According to France 24 website, 30 thousand protesters marched in 100 cities in support of the Sea-Watch’s captain, Carola Rackete and sea rescuers.
More than 8000 protesters gathered in Berlin and 4000 in Hamburg, while many other rallies and marches took place in a hundred cities in Germany. Demonstrators held up life jackets while taking part in a protest against the criminalization of migrant and refugee rescue operations run by NGOs, criticizing Matteo Salvini, the far-right Italian Minister of interior.
Carola Rackete addressed a message to the protesters in Berlin saying: “sea-rescuing operations don’t have any limits, neither does our support”, adding “the lack of responsibility among European countries made me act the way I did.”
Rackete was arrested after docking forcibly in Lampedusa island in Italy, letting 40 rescued migrants disembark.
Meanwhile, the ALEX ship from the Italian NGO Mediterranea is defying Matteo Salvini, by docking in Lampedusa too, carrying 41 rescued migrants. Both the ship’s crew and the migrants haven’t been allowed yet to disembark. The NGO Tweeted asking to disembark the migrants, saying “ Lampeduza is the only possible place for safety”, “the crew and the migrants are exhausted; people we rescued need to be taken care of, making them wait longer is an unnecessary cruelty”.
Matteo Salvini signed a ministerial decree last month to sanction any captain or ship entering the Italian waters by fines up to 50 thousand Euros”
#protests #support #migrants #sea-rescuing #Germany
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