|
Karl Schembri
With Italy and Malta blaming each other for last November’s migrants’ tragedy as fresh revelations raise serious questions about the Maltese army’s surveillance operation, Arnold Cassola, the newly elected Maltese Member of the Italian Parliament, promises to ask Prodi’s new government to dig deeper into the fatal trip that claimed the lives of 29 boat people.
Only last Sunday, influential Italian newspaper La Repubblica reproduced parts of the AFM log book that were leaked and published by MaltaToday last month, commenting that with the revelations “we can now predict how future tragedies will happen” and that “we will even be able to name those responsible for them when they happen”.
Describing it as “a story of horror”, Giovanni Maria Bellu – the journalist who had discovered the site of the shipwrecked Yiohan ship with the bodies of 300 migrants who drowned in December 1996 between Malta and Italy – dismissed the Maltese government’s explanations as “completely banal”, insisting that “in reality, they did everything they could to get rid of those 200 migrants from their territory”.
“MaltaToday has published, word for word, messages between the coordination centre (found at the Maltese army headquarters in Luqa) and the rescuers,” the journalist wrote last Sunday. “It’s a story of horror. It turns out that the Maltese coordination centre knew since 1.11pm of 17 November about the boat carrying 200 people on board … that it was heading towards frightening bad weather. At that point it was five miles away from Gozo and could have been led to shelter. Instead, from the Luqa base, the pilot receives the order to monitor their movements and keep at a distance, letting them face the impending catastrophe.”
For Arnold Cassola, “it is absolutely cynical of anybody to play about with the lives of 29 people, whatever their nationality”.
“The duty of politicians is to ensure the protection of human life and not to try and shift blame onto others for the death of these people,” Cassola added.
Contacted at his new parliamentary office in Rome, Cassola pledged to seek Italy’s explanations and suggested a joint Maltese-Italian inquiry into the tragedy.
“It is the duty of all us politicians to try and find out what really happened, and to shoulder the responsibility,” he said. “At the moment there is no Italian government, since this has to be still appointed by the new President. As soon as it is installed I could put a parliamentary question to the Prodi government to get the official Italian version. But it is also necessary that a Maltese MP in the Maltese parliament asks the Maltese government for its official version of the facts. If these facts continue to differ, I would ask for a joint Maltese-Italian parliamentary inquiry on the issue. We are not talking about platitudes here but about the death of 29 human beings. We all owe an explanation not only to the victims’ families but also to public opinion.”
Last Sunday, Italy’s new Ambassador to Malta, Paolo Andrea Trabalza, has expressed his “extreme surprise” at Parliamentary Secretary Tony Abela’s blaming Italian authorities for the death of the migrants.
According to entries in the AFM operations log book leaked to MaltaToday, a search and rescue plane and a patrol boat were ordered to “keep at a distance” from the boat travelling in force 6 winds five miles off Gozo as they observed it leaving Maltese waters. It shipwrecked hours later in force 7 winds off the shores of Sicily.
Reacting to Abela’s comments made on Radio 101, the ambassador told MaltaToday: “They confirm an attitude which leaves Italian authorities speechless and perplexed… Our reaction is that we don’t agree at all with the explanation given. The Italian authorities should have been informed immediately, that is at 1pm (when it was first sighted by Maltese authorities). This was not a closed vessel but it was evidently carrying poor people who were reaching the shores of Italy sooner or later.”
Even the mayor of the Sicilian port town of Pozzallo where the migrants got shipwrecked on 17 November last year, was extremely critical of Abela’s claims.
“I consider the parliamentary secretary’s declarations unacceptable,” Pozzallo Mayor Roberto Ammatuna said.
According to Abela, “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.
“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.”
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
Links: www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/05/07/t2.html
|
