ABOARD THE OPEN ARMS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA — The full moon was the only light as a terrified 9-year-old boy from Central African Republic climbed into a rubber dinghy held together with duct tape, risking death in the dark waters off Libya along with his parents and 57 other trafficked migrants.
After a long night on the Mediterranean Sea, a Spanish rescue boat spotted them on the horizon after dawn.
“People were screaming, I was afraid,” said the boy, Krisley Dokouada. “But after seeing the rescue boat, I knew there was no more danger.”
Their savior Saturday was the Open Arms, which became the third rescue ship run by humanitarian aid groups to draw the ire of Italy’s anti-migrant interior minister, Matteo Salvini. He has vowed that Italy’s new populist government will no longer allow such rescue boats to dock in Italy, which has taken in hundreds of thousands of migrants rescued at sea in the last few years.
Malta then angrily rebuffed Salvini’s claim that the tiny Mediterranean nation was closest to the rescue ship and should give it safe harbor.
By nightfall Saturday, Spain agreed to let the Open Arms dock in Barcelona, where the humanitarian aid group which operates the vessel, Proactiva Open Arms, is based, the Spanish government said.
The Open Arms and its companion ship, the Astral, will likely need four days to reach Barcelona, said the Astral’s captain, Riccardo Gatti.
Also on Saturday, in an unrelated rescue much farther west of the central Mediterranean where the Open Arms rescue took place, Spanish authorities reported saving 63 migrants trying to reach the country’s southern coast from North Africa.
While European politicians bickered about where the migrants should go, those rescued by the Open Arms were jubilant — jumping, chanting and hugging their rescuers.
Krisley’s tensions melted when he was allowed to sit for a few minutes in the captain’s seat. With sparkling eyes, the only child among the migrants smiled shyly after the rescue crew called him “captain.”
For months, his family had lived in Libya, while they awaited their chance to make the Mediterranean crossing. His mother, Judith Dokouada, said she never left the shelter for fear of being kidnapped or sold as a slave, a fate many African migrants have spoken of to human rights advocates.