(Toulon) The end of an “ordeal”: the humanitarian ship Ocean Viking docked at the military port of Toulon on Friday and the 230 surviving migrants began to disembark, a first in France which is causing strong tensions with Italy.
Posted at 6:58
“The ship docked around 8:50 a.m. and people began to disembark,” Prefect Evence Richard told a press conference, insisting on a welcome thought out “for the sake of dignity and humanity”.
“There is a lot of emotion on board, everyone is very very tired but relieved to arrive on land, it’s the end of an ordeal”, declared AFP Laurence Bondard, for the NGO SOS Méditerranée chartering the ship.
The Ocean Viking wandered at sea three weeks after rescuing, off Libya, on the most dangerous migration route in the world, men, women and 57 children, some from countries at war.
Italy, where the new far-right government has hardened its rhetoric against migrants, has denied them access to its ports, generating a diplomatic crisis with France, which has decided to welcome it “exceptionally” but has criticized sharply Rome for being “very inhuman”.
Italian head of government Giorgia Meloni on Friday denounced an “aggressive, incomprehensible and unjustified” French reaction, recalling that her country has taken in nearly 90,000 migrants this year, while the European countries which had pledged to help and caring for 8,000 people had finally accommodated only 117.
Waiting area
People disembarked from the Ocean Viking will be transferred to a vacation center on the Giens peninsula in Hyères, a town about twenty kilometers east of Toulon, declared an “international waiting area” for around twenty days.
The survivors “will not be able to leave the administrative center where they will be put and will therefore not technically be on French soil”, indicated French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.
Significant police forces were deployed near the accommodation center, noted an AFP photographer and the press does not have access to the disembarkation port.
All these people will be subject to health monitoring, then security checks by the intelligence services, before being heard by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees (Ofpra), which grants refugee status and can carry out up to 90 interviews per day from Saturday.
The procedure that will be applied to the four migrants evacuated to Corsica on Thursday due to the medical situation of three of them has not been disclosed.
Two-thirds of the people will leave France, since they will be relocated to nine countries, the ministry said, citing Germany which is to welcome around 80, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Lithuania, Malta , Portugal and Ireland.
“European Solution”
In the midst of the presentation of a bill on immigration to France, which plans to reform asylum procedures in order to achieve more deportations, Gérald Darmanin’s entourage specified that “those who do not receive asylum will be deported directly from the waiting area to their country of origin”.
Contacts have already been made with the countries of origin with a view to possible expulsions, indicated Eric Jalon, director general of foreigners in France.
“The possibility of expulsion is the principle of the waiting area. But for people who have just arrived, who have survived a crossing of the Mediterranean, who almost drowned, who have wandered for several days at sea […]that raises the question of knowing if they will be able to immediately deliver a story and a state of the persecutions they incur in good conditions”, worried to AFP Laure Palun, who heads Anafé (association national border assistance service for foreigners).
Their arrival in France is particularly tense on the far right, which has cried out for “laxity” through the voice of the leader of the National Rally Marine Le Pen.
The left and environmentalists have hailed a “decision worthy of the values” of France.
The showdown around the Ocean Viking has rekindled tensions between Rome and Paris over the reception of migrants.
Gerald Darmanin announced on Thursday the suspension “with immediate effect” of the planned reception of 3,500 migrants currently in Italy.
Since June, a relocation system, which had already undergone a first phase in 2019, provides for a dozen Member States, including France, to voluntarily welcome 8,000 migrants who have arrived in so-called “front line” countries such as France. ‘Italy.
Mme Meloni said he wanted to find “a European solution”. “It’s not smart to argue with France, Spain, Greece, Malta or other countries. I want to seek a common solution,” she stressed.
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).