France: completed the disembarkation of migrants, the Ocean Viking has left Toulon

The humanitarian ship Ocean Viking, chartered by the NGO SOS Méditerranée, left the military port of Toulon (south of France), the disembarkation of the 230 migrants on board having ended on Friday evening, the prefecture told AFP in the Var on Saturday.

Before leaving the coast of Libya, the ship will stop for a few weeks in another French port, for a technical call.

After 20 days at sea in search of a safe port, the 234 migrants rescued between the Libyan and Italian coasts by SOS Méditerranée were all able to be disembarked, 230 at the military port of Toulon on Friday and four on the French island of Corsica earlier. before being transferred to the mainland.

Among them, 189 people, including 23 women and 13 minors, are now in a holiday village on the peninsula of Giens, about twenty kilometers from Toulon, which has been transformed into a closed “international waiting area” created specifically to prevent assume they are in France. They are prohibited from leaving before an initial assessment of their asylum application.

For the moment, everyone has expressed a willingness to make this request, according to the prefecture. Before that, they will have to undergo security checks, particularly those of French internal intelligence, before talks with the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) whose agents are expected on Saturday to check the compatibility of the their profiles.

The first to be evacuated from the military port of Toulon due to ill health on Friday morning, a 190th survivor was admitted to hospital.

The 44 unaccompanied minors on board the Ocean Viking, most of them “young teenagers”, indicated the prefect Evence Richard, were taken into care by the French social services and relocated outside the Giens camp.

Two thirds of the people, or 175, will leave France to be relocated to eleven countries, including Germany, which will welcome around 80, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Ireland, Finland and Norway.

It is the first time that an ambulance boat operating off the coast of Libya has disembarked survivors in France, in the context of a diplomatic crisis with Italy, which has refused to welcome them. SOS Méditerranée will return to the sea “because there have been more than 20,000 deaths since 2014 in the Mediterranean Sea and we do not accept that this sea becomes a cemetery”. Médecins Sans Frontières has also indicated that its rescue vessel, the Geo Barents, will resume rescue efforts.

Since the beginning of the year, 1,891 migrants have disappeared in the Mediterranean, trying to reach Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).