The humanitarian ship Ocean Viking, chartered by the non-governmental organization SOS Méditerranée, left the military port of Toulon (Var) this Saturday. The disembarkation of the 230 migrants on board ended Friday evening. Before setting off again off Libya, the ship will stay for a few weeks in the port of La Seyne-sur-Mer (Var), for a technical stopover.
After 20 days at sea in search of a safe port, the 234 migrants rescued between the Libyan and Italian coasts by SOS Méditerranée have all been disembarked. 230 were at the military port of Toulon on Friday, and 4 in Corsica, initially, before being transferred to the continent. This is the first time that an ambulance boat operating off the coast of Libya has landed survivors in France, against a backdrop of diplomatic crisis with Italy, which refused to welcome it.
Among them, 189, including 23 women and 13 minors, are now in a holiday village on the Giens peninsula, about twenty kilometers from Toulon, transformed into a closed “international waiting area” and created especially for they are not considered to be in France. They are prohibited from leaving before an initial assessment of their asylum application.
44 unaccompanied minors
For the moment, everyone has indicated their wish to make this request, according to the prefecture. Before that, they will have to go through security checks, in particular those of French internal intelligence, before interviews with the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) to check whether their profiles are compatible.
First to be evacuated from the military port of Toulon because of his state of health on Friday morning, a 190th survivor is still hospitalized. The 44 unaccompanied minors on board the Ocean Viking, most of them “young adolescents”, indicated the prefect Evence Richard, were taken care of by the French social services and relocated outside the Giens camp.
VIDEO. Ocean Viking: Giorgia Meloni castigates an “incomprehensible and aggressive” reaction from Paris
In a joint declaration “for the full respect of the rights” of these people, several organizations including the National Association for Border Assistance for Foreigners (Anafé), the League of Human Rights or the Syndicate of Lawyers of France , on Friday condemned the creation of this “waiting area” and the “deprivation of liberty” it engenders. “There are not the same rights guarantees” for migrants as if they were on national soil, lamented the director of Anafé Laure Palun, denouncing a “political choice” of France.
Two-thirds of the people, or 175, will leave France to be relocated to eleven countries. Germany is to host around 80. The other states concerned are Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Ireland, Finland and Norway.
The ire of the French far right has not subsided this Saturday. The figure of the National Rally and deputy Marine Le Pen denounced an “act of incitement” on the part of the government which could attract more migrants. “We have to tackle the roots, (…) the smugglers”, she advocated on the sidelines of a visit to the Made in France Salon in Paris. In contrast, the left, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, praised an “act of humanity”.
SOS Méditerranée will go back to sea “because there have been more than 20,000 deaths since 2014 in the Mediterranean Sea and we do not accept that this sea becomes a cemetery”. Médecins sans frontières also indicated that its rescue vessel, the Geo Barents, will resume rescues. Since the beginning of the year, 1,891 migrants have disappeared in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).