The civil rescue ship Sea-Eye 4, carrying 87 migrants, was refused permission to enter a port in Malta at the weekend and has continued on to southern Italy in the hope of being able to dock there.
The German vessel Sea-Eye 4 spent days waiting off Malta after rescuing 87 migrants from the country's Search and Rescue zone in the Mediterranean a week ago.
When the ship's request was finally denied by Maltese authorities, it set off for Sicily. At the time of writing, on Monday morning, it was just off the coast of southern Sicily, not far from the port of Ragusa, according to the website Vessel Finder.
On board the Sea-Eye 4, German Greens MP Julian Pahlke wrote on Twitter on Sunday about the response from the Maltese to the ship’s request to be assigned a safe harbor: "What does Malta do? They say they are not responsible and the ship has to head for its home port of Regensburg in southern Germany. Not kidding."
Regensburg, where Sea-Eye is headquartered, is a landlocked town on the Danube river, north of Munich.
SAR responsibilities
Malta, an EU member state since 2004, is located between Sicily and the north African coast. Most migrants crossing the Central Mediterranean to Europe have to pass through the Maltese Search and Rescue region.
The island state has signed the International Maritime Search and Rescue Convention, which divides the world’s oceans into 13 SAR areas. But rescue organizations have repeatedly accused it of refusing to let them dock in its ports, forcing them to continue on to southern Italy.
Malta toughened its position on search and rescue in 2020: it coordinated several returns to Libya with the assistance of the Libyan Coast Guard, resulting in the deaths of migrants. In April 2020, the Maltese government stated that it could no longer "guarantee the rescue of 'prohibited immigrants' on board any boats, ships or other vessels, nor to ensure the availability of a 'safe place' on Maltese territory to any persons rescued at sea."
Claims of 'pushbacks'
From around May 2020, the migrant emergency hotline Alarm Phone said it observed fewer rescues carried out by the Armed Forces of Malta and more migrants illegally returned ('pushed back') to Libya, according to a report in the Times of Malta.
"We are observing that the AFM doesn’t go out for rescues at all to boats in distress in the Maltese search and rescue zone, south of Lampedusa. Instead, they count on merchant vessels and the Libyan coastguard to push boat people back to Libya," Alarm Phone’s Britta Rabe told the Maltese paper.
The NGO also said that Malta was using air surveillance to prevent boats entering the island’s search and rescue zone, in line with a deal between Malta and Italy in 2020.
Migrants rescued by Geo Barents disembark in Italy
Meanwhile, all 659 people rescued in the Mediterranean by another rescue ship, Geo Barents, disembarked in Italy at the weekend. The last migrants were able to leave the vessel on Saturday in Taranto harbor, the organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported. The authorities had assigned the ship a safe port on Thursday, after a long wait at sea.
MSF tweeted that they hoped the refugees and migrants would now receive the protection that they deserved and needed. The aid organization said that among those on board were more than 150 minors. The migrants had been rescued in several operations over the previous few days.
With dpa, epd