The Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, defended today the new strategy for the disembarkation of immigrants saved by humanitarian ships, which involves assigning distant ports, assuring that the intention is to “equitably distribute” the applicants throughout the country. of asylum.
“We do things in a responsible way and we are committed to an even distribution among all the possible landing places so as not to saturate Sicily and Calabria (south), which do not have to be the camp for refugees from Europe,” he said in a conference press.
Piendosi, right-hand man of far-right vice president Matteo Salvini, went today to the Sicilian town of Agrigento (south) to chair a meeting of the Public Order and Security Committee.
“This province has the largest number of landings in Europe and hosts between 1,200 and 1,300 people in a stable manner,” he illustrated.
The minister took advantage of his appearance to defend the new strategy of the Government of Giorgia Meloni to hinder the work of the NGO boats that save immigrants in the Mediterranean and that are accused of favoring the phenomenon with their mere presence.
The organizations have summarized this new strategy as one of “distant ports”, compared to that of the past, of “closed ports”, whereby ships were kept stranded at sea with numerous immigrants on board.
Now, Italy readily grants ports to these ships but often chooses ones hundreds of miles away.
For example, the Geo Barents of Doctors Without Borders, with 110 immigrants, and the Ocean Viking of SOS Méditerranée, with 37, have had to head to distant Ancona (central-north), on the Adriatic coast, to take them to mainland.
A journey of more than three days – with arrival scheduled for next Wednesday – aggravated by a storm with waves of more than two and a half meters.
“They are ships of significant size, in the past they remained at most for up to two or three weeks in meteorological conditions similar to these, they are not prohibitive, there is nothing exceptional,” Minister Piantedosi downplayed.