After the „Sea-Watch 3“ takes despite the resistance of the Italian government, another German rescue ship heading for Lampedusa. The Regensburg-based aid organization Sea-Eye said that the „Alan Kurdi“ was driving the Mediterranean island with 65 people on board, which they had taken from a rubber dinghy off Libya.
Only four days after Sea-watch captain Carola Rackete’s release from house arrest, she faces a renewed confrontation between Germany and Italy. „We are not intimidated by a Minister of the Interior, but head for the nearest safe haven. The law of the sea applies, even if some government officials do not want to admit that, „wrote the organization from Regensburg on Friday evening on Twitter.
On Saturday, however, Sea-Eye rowed back a bit: The „Alan Kurdi“ will initially not enter Italian territorial waters. The Italian customs had given the occupation in the morning a decree of the Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, which was prohibited from entering the territorial waters of the country. „We first observe this ban,“ said Sea Eye Operations Manager Gorden Isler dpa. Without good reason, Sea-Eye will not violate the decree.
According to Isler, the ship was about a nautical mile off Italian territorial waters on Saturday morning and about 13 nautical miles off the Italian island of Lampedusa. A request sent by email to the authorities in Rome and Valletta, the capital of Malta, for a safe harbor for the Alan Kurdi remained unanswered until the morning, the Einsatzleiter said.
The „Alan Kurdi“ had claimed 65 people from an overloaded dinghy in international waters off Libya. 39 of them said they were still minors. The youngest is only twelve years old, reported Sea-Eye. A total of 48 of the refugees were from Somalia in East Africa, two were Libyans. One of the Somali people said he left home three years ago, took three months to cross the desert and lost a friend who was shot dead on the Libyan border.
Mobile phone with a photo of three-year-old Alan Kurid, whose lifeless body was washed ashore on the Turkish coast in 2015
The rescue ship „Alan Kurdi“ of the aid organization Sea-Eye was named after a Syrian boy with Kurdish origin, whose lifeless body was washed ashore in 2015 on the Turkish Mediterranean coast. The image of the dead Alan caused worldwide concern and became a symbol of the humanitarian plight of the fleeing people.
Italy does not want to be the „hotspot of Europe“
Salvini, however, said promptly that the ship should not go to Italy – even in the event of a later redistribution of people to other states. But he had already announced that in the case of the „Sea-Watch 3“ – without success. „Italy (…) does not intend to remain the only hotspot in Europe,“ he said.
A deterioration of the situation on board will fall back exclusively on Germany as a flag state, on the captain and the crew of „Alan Kurdi“, he warned. At the same time, Salvini urged Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) in a letter to take responsibility for the ship. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said in Berlin that the government’s goal was „to find a quick solution“. First, a safe haven must be found and talked about the distribution of the rescued to the EU countries.
Return to Libya rejected
Sea-Eye reported that the Libyan Coast Guard was initially unreachable. Later, she assigned the ship to a port, where the rescued could be brought ashore. However, the organization refused – in its letter to the Libyan navy, it says, „There is sufficient evidence that migrants in Libya face human trafficking, torture, forced labor, sexual exploitation and arbitrary detention – and refugee camps are under rocket attacks.“ Sea-Eye points out in the letter that it must abide by existing maritime law, which states that the ship is obliged to bring the rescued to a safe place.
