An NGO has claimed that the Armed Forces of Malta instructed a merchant vessel not to rescue some 90 migrants who were in distress in Malta’s search and rescue zone.
The NGO Alarm Phone, which monitors migrant crossings in the Mediterranean, said on Twitter over the weekend that the overcrowded boat of migrants had escaped from Libya but that their engine had broken down.
The NGO said that it had informed the merchant vessel Havila Borg which was in the vicinity of the boat, fearing that a pushback to Tunisia or Libya was possibly.
Alarm Phone then later tweeted that some nine hours since its first alarm, the 90 or so on board the boat were still in distress at sea.
“After being monitoring from the air, Malta’s Armed Forces has ordered to a merchant vessel that was 12nm away to NOT intervene,” the NGO said.
The migrants were rescued on Sunday by SOS Mediterranee’s Ocean Viking.
88 people were on board the boat, including 27 minors and a baby, SOS Mediterranee – which now has 181 people on board – said.
Malta has had a patchy record at best with regards to migrant rescues in the past couple of years, with the AFM failing to intervene in most circumstances, despite people being in distress in Malta’s waters.
Prime Minister Robert Abela drew flack during the Covid-19 pandemic for refusing to allow hundreds of migrants entry into the country, and instead keeping them on tourist ferries in open waters while EU countries squabbled over who would take them in.
Pope Francis himself is expected to make an emphasis on the importance of correct treatment of migrants when he visits the country in April. He will be visiting, amongst other places, the Hal Far Open Centre to place emphasis on this.