Aclutch of migrants who are stranded off the coast of Italy awaiting permission to land have become the latest focus of the political battle between the country’s warring coalition parties.
The Open Arms, a Spanish NGO boat carrying 147 migrants, has been waiting at sea for 13 days in increasingly difficult weather, and living conditions on board are worsening.
Interior minister and leader of the rightwing League party Matteo Salvini has made closing Italian ports to NGO boats one of his flagship policies and spearheaded a stringent new law passed earlier this month which allows for vessels to be fined up to a million euros for illegally entering Italian waters.
He is refusing to sign the necessary paperwork that would allow the boat to come in to port, triggering a furious war of words with his coalition partners, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and prime minister Giuseppe Conte.
Until now Five Star had acquiesced to his harsh stance on migrants, and they voted in favour of the new security law. But on
Thursday Italy’s defence minister Elisabetta Trenta — a Five Star representative — refused to back Mr Salvini’s bid to block the Open Arms from landing at the southern Italian port of Lampedusa, in an open mutiny against her erstwhile political ally.
Her move shows that government ministers have abandoned any semblance of unity and after months of bickering, the coalition, which came to power 14 months ago, is collapsing. Mr Salvini last week tabled a motion of no confidence in the prime minister Giuseppe Conte; that vote will take place next week. He has also called for fresh elections.
An Italian court has ruled that the Open Arms should be allowed to enter Italian waters and Ms Trenta has sent a military escort to accompany the boat into port, but the two ministries are now deadlocked over whether it can disembark.
In a statement, Ms Trenta said: “I have taken this decision motivated by solid legal reasons, listening to my conscience. We must not forget that behind the rows of the past few days are children and young people who have suffered violence and abuse of every kind.”
Mr Conte, a figurehead leader who has no official political affiliation, attacked Mr Salvini’s ‘‘constant and obsessive focus on immigration reducing the argument to ‘ports closed’”.
In an open letter to the interior minister on Facebook he reprimanded Mr Salvini, saying that “politics means not just power but enormous responsibility”. France, Germany, Romania, Spain and Luxembourg had all offered to take in migrants from the Open Arms, Mr Conte said.
Mr Salvini retaliated, saying he “confessed my ‘guilt’, my ‘obsession’ with fighting every kind of crime including illegal immigration” and his job involved “defending borders, security, honour and dignity of my country”.
Efforts are afoot in Brussels to try to distribute the refugees to other European countries.
The European Commission said it was in talks with member states over what to do about the migrants on the vessel, but it has not yet received an official request from any member state to co-ordinate distribution of the rescued migrants.
This ad hoc approach to dealing with migrant vessels has become the norm since Italy started refusing to let the boats land. But rights groups say the routine use of such arrangements is unsatisfactory and potentially dangerous, particularly if migrants need urgent help because they are sick or short of food and water.
