June 2 () –
The Italian Coast Guard has announced this Friday that it has detained two migrant rescue boats, operated by the German NGOs Sea Eye and Mare Go, for violating maritime rescue legislation approved by the government of far-right Giorgia Meloni.
“The two naval vessels Sea Eye 4 and Mare Go, which carried out relief work at sea in recent days, and are currently docked respectively in the ports of Ortona and Lampedusa, have been subjected to an administrative strike”, has informed the Italian Coast Guard in a statement.
The Coast Guard has specified that the Sea Eye 4 vessel, after carrying out a first relief intervention on a ship with 17 migrants on board in Libyan waters, went to another rescue of a ship with 32 people on board in Italian waters despite the order indicating that he go to the port of Ortona “as soon as possible”.
For its part, the ship Mare Go refused to go to the port assigned by the Italian authorities in Trapani, in western Sicily, because it was 32 hours away, thus deciding to dock in Lampedusa and attend to 36 migrants “in danger”. .
“After the rescued people disembarked, we were immediately informed that Mare Go was detained for 20 days and we believe that we will face a fine because we broke an Italian decree issued on January 2, 2023 by the neo-fascist government of Meloni,” he stated in a statement by the German NGO.
The Meloni government has been criticized for the recent approval of a law on maritime rescue that contemplates fines of up to 50,000 euros for those who provide humanitarian assistance and which the United Nations has described as “worrying”.
The new law makes the work of humanitarian organizations operating in the Mediterranean difficult, among other issues, as it stipulates that vessels have to go to port immediately after carrying out a rescue, forcing them to ignore emergencies that may arise unexpectedly. additional.
