Tragedy overshadowed the NGO Ship Aquarius as it entered the Maltese harbour of Valletta early this morning with its 141 passengers. After 5 days at sea, a change of heart by the Maltese government allowed the ship to disembark its Somali and Eritrean illegal cargo on its shores. Not even the fact that they had secured 5 nations to accept the “migrants,” however, changes the grim reality that after over 2 and ½ years and 200 migrant “rescues,” Gibraltar has revoked the Aquarius’ registration to fly under that British territory’s flag. This small administrative mishap has the potential to leave the ship and crew unable to complete their mission. What would the European naval Task forces, navies, coast guards and Libya’s new fleet of 12 ships do without this critical 77 meter floating humanitarian super-cruiser?
According to Sky News, a "notice of removal" was actually begun on Aug 6th, but not shared with media until just recently. The order came from the Gibraltar Maritime Administration because, although registered as a “survey vessel,” the crew of the Aquarius has instead been conducting primarily search and rescue missions.
The Aquarius has only 5 days left in which to find a solution, as the official date of the revoke order – August 20th – is fast approaching
There appears to be an ongoing dispute at to whether or not Gibraltar Maritime Authority registered the Aquarius as a search and rescue vessel with the with an international organization, but it does not appear that the SOS Mediterranee, a French-German charity which lease and operate the Aquarius with Medicines Sans Frontiers, were in any hurry to paint an accurate picture of the situation. These organizations also do not see much of a difference between the categories, anyway.
A well-known marine traffic monitoring website has all the details. Some are provided here, with the full link below.
From Marinetraffic.com:
• Name: AQUARIUS
• Vessel Type: RESEARCH/SURVEY VESSEL
• Gross Tonnage: 1812
• Build: 1977
• Flag: GIBRALTAR
There are those heartless, obviously-racist xenophobes who may not find the news surrounding the search and rescue – er – "research vessel" so troubling. Italy, for example, has kept its word. None of their ports were used by the NGO ship, nor did Italy take any of the "refugees."
From Twitter Aug 14 (translated through Yandex):
"In a day that was so sad, a positive news. The ship Ngos AQUARIUS will go to Malta and the immigrants on board will be distributed among Spain, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Germany. As promised, not in Italy, we have already done enough. From words to facts!"
---Matteo Salvini, Italy's Interior Minister
https://twitter.com/matteosalvinimi
Other Sources:
ibtimes.co.uk (main image)
https://translate.yandex.com
https://www.marinetraffic.com/
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