Migrants, fewer deaths with Salvini at the Viminale: the left-wing hoax denied

Among the accusations rained down on the government after the tragedy of the migrants in Cutro, there is also the one aimed against Matteo Salvini. According to the opposition, it was he, when he was Interior Minister in the first Conte government, who complicated the rescue activities by the Coast Guard and NGOs. A reconstruction that also emerged yesterday morning during the broadcast “l’Aria che tira” on La7, when the Security decrees adopted in 2018 and 2019 and strongly desired by the leader of the League at the time at the head of the Interior Ministry were brought into play. In connection there is the Northern League Roberto Castelli who simply denies this thesis dear to the left: “When Salvini arrives, the landings collapse and consequently even the deaths at sea reach the minimum”. The former Minister of Justice shows two graphs, one from the United Nations and the other from ISPI, the Institute for International Political Studies, which certify what was said just before. And he also recalls that “Salvini is the minister who has caused the fewest deaths at sea in the history of the Republic in the last 10 years”. “The data I have read to you are official,” he reiterates.

So let’s look at these data. The account is kept by the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. From 2014 to 2022, about 24,500 migrants lost their lives in the Mediterranean, of which about 19,000 only on the Central Mediterranean route, the one that starts from countries such as Libya and Tunisia and leads directly to Italy. In fact, the year in which the lowest number of victims was recorded, equal to 754, was 2019, when Salvini was at the Interior Ministry. Furthermore, it should be remembered that the first Security decree is from September 2018, the second from the following June.

The data from previous years are impressive, with peaks in 2014 (3,243 deaths at sea), 2015 (2,911), 2016 (4,234) and 2017 (2,874). All years that saw the center-left in government. Among the major massacres we should mention the one in 2013 half a mile from Lampedusa, with 358 dead and about twenty missing, and the one in 2015 in the Strait of Sicily, when a fishing boat with 850 people on board capsized, including about twenty children. The number of victims in the following years is also high, when the 5 Stars were at the helm of the country with the Democratic Party and then Draghi with the government of national unity: 1,545 dead in 2021 and 1,368 in 2022.