Premier Giorgia Meloni and Interior
Minister Matteo Piantedosi on Tuesday hit back at German
search-and-rescue charity Sea-Watch for having criticised the
government's programme to send some migrants rescued in the
Mediterranean to centres on Albanian territory.
The NGO compared these facilities to concentration camps and it
has also criticised agreements reached with the authorities in
Libya and Tunisia aimed at trying to halt illegal migrant
crossings.
Addressing the Senate before this week's EU summit, Meloni said
Sea-Watch was "shameful" and accused of it having called Italian
Coast Guard forces "the real human traffickers" saying it was
delegitimizing the Coast Guards of North African States "and
perhaps the Italian one too".
Piantedosi said it was "peculiar" that the criticism had come
from entities that devote most of their funding, including
public money to "activities at sea that, despite all good
intentions, could be opportunistically exploited by unscrupulous
human traffickers who, in addition to committing criminal acts,
put people's lives at risk on a daily basis".
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