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Italian authorities are outraged by comments made by Parliamentary Secretary Tony Abela about last November’s migrants tragedy which left 29 dead, putting all the blame for the fatalities on Italian rescuers when faced with new revelations about the AFM’s botched surveillance mission.
Reacting to MaltaToday’s story about the leaked AFM log book detailing the order to “keep at distance” given to Maltese rescuers who were following the boat carrying 200 migrants in Maltese waters, Abela unleashed an attack against the Italians charging them with failing to save the drowning migrants.
“These migrants reached Italy’s shores and I say with disgust that the Italians didn’t do their job, because they shouldn’t have died,” Abela said on Radio 101 last Sunday. “There’s no mistake about it, we had informed the Italians.”
While the Italian government – just sworn in, as was the new Italian Ambassador Paolo Andrea Trabalza – is still digesting the comments before pronouncing itself, sources say Rome was extremely taken aback by Abela’s attack.
“The log book revelations show the migrants were seen, followed and abandoned by Maltese rescuers while they were in Malta’s waters,” a senior diplomat said yesterday night.
“They may have decided the immigrants were on a school outing, or on a pleasure cruise to Italy,” he added mockingly. “Maybe they didn’t want to violate their privacy. But blaming all the tragedy on Italy is unacceptable when it is clear that Malta’s collaboration was very lacking. Malta can’t accuse Italy of responding at 9.30pm when they knew about the boat at 1pm.”
Even the mayor of the Sicilian port town of Pozzallo where the migrants got shipwrecked on 17 November last year, expressed his surprise at Abela’s reaction.
“I consider the parliamentary secretary’s declarations unacceptable,” Pozzallo Mayor Roberto Ammatuna told MaltaToday. “I’m just a mayor of an Italian city, having no diplomatic relevance, but as a citizen I have to say it doesn’t make sense. For him (Abela) the Maltese who have feigned ignorance are absolved, but the Italians who have gone out to rescue them, maybe a bit late, are guilty of this tragedy. It’s a weird and unacceptable position.”
Ammatuna was extremely critical of the Italian regional and central government back in November, claiming that his community was “abandoned” in the face of the incessant fatal landings of migrants on the shores of Pozzallo, but now that new details about Malta’s operation have emerged, he is demanding explanations from Maltese authorities.
“To learn that a civilised and modern state like Malta behaves in this way leaves me very bitter, also because like Malta, we have a strong influx of migrants and we feel we have strong cultural, social and human ties with the Maltese. I think that the minimum the Maltese authorities can do in this case is to clarify fully if there were any individual responsibilities. I want to believe that the Maltese government had nothing to do with this tragedy, that it was the mistake of one single individual. The Maltese government can’t behave in this way, and I still want to believe this wasn’t sanctioned by the state but it was a personal error.”
According to the log book entries revealed by this newspaper, AFM rescuers were told to “keep at a distance” as they were monitoring the boat travelling in force 6 winds later turning force 7 and with visibility degenerating rapidly.
The boat was sighted at 1.11pm five miles off Gozo when an AFM Islander plane and patrol boat Melita 1 were dispatched to flank it. By 5.30pm, the Melita 1 reported it was 150 metres away from the boat but it lost sight of them by 5.45pm. The same patrol boat master reported at 5.53pm that he was running out of fuel and was returning to base. Another patrol boat, the P32, which had almost reached the migrants’ boat, reported to base at 6.12pm that the boat people would have reached Italian waters in approximately two hours. Three minutes later, even the P32 was ordered back to base, leaving the boat people to proceed with their trip in deteriorating weather.
The evidence contradicts statements made by parliamentary secretary Abela in parliament the day after the tragedy alleging that the AFM had approached the migrants to offer assistance and insisting that this was refused.
Also, the log book reveals it took the AFM two hours to inform the Italians of the boat approaching Italian waters, basing themselves on the calculation that by that time it would have entered the Italians’ search and rescue region, while it took Rome another 90 minutes to respond to Malta’s warning at 9.34pm.
Yet last Sunday Abela said: “The armed forces were, as part of their ordinary work, monitoring the boat that was moving ahead on its own steam … we did all the monitoring that was required. Had they given us the least signal for help we would have given it. These migrants’ target wasn’t Malta and so they refused (the AFM’s) assistance. They refused not in the sense that one of them phoned us and told us ‘no’, they refused because they kept moving on their own steam. With MaltaToday’s reasoning we should stop every boat passing from Maltese waters.”
Abela insisted the tragedy was not his responsibility as it occurred in Italy.
“They said I should launch an investigation; how can I launch an investigation about something that doesn’t concern me,” he said. “Does this mean when an accident happens in Paris I should launch an investigation about it in Malta? These migrants reached Italy’s shores and I say with disgust that the Italians didn’t do their job, because they shouldn’t have died. There’s no mistake about it, we had informed the Italians.”
Deadly ping-pong game on the high seas
Caught in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, migrants leaving the Libyan coast face not only the uncertain deadly trip ahead of them but also the labyrinthine manoeuvrings of Rome and Valletta.
The two capitals now have an established pattern of washing their hands in front of the illegal immigration nightmare.
The infamous incident when the AFM was caught out giving fuel to migrants who had run out of it to continue their trip to Italy may sound funny, but it betrayed the reigning attitude of both countries to shirk responsibility upon every occasion, as reports about Italian forces sending over migrants unofficially into Maltese waters confirm the reciprocal behaviour.
“Why should I take ownership of a problem that happened in Italy,” said Parliamentary Secretary Tony Abela last Sunday on Radio 101, overlooking altogether the hours it took for Malta to inform Italy of the boat on 17 November.
The reason why the AFM informed Rome about the boat as late as 8.07pm is clear but nobody would state it officially.
“Had we informed the Italians that the boat was approaching Italy while it was still in our waters they would have told us to tow them to Malta,” an AFM officer said. “That’s how it always goes.”
That is why the patrol boat master on the log book is registered as having calculated the time the boat would have reached Italy’s rescue region, with the AFM informing Italy at the estimated time of arrival.
Last year, MaltaToday revealed how vigilant Italian forces were directing Maltese authorities to salvage boatloads of immigrants into Maltese shores as soon as they left Libyan territorial waters.
Using sophisticated air surveillance equipment, the Italians were spotting boats in the Mediterranean that would potentially end up in Italian waters unless restrained in search and rescue operations by the AFM’s maritime unit.
“The Italians are informing their Rome office of any suspect boats in our rescue region, which in turn informs Maltese headquarters that there are boats in distress, and we would have no other option but to go out for them, even though in fact they wouldn’t need to be rescued,” an officer had said. “They are effectively bringing over immigrants who would otherwise have gone elsewhere.”
The Mayor of Pozzallo, the Sicilian port town and grave site of the 17 November victims, reminds of the extent of the tragedy that is cynically overlooked by the two governments.
Earlier this year, he boycotted a seminar on illegal immigration organised by the Italian government, for which Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg was invited to speak.
“I boycotted the seminar because the policy of the Italian government over the last years has been very disappointing,” he says. “The seminar was just a celebration and nothing else. Immigration policy is made day after day not in a conference once in a blue moon just for the publicity of those who want it.
“I know about past tensions between the Maltese and Italian authorities surrounding the problem of illegal immigration. It’s a real problem which in my view the Maltese government has to seriously clarify particularly because it now forms part of the European Union, with all the advantages and obligations related to EU membership.
“The problem of illegal immigration should be solved at the countries of origin of these poor desperate souls. Being too rigid with migrants without helping them solve their problems at home will only lead to more tragedies. When someone is desperate he will even risk his life in his search for a better future. After all, the problem of illegal immigration is not as dramatic as some want to depict it – it is a problem that can be faced because it is only present on the Mediterranean shores of southern Sicily, where we get between 20,000 and 30,000 every year reaching our coast. In the last years the Italian government has enforced a very rigid policy against these desperate migrants which I don’t share. These are persons, human beings, who have to be treated as such, not as second class humans. I believe the Italian government like other western governments have a duty to implement a more efficient reception policy. And we have to intensify relations with countries of origin and give them economic support.”
Links: www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/04/16/top_story.html
www.maltatoday.com.mt/2005/02/20/t4.html
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