Italy-Sea Watch standoff continues as local hoteliers offer jobs to rescued migrants

Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-30 04:13:11|Editor: yan
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ROME, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The standoff between Italy and a German NGO vessel with 47 rescued migrants on board continued Tuesday as a local hotel owners association offered jobs to the rescued.

And the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has stopped short of ordering the shipwreck survivors to be allowed to disembark.

The Sea Watch vessel is now in its 11th day at sea and its fifth anchor within sight of the Sicilian city of Siracusa with the 47 rescuees, among whom 15 are minors.

The Sea Watch captain and the migrants have lodged requests with the ECHR to be allowed to go ashore after Italy's hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini refused them authorization to disembark.

In a statement Tuesday, the ECHR said "the applicants complain that they are detained on board without legal basis, suffering inhuman and degrading treatment, with the risk of being returned to Libya without evaluation of their individual situation."

In its decision, the Court "did not grant the applicants' requests to be disembarked (but) requested the Italian Government...provide all the applicants with adequate medical care, food, water and basic supplies" as well as "adequate legal assistance" to the minors on board.

In a letter to the government and to city officials late on Tuesday, Noi Albergatori Siracusa local hotel owners' association requested permission to "bring the 47 human beings ashore with our own means of transportation and to offer them adequate lodging, food and clothes".

The hoteliers also offered to teach the migrants Italian, to find proper placement for the minors, and to give the adults job training and seasonal work contracts in their own hotels.

The hoteliers specified they would do this by their own money, with no burden to Italian taxpayers.

Speaking at the fifth MED-7 summit in Nicosia, Cyprus, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in televised comments that migration "is a crucial challenge for Europe, which risks imploding because it has been dragging on too long without finding a shared solution".

Salvini reiterated earlier on Tuesday that he would only allow the Sea Watch migrants ashore if they were immediately transferred to Germany or the Netherlands, given that the NGO is German and their vessel flies a Dutch flag.

A German interior ministry spokesman told Italian news agency ANSA that Germany is willing to take in some of the migrants.

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