Luxembourg: EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini told member states on Monday they had “no more excuses” not to act on the Mediterranean migrant crisis as reports came through of another boat sinking with 300 people on board. More than 700 people were feared dead after a fishing boat crammed with migrants capsized off Libya on Sunday, with survivors suggesting nearly 1,000 could have been on board.
As EU foreign and interiors met to discuss their response, the International Organization for Migration said it had received a distress call from another boat in the Mediterranean carrying more than 300 people, with at least 20 reported dead.
“The caller said there are over 300 people on his boat and it is already sinking (and) he has already reported fatalities, 20 at least,” the IOM's Federico Soda wrote in an email. Soda said the IOM had given the Italian coast guard the coordinates for that and two other distressed vessels, but they were still tied up with the earlier shipwreck.
Arriving for the ministerial talks in Luxembourg, Mogherini said the 28-nation bloc “has no more excuses, the member states have no more excuses. We need immediate action from the EU and the member states,” she added.
Italian and Maltese navy boats continued to scour waters off Libya for the victims of Sunday's disaster - the latest in a string of shipwrecks, which have claimed well over 1,000 lives since the start of 2015. But the outlook appeared grim, with only 28 people rescued so far. One survivor told Italian authorities that there were as many as 950 people on board and that some of them had been locked below deck by the smugglers.
The mass drowning caused an outcry across Europe, where newspapers called it the “EU's darkest day.” “European leaders knew the number of victims at sea from African migration would smash records from the spring,” Belgium daily Le Soir wrote.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which is the top destination in Europe for migrants, said she was “appalled” by the disaster, calling it “not worthy of Europe. A continent which feels committed to humanity must look for answers even when there are no easy answers,” her spokes man quoted her.
Refugee and rights bodies demanded European governments beef up maritime rescue operations and address the underlying causes of the flood of asylum-seekers and migrants washing up on Europe's shores.
Malta's PM Joseph Muscat urged the EU to address the chaos in war-torn Libya, which people smugglers have made the main launching pad for overloaded rickety boats.
Amnesty International's 'blueprint for action'
Meanwhile, on the eve of an emergency summit in Brussels, Amnesty International is publishing a Blueprint for Action calling on European governments to take immediate and effective steps to end an ongoing catastrophe that has left thousands of refugees and migrants dead.
The briefing, Europe’s sinking shame: The failure to save refugees and migrants at sea, documents testimonies of shipwreck survivors and details the challenges and limitations of current search-and-rescue operations in the central Mediterranean. It sets out ways in which this can be remedied and calls for the immediate launch of a humanitarian operation to save lives at sea, with adequate ships, aircraft, and other resources, patrolling where lives are at risk.
John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s Director for Europe and Central Asia, said: “European leaders gathering in Brussels have an historic opportunity to end a spiralling humanitarian tragedy of Titanic proportions. Europe’s negligence in failing to save thousands of migrants and refugees who run into peril in the Mediterranean has been akin to firefighters refusing to save people jumping from a towering inferno. Governments’ responsibility must clearly be not only to put out the fire but to catch those who have stepped off the ledge.”
The briefing shows the decision to end the Italian Navy’s humanitarian operation, Mare Nostrum, at the end of 2014, has contributed to a dramatic increase in migrant and refugee deaths at sea. If figures from the latest incidents are confirmed, as many as 1,700 people will have perished this year, 100 times more than in the same period in 2014.
The myth that Mare Nostrum acted as a “pull-factor” is also dispelled by figures which show that the number of refugees and migrants attempting to cross into Europe by sea has increased since the end of the operation. Indeed 2015 has already seen record numbers of refugees and migrants attempting to cross into Europe by sea, with over 24,000 arriving in Italy
