Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Now for more on the story, let's cross to our correspondent in Rome, Sima Gupta.
00:04 Sima, hello. What exactly can you tell us more about this uptick in migrant arrivals
00:11 and the consequences of that uptick?
00:13 Well, just to give you an idea, the local priest on the island of Lampedusa described the situation
00:22 as tragic, dramatic and apocalyptic. He said that's really the reaction. Close to 7,000 new
00:31 migrants arrived within the span of 24 hours, garbage not being disposed of, they're fighting
00:38 over water. So you can imagine the situation in an island. Now that figure of close to 7,000
00:44 is several hundred times more than the actual population on the island of Lampedusa. Now
00:50 overnight we heard reports of some skirmishes, but the authorities have been able to control
00:56 the situation and now they're putting in place commercial ferries as well as the Coast Guard
01:00 to try and move these migrants, these numbers, to other centres on the mainland and on the island of
01:07 Sicily as well. Now the migrant reception centre on Lampedusa itself can only contain some 400 or
01:13 so people, so really it's a huge number to deal with and that's essentially because according to
01:19 the Italian authorities, the weather conditions in Tunisia and the sea conditions led to the fact
01:25 that there was a build-up of boats, if you like, holding these migrants to be able to make this
01:32 journey. And so once the sea conditions improved, they came in in these numbers, being described as
01:38 almost like a flotilla of boats arriving on the island. Since the beginning of the year, more than
01:44 120,000 migrants have arrived by sea onto Italy and including in this group more than 11,000
01:54 unaccompanied minors as well, so you have children. Unfortunately, we also saw the reports of a five
02:01 month old baby unfortunately drowned when the authorities tried to save that baby who was on
02:07 one of those boats. So you can imagine the situation, very dramatic. The authorities though
02:12 are trying to do what they can to deal with these sheer numbers of arrivals. And what exactly has
02:18 been the government's response to the situation on the ground and really to the arrival of this
02:24 many migrants? Well, Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni did lead the EU into striking a deal with Tunisia
02:34 in order to stem the migratory flow, but so far it doesn't seem to be having very much of an effect
02:40 on the ground. And on the ground you have the Civil Protection Minister saying that Lampedusa
02:45 really has done all that it can do and this is not about saving lives at sea, there's no question
02:51 on that issue at all, but it's about stopping the boats from making that journey, stopping them
02:57 from the point of departure. That's always been the line taken by the Italian government and in
03:02 fact they've been quite hostile towards migrant rescue boat ships that are trying to help those
03:07 migrants at sea. The Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani said you need short, medium and long-term
03:14 responses to this problem and he's calling into question that Dublin protocol that's been put in
03:20 place saying that it's old-fashioned. That's the one that says that asylum seekers need to be
03:24 processed in the places that they arrive and you have these migrants wanting to travel up north
03:32 of Europe though and so you have those northern European countries saying that they don't want
03:36 to accept them. So you have this situation of a tussle between Italy and the EU and in the meantime
03:41 on the ground the authorities are having to deal with these migrant arrivals.
03:45 Thank you very much. Sima Gupta there reporting from Rome.