We're Not Boat Drivers

Vita.it – They worked for days and nights to build Santa's Grotto. One cut the wood, one painted the sleigh or the tree, one gathered the leaves for the details, one the moss and the stones to make the grotto itself. Between a visit to the lawyer and a phone call to their parents in Senegal or Ghana who, till a short while ago, when they were in prison, thought they were dead. Between one word of hope and another. And before signing at the police station, as they have to every afternoon before returning to prison.

“Italyisverygood!”

The days have been hot, and not only because the temperature has reached 40 degrees. The current systemic violence its showing its discriminatory and murderous character. Sending thousands of people back to Libya, blocking their arrival in Italy, through making deals with militia that collude with people traffickers, is nothing less than criminal. These are collective push backs, the kind which Italy has already undertaken in the past and for which it has been condemned in the European Court of Human Rights.

A photo taken during the eviction at Via Curtatone, Rome. Photo: La Repubblica

Messina: A Change Of Scene. From Today Migrant Landings To Be Moved To The Nuremberg Dock

Normanno.com – The news had already been circulating for some time, but accident on the Siremar vessel Sansovino, then docked in at the Nuremberg Dock, blocked the plan for a while. Until this afternoon, when the Prefecture of Messina communicated to the range of bodies involved in migrant landing that from today the reception procedures will be moved from the quay at the Marconi Dock to the Nuremberg dock, on the other side of the Via Don Blasco flyover.

Ph. Normanno.com

The Camp At Pian Del Lago, Caltanissetta: A Non-Place Of Desperation

Living conditions are increasingly worse for the migrants living at the informal camp at Pian del Lago. After the last police eviction (26 May 2017) they have been forced to set up their tents in the remaining spaces between the big holes in the earth left by the diggers from Caltambiente. The attempt is of course the continual reconstruction of the tent city, only in a still more difficult situation, one which was already tragic.

Welcome, Humanity!

“In a world full of doors, the only division that mattered now were between those who sought the right of passage and those who would deny them passage” (Mohsin Hamid, Exit West).

In only eight days, 1800 migrants arrived in Palermo. They went ashore from two different ships, the Vos Prudence (Medecins sans Frontieres) and the Diciotti, from the Italian Coastguard. Two different arrivals and two different stories... A different approach to the reality of immigration. 

New Rejections, Arrests and Hotspots: The Migrants Italy Does Not Want to Protect But Continues to Exploit

Around 250 people in just one landing: this is the number of migrants, almost all Moroccans, who were handed rejection notices immediately after arriving in Pozzallo over a week ago on board the Golfo Azzurro. Photocopied rejection notices which impose that you leave the Italian state within seven days, via Fiumicino airport in Rome. This absurd, illegal, unconstitutional procedure has been carried out yet again, leading to the collective rejections of which Italy was found guilty by the European Court of Human Rights.

The Aquarius in port at Catania

Trapani: Landings, Monitoring, Encounters

The air was tense in Trapani last week, due to the landings and the overall situation in the province. We were there to visit two reception centres in Marsala: Borgo della Pace and the former welfare home Giovanni XXIII.

The Vos Prudence in port at Trapani

Landing at Messina on March 22, and the Amal Reception Centre for Minors (formerly the Liberty)

On March 22nd we assisted with a landing at Messina which brought the number of people to have arrived in the city since January up to 1,269. The landing, carried out by the Spanish ship Canarias (EUNAVFOR-MED), involved 636 people, including some women and children. The pre-identification operations and consequent transferrals from the port to the former barracks at Bisconte were interrupted by the police at around 6pm, leaving at least 200 people on board, who were forced to sleep in the open air on deck, with only thermal blankets for cover.

The Canarias in port at Messina

The New Tent Structures At The Port of Palermo

Last Saturday, the Norwegian Frontex vessel Siem Pilot docked at Palermo, bringing with it a cargo of 1,000 migrants. We use this term because this is exactly how people are treated: like goods. Below we publish a letter sent to us by a volunteer who attended the port for the first time.

The Siem Pilot at the port of Palermo

You Also Put Rubbish In Black Bags

On Friday 16th December we were at the port of Palermo to welcome the 388 migrants who have beaten death and arrived on board the Spanish military vessel Navarra. Along with those rescued, there was also one body. Up until the moment of arrival at Palermo, the staff at the port ready to assist in the landing operation had still not been notified of the corpse. It is entirely likely that this person – brought to dry land in a black bag, and welcomed with the blessing of the ever-present Comboni Lay Mission – died after being rescued at sea, on their way to Palermo. The person suffered diabetes and, after the psycho-physical stress and inhumane conditions, did not manage to win out against the odds, death instead winning once again, with the assistance of European policies.

Hard to Accommodate: Lampedusa

There are 850 migrants stuck in the Hotspot of Contrada Imbriacola, inside a (partly uninhabitable) structure which could take around 250, at most 300 people. On Lampedusa, away from eyes and hearts, anything can happen, including locking up women and children with acute problems inside a Hotspot for months at a time, without any appropriate divisions by age and gender, in violation of every law on the protection of the vulnerable, illegal detention in an off-limits centre where civil society and NGOs are blocked from entering into contact with those inside.

Hard to Accommodate: Trapani

Three landings in one week are too many even for Trapani, where there is no prospective for anyone who arrives, only unsurpassable walls. More than a thousand people in three landings put the Hotspot's mechanisms to the test, a centre which usually works better than the others.

Migrants, little water and no breaks during the transfers. A policeman: “If there is any problem, we’ll take care of it”

From MeridioNews

“We can’t let anybody get off the bus, otherwise it will end up that everybody needs to go to the toilet”. This is the order of a police officer to the drivers of the 15 buses departing from the Port of Catania after one of the last landings in the Etnean Capital. “This is a recurrent practice” reports Giulia Capitani from Oxfam Italy.

Ph: MeridioNews

Fortunately 2015 ended

The numbers of 2015 are horrible, they recall homicides, daily deaths that did not seem to end, fostered by policies that have not been corrected even when confronted with racism and the deaths of children.

931 - 237 - 150 - 200 - 73 are only the numbers of the latest arrivals – of minors, of Moroccan citizens, of migrants withhold at the new hotspot of Trapani and of those who demonstrated for days in Agrigento. 

Numbers and facts which reveal that the year 2015 ended exactly as it started, in total confusion, with the indifference of institutions and through the intervention of volunteers and activists who allow this system to still remain into place instead of crumbling.

New landings at Augusta and Pozzallo

Migrants’ journey has not ended yet. Last week-end about 940 migrants were rescued offshore Sicily, in eight different operations. 258 of them arrived at Augusta’s port onboard of Belgian frigate Leopold Ist, in the morning of Friday, november 7, within EUNAVFORMED mission. Newspapers already write of the capture of 4 presumed smugglers, omitting the fate of all of the other new arrived, supposedly shunted in the surrounding centres. Another 713 more  migrants land from the Coast Guard’s ship “Diciotti” at the port of Pozzallo, in the same Friday afternoon.

Photo Lucia Borghi

Holocaust at Sea, Messina welcomes 683 refugees and 2 dead bodies. Many among them are minors

From tempostretto.it - The disembarcation from this morning is not like the previous ones; here the vessel Diciotti from the Coast Guard, arriving at around 8 o’ clock, has disembarked 683 women and men, rescued in the Channel of Sicily two days ago, in the days when two boats drowned, causing more than 100 casualties. During the operations, which the public is now watching through the lifeless eyes of the dead bodies of those stranded children, immortalised by the photos gaining coverage all over the world. The young people, who have been helped and assisted in the disembarkation this morning, are particularly tired and frightenened. They are alone. Among them some women, and as many as 100 children. And a very young child, essentially alone. It looks like that there are no family units involved.

Migrants died below the deck, those bodies we want to ignore

They left in the night between Friday and Saturday from the Libyan city of Zwara. There were 326 people from Syria, Sub Sahara, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Today, however, only 313 of them touched the ground at the port of Catania with their own feet. The remaining 49 breathed their last breath below the decks of the boat in which, in the paradoxical and absurd hierarchy of the poorest of the poor, they had been relegated to "the third class". They died from the inhalation of toxic gas, asphyxiation, suffocation and drowning. They died from desperation and from having too much hope.

New boat arrivals in Messina, Augusta and Pozzallo. Another 14 deaths and the hypocrisy of emergency continues

During the morning of the 29th July 453 migrants arrived in Messina along with the 14 bodies of those who did not survive the crossing. The first thing which those on the scene spoke of was the "the strong smell of death" . The fact that it could even be smelt from the sidelines offers an idea of just how dramatic the conditions aboard must have been throughout the journey.