Migrant crisis in Med 'genocide' says Italy frontline mayor
Rome (AFP) - Failing to provide asylum seekers with safe passage to the EU while hundreds die at sea is tantamount to genocide, a mayor on the frontline of the crisis warned Thursday.
"We're living a genocide, and in a few years we Europeans risk being found responsible," Palermo's mayor Leoluca Orlando said in reference to the 1,800 or so people who have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean by boat this year.
Orlando said Europe should make it easier for asylum seekers to apply for refugee status outside the EU, after which they could enter the bloc legally rather than having to place their fate in the hands of people traffickers.
"If Syrians, coming from a country at war, have the immediate right to refugee status, why stop them taking a plane ticket from Istanbul to Paris, for example, and oblige them to go via Libya and the Mediterranean sea?" he asked. ...
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