Berlusconi visits migrant island of Lampedusa Skip to main content

Berlusconi visits migrant island of Lampedusa

An Italian policeman watches over migrants on the island of Lampedusa (29 March 2011) Some 20,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean since the upheavals began

Related Stories

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has arrived on the island of Lampedusa as ships move thousands of migrants who have recently arrived there.
Hundreds, travelling mainly from Libya and Tunisia, have been arriving on the shores of the tiny island south of Sicily each night.
Its residents have protested, occupying the town hall and threatening to cut off supplies if ships do not arrive.
Officials say sanitary conditions on the island are now "desperate".
About 20,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean since the upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East began in January.
Emergency
Some 7,000 migrants - more than the total population of the island - are now living there in makeshift camps.
There were no new arrivals on Tuesday night, Italian media reported, the first night with no new immigrants for some time.
On Wednesday morning, five ships arrived, sent by the Italian government to Lampedusa to take migrants to camps on the mainland. One of the ships was the naval vessel San Marco and the rest were civilian ferries, reports said. Another boat was expected later.
Lampedusa map
Mr Berlusconi's plane arrived on the island shortly after 1300 local time. Speaking the previous evening, he described the immigrants as "poor wretches".
"They are fleeing from a world without freedom, democracy, or prosperity. That is exactly what they have come looking for in our country," he said.
Repatriation The prime minister, who is visiting Lampedusa with Interior Minister Roberto Maroni and Justice Minister Angelino Alfano, is expected to give details of compensation measures for Lampedusa, whose tourism industry has been hit by the influx.
Although most of the immigrants on the island are expected to be transferred to Sicily or camps on mainland Italy, negotiations are said to be under way to repatriate a number of people to Tunisia.
Most of the arrivals since January have sailed from Tunisia, but in recent days boats have come from Libya as well.
The BBC's Duncan Kennedy, in Rome, says that Italy, as the former colonial power in Libya, does not want to provoke the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, into sending thousands more migrants fleeing.
Early on in the crisis, Col Gaddafi threatened to do just that, if the EU backed military action.
Migrants who can prove they are refugees from a conflict are eligible for asylum in the EU under human rights conventions.
The European Commission says EU member states must address the surge in migration produced by the unrest in North Africa.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12903771
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chronology of the Press in Burma

1836 – 1846 * During this period the first English-language newspaper was launched under British-ruled Tenasserim, southern  Burma . The first ethnic Karen-language and Burmese-language newspapers also appear in this period.     March 3, 1836 —The first English-language newspaper,  The Maulmain Chronicle , appears in the city of Moulmein in British-ruled Tenasserim. The paper, first published by a British official named E.A. Blundell, continued up until the 1950s. September 1842 —Tavoy’s  Hsa-tu-gaw  (the  Morning Star ), a monthly publication in the Karen-language of  Sgaw ,  is established by the Baptist mission. It is the first ethnic language newspaper. Circulation reached about three hundred until its publication ceased in 1849. January 1843 —The Baptist mission publishes a monthly newspaper, the Christian  Dhamma  Thadinsa  (the  Religious Herald ), in Moulmein. Supposedly the first Burmese-language newspaper, it continued up until the first year of the second Angl
Post a Comment
Read more

ARSA claims ambush on Myanmar security forces

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on Sunday claimed responsibility for an ambush on Myanmar security forces that left several wounded in northern Rakhine state, the first attack in weeks in a region gutted by violence. Rakhine was plunged into turmoil last August, when a series of ARSA raids prompted a military backlash so brutal the UN says it likely amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya minority. The army campaign sent some 650,000 Rohingya fleeing for Bangladesh, where refugees have given harrowing accounts of rape, murder and arson at the hands of security forces and vigilantes. Myanmar's military, which tightly controls information about Rakhine, denies any abuses and insists the crackdown was a proportionate response to crush the "terrorist" threat. ARSA have launched few attacks in recent months.  But the army reported that "about ten" Rohingya terrorists ambushed a car with hand-made mines and gunfire on Friday morning
Post a Comment
Read more

Thai penis whitening trend raises eyebrows

Image copyright LELUXHOSPITAL Image caption Authorities warn the procedure could be quite painful A supposed trend of penis whitening has captivated Thailand in recent days and left it asking if the country's beauty industry is taking things too far. Skin whitening is nothing new in many Asian countries, where darker skin is often associated with outdoor labour, therefore, being poorer. But even so, when a clip of a clinic's latest intriguing procedure was posted online, it quickly went viral. Thailand's health ministry has since issued a warning over the procedure. The BBC Thai service spoke to one patient who had undergone the treatment, who told them: "I wanted to feel more confident in my swimming briefs". The 30-year-old said his first session of several was two months ago, and he had since seen a definite change in the shade. 'What for?' The original Facebook post from the clinic offering the treatment, which uses lasers to break do
1 comment
Read more