Rome: The migrant rescue ship Sea Watch 3 has been detained in the Sicilian port of Catania for breaching safety and environmental laws, the Italian coastguard said on Friday, after it disembarked dozens of people it had saved from the sea.
The crew of the Dutch-flagged ship had expected the vessel to be detained or impounded as a show of strength from Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who says charity rescue boats aid illegal migration.
“As assumed, we are blocked for political reasons! There was high pressure on the coastguard to find a reason to chain us,” Sea Watch International said on Twitter.
“They can chain our ships, but they can’t chain solidarity!” it said.
Sea Watch 3, which had been waiting off the coast of Sicily with 47 people it rescued in the Mediterranean on January 19, was finally allowed to anchor in Catania after six other countries agreed to take in the migrants, including 15 minors.
Officials then boarded the ship “to perform a technical inspection of conditions on board”, the coastguard said.
“During the inspection of the Sea Watch 3, a vessel certified as pleasure yacht, a series of non-compliances concerning both navigation safety and compliance with rules protecting the marine environment were noted,” it said.
The coastguard will “not permit the departure of the ship until they are resolved,” it added, without providing further details.
Should the ship be impounded, it would take the last rescue charity ship operating in the central Mediterranean out of action, though there is one more charity-run surveillance boat that aims to spot migrants in distress but is not equipped to help them.
Italian Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said the ship was a pleasure yacht, “which is not as a rule for carrying out rescues of migrants at sea”.
“In Italy this is not possible. If you are a millionaire and you buy a yacht, you are going to sail for your pleasure, not in order to substitute the Libyan or Italian coastguards,” he said in a Facebook post.
Sea Watch replied on Twitter that the ship is registered as a yacht because it is not a commercial boat.
“This doesn’t affect our ship’s qualification as a rescue vessel. Come up with something new!” it said.
France, Germany, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Luxembourg had said they would share care of the mainly Sub-Saharan group of migrants.
Europe has been wrestling with divisions over migration since the crisis of 2015 when more than one million people arrived on its shores, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East.
Salvini is looking into whether it is possible to ban charity rescue ships from Italian waters and has threatened legal action against the Sea Watch crew.
He accuses them of sailing straight for Italy rather than taking the migrants to closer ports in Libya or Tunisia.
The German charity says it tried but failed to get a response from Tripoli or Tunis and had no other option than to head to Italy.
Sea Watch’s mission head Kim Heaton-Heather told AFPTV on Thursday that he feared “problems with the authorities”.
“But I am also very, very certain that in the end, no matter what allegations are brought against the organisation, the ship or the crew as whole, none of these allegations will stick and the truth of the matter will come out,” he said. — AFP
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