Actor Richard Gere Distributes Food among Migrants on a Ship Stranded in the Mediterranean
Though Gere has boarded the Open Arms ship, which had more than 100 migrants stuck on board as they wait for the European nations to agree to take them in.
The Ocean Viking charity ship rescued 85 African migrants from the sea of Libya, recently. But the latest rescue in the Mediterranean Sea is becoming viral as Hollywood star Richard Gere boarded a second vessel to highlight the plight of the migrants who are stranded and is helping them with food.
Though Gere has boarded the Open Arms ship, which had more than 100 migrants stuck on board as they wait for the European nations to agree to take them in. Migration is emerging as a big problem across the world, with different problems.
Two French NGOs ‘SOS Mediterranean’ and ‘Doctors without Borders’ operate the Ocean Viking charity ship. Actor Richard Gere set off from Libya along with the workers of the NGOs, they spotted the migrant ship while flying with the European Union’s migrant monitoring operation Sophia.
Most of the migrants on the ship had come from Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast and Sudan. Among them are 5 women and 15 children, the youngest one is just aged one. Rescue team continued to scan through the waves for a second vessel that set sail at the same time.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has warned Oslo, where the rescue ship is registered. Matteo said, “Italy is not legally bound, nor disposed to taken in clandestine, unidentified migrants from on board the Ocean Viking”.
He also has said the same earlier this week about the migrants on Open Arms, the ship operated by Spanish charity Proactiva.
Richard Gere, who boarded the Open Arms on Friday, said that he had boarded the ship from the nearby Italian island of Lampedusa, adding, “We brought as much water and food as we possibly can, for everybody on board the ship. Everyone is doing OK now but were on two boats on the ocean. The Libyan navy turned one of the boats back. We don’t know what happened to them”.
He also added, “now the most important thing for these people here is to be able to get to a free port, to be able to get off the boat, to start a new life for themselves”.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini also criticized the involvement of American star Richard Gere saying he hopes Gere “gets a bit of a suntan and he should take the migrants to Ibiza” Ibiza is a Spanish resort island.
Meanwhile, Norway’s minister of justice and immigration, Joran Kallmyr, said that the migrants should be “transported back to Africa, either to Tunisia or Libya. They should not be sent to Europe because this action will then be an extension of the refugee route instead of a rescue operation”.
On July 22, France has announced that 14 European Union member states had agreed on a solidarity mechanism to share the migrants, who are being saved from the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, Proactive Open Arms had loaded various needed supplies onto its yacht Astral, which also set on sail from Barcelona recently to reach the charity’s ship off Italy, some three days later.