Interior Minister Matteo Salvini
said Thursday all 150 migrants on board the coast guard ship
Diciotti were illegals and that he answered to the Italian
people as he pursued an Australian-style immigration policy.
"My objective is the Australian No Way (policy)," he said.
"They are all illegal immigrants on the Diciotti."
"Italy is no longer Europe's refugee camp".
With my authorisation on the Diciotti, no one gets off".
Salvini said he responded to a mandate given by Italians in
the March general election amid the row over the 148 migrants he
is keeping aboard the Diciotti until the EU agrees to
redistribute them.
"I respond to the mandate which the Italians gave me on March
4," said the leader of the anti-migrant Euroskeptic League
party.
"They are asking me for more security".
Salvini has faced off against House Speaker Roberto Fico, of
his ruling partner the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S),
who says the migrants should be let off the boat and then EU
agreement sought.
Salvini said Thursday Fico has done the "opposite" of the
M5S in urging migrants aboard a coast guard ship to be allowed
to land.
"I'm working very well with (M5S leader) Luigi Di Maio," said
Salvini.
"Others have a lot of time to speak, I'm thinking of the
House Speaker, who every so often says and does the exact
opposite of other M5S exponents.
"It's a problem that they will resolve".
Salvini also said he was not afraid of intervention by
President Sergio Mattarella in the case.
The minister said "I'm absolutely not afraid of anything"
when asked if Mattarella might intervene as he did some weeks
ago.
"My conscience is more than clear.
"Yesterday I spoke to Premier (Giuseppe) Conte, who is
someone I'm working very well with and with whom we have been in
perfect harmony for two and a half months."
An Agrigento prosecutor is probing the case for alleged
abduction.
Other prosecutors are also investigating in Plermo and
Catania.
The migrants have been aboard the Diciotti for a week and in
Catania harbour for three days.
Some 27 migrant children were allowed to disembark on
Wednesday night.
"We picked up 27 skeletons," rescuers said.
"The skinniest weighed 30 kilos," they said.
"One of them couldn't see very well, he had dilated pupils,
he told me he had been detained for a year," said MSF
psychologist Nathalie Leiba.
Australia pushes back all sea-borne migrants to Pacific
islands north of Australia: Nauru and the Manu Islands in Papua
New Guinea.
Salvini said in an interview with RTL that he aimed to bring
in a policy modelled on the Australian stance.
"No migrant rescued at sea sets foot in Australia," he said
in commenting on the issue of allowing ships carrying migrants
to dock in Italian ports.
There will be no more migrant-landing standoffs like that
involving the Diciotti if the EU's Dublin regulation is
reformed, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani said
Thursday.
"If member States had followed the EP's proposal to reform
Dublin the Diciotti problem would already be resolved," he said.
"This is the key to the solution," Tajani said, because "it
envisages the immediate resettlement of the migrants".
The Visegrad Group - Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and
Slovakia - who are against the reform "must take on the
problem...or be sanctioned," Tajani said.
"I will continue to wage this battle at the next EU summit",
he told ANSA.
The migrants were fed and clothed by Maltese ships after
being located in Maltese waters August 15 before being led into
Italian waters.
A German interior ministry spokesman told ANSA Thursday that
Berlin had yet to decide on taking in any of the 150 migrants
aboard the Diciotti.
"A decision on reception has yet to be taken," he said.
"Fundamentally Germany is up for its humanitarian
responsibility in the framework of European solidarity.
"But we are waiting for other member States to also take part
in the action of reception".
He said "solidarity cannot be a one-way street".
A dinghy carrying members of Italy's Anti-racism Network
tried to reach the Diciotti on Thursday.
The dinghy was stopped by police.
A delegation from Italy's guarantor of personal rights office
on Thursday boarded the Diciotti to inspect the conditions of
the migrants.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and
the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) on Thursday
urged the Italian government to let the 150 migrants land.
In a statement, the two bodies said they "urge the Italian
government to allow the refugees and migrants rescued on board
the Italian coast guard ship Diciotti to disembark".
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