Theresa Maggio

THe NGO non profit MOAS has suspended rescue operations of migrants in the Mediterranean and will move to south east Asia to rescue migrants there.
MOAS was founded in 2014 to reduce the loss of lives along the migration path between Africa and Europe. In the following three years MOAS rescued more than 40,000 people including children, women and men who were victims of violence, poverty and persecution.
MOAS co-founder Regina Catrambone explained to supporters: "At present, there are too many questions without an answer, and too many doubts about those trapped or forced back to Libya.

"The horrific tales of those who survive depict a nightmare of abuse, violence, torture, kidnapping and extortion.

"MOAS does not want to become part of a scenario where no one pays attention to the people who deserve protection, instead only focusing on preventing them from arriving on European shores with no consideration of their fate when trapped on the other side of the sea."

The rescue ship will now sail to the Bay of Bengal between the borders of Myanmar and Bangladesh to save the fleeing Rohingya people. The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim ethnic minority who have faced persecution in Myanmar. Many of those who have fled describe troops and Buddhist mobs burning their villages and attacking civilians in the province in Rakhine.

The United Nations has described them as the most persecuted people on earth, with Pope Francis appealing for an end to violence on 27 August.  Read More 

The tiny Pelagic island of Linosa, a hundred miles offshore from Porto Empedocle , Sicily, the sister island of Lampedusa, albeit two hours by ferry from Lampedusa, has barely 300 inhabitants, no hotel and no place to receive the hundred Tunisian migrants escaping Africa who arrived in two boatloads over the past two days. The migrants are mostly adolescent boys but include three women and a 7-year-old child, according to La Repubblica. For the past two nights they have been sleeping in the open on the steps of the tiny island town's amphitheater.
One of the island's three restaurants have guaranteed meals to the newcomers. One tourist from Milan who has a vacation home on Linosa let the migrants use her outdoor shower to wash themselves and their clothes, and loaned them her cell phone so they could call family back in Africa to say they had arrived safely. Water is scarce on Linosa: people collect rainwater in underground cisterns, so this was a real favor.
Linosa has no migrant center. The inhabitants feel abandoned by the state, wondering when someone will come get these immigrants who are spending their days in the street. The town opened up its kindergarten building for the migrants because it is the only structure with a tree for shade. There are no public bathrooms on Linosa, which one woman I know who taught there described as "a cork floating on the ocean."
The only available public bathroom is in the emergency clinic. Confronting the emergency are only the island's three carabinieri (federal military police who added ten more officers overnight) the lady doctors at the emergency health clinic and the traffic cop. Read More 

From La Repubblica today:
The bodies of 49 immigrants asphyxiated by diesel fumes in the hold of a trafficker's fishing boat were lifted ashore by a crane at the port of Catania today. The ones who pay the least for their passage, usually the women, are relegated to the airless, windowless hold, locked in, thesurest to die if the vessel sinks, with only diesel fumes to breathe. The survivors numbered 312, of whom 45 were women and three minor children.
They arrived on the Norwegian ship Siem Pilot.  Read More 

From The Guardian:
Three NGOs have suspended migrant rescues in the Mediterranean because of the increasingly hostile stance of the Libyan authorities and coastguard.

Save the Children and Germany’s Sea Eye have joined Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in halting operations because they feel their crews can no longer work safely in  Read More 

Blood and soil. Blut und bloden. A Nazi slogan referring to its ""racist ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors, descent blood (of a folk) and territory," per Wikipedia.
Don't they know that anybody living in the USA has the blood of immigrants? Including "Native Americans" who crossed the Bering Strait on their way from Asia? I guess not. They are just scared, scared of being "replaced". And scared people become bullies. Read More 

From the Guardian:
Doctors Without Borders has said that it is temporarily suspending the activity of its rescue ship owing to alleged threats from Libya. The Libyan coastguard has increasingly become more aggressive in patrolling the waters off its coasts where human traffickers launch boats crowded with migrants desperate to reach Europe.

The humanitarian group said the rescue coordination centre operated by Italy’s coastguard had informed it on Friday that the Libyan threats pose a security risk. The group added that Libyan authorities declared their own rescue area, extending into international waters, the same day. Read More 

Most of the immigrants arrive in Sicily from north Africa on flimsy rubber rafts. A few lucky ones arrive on 20-foot boats. They aim to land at night on nature reserves or tiny, unknown beaches. They escape, unseen. Many run to Palermo. They leave their old boats behind rocking in the waves.
 Read More 

Eight corpses were recovered from aboard a rubber raft full of migrants coming from Libya and headed towards Italy during a rescue operation.
From La Repubblica:
Five hundred migrants were rescued at sea in four operations today, according to the Italian Coast Guard.

The crew of a ship hired by a European far-right movement aiming to disrupt migrant rescues in the Mediterranean have reportedly been deported from Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus for alleged people-smuggling after 21 south Asians were found onboard.
The crew of the C-Star were taken off the vessel at the port of Famagusta, and appeared in court on Thursday, alongside the ship’s Swiss owner.
They were accused of preparing and circulating false documents, but were later released for lack of evidence. Read More 

From La Repubblica this morning:
The anti-racist non profit associations of Sicily are on the brink of "war." Today at Catania's port they protested against the idea of letting the ship C-Star dock there. The C Star is a ship rented by by the extreme right group Generazione Identitaria,
( Identity Generation), an extreme right multinational group formed in 2012 and made up of French, Italian and German members. Alfonso Di Stefano, representative of the Catania Anti-racist Network, said, " We are expressing our unconditional solidarity with the precious work that the humanitarian ships do and we will stand vigil in the port until the docking of the C-Star does not happen here nor anywhere in Sicily. We know that up until yesterday evening it was blocked in the port of Suez. It seems that it is going to leave or it has already left and it will take from five to six days to arrive here.
The C Star intends to lend support to the Libyan Coast Guard in its operations in which they stop vessels loaded with migrants and turn them back to Libya.
At the sit-in at the Catania port were thirty representatives of the non- profits that comprise the Network, who showed banners with the saying: "No more shipwrecks. The right to European refuge in order not to die," and Freedom, not Frontex," and " The right to asylum and humanitarian corridors." Read More