Italian Authorities Arrest Captain of Migrant Rescue Ship Ending Standoff

Captain challenges Italy's policy of not accepting more migrants

By Clyde Hughes

Sea Watch 3 captain Carola Rackete (C) is arrested after entering the port of Lampedusa Saturday morning.

Photo by Selene Magnolia/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- Italian authorities arrested the captain of a migrant rescue vessel Saturday morning after it docked into a port off the Lampedusa island, ending a more than a two-week standoff.

The Sea-Watch 3, after rescuing about 40 migrants off the coast of Libya, sat in the Mediterranean Sea prepared to test new Italian laws closing its ports to such rescue vessels. Italy's anti-immigrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had closed the port to fleeing migrants in June 2018.

Sea-Watch 3 captain Carola Rackete said she was determined to get the migrants to safety, knowing that she would get arrested and fined.

"Even though in the afternoon the prosecution has opened an investigation against me, at the same time they notified us that they will not help to bring the rescued off the ship," Rackete said in a video recorded before the ship was docked. "I have decided to enter the harbor, which is free at night, on my own."

The German-owned Sea-Watch 3 sails under the flag of the Netherlands. Salvini celebrated Rackete's arrest on social media while criticizing the Dutch. The ministry said the ship will be confiscated and fined from $23,000 and $57,000.

"Happy Saturday folks," Salvini said on Facebook, in reference to Rachete's arrest. "Shame on the silence of the Dutch government."

The Italian foreign ministry said that Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal stepped up to take in the migrants.

But not the Netherlands!!!???

Lampedusa Island

Macron in ‘Suicidal Position’ in Battle Against Salvini & Orban on EU Migration Policy

A hypocritical politician? - Ça ne peut pas être!

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini

© Massimo Pinca / Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron is hypocritical to claim he supports migration while being unwilling to open the door to more migrants, says professor Jean Bricmont, adding that the issue could be used, by the right, against him.

Macron billed himself as a main opponent to the hardline anti-migrant politicians currently holding power in Italy and Hungary. That is after Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban united to fight existing EU migration policies and vowed to take power into their own hands in the next elections for the European Parliament.

During a joint press conference in Milan, Salvini and Orban pledged to take a hardline stance on the immigration issues and to oppose Macron, whom Hungary’s PM described as “the leader of pro-migration parties in Europe.”

RT asked Jean Bricmont, a professor, writer and political commentator, whether Macron will get support for his opposition to Orban and Salvini, since only days ago the French president was talking about the vital need for EU unity.

Bricmont believes that “the problem with Macron is that he is very hypocritical, as Salvini points out.” He explained that Salvini is willing to send many migrants to France but France doesn’t want to take them.

“Italy and Hungary are a little bit different – Hungary has never been a colonial power. They are not responsible for the wars in the Middle East… Why should they accept migrants? … Maybe you can say by charity. But they can say ‘We have got a lot of problems to solve first’,” Bricmont continued.

The situation with Italy is a little bit different, he noted, but Italy has taken many migrants and said “it is enough and other countries should take them. But they don’t.”

Furthermore, he suggests that the problem is largely psychological.

“Because people are worried that if you let migrants in, then they will come in the millions, tens of millions and we’ll be overwhelmed,” he said.

And what's to stop them? Also, remember Muslims have a much higher birth-rate than Europeans. What may be hundreds of thousands, will be millions and tens of millions in a few generations. And then, Europe will be Muslim!

According to Bricmont, as there are already tensions with the descendants of immigrants in Europe, people don’t want more migrants “even if it is not that many.”

“And then they are worried about their numbers. Nobody says ‘We will take 500,000 and that is it, after that we will close the border.’ Nobody is saying this and of course people think there will be millions.”

Asked about Salvini’s and Orban’s potential to redraw the map of the European parliament in the next elections, Bricmont said that he expects a large bloc of anti-migrant deputies to be elected.

“In France, the right, not the far right, but the right and the Republicans are already taking the opportunity of having a violent anti-migrant discourse. Which is a bit ridiculous because France does not take that many migrants, it is Italy who takes them but not France. At least, not recently,” he pointed out.

He suggested that the right in France would jump on that migrant issue while making an alliance with the National Rally (formerly National Front).

“And they will probably win against Macron. The Left is not going to win,” he argued.

In Bricmont’s opinion, Salvini and Orban are far more popular in their countries than Macron is in France and he believes that Macron is in “a suicidal position.”

Hungary’s Orban Calls for Italy to Deport Illegal Migrants Back to Africa

5 EU countries now opposed to reckless migration

© Massimo Pinca / Reuters

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that illegal immigrants in Italy must be deported back to Africa instead of relocated to other places in Europe and that Hungary is willing to help with the process.

Orban was speaking during a press conference following a meeting with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who has come under fire in recent days for refusing to allow more than 100 African migrants to disembark from a boat docked in Catania.

Last Wednesday, the crew of the Diciotti rescued 190 migrants from an overloaded boat about 15 nm off the island of Lampedusa. 13 individuals needed emergency treatment and were medevaced to shore, but 177 remained on board.

Aid group Medecines sans Frontieres reports that 27 minors have been allowed to disembark from the Italian Coast Guard cutter Diciotti, which was temporarily banned from port by its own government last week. About 150 survivors remain on board the vessel, which is alongside at the port of Catania, and Italy is attempting to negotiate with other EU states to persuade them to take them in. 

They are not having much success at getting other EU countries to take them, although those countries have no problem criticizing Salvini for standing firm. Salvini is also getting criticism from within his own government and judicial system which is now investigating whether or not they can charge Salvini with some crime.

Orban, earlier today called Salvini his hero!

Asked whether migrants should be relocated from Italy to other EU countries, Orban said that they should be sent back home.

“We should send them back instead of relocating them,” he said, adding that anything else would mean “the human smugglers have won” and “immigrants would keep coming in further waves”.

Orban said that illegal migration was the most important issue facing the European Union and said that Hungary was “attacked” by Brussels because the country had shown that it was possible that migrants could be stopped on land, referring to the fence built at Hungary’s border with Serbia and Croatia.

It was possible, Orban said, for Salvini to prove that migrants could “also be stopped at sea.” He called on Salvini not to “retreat” and promised assistance from Hungary to help Italy protect its borders. “Europe’s security hinges on his [Salvini’s] success,” he said.

Mariann Őry

@otmarianna

 #Orban: We are ready to help #Italy to deport back migrants to #Africa. Take them back home, instead of relocating them. #OrbanSalvini

Orban said that Brussels’ policies on migration, particularly those driven from Germany, France and Spain, were aimed at “better management” of the influx of migrants, while the Visegrad group - which is made up of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic - wants to stop illegal migration fully.

Earlier in the day, other top officials from Italy's ruling coalition said that EU funds to Hungary should be stopped because it had not responded to Italy's "request for help" in relocating migrants.

Mariann Őry

@otmarianna

 #Orban: I told #Salvini that migrants who arrived in Europe should be taken back. Brussels elite says it's not possible but I'm convinced we only need political will. I wish much success and are thankful for your support. #OrbanSalvini

Salvini described the meeting with Orban as one in a “long series of meetings to change the destiny of Europe” and said the two countries were “close to a historic breakthrough on a continental level”.

Both Orban and Salvini have angered Brussels with their anti-migrant rhetoric and refusal to cooperate with EU demands. 

Orban has referred to migrants in Europe as “Muslim invaders” who he said are not true refugees, while Salvini has said he is prepared to be arrested in his defence of Italy’s borders.

Truth and Common Sense From an European Politician - How Strange

‘People voted’: Italian interior minister confronts journalist who called Crimea referendum ‘fake’

FILE PHOTO: Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini © Tony Gentile / Reuters

Crimea belongs to Russia

Italian Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said that Crimea “legitimately” belongs to Russia as he argued with a US journalist who called the 2014 referendum held on the peninsula “fake.”

When Washington Post journalist Lally Weymouth confronted Salvini with the apparently provocative question of whether or not he supports Russia’s “annexation” of Crimea, Salvini pointed out that there was actually a referendum, prompting her to claim it was “fake.”

Amazing! She declares it fake as if just to do so makes it true. She has no evidence other than the presence of soldiers, who never fired a single shot. And there is no evidence that Crimeans are unhappy about the annexation. Indeed, the opposite appears to be true. MSM - they just make stuff up to fit their preconceived notions.

In response, Salvini noted that it was just the journalist’s subjective “point of view.” “There was a referendum, and 90 percent of the people voted for the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation,” the Italian interior minister said.

Weymouth then implied that the referendum was illegitimate due to the presence of some Russian forces on the peninsula at that time. Salvini replied that what was indeed illegitimate was the change of power in Kiev at that time, which he called a “pseudo-revolution funded by foreign powers,” just like the unrest in the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring revolutions.

“There are some historically Russian zones with Russian culture and traditions which legitimately belong to the Russian Federation,” Salvini then said, apparently referring to Crimea. His words immediately provoked an angry reaction in Kiev. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry even summoned the Italian ambassador to voice its protest following Salvini’s comments.

“We condemn the position of the Italian politician as one that is not based on real fact and contradicts … the principles and norms of the international law,” the Ukrainian ministry said in its statement, adding that it “expects” Italy to once again condemn what it called the Russian “aggression.”

The Italian minister, meanwhile, once again said he would like to lift anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the EU back in 2014, following Crimea’s reunification with Russia and the outbreak of crisis in Ukraine. The sanctions “didn't prove to be useful, and according to the data, they hurt Italian exports,” Salvini told Weymouth.

He also praised the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump in Helsinki, calling it “a very positive sign.” “A rapprochement between the US and Russia is good news for Italy and for Europe.”

Salvini visited Moscow earlier this week, where he met with Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev to discuss cyber security, the fight against terrorism, and drug trafficking, among other issues. During his visit to Russia, Salvini also said that Rome might address the issue of sanctions by the end of the year.

His statement comes at a time when the EU announced that sanctions against Russia would remain in place until January 2019. In 2014, the US and EU imposed sanctions after accusing Russia of supporting a military uprising in eastern Ukraine. Moscow denied the accusation and responded with counter-sanctions, banning imports of certain agricultural products, raw materials, and foodstuffs from countries that target Russia with sanctions. The restrictive measures have been extended by both sides on multiple occasions.

Italy's Salvini - Italy's Saviour or Europe's New Mussolini?

Specter of Mussolini evoked as Italy’s Salvini orders full census & expulsion of Roma ‘illegals’

FILE PHOTO: Italian Roma meet the right-wing Lega Party leader, Matteo Salvini, in the camp of Via Germagnano on February 1, 2018. © Lapone/Fotogramma/Ropi / Global Look Press

Italy’s interior minister and leader of the right-wing Lega party, Matteo Salvini, has told his officials to “prepare a dossier” on the country’s Roma and plans to expel the undocumented among them. The move has provoked outrage.

“At the ministry, I have them preparing a dossier on the Roma issue in Italy,” Salvini, who is one of the leaders of the ruling Eurosceptic coalition, told the regional TeleLombardia broadcaster. He then added that the dossier would involve a “census of Roma in Italy,” which will help the Interior Ministry to “see who, how, how many.”

The minister went on to vow that all Roma who have no valid documents and reside in Italy illegally would be “expelled,” under agreements with other states, while Italian Roma “unfortunately have to be kept at home.” He also rushed to explain that his initiative has nothing to do with racial profiling.

“We will have a register and not a profile,” Salvini said, adding that the ministry has “no intention” of “profiling [these people] or taking the fingerprints of anyone.” He then explained that the major aim of the census is to monitor the situation in the Roma camps across Italy, including the illegal ones, as well as to “protect … thousands of [Roma] children, who are not allowed to attend school regularly because their kinfolk prefer to involve them in delinquency.”

“We also want to control how the millions of euro that come from European funds [to help Roma in Italy] are spent,” the minister said, as he listed the goals of his initiative.

‘Outrageous racism’

The move was immediately slammed by Italy’s left-wing politicians, who branded it “ethnic cleansing” while describing the idea of a dossier on the Roma community “chilling.”

“We cannot allow a census for a race,” Emmanuele Fiano, an Italian MP from the center-left Democratic Party said, as cited by La Repubblica daily. “People can be divided … by their behavior, by their choices but not by their birth. It did not end well 80 years ago,” the politician said, apparently referring to the times of the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and calling on the current government “not to try it again.”

“The way is short from a census to a concentration camp. Salvini apparently decided to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the racial laws,” Chiara Gribaudo, an MP from the Democratic Party, wrote in a tweet, in another reference to the Mussolini era.

“The majority of the Roma are EU citizens,” Nicola Fratoianni, another MP and the leader of the Italian Left Party, said, adding that conducting such a census would be akin to “profiling the French people living in our country.” He also went as far as to implicitly call Salvini a “racist and [an] idiot.”

The Interior Minister’s actions were also sharply criticized by the former Italian Prime Minsiter Paolo Gentiloni, who tweeted: “Yesterday refugees, today Roma, tomorrow guns for everyone. How hard it is to be bad.”

Various Italian NGOs were equally critical of Salvini’s initiative. "The interior minister does not seem to know that a census on the basis of ethnicity is not permitted by law," Carlo Stasolla, president of the Associazione 21 Luglio, a group which defends the rights of the Roma community, pointed out. He also added that the data on those who “live in formal and informal settlements already exist while the few undocumented Roma are effectively stateless, and therefore cannot be expelled.”

The controversy soon moved beyond the Italian borders; the Party of European Socialists (PES), an umbrella group uniting left-leaning parties from the EU and Norway, also lambasted the initiative. “Disgusted by Salvini's announcement of a Roma census. We can't tolerate this shameless profiling,” the group said in a Twitter post.

Kenneth Roth, the CEO of Human Rights Watch, an international humanitarian NGO, also assailed the Italian minister with criticism. “Outrageous racism is the honest way to describe an interior minister (and party leader) who says it's "unfortunate" that Italy cannot deport its Roma citizens,” he said. 

New ‘Hitler’ or ‘effective’ minister?

People on social media were mostly critical of the interior minister’s initiative; many accused him of having “no heart,” called him racist and even compared him to the German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Others, however, praised Salvini’s “effective” actions in tackling migration and expressed their support for his policies. Some people also cited the results of an opinion poll conducted by the Italian SWG market research company for an Italian private TV Channel La7, which showed that public backing for Salvini’s Lega party is on the rise. “Anti-immigration stance is paying off,” they said.

Salvini had obtained more results regarding the migrants issue in two weeks as a minister of the Interior, than Mogherini in 4 years as High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs. That's the proof that  national states have much more power than the weak EU.

Salvini had already provoked controversy with his policies earlier in June, when, apparently in line with his election promises, he refused the docking of the migrant rescue ship ‘Aquarius’ with 629 people on board and redirected the vessel to the Island of Malta. The move was followed by a spat between the Italian government and the EU, with Rome accusing Europe of “not showing solidarity” with Italy on the migration issue.

The Roma people living in Italy account for 130,000-170,000, or 0.23% of the total Italian population, according to data provided by the Catholic University of Milan (UCSC). About 50 percent of them are Italian citizens.

Italy's Election has Potential for Cataclysmic Outcome, Watchers Worry

By Jonathon Gatehouse, CBC News 

Forza Italia leader Silvio Berlusconi, centre, flanked by Fratelli D'Italia party leader Giorgia Meloni, left, and Northern League leader Matteo Salvini during a meeting in Rome on Thursday. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters)

Italy election unease

In the 73 years since the end of the Second World War, Italy has had 65 governments.

So you would think the world would be a little more blasé about the outcome of this Sunday's national elections.

They are, after all, likely to result in yet another "pizza parliament" and a hard-to-manage coalition government — either the centre-right option controlled by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, or the centre-left option under the ruling Democratic Party and another former PM, Matteo Renzi.

Police battle students at a rally opposing neo-fascists in Milan on Feb. 24, ahead of the March 4 election. Thousands of police have been deployed for protests in Rome, Milan and other Italian cities, tasked with preventing clashes during an election campaign that has increasingly been marked by violence. (Matteo Bazzi/Associated Press)

Both of which could be joined, or toppled, by the anti-politics Five Star Movement led by Luigi di Maio, a 31-year-old college dropout who has never held a full-time job.

Leader of Italy's anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), Luigi Di Maio, may be a deciding force in terms of which party forms a coalition government. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)

But there are a remarkable number of potentially cataclysmic outcomes being predicted by the pundits:

The return of fascism. Immigration and the migrants trying to reach southern Italy by sea have been a focal point of the campaign, and far-right parties like Brothers of Italy have taken a Trumpist "Italy First" approach. Another, Forza Nuova, marches around giving the old straight-armed salute. And Benito Mussolini's granddaughter, Alessandra, has been busy campaigning for Berlusconi's Forza Italia party.

A strong result by anti-European Union parties, like the far-right Northern League, which could in turn drag down the euro. Or even lead to Italexit.

Leader of the Democratic Party and former PM Matteo Renzi

A big win for Vladimir Putin. Berlusconi and the Russian president are buds. The Northern League thinks sanctions against the Kremlin hurt the Italian economy. And the Five Star Movement has traditionally been unenthusiastic about NATO, and may be benefiting from Russian-funded Twitter bots and trolls.

Further widening of Italy's already gaping rich-poor divide. Thirty per cent of the population -- almost 18 million people -- are already judged to be at risk by the national statistics agency, and the economy shows little sign of improving.

The most likely scenario?

After a brief period of business-as-usual chaos, yet another election.