Captain Marc Reig’s ship is stuck in a Sicilian port, and a hostage to Italy’s resurgent right, as charities become a target for their role in rescuing refugees
Captain Marc Reig does not look like a man at the centre of a storm. But that is what he is, despite the fact that his ship, the migrant-rescue boat the Open Arms, is safely moored in the pretty port of Pozzallo in southern Sicily, its peace disturbed only by the waves gently lapping against its hull.
When the ship, operated by the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms, lifted 218 desperate migrants from the leaky raft on which they had been trying to cross the rough seas of the Mediterranean last week, it seemed like a routine operation. In the last three years, more than 5,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean onboard the ship run by the NGO, which patrols an area outside Libyan waters. But what happened next was anything but routine. As the ship docked in Pozzallo, dozens of police closed in.
Continue reading...from Voluntary Sector Network | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IPG2DZ
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