Migrants, Renzi: Meloni accused me of manslaughter, apologize today. Let’s stop the traffickers, not the NGOs

Matteo Renzi attacks Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on social media. Theme: migrants, after yet another massacre at sea. «In 2015, after a shipwreck, Giorgia Meloni asked that I be investigated for Massacre Colposa. It was an act of pure looting. Today I’m not asking for Meloni to be investigated: it’s enough for me to apologize and for the policy of rescues at sea to become human again. Let’s stop the traffickers, not the NGOs” the leader of Italia Viva wrote on Twitter this morning, posting the screenshot of Meloni’s post from eight years ago in which she wrote: “Shipwreck in the Sicilian Channel, the Renzi government should be investigated for manslaughter crime”.

The shipwreck in the Crotone area, the latest massacre of migrants in Italian waters, rekindles the controversy between the minority and the majority on the question of landings that has persisted for years. The balance of the tragedy that took place on the beach of Steccato di Cutro (Crotone) is dramatic: at the moment 66 bodies have been found lifeless.

Meanwhile, the controversy over the statements of Minister Piantedosi continues, whose words on migrants “are incredibly cynicistic”, accuses Riccardo Noury, spokesman for Amnesty International Italy. “If there hadn’t been more governments that have pointed out the NGOs as the taxi drivers of the sea in cahoots with criminals, perhaps there would have been some NGO ships in the Ionian Sea and these people would have been saved”.

On the rescue front, “no one has ever declared a Sar event for this boat and therefore a search and rescue operation has never started,” says the prosecutor of Crotone, Giuseppe Capoccia. “I don’t see a hypothesis of a crime of this kind emerging, but I feel like saying that the role of Frontex should really be rethought”.