Aid group MSF protests Italy migrant policy, but rescue ship free to resume

The president of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) accused Italy's hard-right government Wednesday of seeking to criminalise humanitarian aid to drowning migrants, as a court suspended authorities' blockage of its ship.

The organisation's search and rescue vessel, the Geo Barents, has been at port in Salerno, Italy, for two weeks after being placed under administrative detention by Italian authorities, a decision MSF appealed.

On Wednesday afternoon, that appeals court suspended the order, allowing the Geo Barents to be "free to return to the Mediterranean", an MSF spokesman confirmed to AFP.

Ahead of the decision, MSF's president, surgeon Christos Christou, said Italy's accusations that the group had failed to provide timely information to coordinating authorities during multiple rescues it carried out on August 23 were baseless.

He accused Italy of creating obstacles to saving migrants in the Mediterranean.

"I felt I had to come here (to Salerno) to advocate about how unfair it is to detain the Geo Barents for 60 days while there is so much happening in the Mediterranean," where desperate migrants try to reach Europe from Libya, Christou said in an interview with AFP.

Under Italy's law, vessels operated by rescue charities are obliged to perform only one rescue at a time, a system the groups charge is inefficient and puts lives at risk.

Christou said that on August 23, having just completed rescue and following instructions from Italian authorities to head to port, it witnessed another migrant boat in distress and went to help.

"People were jumping into the sea. They were there, helpless, without any life vests," Christou said.

"We were trying to contact the Libyan coast guard again but there was no response. Looking at the people in the sea, in that moment the only thing you must do is to offer a hand and pull them out of the sea," he said.

'Pattern of obstacles' 

The detention of the Geo Barents was the ship's third such blockage under an Italian decree-law from January 2023 that has also led to the seizure of rescue ships from humanitarian charity groups such as France's SOS Mediterranee and Germany's Sea-Eye and Sea-Watch for periods up to 60 days.

Like Wednesday's decision by the Salerno appeals court, other courts have similarly overturned such detention orders, most recently in June.

Christou said Italy's detentions of NGO rescue vessels fit a "pattern of measures and ways to create obstacles to what we do in the Mediterranean".

"With this government in Italy we can clearly see the intention: they really want to criminalise the humanitarian aid provided by civil sea rescue ships."

Ahead of the court ruling, the interior ministry spokesman declined to comment to AFP.

Italy's interior minister Matteo Piantedosi has previously said the "rules of conduct" for the charity ships are intended to "make their activity more functional" in coordination with Italy's coastguard, which rescues the bulk of migrants.

Rescue groups are also ordered to disembark migrants at faraway ports, adding to time and cost.

Since 2017, Italy and the UN-backed Libyan government in Tripoli have partnered on a controversial EU-endorsed migrant deal. Human rights groups say it pushes thousands of migrants back to Libya to face torture and abuse under arbitrary detention.

Under the deal, Italy provides training and funding to the Libyan coastguard in order to stem departures of migrants or return those already at sea to Libya.

 Dead and missing 

The crossing from North Africa to Italy or Malta in the central Mediterranean is the world's deadliest migration route. At least 2,526 migrants died or went missing there last year, and at least 1,116 this year so far.

That is out of the estimated 212,100 migrants who made the crossing, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The group has counted more than 17,000 dead or missing since 2014.

The number of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean has dropped by about a third this year, according to border agency Frontex.

But migrants are opting to cross to Europe using new, dangerous routes, said Christou, citing surges this year in routes from Africa to Greece or to the Canary Islands, leading to "more people dying."

Those routes "were not on our radar until recently," he said.

The European Union, Christou said, "is failing in providing collective solutions", with most funding for migration going to security measures rather than humanitarian ones.

"More drones, more fences, more coastguard... instead of humanity and treating people with human dignity," he said.