The government is initiating the medical evacuation of four people from the Ocean Viking while the ship is stuck in the Mediterranean with 234 migrants on board. It has been off Corsica since Thursday morning. This medical evacuation was a request from the NGO SOS Méditerranée which charters the boat, evoking some “in a serious state of health” with a “need for hospital care”.
“The General Secretariat for the Sea, on the instructions of the Prime Minister, is implementing a medical evacuation operation at sea for four migrants currently on board the Ocean Viking”, announced Thursday in a press release this body attached to Matignon. and headed by the former prefect of police of Paris Didier Lallement. According to the NGO SOS Méditerranée, there are three migrants and a companion.
“A message requesting the evacuation of people in danger having been issued (…), this operation will be carried out under the operational management of the Admiral Maritime Prefect of the Mediterranean”, detailed the General Secretariat for the Sea.
Among the people to be evacuated, “one of the patients is unstable and has not responded to the care provided on board since October 27. The other two suffered injuries in Libya which, due to the long delay in treatment, now risk having long-term negative consequences,” said a spokeswoman for the NGO.
The migrants on board the boat are part of a group rescued on October 25 and 26, 56 of them were rescued from an overcrowded wooden boat in international waters off the Italian island of Lampedusa. Thirty-two others had been taken to safety off Malta.
Franco-Italian bras de fer
Since the Ocean Viking was seeking to dock in an Italian port, which other humanitarian NGO boats had been authorized to do, which Rome had refused. The government spokesman, Olivier Véran, then asked Italy to “respect its commitments”, while Gilles Simeoni, president of the Executive Council of Corsica, offered to welcome the boat.
“It’s an Italian responsibility. But we must be very clear, we must not let these migrants down ”, insisted this Thursday Clément Beaune, Minister Delegate in charge of Transport. Asked about LCI, he denied the opening of the port of Marseille to the boat, however advanced by the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs. “If we call into question the principle of the nearest safe port, we are heading towards situations of serious humanitarian danger”, underlined the Minister.
Concerning a landing of the boat in a French port, the mayor (DVD) of Toulon, Hubert Falco, assures that “the State is still negotiating with Italy” and that “nothing has been recorded”.
Four years after the fate of the Aquarius, relations between Paris and Rome were once again strained around the reception of the humanitarian ship. The NGO SOS Méditerranée deplored the “deafening silence of Italy” and asked France the same day to assign a safe port to the boat which “should arrive in territorial waters near Corsica on November 10”, according to SOS Mediterranean.
The European Commission then banged its fist on the table on Wednesday: “The situation on board the ship has reached a critical level and must be resolved urgently to avoid a humanitarian tragedy”, she reacted in a press release, calling for an “immediate disembarkation” of all migrants.