ROME – The Italian Coastguard stepped in to aid the motor patrol boat bought and funded by mysterious British artist Banksy in dealing with an emergency migrant situation on Sunday night. 

 The ship, named Louise Michel after a French anarchist and feminist, sent out distress signals on Sunday after having rescued 130 people from a drifting migrant ship and housing the one deceased on that boat. The rescue boat had 219 migrants and ten crew aboard who used Twitter to try and raise awareness of the dire situation of the migrants, sending an appeal to the Italian Coastguard and the Maltese Armed Forces for immediate intervention.

 The boat was overcrowded and posted on their Twitter account, “The crew has managed to keep the Louise Michel stable for almost 12 hours. Our new friends have told us that they have already lost 3 of them on their journey. With the body in our only life raft, there are four lives lost because of Fortress Europe…and we are still waiting.”

 The Italian Coastguard eventually responded to the request and sent out a 300 class patrol boat from Lampedusa which rescued the 49 most vulnerable people on board the Louise Michel. Of these 49, there were 32 women, 13 children and four men and they were saved according to nuclear family ties as well. The body of the dead migrant was also taken to shore.

According to the Guardian, Banksy’s boat left the Spanish port of Burriana on Aug. 18 to begin rescue operations in the area of migrant sea crossings.

 The MV Louise Michel is painted pink and has a Banksy depiction of a young girl holding a life jacket on its side. At 31 metres in length, it is smaller than many other search and rescue ships but much faster than those of other NGO vessels, reports il Fatto quotidiano.

 Banksy had financed the acquisition of the boat in 2019, offering the sufficient money to Pia Klemp, the former captain of many ONG ships that had worked to rescue migrants. Banksy wrote to Klemp “I read your story in the newspapers. I’ve made some work about the migrant crisis and I can’t keep this money. Maybe you could use it to buy a boat or something. Well done. Banksy.” Klemp herself, initially believed the message to be a joke, but soon she had purchased the Louise Michel from un-used old French Coastguard vessels."

There has been much criticism from the right-wing in Italian politics towards the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean sea, particularly during the Coronavirus pandemic, where they have taken the opportunity to use fears over the sanitary safety of migrants as an attack on the government's approach to offering aid in the increasingly periculous area. On Sunday night 370 migrants landed in Lampedusa, Sicily, prompting outrage from political members of the right wing and genuine concerns of the overcrowding in the facilities at the port for housing migrants. The building for migrants is nearly 10 times over capacity with around 1,500 currently housed there, reports Corriere della Sera. Matteo Salvini, outspoken ex-leader of right-wing party the League, called the situation “an immigration that is at this point an invasion and in which the Conte government is complicit.” In response to the outcry in Sicily, the Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese, announced the departure of three “quarantine ships” which will help manage the situation.

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