Sea Rescue Operation for 450 Stranded Migrants

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World

12:30 02.01.2015(updated 15:28 03.01.2015)

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Italian helicopters have been scrambled and rescuers are on board an abandoned people smuggling ship on the Mediterranean Sea.One of the migrants on board the livestock vessel used the ship's radio to call the Italian coast guards for help saying: "We're without crew, we're heading toward the Italian coast and we have no one to steer".
According to the ANSA news agency the ship was 40 miles off Italy's southeastern tip with as many as 450 people on board. Most passengers are believed to be from Syria.
Record numbers of people from Africa, Asia and the Middle East attempted the same perilous journey last year. During the summer, traffickers transporting human cargo use fishing boats and dinghies and the rough winter seas are seen as no deterrent. The boats are just bigger; the migrants are just as desperate.
"Freight boats departing from Turkey are now being used which is a new trend", according to Izabella Cooper, from the European border protection agency Frontex. "The smugglers buy old boats from scrap yards and put the migrants on them. They go to different countries to take more migrants in order to transport them to Italy".
Earlier this week, almost 1,000 migrants had to be rescued from another boat that had been abandoned by the captain and crew. Children and pregnant women, believed to be Syrian were on board.
Record numbers of men women and children died last year trying to reach the Italian coast on boats that are put to sea and then abandoned.
More than 170,000 had to be rescued by Italy in the last 14 months — and there now appears to be a new route, says Cooper "The Black Sea route from Turkey into Romania".
But since last October, Britain has withdrawn any support for any search and rescue operation to prevent mass drowning of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. Foreign Office ministers claim rescue operations encourage more people to risk their lives and subsequently more profit for traffickers.
However, the Home Office confirmed that the UK contributes a ‘de-briefer' who interviews migrants and refugees in order to help build a picture of the criminal networks involved in the human trafficking.
"Information gathered by a de-briefer who conducts voluntary interviews with the migrants is very important, it can definitely save lives," says Izabella Cooper.
"We can't conduct investigations but we do pass the information on to the migrant-receiving countries and Europol so that they can take action on the criminal networks. For every boatload of 400 people, the smugglers make a clear profit of one million euros,"
The people rescued at sea often admit that they know the dangers but are so desperate to flee that they are prepared to take the risks.
Izabella Cooper says pressure will remain high on the central Mediterranean route, with the situation in Libya crucial to that: about 87% of the Mediterranean crossings begin in Libya, where the trafficking gangs can work with almost complete impunity.
In 2014, more than 207,000 migrants and refugees made the risky Mediterranean crossing to get to Europe — nearly three times the previous highest figure of 70,000 in 2011. Of those, some 3,400 died.
Adrian Edwards, spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), believes that 2015 is "a time of real need in the world. Conflict and displacement are on the rise, so we're heading into 2015 looking at difficult asylum environments with more people in flight".
Refugee and human rights organisations say Britain's decision to withdraw rescue support will contribute to more people dying in what's become a Mediterranean graveyard on Europe's doorstep.

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