10 May 2009

Rome - Libya for the first time on Thursday agreed to take back boat people picked up off its shores by Italian vessels, prompting deep concern among human rights and humanitarian groups.

In what Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni hailed as a "historic day" in the fight against illegal immigration, three Italian navy launches ferried 227 boat people into the port of Tripoli.

Since they were picked up in waters patrolled by the island state of Malta on Wednesday, Maroni said Libya's move could help resolve a long-running conflict between Italy and Malta over responsibility for boat people.

But the United Nations refugee agency said it was very concerned over the development.

"The migrants were unable to make demands for asylum because they weren't even received," Laura Boldrini, spokesperson of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said.

Last year, 75 percent of those who arrived in Italy, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa, sought political or humanitarian asylum.

Half of those received it, according to UNHCR figures.

The other two-thirds of thousands who flock to Italy and Malta each year are economic migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

Libya has not signed the 1951 Geneva Convention on refugees and has no reception centres for political refugees, Boldrini said.

The humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) slammed what it called a "terrible event".

"Far from being a historic event as the Italian government suggests, this forcible and cynical return is contrary to international laws," the head of MSF-Italy, Loris de Filippi, said.

"You can't send people back to a country like Libya that hasn't ratified international humanitarian conventions like the Geneva Convention on human rights," he said.

Speaking on Italian television, Maroni, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party, said the speedy return of the boat people to their starting point "may be a turning point in the struggle".

He said yesterday that, if Tripoli continued to take back boat people, "the dispute between Italy and Malta on the intake of illegal immigrants will be resolved because, regardless of the waters where the boats are found, they will be sent back to Libya from where they left".

Some 36 900 boat people arrived on Italian shores last year, a 75 percent increase over 2007, according to interior ministry figures.

Arrivals have fallen this year, with some 3 600 arriving between January and mid-April, but the pace is expected to quicken in the warm summer months, the ministry said.

Tripoli agreed to step up the fight against illegal immigration under a friendship accord between Italy and Libya signed in August 2008.

It said it would take part in joint patrols with Italy.

Maroni said the patrols were to begin on May 15 after a brief period of training for Libyan crews aboard Italian launches.

"On May 15, when the accord will take effect … the problem (of illegal immigration from Libya) will be resolved," Maroni said in late March after more than 600 boat people landed in Lampedusa.