On Friday, Europe's Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini suggested Malta, Italy and Greece could launch a joint patrol of their waters to alleviate the illegal immigrants’ crisis. This follows the death at sea of 13 African immigrants trying to reach Italy, in one of the worst such incidents since the start of the year, highlights the perils faced by the growing number of would-be immigrants seeking a better life in Europe.
Franco Frattini said that the summer months always bring boatloads of migrants to Italy, but recent moves by the country's new government have made the journey even more appealing, AFP reported. A week ago the Italian government announced plans to legalise 350,000 illegal immigrants working in Italy, and on Friday it announced further measures to make it easier to obtain a residence permit or to bring family members over.
Thus, this proposed Italy-Malta-Greece patrolling joint effort should help avoid further death incidents and the mission could be extended to other countries within the European Union.
In Friday’s incident, the survivors were picked up off the island of Lampedusa during Friday night. Seven of the 14 were taken to hospital in a serious condition, two of them in a coma, flown by helicopter to Palermo in Sicily. AFP reported that the migrants, all men aged between 20 and 30, had drifted for 20 days in a boat with no food or water. They were preparing to throw the two unconscious passengers overboard, believing them to be dead, when they were rescued.
The tragedy carried one of the highest death tolls of any such incident since the start of the year, although it is far exceeded by the 47 Senegalese migrants whose bodies were found on a boat discovered adrift near the island of Barbados. It had left Cape Verde for the Canary Islands four months previously, AFP said.
On March 15 a Spanish hospital ship recovered 17 bodies south of the Canary Islands and another 17 people have been missing since Wednesday when their boat sank off the coast of Tunisia. Since Spain put in place more rigorous controls to prevent illegal immigration, many African migrants have begun to head instead for Italy, Interior Minister Guiliano Amato said on Thursday.
"In the past two weeks, more than 2,000 illegals, most of them from north Africa, have arrived on Lampedusa", a small island some 300 kilometres (200 miles) north of Libya and 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Sicily, he said according to AFP.
Spain has also registered record numbers of illegal immigrants with 12,300 arrivals since the start of the year. (Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP))
Meanwhile, 30 illegal immigrants entered Malta on Saturday evening. Another 12 were rescued by AFM on Sunday and a search operation was launched to locate 15 immigrants reported missing.
Read more about this issue on MaltaMedia's special feature:
Lanċa Ġejja u Oħra Sejra: Malta and its migrations.
See also:
Illegal immigrants rescued; search operation ongoing
by MaltaMedia News - Jul 30, 2006
© Copyright 2006 - MaltaMedia Online Network
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