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Thousands of lives have been lost but also thousands have been saved because they have been assisted to a safe landing.

The law requires the rescue of people in distress on the high seas and so does common humanity.

But with nearly 6,000 refugees arrive on its shores each day mostly from Africa Italy has had enough and is actively considering blocking the boats carrying migrants from landing.

The Italian ambassador to the EU, Maurizio Massari is seeking a mandate to raise the issue with the European commission with a view to changing EU asylum procedures.

The UN has called for a Europe-wide solution to this ongoing crisis and not before time.

If there are signs of some sort of concerted action then it is to be welcomed.

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Refugees and migrants wait in a small rubber boat to be rescued off Lampedusa, Italy

But merely passing the problem around the various European states to alleviate the burden on Greece and Italy cannot be the answer.

What is essential is to make it far more difficult and far less profitable for people smugglers to operate in the first place.

International co-operation must stop the problem at its source and prevent yet more deaths by drowning in the coming months of summer.

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Downing Street has told business leaders in no uncertain terms that Britain will walk away from the Brexit talks if there is no satisfactory deal in the offing regarding the divorce settlement.

The going figure is now set at 87.7billion which is surely more than the most disgruntled exspouse is entitled to.

Theresa May is right to remind both business leaders and Brussels that the option of a walkout is still very much a possibility.

For otherwise the Eurocrats would sense that they can batter Britain into submission with their demands.

The setback for the Government following the General Election can be overstated.

The fact is that Britain is still in a position of strength in its negotiations with Brussels.

We have the power to walk from the table and Mrs May is not bluffing when she says she is willing to use that power.

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Andy Murary's wife Kim in pictures

Anew baby on the way and another Wimbledon Championship to win.

So no pressure for Andy Murray as he walks out on court.

Best of luck Sir Andy and congratulations to Lady Murray.

Within a few years the family will be able to hold their owns doubles matches.

Originally posted here:
Call for a solution to the migrant crisis is overdue - EXPRESS COMMENT - Express.co.uk

EMMA Jane Kirby is an award-winning broadcaster but she is also a consummate storyteller, touching millions of listeners with her heart-rending dispatches from the frontline of the migration crisis in the Mediterranean.

Her book The Optician of Lampedusa tells the real-life story of Carmine Menna, an optician who lives on the Italian island which is one of the main entry points for migrants from Africa.

In October 2013, Menna was on a sailing trip with friends when they heard what they initially thought was the sounds of seagulls screeching.

However, it was hundreds of refugees screaming for their lives as the boat they were on sank. Menna and his friends sailed to their aid, rescuing 47 people; 368 lost their lives.

Kirby, a BBC radio journalist, will read from the book on board the L Samuel Beckett in Bantry Bay later this month, as part of the West Cork Literary Festival.

The Irish navy ship completed two deployments to the Mediterranean in 2015 and 2016, rescuing more than 4,000 people.

When Kirby encountered Carmine Menna, she knew her reports on the migration crisis were already losing their impact.

The images of overcrowded rubber boats had reached saturation point. We knew people were switching off because it was happening again and again. We desperately needed to find a new angle; I interviewed five ordinary Italians who had been affected by the crisis; a gravedigger who had the dreadful task of burying them; a hospital director who had to find space to treat them; a wonderful lady who worked in a soup kitchen; and a carpenter, a very religious man who had decided to make crosses from the driftwood washed up on the shores of Lampedusa from the wrecked boats.

Then we had the optician, just an ordinary guy who was getting on with his own life, exactly as we all do, then one day, bang, he found himself in the middle of what was then Lampedusas worst shipwreck.

There was a hugely positive response to the series from listeners and Kirby went on to win the prestigious Prix Bayeux-Calvados award for war correspondents.

People could see themselves in those we interviewed particularly the optician. They could imagine literally being in that same boat what would they have done?

The optician was reluctant to speak at first, says Kirby.

He absolutely did not want media attention. First, he was terribly traumatised and second, he didnt want to be a hero. I remember saying to him when he told me he had saved 47 people, You are a hero. It was the only time I ever saw a flash of anger. He replied: A hero would have saved them all.

While Kirby was initially worried about telling him about the book, she was surprised by the encouraging response.

I went to see him and I showed him the photographs of being awarded the prize and he said Good grief, they actually understood the importance of the story. I told him I wanted to write this book and I thought he would explode but he said: I love reading and I trust you to give the message. He was delighted when Waterstones made it their book of the month and it raised 56,000 for Oxfam. He said he had been searching for meaning for three years and the fact that it has raised all this money for a charity for migrants had given his story meaning.

Kirby doesnt name the optician in the book: I wanted him to remain an everyman figure, it could have been you or me. I knew I wasnt going to write a biography or reportage. There is something in the story that lends itself to literature, the adage of the old man and the sea; the metaphor of the optician who helps us see clearly.

She is still in regular contact with Menna and returned to Lampedusa last October to mark the third anniversary of the boat disaster.

Coffins of died migrants are lined up inside a hangar of Lampedusas airport, Italy.

I went back on that same boat with him and four of his friends and three of the migrants who had been rescued. The boat is still there and they scattered hibiscus flowers onto the water, where the 368 people met their deaths. I cant tell you how moving it was to be included.

The response to the crisis in the Mediterranean has been less than compassionate in many quarters. Kirby believes it is hard for people to empathise with such large-scale suffering, until, like the optician, they encounter it in a human context.

He said it wasnt until he felt the hand of the first man he pulled from the sea in his that he realised they were names not numbers, that was his phrase. I remember we went out to dinner to talk about it. He started to sweat, and he was shaking as he was re-enacting for me pulling all these people out. He said: It was like electricity going through me, knowing I was their chance for life; as I touched them I felt something like and he couldnt finish his sentence. He looked down and fiddled with his napkinand his wife said: he felt something like love.

Kirby says Menna, his wife and friends have come to look on the people they rescued as family.

He takes them out fishing and tries to teach them to love the sea again because they are so frightened of it.

One of the men they saved went to live in Sweden; when he had to say goodbye, he clung to the opticians wife like a baby, sobbing.

Kirby strikes me as a very strong person, to be able to bear witness to such horrific testimony and remain so calm and professional. But she argues she is no different to anyone else and is just doing her job.

Journalists are sent to witness on behalf of other people who cant be there. We have a duty to tell people what is happening and not shield people from horror. But I cried every single day writing this book. I was haunted by the opticians story, I still am.

Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved

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Emma Jane Kirby's story of an optician helped us all to see migrant crisis more clearly - Irish Examiner

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Europe migrant crisis: Italy threatens to close ports as ministers meet BBC News The interior ministers of Germany, France and Italy are due to meet for crisis talks in Paris amid a warning from Italy that the influx of migrants into the country is unsustainable. Italy has threatened to close its ports and impound rescue ships run ... Interior Ministers of France, Germany and Italy to Discuss Italian Migrant CrisisVoice of America Talks in Paris on Sunday on Italy's migrant crisisThe Local Italy France, Germany, Italy to meet over migrants crisisVanguard Pulse Nigeria -Washington Post -The Navhind Times all 48 news articles »

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Europe migrant crisis: Italy threatens to close ports as ministers meet - BBC News

The interior ministers of France, Germany and Italy will meet in Paris on Sunday to discuss a "coordinated approach" to help Italy deal with hordes of migrants arriving in its ports, a source said.

Italy on Wednesday threatened to suddenly stop vessels from other countries disembarking migrants at its ports after rescuing them in the Mediterranean.

French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, German counterpart Thomas de Maiziere and Italy's Marco Minniti will meet European Union Commissioner for Refugees Dimitris Avramopoulos in the French capital, the informed source said.

"The aim is to have a coordinated and concerted approach to the influx of migrants in the central Mediterranean," as well as "how best to help the Italians," the source close to the issue said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron both expressed their backing for Italy after meeting in Berlin.

"Germany will certainly help Italy face this problem," Merkel said.

Macron meanwhile cited the Italian premier as saying that more than 80 percent of the migrants were seeking a better life economically and were not fleeing war or persecution.

Nearly 77,000 migrants have landed in Italy since January, up 15 percent on the same period in 2016.

"We are confronted with growing numbers that over time could severely test our reception system," Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni had said.

Speaking in Ottawa, Italian President Sergio Mattarella warned that "if we continue with these kind of figures, the situation will become unmanageable, even for a large and open country like ours".

Mattarella called on the fellow EU nations to make a "concrete contribution" to help Rome deal with the problem.

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Talks in Paris on Sunday on Italy's migrant crisis - The Local France

After all, the EU did a deal with Turkey last year in which Turkey agreed to take back migrants who had made the short dash across the Aegean in return for European countries agreeing to take an equal number of Syrian refugees from camps in Turkey.

Yet as many British tourists who head to the Mediterranean over the next few weeks will discover, the Turkey deal has not ended the problem.

On other routes the migration continues apace. In just four days 9,000 migrants have arrived in Italy.

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Refugees and migrants wait to be rescued in the early hours of the morning off Lampedusa, Italy

Besides that, a new migration route has been established between Morocco and Spain, which over the past week has seen 1,000 arrivals.

We have to shut down the traffickers

Tragically, as in Greece, bodies are beginning to wash up on Spanish beaches.

Across the Mediterranean as a whole 2,000 are estimated to have drowned this year. We cannot go on tolerating this human tragedy.

As in Greece we must find a humane way of stopping people boarding boats in the first place. Italy yesterday made a start by threatening to close its ports to non-Italian-registered, migrant-carrying ships.

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Many of these vessels are operated by charities which, while well-meaning, are thoroughly misguided.

Italys move is certainly a beginning, although Europe needs a co-ordinated approach to go further still and shut down these migration routes.

It goes without saying that we can and must continue to do whatever we can to search for these boats and to rescue their human cargos.

But once migrants have been saved from the unseaworthy vessels they have boarded in North African countries they should in almost all cases be returned to the countries from whence they set sail.

What we must stop doing, on the other hand, is providing a ferry service across the Mediterranean.

What happens at the moment is that migrants saved from sinking boats a few miles off the North African coast are then being brought the rest of the way to Europe in safety.

By providing this service we are encouraging a criminal racket which has caused a huge number of deaths.

There are some in Britain who romanticise the great migration across the Mediterranean, who see the migrants as heroes who, if allowed to, will become enterprising and patriotic citizens of Europe.

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In some cases this is no doubt true but it shouldnt detract from the fact that the migration is run by criminal gangs who care not one jot for their victims.

We will tackle these traffickers only by closing down their business. Instead we are colluding with them. There is another common fallacy that all those who attempt to make it to Europe are refugees.

Some arriving from Syria or the lawless parts of chaotic, post-Gaddafi Libya certainly do deserve that description.

Others may have started their journeys as refugees in places such as Somalia. But many others are more accurately described as economic migrants.

Some of those arriving in Spain in recent months are reported to have come from Senegal, which is one of the most stable African countries.

Of course many Senegalese could improve their lives and their health by migrating to European countries which offer a far better standard of living.

But that is no basis for claiming asylum, which is supposed to be for people who are genuinely fleeing in fear of their lives.

If we did recognise the right of people to settle wherever they liked, and to enjoy the full rights of citizenship, including access to welfare and healthcare, Europe would very quickly be overwhelmed. And while economic migrants were allowed to pursue a better life, genuine refugees would be forgotten.

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Aid workers help migrants up the shore after making the crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos on November 16, 2015 in Sikaminias, Greece

Ferrying migrants across the Mediterranean might be helping some refugees lucky enough to survive journeys in traffickers boats but for too long Europe has been looking at the refugee problem from the wrong end of the telescope.

The debate has become fixated on people crossing the Mediterranean and indeed the English Channel when we should really be asking what more could we do to help refugees much closer to the source of the problem.

Throughout the Syrian crisis Britain has followed by far the most logical and humane approach of any European country.

We have contributed far more than any other to the running of refugee camps in countries bordering Syria, while at the same time erecting barriers to discourage migrant flows into Britain.

There is a lot more that Europe could be doing to help refugees. Disgracefully the UN Food Programme had to reduce its operations in Lebanon for want of donations from wealthy countries.

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We could certainly take more refugees from Syria but we should take them directly from camps in the Middle East.

That way we ensure we are really helping refugees, not economic migrants, and also discourage the people traffickers.

Last year in its deal with Turkey the EU finally caught up with the logic. It is high time it went further and closed down the lethal trade in migrants across the Mediterranean for good.

Originally posted here:
Europe's attempts to solve migrant crisis are failing, says ROSS CLARK - Express.co.uk