Gabon rejects migrant boat
2009-10-26 14:45
Libreville - A boat intercepted last week with nearly 300 would-be migrants on board has been escorted out of Gabon's territorial waters and sent back to Benin, a defence ministry spokesperson said on Monday.
The Ghanaian-registered ship was boarded on October 18 off Cape Esterias, near Libreville, and is due to return to its home port of Porto-Novo in Benin.
"The identification of the 288 passengers has been completed," the defence ministry spokesperson said.
According to the national daily L'Union, only 24 passengers had papers in order. The others - who included 135 Beninese, 21 Burkinabes, 22 Malians and 78 Togolese - either had no papers or their papers were invalid.
The passengers included 34 minors who were turned over to the Red Cross and to the UN Children's Fund, while two pregnant women were allowed to join their husbands already in Libreville.
Clandestine network
The other passengers were sent back to Benin.
When the vessel was seized, the defence ministry spokesperson said "it is a clandestine network that we need to dismantle. The person who charters the boat doesn't travel aboard it."
"The ship's owner took 400 000 CFA francs $917 off each of us and 300 000 CFA francs for the children, with the promise of getting us visas according to the regulations," one of the migrants told L'Union. "But to our surprise, we realise that the wool was pulled over our eyes."
An oil-producing country which is potentially rich in spite of the economic crisis, Gabon attracts a large number of illegal labourers, though there are no official statistics on the subject.
- SAPA