Rescue in the Mediterranean Sea that took an ominous turn raises concerns some merchant ship captains might become reluctant to save migrants in danger of drowning.
A view of Turkish oil tanker El Hiblu 1, which was hijacked by migrants, harbored in Valletta, Malta, Thursday March 28, 2019. A Maltese special operations team on Thursday boarded a tanker that had been hijacked by migrants rescued at sea, and returned control to the captain, before escorting it to a Maltese port.
The temporary hijacking this week of the El Hiblu 1 was described by Italy’s hard-line interior minister as an act of “piracy. ” Aid groups called it an act of “self-defense” against Europe’s inhumane immigration policies, which aim to ship back desperate migrants to Libya, where they often face beatings, rape and torture in detention camps.
“I swear in the name of God, if I find a million people dying in front of me in the sea, I will never rescue them after what I saw here in Malta,” Nader el Hiblu told The Associated Press by phone from the ship Friday. “This filthy country treated me in a very disrespectable way after rescuing 98 people. They dealt with me as a criminal and accused me of illegal migration.”
“We knew it was coming, we have sounded warnings about this frequently,” John Stawpert, manager for environment and trade at the London-based International Chamber of Shipping, told the AP. “This episode I think has brought it into sharp focus. What we need is action at a high level, at state level and also international level, to ensure that ships that find themselves, through no fault of their own, in this sort of situation, get immediate assistance.
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