AT SEA: EU parliamentary elections this weekend have prompted an often bitter debate across the region about how to handle the rising tide of migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia reaching Europe's shores

Record ID: 348746

  • Title: AT SEA: EU parliamentary elections this weekend have prompted an often bitter debate across the region about how to handle the rising tide of migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia reaching Europe's shores
  • Date: 21st May 2014
  • Summary: AT SEA OFF COAST OF SICILY, ITALY (RECENT) (REUTERS) SHIP PERSONNEL IN PROTECTIVE CLOTHING ON WET DOCK OF SAN GIORGIO VARIOUS OF NAVY RESCUE VESSEL PACKED WITH MIGRANTS ENTERING WET DOCK VARIOUS OF MIGRANTS ARRIVING ON VESSEL TRANSLATOR SPEAKING TO MIGRANTS THROUGH LOUD SPEAKER MIGRANTS STANDING ON VESSEL VARIOUS OF WATER BOTTLES BEING HANDED OUT TO MIGRANTS MIGRANTS SEAT
  • Embargoed: 5th June 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: At Sea, Italy
  • City:
  • Country: Italy At Sea
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA48Z0MG0Z4BHE3B2XLOYDEST5G
  • Story Text: Italy's naval vessels are responsible for Europe's most important patrolling mission, saving lives on an almost daily basis as they monitor the waters between Sicily and North Africa.
    The five-ship fleet involved in the mission, known as Mare Nostrum or "Our Sea", has been operative since October 2013 when 366 men, women and children drowned in a shipwreck a mile from the coast of Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost point. The mission's aim is to prevent similar disasters and fight human smuggling, mainly from the shores of the increasingly unstable Libya.
    So far the operation has hauled more than 43,000 people from the seas.
    On the bridge of the flagship, the San Giorgio, Captain Aldo Dolfini barks orders to launch a rescue craft to help a small fishing boat in trouble at sea with hundreds of migrants on board. The wind is whipping down from the north, stronger by the minute.

    "Unfortunately the situation is deteriorating, the wind force is increasing, we foresee a worsening of the sea conditions," Dolfini told Reuters as he looked out to sea.

    "Our objective is to reach the boat and, if we need to, intervene as quickly as possible. We will try to get there before dark because that is when everything becomes more difficult," he said.
    Snipers take up position on the San Giorgio deck in case there is any trouble from trigger-happy human traffickers. Minutes later 300 migrants crowded onto the 12-metre (12-yard) boat are loaded onto a rescue craft and ferried to safety. Wind gusts had reached 50 knots, turning what had been a flat sea into a watery death trap with 4-metre swells. The migrant boat had been floating helpless 63 kilometres (40 miles) from Libya and 193 kilometres (120 miles) from Italy. Dolfini is sure if they had not been rescued they would all have drowned in the high seas.
    The stench of human sweat is overpowering as a landing craft enters the wet dock in the belly of the San Giorgio carrying 300 Eritrean men, wide-eyed and tense. They are to be quickly transferred to another Italian vessel, the frigate Vega.
    Water is handed out to the men, packed like animals in the rescue vessel.
    The crew of the San Giorgio are given little respite after weeks of continuous rescues, including as many as 1,200 in four different boats in one afternoon alone.
    After a rescue, the ship often works around the clock. It provides medical attention, serves the migrants three meals a day, gives them an ID card and begins the paperwork for asylum seekers. Once the migrants disembark, the ship takes on supplies and heads back to sea a day later to do it all over again.
    Apart from saving lives, Dolfini says Mare Nostrum has another objective, "to combat and fight for justice against all those who profit out of this human trafficking."

    "These desperate people carry out journeys that sometimes have taken years, they confront the sea, sometime for the first time ever, in order to try to keep their hopes alive. We like to think that with our work, their hopes will continue to live on," he said.
    The navy has been stretched thin by its largest mission in decades, and migrant centres across the country are full, as bureaucrats struggle to process tens of thousands of requests for asylum or to be hosted temporarily for humanitarian reasons.
    Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's government is pushing for more EU involvement in Mare Nostrum, both in financial terms and in the form of ships.

    "We cannot stop Mare Nostrum - it would mean an immediate death sentence for millions of people," said the man in charge of the mission, Admiral Mario Culcasi.
    Italy also wants the EU to symbolically move the regional border authority, Frontex, from Poland to Italy. It is asking that the rules governing asylum within the EU, known as the Dublin Regulation, be made more flexible.
    For decades before Mare Nostrum began, Italy saw boats arrive on its shores without knowing how many were lost at sea. Now at least, for the Italian navy and the rest of Europe, there is no turning back.
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