A fishing boat carrying nearly 370 migrants landed overnight on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the country’s news agencies said on Sunday, fueling anger from local officials over a recent rise in illegal arrivals. Italy has been struggling in recent months with daily arrivals of hundreds of migrants leaving from North Africa to its southern shores, a task complicated by security measures imposed by the ongoing coronavirus crisis. Local Lampedusa Mayor Toto Martello called for a general strike on the island from Monday to protest the national government’s “frightening silence” on the issue.
The migrants, whose nationalities were not known, underwent temperature checks before they were taken to an emergency reception centre on the island which now houses some 1,160 people, ten times its planned maximum capacity, Martello told ANSA. About 30 other small boats, mostly from the Tunisian coast, had already reached the island since Friday carrying a total of around 500 migrants, the Italian press reported. Nello Musumeci, the right-leaning leader of sister island Sicily, on Sunday wrote on Facebook that he would ask the government for a meeting on the “humanitarian and health crisis”.
Musumeci issued a decree last week ordering the closure of migrant centres in Sicily to curb the spread of coronavirus, a move that was rejected by the Italian courts. Mayors on the island have voiced fears that the presence of migrants could discourage tourism. Thousands of people are thought to have died making the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean to flee conflict, repression and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. The migrant crisis has divided the European Union. Italy two years ago closed its ports to rescue boats, until in 2019, France and Germany agreed to share intake of migrants landing in Italy and Malta.
The rescued migrants later said three people had died at sea before the arrival of the Louise Michel. Banksy, who keeps his identity a secret, explained in an online video that he had bought the boat to help migrants “because EU authorities deliberately ignore distress calls from non-Europeans”.
Source: DJ
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