Forty-seven migrants who have been stranded at sea for more than a week were visited yesterday by three Italian opposition lawmakers, and received a surprise message of support from ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi.
The Sea-Watch 3, a Dutch-flagged vessel run by German non-governmental organisation Sea-Watch, rescued the migrants north of the Libyan port of Zuwarah, and entered Italian waters on Friday, to seek shelter from rough seas.
Berlusconi, a conservative who has previously taken a hard line on migration, joined UN agencies, human rights groups and left-wing politicians in calling for the migrants to be allowed on to Italian soil.
“I think that 47 new immigrants on top of the more than 600000 we have in our country would not change anything. Therefore, if it were my responsibility, I'd certainly let them disembark,” he said.
Earlier, Riccardo Magi from the centrist Piu Europa (More Europe) party tweeted that he and two fellow parliamentarians had boarded the Sea-Watch 3 to check on crew and passengers and to ask "for all of them to be disembarked immediately".
The migrants were “exhausted” and crammed into a 25-square-metre room with access to a single toilet, Magi said.
The migrants “are certainly better [on the boat] than they were a year ago or a month ago [in Libyan prisons],” but “their faces and bodies bear the signs of violence and torture they suffered for years,” he added.
Nicola Fratoianni of Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left) and Stefania Prestigiacomo, a member of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, also boarded the ship.
The lawmakers used a dinghy to reach the NGO vessel, defying orders not to go near it.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini accused the parliamentarians of “breaching Italian laws and abetting illegal immigration”, and promised to press charges against the crew of the Sea-Watch 3 for ignoring coastguard orders and endangering migrants’ lives.
The Sea-Watch 3 is stationed a couple of kilometres off Syracuse, on the coast of eastern Sicily. The government is refusing it to let it get any closer.
Since June, when Italy's populist government took office and started turning away NGO ships, migrants rescued from the Mediterranean have repeatedly been trapped in intra-EU rows about where they should be allowed to land. dpa