ROME (Reuters) - Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Saturday it was
suspending its migrant rescues in the Mediterranean because it felt threatened
by the Libyan
coastguard and the Italian government's policies have made its
job harder.
The aid group's decision is the latest development in mounting tensions
between Rome and NGOs as migration dominates Italy's political agenda ahead of
elections early next year.
"We are suspending our activities because now we feel that the
threatening behavior by the Libyan coastguard is very serious ... we cannot put
our colleagues in danger," the president of MSF's Italian arm Loris De
Filippi told Reuters.
Almost 600,000 migrants have arrived in Italy over the past four years,
the vast majority setting sail from lawless Libya in flimsy vessels operated by
people smugglers. More than 13,000 migrants have died trying to make the
crossing.
Charity boats have played a growing role in rescues, picking up more than
a third of all migrants brought ashore so far this year against less than one
percent in 2014.
However, Italy fears the groups are facilitating people smuggling and
encouraging migrants to make the passage, and it has proposed a Code of Conduct
governing how they operate.
Some groups, including MSF, have refused to sign the code.
They object to a requirement that Italian police officers be on their
boats and that the boats must take migrants to a safe port themselves, rather
than transferring them to other vessels to allow smaller boats to stay in the
area for further rescues.
MSF operates one rescue ship in the Mediterranean, the Vox Prudence,
currently docked in the Sicilian port of Catania.
In the last six weeks the number of migrant arrivals in Italy has slowed
sharply and Rome has begun collaborating more closely with the Libyan
coastguard, which De Filippi said was threatening the NGOs and preventing them
from working.
He said the Libyan coastguard had demanded the NGOs should leave an area
of hundreds of kilometers around its coast, whereas previously they had been
allowed to conduct search and rescue operations as close as 11 nautical miles
to the mainland.
"Last year the coastguard fired 13 shots on our boat and that was in
a situation that was much calmer than the present one," said De Filippi.
He said MSF would continue its collaboration with another aid group, SOS
Mediterranee, which operates a rescue ship in the Mediterranean with MSF
doctors on board.
De Filippi said the Rome government's Code of Conduct for NGOs and its
support for the Libyan coastguard showed it was now mixing the humanitarian
goal of saving lives with "a political and military intention" of
reducing arrivals.
A government spokesman was not immediately available to comment.
Last week Italy began a naval mission in Libyan waters to train and
support its coastguard, despite opposition from factions in eastern Libya that
oppose the U.N.-backed government based in Tripoli.
General Khalifa Haftar, a commander aligned with an Eastern-based
parliament, told Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Saturday the presence of
Italian military vessels in Libyan waters was unacceptable but he would not
attack them.
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