By RFIPalled on 05-26-2019Modified on 26-05-2019 at 04:31
The Maltese Navy announced on Saturday (May 25th) that it had rescued at night 216 migrants who were aboard two boats in difficulty in the Mediterranean.
A first group was rescued Friday night after making a distress call. The boat was taking water. Then, at night, Malta received another call. The patroller on the way to Valletta with the migrants from the first group turned around to help the second group. Aboard boats in difficulty: migrants including pregnant women and unaccompanied unaccompanied minors.
These 216 rescued people bring to 500 the number of migrants welcomed since the beginning of the year by the small archipelago of 450 000 inhabitants, against hardly three times more for all Italy whose populist government applies a policy of firmness to the respect of migrants.
However, in recent years, Malta has done everything to let Italy take care of the rescue and reception of migrants from Libya. But in the almost total absence of relief ships off Libya and the firmness of Rome, the small island has once again become a crossing point for migrants.
For Jean-François Dubost, the head of the "protection of populations" program at Amnesty France, this situation illustrates the fact that " the need for rescue capacity on the high seas is still very real ".
We call on states for months to re-establish a large-scale rescue operation, to coordinate. And it's exactly the opposite that states have done in deciding a few weeks ago to remove all their life-saving capabilities at sea.
Jean-François Dubost, head of the "population protection" program at Amnesty France
26-05-2019 - By Jelena Tomic
Because certainly the number of migrants in the Mediterranean has dropped, but " the death toll continues to increase, " says Jean-Francois Dubost.
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