Migration Policy and Inhumanity

"The suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an offence to the conscience of humanity”. These are not the words of an activist, but of a representatibe to the UN High Commission for Human Rights.

The Migrant Business: More Than €143,000 Per Day, Managed By An Archipelago Of Cooperatives

Palermo.repubblica.it – The former Regional Aide for Families, managed of the Ippocrate in Enna: “We're only left with €3 per resident.”

In front of the gates to the former hotel 'Canguro', the locals of Castell'Umberto point their fingers above all at them: the cooperatives. “They make money and we take the migrants” is the phrase passing through the crowd.

Migrants hosted at the hotel 'Sinatra' (Lapresse)

The Eviction of the Former Post Office in Catania

On Tuesday 28 February, at 6am, the local police of Catania evicted the former post office building in Viale Africa. Despite having been completely abandoned for years, it has been used for a long time as an improvised refuge for various homeless persons, especially migrants and asylum seekers. The result of the police operation has been the charging of 18 people for violation of Article 633 of the Penal Code, punishing the invasion of a building or land for the ends of occupying it.

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.

Market Commodities: Surviving in a System of Rejection

'A's story can be found repeated in many other places in Sicily, a story which includes not only minors but also women and men who have been here for many months and “rejection” from the very centres that were meant to welcome them. In the last few weeks more than 1,000 migrants arrived at the port of Catania, 850 on Sunday alone, on board the Bourbon Argos, and 288 a few days later, along with 20 bodies.

#Overthefortress: A Two-Month Journey from Sicily to Rome Within and Beyond the Central Mediterranean Route

From Meltingpot.org

Forty stops, 3,400km, one camper: join the journey and support the crowdfunder.

The #overthefortress camper departing at the Port of Igoumenitsa will land in Southern Italy for a project of investigation and independent communication side by side with migrants and groups in the area, to examine common sites and dominant narratives, and to provide space to a politics of welcoming, solidarity and civil engagement.

Will There Ever Be A Dignified Welcoming For Migrants at the Port of Augusta?

By the Catania Antiracist Network

Dozens of migrants, the majority of them unaccompanied minors, crowded for weeks into tent structures in a closed-off, militarised port, in undignified sanitary conditions, left without any prospect of being housed properly, and without even the most elementary legal safeguarding of their human rights.

More Vulnerable People, Less Protection. Prolonged Detention in Pozzallo and Augusta.

Fifteen migrants dead at sea, including women and children.

The notices of death in the Mediterranean are ever more frequent and standardised, and the images of rescue missions and the disembarking leave only a minimal functional space to call into question European responsibility and to commend Italian work. Faces and bodies quickly disappear, usually destined either for a far-off burial away from the view of friends, or to eek out an exhausting survival in a country which is shown to be ever less democratic and welcoming.

A War on Migrants: The Palermo Landing

On August 31st, 1169 people were landed at the the port of Palermo.

Those rescued by the Garibaldi, a ship which is usually tasked with the mission of defending our coastlines, our country, our security, were dealt with in a “military” manner, inasmuch – in referring to the presence of migrants on board – one of the crew expressed his feelings by speaking of the “invasion on their ship”. This says a lot about the atmosphere which one could breathe aboard the Garibaldi, and the view that some hold for those who had been saved.

That Old Hotel at Geraci Siculo

Geraci, famous for the clean waters which flow from the nearby springs, has been host to an Emergency Reception Centre (CAS*) since 2011. During the North African emergency, the owners of the old Ventimiglia hotel decided to change profession and the hoteliers/restaurant owners became instead a coop which – first under state protection, and then with the Prefecture – manages an Emergency Reception Centre. And despite the fact that since 2011 the situation has remained unchanged both in terms of numbers and dynamics, in Geraci Siculo there is still an overwhelming climate of 'emergency', thanks to a state which looks the other way and abandons those have decided to live within the reception system.

Everyone Sit Down Please

It's not just a line for children, but also the position lived out by migrants while on board the rescue ships, while waiting their identification at the port, while in the police station for their finger prints to be taken. Sat on the ground so that we can watch over them from above. We who decide their fate.

The Reception System for Minors is Called HELL

In Sicily we have a constant feeling of total despair in relation to the practices of institutional actors, those who are meant to protect people, particularly minors, in line with national and international regulations.

Agrigento, Trapani and Palermo: Arrivals and Rejections

The results of the landings in the port of Palermo, Trapani and Porto Empedocle on July 7^th:

1,038 Palermo

658 Trapani

246 Porto Empedocle

For the Italian state, these are only numbers and frequently it is only as numbers that the people themselves are treated.

So Many Arrivals, So Little Protection. Migrants In Ever Worse Conditions And Abandoned To Themselves.

In only a few days 4,500 people have been rescued and brought to the main Sicilian ports: Pozzallo, Augusta, Catania, Messina, Porto Empedocle and Palermo. The arrival of such a high number of migrants paradoxically corresponds to refugees' extraordinary invisibility and the lack of protection for them. As always happens when there are various landings on the same day, NGO workers are forced to divide themselves among the different ports, leaving somewhere uncovered.

Foto Lucia Borghi

Landings at Agrigento and Palermo: “Where is my husband? Please help me!”

Last Saturday (June 25^th), the Coast Guard ship “Diciotti” disembarked 886 people at Palermo, including around 150 women, many of them very young, and 96 minors. These Nigerians, Ivorians, Guineans and Senegalese set foot in the Sicilian capital only for a few hours. Around 13 Eritreans were present, including 3 young women who were taken for adults, despite the specific information provided by workers from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The "Diciotti" - Ph. Alberto Biondo

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

The Parliamentary Commission Fails The Pozzallo Hotspot: New Minors Accepted Yesterday

On June 23^rd the parliamentary commission for the inquest into migrants visited the Hotspot of Pozzallo, in order to investigate the reception centre given over to official identification. The inspection revealed a critical and concerning situation within the centre: structural inadequacies, problems with the water supply, violations and privacy and prolonged detention of unaccompanied minors. Major “attention” is given over only to the identification procedures, perfectly in line with the logic of the Hotspot approach.

From Pozzallo to Mineo via Ventimiglia. Migrants detained, deported and isolated.

The images which arrived from Ventimiglia and Genoa this week are images of a police state: beatings, evictions, raids, deportation flights and forced identifications imposed on around a hundred migrants, including pregnant women, children and vulnerable persons. Identifications, barracks detentions and deportation orders have also been distributed to a large number of activists and citizens deemed “guilty” of having given assistance, legal information and solidarity to the refugees camped along the beach at Ventimiglia. At the French border another dark chapter in Italian history is being written, precisely because, whether we want it to or not, the violation of rights, the repression and implementation of political liberticide affects all of us.

Egyptian and Lybian migrants arrive in Portopalo

lanota7.it - It was a coastguard patrol boat which went to the rescue of a fishing boat carrying immigrants from Lybia and Egypt. They had been spotted by a ferry in the Sicily Channel, 20 miles off the Sicilian coast. The military helped board all 68 of them (15 of whom were minors) and they were then taken on to Portopalo di Capo Passero. Patrol boats equipped with anti- immigration devices were used in the rescue operation. All of the migrants are men aged between 15 and 25, of Egyptian or Lybian nationality.

35 migrants arrive by boat in Sicily

SYRACUSE. The men from the Port Authorities stopped 8 illegal immigrants immediately. They declared that there were 106 migrants aboard in total, including 50 women. The search for the other migrants is underway. This morning a boat of migrants arrived in Sicily.