BRUSSELS. “The decree and the practice of assigning distant ports for the disembarkation of people rescued at sea risk depriving people in need of life-saving assistance from NGOs on the deadliest migratory route in the Mediterranean.” With these reasons, the commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatovic, wrote a letter to the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi asking him to withdraw the anti-NGO decree adopted by the Meloni government which, among other things, provides for the prohibition of multiple bailouts.
According to the Council of Europe, these provisions “could hinder the search and rescue operations of NGOs and therefore be in conflict with Italy’s obligations under human rights and international law”. Also because “by respecting this provision, the commanders of the NGOs would in fact fail in their rescue obligations enshrined in international law”.
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As for the practice of indicating the towns of central-northern Italy as ports of disembarkation, Mijatovic points out that “the objective of ensuring a better redistribution of migrants and asylum seekers throughout the country could be achieved by rapidly disembarking the rescued people and ensuring that there are practical alternative agreements to redistribute them in other areas of the country”.
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The Strasbourg-based body, which has nothing to do with the EU institutions, also reiterates its invitation to the government to “suspend cooperation with the Libyan government” to intercept ships at sea, cooperation which was recently renovated. Then there is another third point on which the Council of Europe asks Rome for further information: there would have been “alleged repatriations of people from Italy to Greece on private ships” and these people “would have been deprived of their freedom in worrying conditions” .