Tragic rescue from destroyed rubber boat
A maritime rescue team discovered on Tuesday a woman clinging to the remains of a rubber dinghy, flanked by two corpses. Rescue organisations accuse the Libyan coastguard of failing to render assistance and leaving migrants to die in the Mediterranean. How can the EU rely on cooperation with a failed state like Libya, commentators ask.
Italy is to blame
Italy is largely to blame for the rising number of deaths in the Mediterranean, rails Gianluca Di Feo, deputy editor-in-chief of La Repubblica:
“Everyone knows that there is no state in Libya, and that since 2014 the country has been locked in a permanent civil war only sporadically interrupted by ceasefires. How is this country supposed to solve the migration problem? ... This is the reality that Conte's government doesn't want to see. It has withdrawn all Italian and European military ships from Libya's coast. It interrupted the coordination of rescue operations, which previously counted on the support of aircraft, helicopters, and modern equipment. It blocked the activities of the NGOs and discouraged owners of commercial ships from rescuing people by closing its ports. Everything was delegated to the Libyans. The result can only be a massacre.”
Don't rely on Libya!
Libya is not the kind of state that should be given responsibility for dealing with refugees, eldiario.es warns with a sense of urgency:
“The Libyan coastguards are not coastguards but members of the militia. They don't belong to an official public institution, basically because public institutions don't really exist in Libya, there is no state. The agreement they have signed with Italy contains only one clause: that as few blacks as possible come to Europe because there's no more room for them on our paved streets. The penal code there is not a code, and simply attempting to leave the country is already treated as an offence: attempted emigration. And once the prisons get too full, they make space by firing guns.”