Migrant rescue: hundreds missing in Mediterranean tragedy
With 200 of a group of 700 migrants feared to have drowned in the latest Mediterranean boat tragedy a UN expert warns against thinking of migrants as “aliens from another world”.
A group of 94 migrants have been rescued from a rubber boat – including 17 woman and a five-year old boy – by the humanitarian agency Medecins sans Frontiers.
There were an estimated 700 people on board the boat which capsized off the Libyan coast, an Irish Navy ship is now involved in the rescue operation.
In the first hours after the accident, 367 survivors were rescued and 25 bodies recovered.
There are fears that more than 200 migrants have drowned in the tragedy.
The overcrowded steel-hulled boat flipped over on Wednesday after leaving from the city of Zuwara in the north-west of Libya early that morning.
The Irish navy vessel is expected to reach Sicily later on Thursday with most of the survivors.
An account of the rescue by the Irish navy explained how the ship, the Lé Niamh arrived on scene at 11.45 am and deployed two rhibs either side of the vessel, which then capsized.
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“The Lé Niamh immediately deployed all available assets including rhibs and life rafts. The Italian vessel the Mimbelli sent a helicopter to the scene to deploy additional life rafts and two further vessels,” a statement explained.
“The Italian Sirio and Médicins Sans Frontiére Dignity 1 are on site assisting with the efforts. The Lé Niamh has rescued 1280 migrants before this operation.”
There is a pan-European degree of disquiet about numbers, stoked up by excessive belief we are being flooded – that simply is not true Peter Sutherland, UN special representative on international migration
The managing director of Medecins Sans Frontiers, Florian Westphal called for the EU to take action in the wake of the tragedy.
“In the short term we obviously need to see which ships are available and in which regions in order to carry out these rescues, because unfortunately it looks like it is not enough,” he stated.
“If more ships are needed then more need to be brought in. In the mid term, the EU needs to complete its policy.”
The United Nation’s special representative on internatiional migration, Peter Sutherland, told Channel 4 News that hostile public discussion of migrants was unhelpful: “there is a pan-European degree of disquiet about numbers, stoked up by excessive belief we are being flooded – that simply is not true.”
Talking about refugees as if they are “aliens who have to be sent back to some other world” is not appropriate he said, adding that such people deserved as much help as the Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s.
Mr Sutherland called for Europe to “get its act together” to save lives and then to process asylum claims in a harmonised and fair manner.
Florian Westphal of Medecins Sans Frontiers, echoed his sentiment, saying the EU “needs to make sure that people who are fleeing their homes have the possibility to make their way to Europe in a safe and legal way in order to find safety and to apply for political asylum.”
“Therefore it needs to change its policy, which currently forces these people to travel across the Mediterranean in crowded rubber boats in order to risk their lives.”
