From The International Herald Tribune: After disaster, a call for more vigilance BY JAMES KANTER AND GAIA PIANIGIANI BRUSSELS — A senior E.U. official on Tuesday called on member governments to contribute to vastly expanded patrols of Mediterranean waters as horror mounted over the deaths of hundreds of African migrants near Sicily last week. The Union needed ‘‘a wide operation that will cover the whole Mediterranean from Spain to Cyprus in order to be able to prevent future catastrophes and save more lives,’’ Cecilia Malmstrom, the E.U. commissioner for home affairs, told a news conference following a meeting of justice and interior ministers in Luxembourg. ‘‘I’ve asked member states to give their political support and also make available the necessary resources,’’ said Ms. Malmstrom, who must rely on E.U. governments to fund and carry out search-and-rescue efforts. The statement from Ms. Malmstrom was one of the strongest calls for a response to the disaster last week when an overstuffed and rickety trawler carrying an estimated 500 migrants fleeing war and poverty caught fire and capsized near the Italian island of Lampedusa. Ms. Malmstrom said she would join Enrico Letta, the Italian prime minister, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, in Lampedusa on Wednesday to speak with local people and to the victims of the shipwreck. On Tuesday, divers retrieved another 19 bodies from the wreckage under 165 feet, or about 50 meters, of water and about a quarter of a mile, or roughly half a kilometer, from Lampedusa, raising the death toll to 275. Only some of the bodies were removed from the vessel’s hull, where many of the migrants were believed to have been trapped as the boat sank. Officials from the Italian Coast Guard said the death toll was expected to grow over coming days as the search continued. Even as the E.U. commissioner sought to prevent more tragedies at sea, the already fierce debate in Europe over how to treat people caught making landfall in the Union became more fraught, as the 155 survivors of the Lampedusa tragedy were placed under investigation by the Italian authorities for illegal immigration. Illegal migrants who are not asylum seekers can be sanctioned for entering Italy under a law from 2009, a situation some experts described as absurd. ‘‘If prosecutors have the pilot and the boat, migrants are logically the victims of the smuggling, they are not liable for any crime,’’ Alberto Di Martino, a professor of criminal law and immigration at the University of Pisa, said by telephone. On Tuesday, prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, said that they were holding a 35-year old Tunisian man, Khaled Bensalam, on suspicion of being one of two men in charge of piloting the boat. Prosecutors said Mr. Bensalem, who has not been formally charged, could face a jail term of more than 20 years if he was charged and found guilty of multiple manslaughter, abetting illegal immigration and causing a shipwreck. Ms. Malmstrom said the additional patrol work in the Mediterranean should be undertaken by Frontex, the E.U. border agency that relies on funding from the bloc’s governments to pay for surveillance equipment like planes and boats. Ewa Moncure, a spokeswoman for Frontex, which is based in Warsaw, said on Tuesday that the agency had already deployed four coastal vessels and two aircraft earlier this year to patrol the central Mediterranean route used by the migrants who died near Lampedusa. Ms. Moncure said Frontex was waiting for the outcome of the meeting of justice and home affairs ministers in Luxembourg before issuing a statement about any additional patrol work on the Mediterranean Sea. ‘‘But with such high numbers of migrants arriving, we are definitely going to prolong our operation beyond October,’’ she said. Analysts warned, however, that allocating more resources to Frontex would not automatically make the agency any more effective. ‘‘Frontex would be very enthusiastic for this kind of wider role but there is a big question over how this would really work, given that Frontex does not have any direct operational powers,’’ said Joanna Parkin, a migration specialist at the Center for European Policy Studies, a research organization in Brussels. ‘‘A second serious question is whether Frontex should have this kind of enhanced role given the ongoing questions about whether Frontex can be held responsible for failures to protect migrants on the Mediterranean Sea or whether it can ensure that potential refugees are given proper protection when they reach Europe rather than get pushed back,’’ she said. Many of the migrants on the central Mediterranean route originate from countries in the Horn of Africa and western Africa, and use Libya as a nexus point before starting their journey toward Europe, according to a statement Frontex posted to its Web site on Friday. Most of those migrants land on Lampedusa or Sicily, but others make landfall at other parts of the Italian coast, usually around Calabria and Puglia, the agency said. During the first nine months of this year, more than 31,000 migrants had arrived in the Union using the central Mediterranean route, most of them Eritreans, Somalis and other sub-Saharan Africans, as well as Syrians, Frontex said. Migratory pressure this summer was comparable to the summer of 2011, when civil unrest in Tunisia and Libya led over the course of that entire year to about 60,000 arrivals on the central Mediterranean route, it said. Most migrants make their journeys aboard wooden fishing boats that are often overcrowded and prone to sinking or capsizing in high seas and are often ill equipped, with poor engines and navigation systems. ‘‘Often the drivers of these boats leave them adrift relatively near the Italian shores and go back where they came from,’’ Renato Di Natale, the chief prosecutor in Agrigento, said by telephone. ‘‘At times, they try to get into the country like all other migrants — it’s just a different method, so to speak.’’ Mr. Bensalam, the Tunisian being held by the Italian authorities on suspicion of piloting the boat that sank near Lampedusa last week, has described himself as a passenger to the authorities but has also admitted previously piloting another boat full of migrants to Lampedusa, according to prosecutors. ◼ Get the best global news and analysis direct to your device – download the IHT apps for free today! 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Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 21:36:30 +0000
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