Gaspar, a fisherman from Sciacca, Sicily, rescued dozens of migrants who tried to reach Italy When Italian authorities threatened to arrest him and his crew to help illegal immigrants, he left Libya by boat.
He said in 2019: “I want to know if one of our politicians has ever heard desperate calls for help on the high seas late at night.” I wonder what they would do. No one-sailor or not-would turn and leave. “
As the Secretary of State for the Interior of the United Kingdom, his words resonated again. Pritty Patel, Intensified her movement and sent ships carrying migrants back to the strait.
Sending a rickety ship full of desperate people back to France violated maritime law and obligations based on long-term moral obligations. There is no legal shortcut to avoid assisting asylum seekers at sea. Regardless of how Boris Johnson’s spokesperson talks about making the plan “safe and legal,” not helping immigrants in danger at sea is not a legal choice.
Experts say that any forcibly returning the ship is a violation of Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Convention and EU legislation, because denying individuals the right to apply for asylum is a violation of human rights.
Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s far-right coalition party and former interior minister, is still paying the price for his policy of closing the country’s seaports to ships carrying migrants in 2018.
In April last year, a judge in Sicily ordered Salvini to stand trial on the grounds that in 2019 he refused to let a Spanish immigrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port, which allowed the people on board to stay at sea for several days. He was accused of kidnapping and negligence of duty. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.
The repatriation of small boats carrying asylum seekers is not like asking a truck driver to go the wrong way back. The immigrants on the raft took all risks for their travels. The journey faced by migrants is full of obstacles, taking unseaworthy and overloaded ships; some ships are under severe maintenance.
Migrants often do not know how to swim; they sometimes make mistakes, when they see a boat extending a helping hand to them, they jump into the water in their clothes without calculating the distance between them and potential rescuers. In the past few years, hundreds of migrants have died at sea during rescue operations.
It is not difficult to imagine what dozens of immigrants in a small boat would do when they saw a British warship that wanted to send them back to France. You just have to look at the migrants who saw the Libyan Coast Guard ship trying to drive them away. They threw themselves into the sea, and many times, they died.
It is not only illegal to refuse ships carrying migrants; it is also very, very dangerous.
Gaspare’s son Carlo is also a fisherman. He said that if he saw 50 immigrants in the dark night that they had run out of gas and were sucking water in a small boat, he would be haunted if he turned and left. Until the day he was dying, they desperately called for help. Patel’s plan showed that these were cries she had never heard before.
