Flavio Briatore saves migrants at sea
Flavio Briatore via Facebook
One hundred people were crammed onto a sailboat in a rough sea.
He says he is “still in shock”. A few days ago, Italian businessman and Monaco resident Flavio Briatore witnessed a nightmarish situation to say the least: “We received a request from the port office in Crotone [an Italian town in the Calabria region]. They begged us, giving us the coordinates, to go and check a boat – which they thought was a yacht – that was asking for help and was seven or eight miles away. We changed course and found a small sailboat, about sixteen metres long, full of people, at least a hundred of them. Even animals in the 19th century were not treated like this! (…) People were shouting in despair, there were children, and we tried to calm them down by saying that help was on the way.”
Advertising
The boat contained migrants, who were frightened on board given the very rough sea. In an interview with the newspaper Verità & Affari, Flavio Briatore explained that the yacht had been abandoned in Italian waters by other boats: “They put the passengers in rubber dinghies, then put them on the boat. They activated and locked the autopilot, gave them a radio so they could call for help and abandoned them,” he said, adding that the captain of the boat had fled.
Flavio Briatore stayed with the boat until the harbour master’s office arrived. Shocked by this experience, he did not hesitate to express his anger: “We have to block these damned smugglers from the start, we must not let them go, otherwise it is a massacre. I don’t wish anyone to make such a journey. We must think about a real naval blockade, a blockade in the country of origin, before they arrive in Italian waters.”
According to the newspaper Il Sussidiario, the entrepreneur, who is very up in arms against Italian policy on the reception of migrants, suggests investing in Africa to create jobs there and not force people to leave their country of origin in the hope of surviving: “I have been in Africa for 30 years and I employ more than a thousand people. (…) The current Minister [of the Interior, Luciana Lamorgese] has never dealt with them [migrants], she should go on the boats to see what is happening, to see the situation and I am sure she would change her mind about the reception policy.”