Of Francesca Totolo
The Government has changed, as well as policies relating to migratory flow. The new ministers, supported by the broad consensus of citizens, they try to remedy the licentious agreements and against the interests of the Italians themselves of the Renzi-Gentiloni executives, which provided for the indiscriminate opening of ports to NGO ships and those of European missions. The result is clear to everyone: more than 600 thousand irregular immigrants arriving in Italy and the Mediterranean reduced to an open-air cemetery. Maybe one day someone will have to answer for these 14 thousand deaths (give UNHCR 2015-2018).
What few people know though secret agreements signed bilaterally by Prime Ministers Renzi and Gentiloni and by their counterparts from other countries, to make sure that all immigrants collected at sea were brought only and exclusively to Italy. It was last July when the undersigned e Luca Donadel we noticed a ship from Irish Navy which shuttled between the Libyan SAR zone and the Sicilian ports with a rather suspicious frequency. Dublin was not included in the European Frontex mission at the time, EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia, which included as a collateral activity the rescue of migrant boats in danger under the coordination of MRCC of Rome.
We thus discovered Operation Pontus, a bilateral pact drawn up in 2015 which involved Renzi's Italian government (then reconfirmed by Gentiloni) and the Irish one, independent of European devices. The agreement, kept silent to Italian citizens and without any mention on the Government's institutional websites, predicted that the immigrants transshipped onto Irish Navy ships in the Libyan SAR area were disembarked in Italian ports. No national press has ever documented the landings of the Irish ships even though they all occurred regularly in Catania, e, at the same time, no one ever mentioned Operation Pontus.
This did not happen in Ireland. Both government institutional sites and the national press have proudly documented the rescues of 18 thousand migrants brought to Italy by military ships LAND Samuel Beckett, LIt's Niamh, LIt's James Joyce, LIt's Roisin, LEithne e LIt's William Butler Yeats, who have taken turns for 3 years in the Mediterranean.
Following the publication of the investigation regarding Operation Pontus, the Gentiloni Government preferred not to respond to our objections. Not even former deputy minister Mario Giro, interviewed by us in December, he responded by arguing that he was not aware of the bilateral agreement. From Italy, only the Captain Antonello de Renzis Sonnino, head of media relations at EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia followed up on our questions, confirming that the Irish naval vessels were not operating in the context of the European mission.
Il Irish Department of Defence, unlike the silence of the Italian Government, he answered us immediately: “The dispatch of Irish Navy ships to undertake humanitarian search and rescue activities in the Mediterranean is implemented as part of a bilateral agreement with the Italian government. The bilateral agreement was first established in May 2015." and also confirming the renewals of 2016 and of 2017. Dublin also added that “The coordination of search and rescue operations and the subsequent provision of humanitarian assistance, takes place thanks to close collaboration with the competent Italian authorities" and therefore that the rescued migrants were all taken to Sicilian ports.
However, the Irish Department itself never responded strangely to the subsequent questions regarding the distribution of Operation Pontus expenses.
So, to date, we can easily assume that the very high costs (the Aquarius ship of SOS Mediterranee, which has a lower tonnage than Irish naval vessels and benefits from the help of volunteers on board, has a daily cost of 10 thousand euros) were paid by Italian taxpayers.
In other words, we can reasonably say that Renzi and Gentiloni founded their own "NGO" which he ferried 18 thousand migrants in Sicily at the expense of Italian citizens, deliberately kept in the dark about the bilateral pact.
Operation Pontus subsequently ended last August upon Ireland's entry into the European mission Operation Sophia. Il 7 July the ship LAND Samuel Beckett, operational in the European fleet, he landed in Messina 106 migrants. Again due to the agreements signed by Renzi and Gentiloni in Brussels, European missions in the Mediterranean are coordinated by MRCC in Rome in the case of SAR operations. After the closure of the ports to NGOs, Sunday Matteo Salvini and Danilo Toninelli they said they were determined to put an end to these distortions which have effectively penalized Italy, which has become the only disembarkation port of the Libyan route in Europe.
The Minister of the Interior declared: “After stopping the NGO ships, Thursday I will bring to the European table in Innsbruck the Italian request to block the arrival of international mission ships in Italian ports currently present in the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, the Italian governments of the last few 5 years they had signed agreements for all these ships to unload the immigrants in Italy, with our government the music has changed and will change“.
Irish naval vessels used it as a logistics port Malta, which is probably the scene of another secret bilateral agreement of the Renzi Government.
At the beginning of July a controversy broke out that is causing a lot of noise on the island: following the controversy over the responsibilities of rescues at sea, the leader of the opposition, Adrian Delia, spoke of the existence of a secret agreement of 2014 between the then Prime Minister Renzi and his counterpartJoseph Muscat.
Il contract initialed, according to Delia, would have predicted the sale regarding the Maltese oil exploitation rights in the stretch of sea south-east of Sicily, in exchange for non-involvement in Malta's SAR operations and therefore no disembarkation of migrants in the island's ports. Delia also stated naively: “Citizens have the right to know the details of this negotiation, and why it was not made public e renewed with the new Conte government”.
We will follow the developments of request for clarification from Adrian Delia to Premier Muscat and all the other silenced chords of the last ones 5 years that will come to light. Clearly Italian citizens would also need to have gods serious clarifications on these agreements voluntarily withheld by Renzi and Gentiloni. The games of the PD governments have cost us 5 billions a year for reception costs, not to mention the relative and difficult to estimate ones of the growing degradation of our cities.
