to migrants, citing the threat of the coronavirus. According to charities, Maltese authorities have also increasingly been delaying responses to migrant boats in distress.
Alarm Phone, a hotline service for migrants in distress at sea, has shared two audio recordings with the Guardian of a series of calls from a group of asylum seekers claiming an official from a Maltese navy boat on Thursday sabotaged their vessel, carrying about 70 people, by cutting the engine cable.
“We have an emergency here,” a man can be heard saying in one of the audio recordings. “The Maltese military came and cut the motor cable. There is water in the boat. The Maltese military said: ‘We will leave you to die in the water. Nobody will come to Malta.’”
“Please help us. We will die,” says another man. “The Malta military ship number is P52.”
The migrants, who were allegedly boarded by the Maltese navy roughly 20 miles south-west of Malta, were eventually rescued by the Maltese authorities.
The Guardian has asked the Maltese navy for comment.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus emergency, the central Mediterranean route has become increasingly impenetrable for migrants fleeing war-afflicted Libya.
The risk, according to charitable organisations, is that the restrictive measures in Libya, Italy and Malta will set the migrant situation back years, to when boats from Libya would set off on their own, risking people’s lives in the attempt to reach Italian shores.
“European governments’ actions to close their ports to people rescued at sea put lives at risk and cannot be justified on public health grounds,” said Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Recent and unfolding events in the Mediterranean Sea raise serious concerns that European Union countries will use the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to evade their responsibilities under international law to respond to boats in distress at sea.”
On Friday, Italian authorities said a 15-year-old migrant who had landed in the Italian island of Lampedusa on Tuesday had tested positive for Covid-19 and been placed under quarantine.
The rescue boat Alan Kurdi, operated by the German NGO Sea Eye and named after the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in 2015, is currently the only NGO rescue boat operating in the central Mediterranean. The coronavirus outbreak has forced many charities to concentrate their aid efforts elsewhere, while other rescue groups, such as Sea Watch and SOS Méditerranée, have not returned to international waters after being quarantined for 14 days after their last missions at the end of February.
source https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/libyan-officials-migrants-stopped-seaports-unsafe
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