Brussels, 28/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Sunday 27 March, for the first time since the start of the uprising in Libya, a vessel carrying migrants from Libya landed in Lampedusa, AFP reports. This first craft with 284 people, mainly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, on board was followed throughout the day by various other vessels, taking the number of newly arrived migrants, according to some media, to almost 2,000 over the course of the weekend.
“Up until now, the only migrants arriving in Lampedusa have been Tunisians. This is the first boat from Libya with people fleeing the military escalation, attacks and reprisals”, AFP quotes a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) as saying in Italy. She said these refugees were entitled to “international protection”. These latest migrants were due to be taken on Monday 28 March to Sicily from where they were to be transferred to refugee centres. “The situation of the Somali and Eritrean refugees who are fleeing Libya and who are beginning to arrive in Italy this weekend is totally different”, acknowledged Italian Home Affairs Minister Roberto Maroni on Monday. “The Somalis and Eritreans cannot be sent back home because they are fleeing from war and have a right to international protection. We will provide them with the necessary assistance and we will again ask Europe to share the load being borne by Italy”, he added, making clear, however, that “this cannot be the case for Tunisians”.
15,000 Tunisians have arrived on the island of Lampedusa alone since the fall of the Ben Ali regime. Of these, 6,000 are still on the island and the remainder have been transferred to other Italian centres or sent back to Tunisia. Maroni and his colleague at foreign affairs Franco Frattini visited Tunis on Friday 25 March. And European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström announced last week that she, too, intends to travel to Tunisia to discuss inter alia management of migratory flows. On Friday, the Italian ministers pledged €150 million to the Tunisian authorities and promised technical assistance to help them strengthen controls and prevent migrants from leaving from their shores. (S.P./transl.rt)