Amnesty International Righ on Wednesday (22/4) urged European leaders in order to start a humanitarian effort to end the migrant boat sinking tragedy has risen dramatically in the Mediterranean Sea.
In a report released in Paris, Amnesty International calls maritime disaster was embarrassing for Europe. Amnesty urges EU heads of state will meet in Brussels on Thursday to immediately authorize humanitarian operations with more ships, aircraft and other resources to patrol the Mediterranean Sea and save migrants when their lives are threatened.
Amnesty International petition that appears while European authorities continue to investigate how migrant boat from Libya to the island of Lampedusa, southern Italy, capsized a few days ago, about 900 people drowned and only 28 rescued.
Italian prosecutors say that the Tunisian boat captain, who had been arrested, accidentally bumping Portuguese container ships that came to the rescue effort.
John Dalhuisen, Amnesty director for Europe and Central Asia, said, "negligence Europe to save thousands of migrants and refugees who experienced the dangers in the Mediterranean Sea is similar to the fire department refused to save people jumping from the flames."
Many EU countries still believe search and rescue operations alone will not solve the problem, and more must be done to fight traffickers, who have taken advantage of lawlessness in Libya to set up operations that spirited 170,000 migrants across the sea last year.
One proposal the leaders will discuss is a military and civilian mission to capture and destroy the traffickers' boats.
"We know where the boats are, where the smugglers gather together the people who are fleeing," Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti told Italy's SkyTG24 television.
EU officials have drawn comparisons with operations to crack down on Somali pirates.
"We are determined to destroy their business model," one senior EU official said, saying states would make "surgical", intelligence-based operations once legal issues, including a possible U.N. mandate, had been addressed.
"We are not talking about war," he stressed. "No one is talking about boots on the ground."
The leaders will also discuss a pilot project to resettle 5,000 to 10,000 refugees from Mediterranean countries to other EU states, the senior diplomat said. The United Nations estimates 36,000 have made the voyage so far this year.
On Wednesday, Italy's coast guard said it had rescued 220 migrants on Wednesday taken from two large rubber boats about 40 miles from the Libyan coast.
Another 545, most of them without even a pair of shoes, were taken to Salerno, just south of Naples. A further 446, mostly of Egyptian, Syrian, Sudanese, Somali and Eritrean origin, arrived in eastern Sicily after being rescued from a fishing boat.
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