Peoples' Court To Be Held in Palermo. The Accusation: Crimes Against Migrants By the Italian Government and the EU

Press release - We understand that the Minister of the Interior, Marco Minniti, has been invited to a celebration in Palermo organised by the newspaper La Repubblica, in order to discuss migration and reception. This all while a vast number of men, women and children are tortured and left to die in Libyan prisons, left to down in the Mediterranean or finally reach Italian shores but without life in their bodies.

Reception system, the new CAS* scattered between hills and mountains of the province. “Migrants increasingly lonely and isolated: this way they can be blackmailed”

MeridioNews.it - After the public call by the prefecture for the entrustment of foreign citizens asking for international protection, centres have opened far away from the cities. “They answer to the logic of hiding people”, Alberto Biondo, representative of Borderline Sicily, denounces: “It is an immigration factory which creates invisible people”.

Photo: Cooperative "Lavoro e non solo"

Ever More Isolated and Alone

Castellana, Collesano, Geraci, Isnello, Palazzo Adriano, Ciminna, San Cipirrello, Villafrati, Marineo and Godrano: these are just some of the provincial wards where there are now Extraordinary Reception Centres, or CAS*, in the province of Palermo. There are centres dispersed among the hills of the Madonie mountain range, centres which follow on from a logic of hiding people away. Old and new cooperatives have opened their doors amid forests and agro-tourism hostels, far from inhabited centres.

Tunisian migrants forced to sleep on the ground at the Agrigento train station

Confusion Reigns Supreme While Migrants Die

The war on migrants is claiming ever more victims. There is no pause: the victims are increasingly younger, victims of policies arising from Europe’s choice to be ever more closed in on itself. A Europe with a constant syndrome of believing itself to be under siege, rending people’s lives a living hell, as is the case for the 606 people who arrived last Friday in Palermo on border the SOS Mediterranee, a landing baptised by all of the newspapers as the “ship of children.”

The SOS Mediterranee at the Port of Palermo

No One Is Meant To Know

At the recent Paris talks, representatives from France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the EU confirmed their shared political line of cooperating with dictatorial states, of being the de facto ATM for blood thirsty regimes whose task is, and will increasingly be, to block people departing for Europe at all costs. It is important that nothing of what’s going on in Africa leaks into Europe, into public opinion. Minniti and the Italian government have already done the dirty work for this, gorging out indiscreet eyes by excluding the NGO ships from the Mediterranean, the unique and troublesome witnesses.

Rejected Tunisians at the Palermo train station

“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

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)

Porta Felice: Exception Or The Rule?

For those working in the Italian migrant sector, “MSNA” is a well-known acronym. The following reflection ought be similarly well-known: “This is a complex phenomenon and to understand it, define it and in the end manage it better, it would be slowly move forward by starting from the objective data.” Even if it is not possible to proceed in this way here in any exhaustive way, we will nonetheless try to read and interpet the single case in question from within the general context.

Palermo – one of the rooms in Porta Felice, the community for minors on Via Marinuzzi

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. 

I'm Starting To Be Scared For My Children

The Minniti-Orlando decree, now law, came into force in a deeply concerning way the past few days, with raids across Italy, rejection notices from the police stations and deportations from the Hotspots. The style is fascist, even if the law was signed off by two politicians who, in theory, ought to be fighting fascism. This government's actions are nourishing a daily xenophobia and violence against migrants which increases by the day, just as the glaring security measures close in while the government gives the nod.

Lampedusa: 40 Nigerians made to alight on a Meridiane plane to be deported

Freedom for Gabriele Del Grande: Initiatives in Sicily

After days of waiting in vain for a quick solution to the events which have seen our friend Gabriele Del Grande detained for 10 days in a detention centre in Turkey, deprived of all his rights, Borderline Sicilia (non-profit) is supporting the mobilisation launched by Gabriele and his family. There will be a demonstration in front of the prefecture in Catania on April 20th, at 5pm.

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

Not Only At Sea

Last week, we marked the day of remembrance all over the world with horrific memories, and worthy proposals, from those who lived through some of the most brutal pages in the story of our poor world. A world so lacking in values, values which we lost long ago, that it can celebrate the suicide of those from whom we have taken everything; because, unfortunately, life is so intensely hard for so many young people impoverished by the system enacted by today's ruling powers, that they have lost all hope of a dignified life, and the only way out from so much pain is to take their own lives. Death does not meet them only at sea, because the violence which they have gone through cannot be wiped away. And without support, they remain alone with their pain, and decide to end that pain once and for all.

Migrants transferred from the Lampedusa Hotspot to Villa Sikania, via Porto Empedocle

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.

They're Not People, They're Moroccans!

We have taken some time to write about what happened in Palermo around three weeks ago, when the Coast Guard vessel Dattilo brought 1,048 migrants into Palermo. It has taken some time to digest the violations adopted as a systemic, inhuman practice, and above all we were concerned with providing some relief and support to those who are otherwise forgotten, to those who Italy and Europe considers as worth less than animals. We can write about it now by starting from the anonymous letter which was provided to us by a volunteer present at the port.

Hard to Accommodate: Palermo

In the past few days we have read about the announcementsby the mayor of Gorino and the protests held by its citizens, and many of us have condemned such acts. Without doubt, racism and ignorance have created some monsters for the front pages, but in the end it has been too easy to “pick off the easy targets”, and no one in the media has examined the errors committed by the Prefecture and other institutional agents, who were unaware of how to set up a reception project: there was no plan prepared for any interaction between the new arrivals and the indigenous community, but instead they were inserted into a situation of emergency, causing simply the latest social conflict which has served to demonstrate quite clearly the true face of migration policies and to continue to reap its harvest of victims.

The Great Frontier Within Our Cities

There is a border we have built which is larger than any of the walls being raised up throughout the whole world, a frontier which is born from within ourselves and the culture from which we are all nourished even as children, a frontier which is created by our egoism and comfort, a frontier which kills people even before the sea does. It is a frontier which behaves as if exploitation, death and discrimination were simply daily “sport”. It is a frontier which divides rich and poor within our cities and neighbourhoods. It is a frontier which we raise up so that we can live well, so as not to raise our glances over the wall which we have built for ourselves.

[Image: The Cemetery at Agrigento. Photo: Alberto Biondo]

Landings and Photo Identification: “Procedures are Overriding Humanitarian Necessity”

By Redattoresociale.it

The landings are taking longer and longer, increasing the migrants' exhaustion and stress, and removing time which could be used for other rescue operations. Doctors Without Borders noted a problem in the system, calling for much faster landings.

From the Sea to the Countryside, Passing Through Our Cities

 What do a young Ghanaian woman, a middle-aged Nigerian man and a Senegalese teenager have in common? Beyond the colour of their skin, without a shadow of a doubt, they share an experience of violence and exploitation, and the fact that they have been killed by our laws. This system has decided to sacrifice migrants so as to stay on its feet, has decided to outlaw anyone who wants to rise from the ashes we have left in the countries from which they arrive, young men and women who live daily with death on their doostep, which frequently gains the upper hand.

[Image: Landing at Palermo. Photo – Alberto Biondo]

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.