ROME: Italy’s anti-immigrant interior minister accused a German charity on Thursday of ignoring coast guard orders when its Dutch-flagged ship picked up 226 migrants off Libya’s coast and he said they should be taken to the Netherlands not Italy.
Earlier this month Matteo Salvini pledged to no longer let charity ships offload rescued migrants in Italy, leaving the Gibraltar-flagged Aquarius stranded at sea for several days with more than 600 migrants until Spain offered them safe haven.
On Thursday, Mission Lifeline, a charity based in Dresden, Germany, pulled migrants off two rubber boats in international waters even though it was told by Italy that Libya’s coast guard was coming to get them, a spokesman for the charity said. They would not have been safe if taken back to Libya, he said.
Salvini, also leader of the anti-immigrant League party, addressed the charity in a Facebook video: “You have intentionally not listened to Italian or Libyan authorities. Good. Then take this load of human beings to the Netherlands.”
International maritime guidelines say that people rescued at sea should be taken to the nearest “place of safety.”
The United Nations and other humanitarian agencies do not deem Libya “a place of safety” because they say migrants there are subject to indefinite detention, physical abuse, forced labor and extortion.
A Lifeline statement indicated its vessel was heading northwards with the 226 migrants and called on “the competent authorities to swiftly react according to their obligation to designate a place of safety.”
“They have a Dutch flag, but they are not registered in the Netherlands, and therefore are not under Dutch state flag responsibility,” Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Lennart Wegewijs said in response, without elaborating.
Italian Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said he had asked the coast guard to investigate state flag issue.
Lifeline spokesman Axel Steier said the migrants aboard its boat included 14 women and four small children. “We didn’t want to wait for the Libyan coast guard because people were in danger,” Steier told Reuters.
Waiting for the Libyans would have constituted allowing “an illegal pushback” of refugees to a country where they are not safe, he added.
With its hard line on rescue boats, Italy’s new populist government has thrust migration back onto the European Union agenda. Italy has seen more than 640,000 land on its shores since 2014 and is currently sheltering 170,000 asylum seekers.
Germany is also seeking to restrict asylum-seekers’ movement in the bloc. An emergency “mini-summit” has been called for Brussels on Sunday to discuss immigration ahead of a full, 28-state EU summit on June 28-29.
Toninelli, who oversees Italy’s ports and coast guard, had called last weekend on the Netherlands to recall Lifeline and another Dutch-flagged ship, Seefuchs. On Thursday, Toninelli said Lifeline was acting “outside of international law.”
“The transport minister is lying,” Steier shot back. “We always act in line with international law. Always.”
Salvini has denounced the charity ships as “deputy traffickers,” suggesting they profit from the rescues.
Earlier this week a tribunal in Palermo shelved an inquiry into whether German charity Sea Watch and Spain’s Proactiva Open Arms were in contact with smugglers, saying no evidence was found.
Italy tells rescue ship to take migrants to the Netherlands
Italy tells rescue ship to take migrants to the Netherlands
- Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini: “You have intentionally not listened to Italian or Libyan authorities. Good. Then take this load of human beings to the Netherlands.”
- Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Lennart Wegewijs: “They have a Dutch flag, but they are not registered in the Netherlands, and therefore are not under Dutch state flag responsibility.”
World copper rush promises new riches for Zambia
CAPE TOWN: Five years after becoming Africa’s first Covid-era debt defaulter, Zambia is seeing a dramatic turnaround in fortunes as major powers vie for access to its vast reserves of copper.
Surging demand from the artificial intelligence, green energy and defense sectors has exponentially boosted demand for the workhorse metal that underpins power grids, data centers and electric vehicles.
The scramble for copper exposes geopolitical rivalries as industrial heavyweights — including China, the United States, Canada, Europe, India and Gulf states — compete to secure supplies.
“We have the investors back,” President Hakainde Hichilema told delegates at the African Mining Indaba conference on Monday, saying that more than $12 billion had flowed into the sector since 2022.
The politically stable country is Africa’s second-largest copper producer, after the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo, and the world’s eighth, according to the US Geological Survey.
The metal, needed for solar panels and wind turbines, generates about 15 percent of Zambia’s GDP and more than 70 percent of export earnings.
Output rose eight percent last year to more than 890,000 metric tons and the government aims to triple production within a decade.
Mining is driving growth that is forecast by the International Monetary Fund to reach 5.2 percent in 2025 and 5.8 percent this year, which places Zambia among the continent’s faster-growing economies.
“The seeds are sprouting and the harvest is coming,” Hichilema said, touting a planned nationwide geological survey to map untapped deposits.
But the rapid expansion of the heavily polluting industry has also led to warnings about risks to local communities and concerns of “pit-to-port” extraction, in which raw copper is shipped directly abroad with little domestic refining.
’Dramatic new chapter’
“We need to be aware of the potential for history to repeat itself,” said Daniel Litvin, founder of the Resource Resolutions group that promotes sustainable development, referring to the colonial-era scramble for Africa’s resources.
There is a risk that elites will be enriched at the expense of the broader population, while “narratives of partnership” offered by major powers can mask underlying self-interest, he said.
Chinese firms have long dominated the sector in Zambia and control major stakes in key mines and smelters, cementing Beijing’s early-mover advantage.
Another major player is Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, Zambia’s largest corporate taxpayer.
Investors from India and the Gulf are expanding their footprint, and the United States is returning to the market after largely pulling out decades ago.
Washington, which has been stockpiling copper, this month launched a $12 billion “Project Vault” public-private initiative to secure critical minerals, part of an effort to reduce reliance on China.
In September, the US Trade and Development Agency announced a $1.4 million grant to a Metalex Commodities subsidiary, Metalex Africa, to expand operations in Zambia.
“We are at the beginning of what is going to unfold to be a dramatic new chapter in the way that the free world sources and trades in critical minerals,” US energy secretary adviser Mike Kopp said at Mining Indaba.
Sweeping US tariffs introduced last year helped send copper prices soaring to record highs, as companies rushed to buy both semi-finished and refined stocks.
Cost of rush
“The risk is that this great power competition becomes a race to secure supply on terms that serve markets and not the people in producer countries,” said Deprose Muchena, a program director at the Open Society Foundation.
Despite its mineral wealth, more than 70 percent of Zambia’s 21 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank.
“The world is waking up to Zambia’s copper. But Zambia has been living with copper and its consequences for a century,” Muchena told AFP.
Environmental damage caused by mining has long plagued Zambia’s copper belt.
In February 2025, a burst tailings dam at a Chinese-owned mine near Kitwe, about 285 kilometers (180 miles) north of Lusaka, spilled millions of liters of acidic waste.
Toxins entered a tributary feeding the Kafue, Zambia’s longest river and a major source of drinking water. Zambian farmers have filed an $80 billion lawsuit.
“Whether this boom is different depends on whether governance, rights, and community agency are at the center, not just supply chain security,” Muchena said.
