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The Italian authorities have kept immobilized since this Saturday in the port of Palermo, in Sicily, the rescue ship ‘Sea Watch 4’ operated by the NGOs Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Sea Watch, which makes the boat the fifth that has followed this fate in the last five months.
In its last mission, the ship rescued 354 people – 227 men and 98 unaccompanied minors, women and children. According to MSF in a statement, the decision of the Italian authorities “is most reprehensible given that the ship received instructions from the Maltese authorities to bring more people on board from the rescue ship ‘Louise Michel” “, which could not keep the more than 200 people he had rescued.
As explained by the head of MSF Search and Rescue operations, Ellen van der Velden, the Italian authorities carried out an eleven-hour inspection on Saturday, once the ship arrived at port, from which “they left with sufficient infractions to prevent the bard from leaving the port of Palermo. “
“We are accused of saving people ‘systematically’, we are criticized for having too many life jackets on board and the sanitation system is being questioned,” he said. “Meanwhile, the obligation of every ship to offer assistance to vessels in distress is completely neglected,” he denounced.
With this, according to the head of MSF, the Italian authorities “are playing dirty, trying to incriminate and arrest humanitarian organizations that do nothing more than try to save lives at sea as stipulated by International Maritime Law” and also do it “with the assent, if not the full backing, of European countries. “
In its statement, MSF has defended that “the ‘Sea-Watch 4’ is only at sea due to the absence of state search and rescue capacity on the most dangerous maritime border in the world.”
In this sense, the NGO has defended that the boat should be released “urgently so that it can resume its search and rescue, vital in the central Mediterranean”, while it has demanded that “the continued attacks against NGOs that try to offer assistance cease. desperate people. “
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