Maltese government disputing claims of capsized boat migrants

Maltese government sources are disputing claims that a boat carrying dozens of migrants fleeing Libya by sea, had sunk inside Malta’s Search and Rescue Area.

On Facebook, foreign minister Evarist Bartolo relayed informatin given to Cabinet colleages, who were told by government officials the claims were “unfounded”.

This newspaper has requested further details on the alleged incident from Alarm Phone, a migrant rescue NGO that alerts rescue coordination centres to the presence of boat migrants in distress.

Malta has closed its ports to migrant rescue boats which in recent years have been patrolling a Mediterranean sea in which fewer European navies have endeavoured to rescue migrants leaving Libya, and instead delegated the Libyan coastguard to patrol and take in migrants leaving the war-torn country.

According to the government source, officials are disputing claims that the boat could have sunk inside Malta’s SAR, and that the claim is related to a sighting by EU border agency Frontex’s aerial reconnaissance of a torn dinghy. Frontex has alerted the relevant authorities of the responsible countries concerning the torn dinghy, as well as various EU Member States.

Now the Maltese government is saying that sightings of torn dinghies left adrift are many in the Mediterranean Sea, and that these do not automatically mean that migrants were aboard and lost their lives.

A petition to Malta Prime Minister Robert Abela yesterday requested that the Armed Forces succour a vessel carrying boat migrants inside the Maltese search and rescue zones, as fears grew of a boat capsizing in inclement weather.

The petition concerns a reported incident in which a boat carrying 47 people, including a pregnant woman and children, could have already lost their lives at sea.

European member states this week shut down their ports to boat migrant rescues, invoking emergency measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Malta’s foreign minister Evarist Bartolo on Saturday also spoke to EU external relations commissioner Josep Borrell, protesting that migrant rescue charities were enabling human traffickers in Libya to send out boat migrants at sea, and ferry them to safety in Europe.

The Maltese government fears that after Italy’s ports were shut down under the COVID-19 pandemic, more asylum seekers will be directed into the Maltese SAR zone and territorial waters.

The migrant hotline charity Alarm Phone yesterday said the measures were putting migrants at sea at serious risk of dying in distress. “Under the veil of the health crisis, European authorities are carrying out racist border security policies that make sea crossings even more dangerous and deadly.”

The Alarm Phone estimates that in just the week between 5-11 April, over 1,000 people on more than 20 boats left the Libyan shores. “The Alarm Phone was alerted to 10 boats in total, two of which were rescued by [Sea-Eye’s] ‘Alan Kurdi’ on 6 April. Over 500 people are reported to have been returned to Libya within merely three days. Some of the survivors have informed us that six people drowned. Many of those returned were kept imprisoned on a ship at Tripoli harbour. Moreover, the fate of some boats remains unclear. At the same time, we have also learned of several other boats that reached Italy autonomously, arriving in Lampedusa, Sicily, Linosa and Pantelleria.”

The dangerous rescue gap that has emerged inside the central Mediterranean stems from an unwillingness by European coastguards and navies to patrol waters which traffickers use to send out asylum seekers and refugees in boats to be ultimately picked up. But even the Libyan coastguard, financed by the EU to monitor its immediate SAR zone and pick up departing boats, has said it will not engage in SAR activities.

Now only one civil rescue boat, the ‘Alan Kurdi’ was at hand to rescue two boats; but with 150 people now on board, they are searching for a port of safety, since then denied by both Italy and Malta.