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A boat with refugees on the Mediterranean Sea (2017)
Photograph:
Emilio Morenatti/ AP/ DPA
Nearly 500 people who had tried to cross the Mediterranean to Europe have apparently been returned to Libya. This was announced by a spokesman for the UN migration agency on Friday evening – two days after rescue organizations lost contact with the boat they were on.
"Libya is an unsafe haven where migrants should never be returned," Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM), wrote on Twitter. 485 migrants docked in the Libyan port of Benghazi on Friday. Further details were not provided to the IOM.
According to international humanitarian law, migrants cannot be turned back in the Mediterranean.
Alarm Phone, an initiative that receives calls from migrant ships in distress, said it had not received a sign from the boat since Wednesday morning. At that time, the boat had drifted on the high seas in the Mediterranean Sea without a functioning engine. Sea rescuers on water and in the air could not report any success in the search for the boat until the end.
Italy reports rescues
The Italian Coast Guard had reported on Thursday the rescue of 423 and 671 migrants in two separate operations, which, according to Alarm Phone, had nothing to do with the missing boat. Meanwhile, the aid organization SOS Humanity said that 27 people from a third boat in distress had been picked up by an oil tanker and illegally returned to Libya. The Italian coast guard denied any involvement in so-called pushbacks, saying Libya had "legitimately" taken over the coordination of the rescue.
At present, numerous people seeking protection are once again making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. The boats are often not adequately equipped for a crossing, and people die again and again when crossing the sea.
sak/Reuters