Miss, I'm Sorry, But I Have To Inform You That Your Son Has Been Killed

There have been too many, far too many phone calls over the last week. Too many messages from mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters looking for information about their loved ones, prisoners of our war on migrants. A battle which claims its victims every day: the last ones – if only they were truly the last – were those claimed last week, on the weekend of 13^th -15^th  January, when Europe's policies murdered around 200 people.

EU Re-Assesses Italy's Activity in the Hotspots. Activists: “Fingerprinting? A Widespread Failure”.

Source: Meridionews.it

The European Commission has closed the infringement case against Italy and Greece relating to accusations of deficiencies in migrant identification centres. At the same time, associations have noted the limited results of the relocation program. “The norm at the moment is to imprison asylum seekers”, says Paola Ottaviano from Borderline Sicilia.

Ph: Meridionews.it

Hard to Accommodate: Agrigento

Looking over the most recent data, it seems that the practice of handing out rejections is once again in fashion at the Sicilian police stations. Last week there were rejections of 26 Moroccans and 3 Algerians in Agrigento, having arrived at Porto Empedocle on the ferry from Lampedusa. Along with them there was a Tunisian who was arrested as a “suspected boat driver”. On the ship connecting the Pelagian islands and Sicily there were also around 20 foreign unaccompanied minors, who will have joined the veritable army of minors hosted by the vast numbers of housing communities in the Province of Agrigento, even claiming a record for the number of centres of 'first reception' for minors, opened as usual in a situation of emergency.

Why The Death Continues

Little more than a hundred euros and a few weeks' wait. That's the price any Italian citizen has to pay and the procedure to follow if they want a passport. Who knows how many people who request and make use of their own document are aware that what to them is a banal and routine operation, is beyond the reach of thousands of others, indeed is impossible. Who knows if European citizens think even for a moment that to have the same freedom of movement there are people who, even today, are forced to pay with their very lives, to waste away in prison for months and to sell their bodies.

Migrant Landing at Pozzallo: “Improvised, Overcrowded Centres, The Closed Borders Are Pushing the Reception System into Collapse”

From IlFattoQuotidiano.it

Paola Ottaviano from Borderlin Sicily, an association of legal experts which is extremely active in assisting migrants, explains the situation of the Sicilian Hotspot: “The Italian system of helping migrants has not been reorganised, nor rethought through so as to manage this consistent influx of people.”

Mincemeat

I was sitting down with two workers from an Extraordinary Reception Centre* in the province of Trapani, to discuss some of the problems which noiselessly repeat themselves within the centres (and not only those in Trapani), looking for some possible practical solutions. In these situations, the analysis often ends up being expressed in all its rawness: “They're mincemeat. It doesn't matter if they're adults or children, men or women, most people don't give them any attention, starting with the institutions and ending with the stressed and confused workers. And in these moments of stress, the migrant always takes the blame, and pays for it. The workers are always more distant from the needs of those who are being welcomed, because they're not paid, and they're pressed from all sides by endless requests from the migrants, who end up having mincemeat made of them, without any possibility of getting out unharmed.”

Those Who Die, Those Who Arrive and Those Who Remain: The Overcrowded Hotspots at Pozzallo

“What Europe just doesn't understand is that for migrants arriving in Libya it's less risky to try and escape across the sea that to try and go back to their home countries”, says A., a young Senegalese man who arrived in Italy two years ago. Like many of his countrymen, he's following the rescue operations on the TV, shot through with a sense of momentary relief between the powerlessness and rage. “Anyone who hasn't been in Libya cannot imagine what it means to live there. Every European has a mobile, in the same way every Libyan, however old, walks around with a gun in his hand. But no one in Italy wants to hear about this.”

Don't Worry Dad, I'll Die Happy Because You're Alive At Least

I cannot but feel pain when confronted by the death of an innocent, and the thought that someone you love might lose their life in such an unjust way sends a long, cold shiver down your spine. The news that a father had to leave his small daughter dead at sea so as to try and save other lives during yet another maritime massacre, the harvest of murderous European policies, has disturbed me deeply. What can we possibly do to help a desperate father who has lost both wife and child?

The Dead: The Sea Can't Take Them Any More

The sea now leaves many of the dead on the beaches of Libya, the very same from which so many depart in search of a new life, a life which has then been denied them, men and women of all ages. In the last week some have been recovered by humanitarian vessels such as Aquarius and Dignity managed by Médecins Sans Frontières. The most recent are the 22 bodies of young women which were disembarked last week at Trapani. Women and children are the first to die in the journey from Libya to Italy, due to their position within the vessels.

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.