ROME — Italy’s president warned Friday of a “worrisome” increase in intolerance toward immigrants in Italy, a day after the government turned back a boat carrying 200 migrants without screening them for asylum onshore.
ROME — Italy’s president warned Friday of a "worrisome" increase in intolerance toward immigrants in Italy, a day after the government turned back a boat carrying 200 migrants without screening them for asylum onshore. President Giorgio Napolitano said in a message marking the 157th anniversary of the Italian state police that international cooperation should be a priority in fighting illegal immigration. The president, whose role is largely symbolic, said increases in migrant smuggling "risked creating a diffuse perception of insecurity and worrisome instances of intolerance" among Italians. On Thursday, the government defied the U.N. refugee agency and returned more than 200 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean back to Libya, refusing to let them apply for asylum in Italy. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni called the operation a "turning point" in Italy’s crackdown on illegal immigration and said it should be a model for other European countries. The UNHCR, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the move, and said Italy had breached international law by refusing to allow the migrants to apply for asylum. Also expressing concern was the Vatican. The Holy See’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano described as "worrisome" the possibility that some of the migrants could have made requests for political asylum. Sending back the migrants to Libya "violated international rules on refugee rights," the Vatican’s top official for migrant issues, Monsignor Agostino Marchetto, was quoted as telling the Italian news agency ANSA. Maroni — who comes from Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League party — said Libya had adequate facilities for interviewing migrants to determine if they needed asylum and praised Libya for taking in the migrants as called for by a new Italy-Libyan border patrol agreement. Libya is a common point of departure for many smuggling operations bringing migrants to Italian shores. Human Rights Watch said Libya had a terrible record in dealing with migrants, who it said were sometimes subjected to indefinite detention "often in inhuman and degrading conditions." Libya has not signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and does not have a domestic asylum law, Human Rights Watch said. Under the refugee convention, to which Italy is a signatory, Rome cannot return a person to face persecution. Monsignor Marchetto also criticized proposed legislation Premier Berlusconi’s conservative government is pressing for in Parliament. If the plan becomes law, it would become a crime to be an illegal immigrant. He noted that Catholic groups have opposed plans by government allies to make it obligatory for hospital doctors and school principals to report illegal immigrants. ______ Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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