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.

Borderline Sicilia On Board the Sea Watch 3: The Intervention of the Libyan Coast Guard Brings Death and Refoulment

Press release – The landing operation of the Sea Watch 3 at the port of Pozzallo came to a close this morning at midday. Police, carabinieri, Frontex and EASO agents were waiting on the quayside, as well as staff from the main governmental organisations and NGOs active in Sicily. There were also workers and legal assistants from Borderline Sicily.

The Sea Watch 3 docks in at Pozzallo. Photo: Viola Gastaldi

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"

Migrants' Narratives from the Libyan Hell: “Sold As Slaves, Beaten and Forced to Leave.”

Repubblica.it – Long months of violence, detained in a condition of slavery without any contact with international bodies, right up till the departure for Italian shores: this is the shared narrative of three Africans who arrived in Italy before the Summer. All three are now being supported by the OpenEurope project jointly run by Oxfam, Borderline Sicilia and the Waldesian Deaconry.

Torture, rape and slavery in Libya: why migrants must be able to leave this hell

oxfam.org - Rape, torture and slave labour are among the horrendous daily realities for people stuck in Libya who are desperately trying to escape war, persecution and poverty in African countries, according to a new report by Oxfam and Italian partners MEDU and Borderline Sicilia.

Oxfam, Borderline Sicilia, Doctors For Human Rights: “Abuse, Torture and Illegal Detention in the Libyan Hell”

A new report reveals the daily brutality suffered by migrants in Libya at the hands of local militia, human traffickers and criminal gangs. It represents an urgent call to revoke the deal between Italy and Libya and for a change in direction of the EU's policies on controlling the flow of migrants.

Landing in Sicily. Photo: Alessandro Rota, Oxfam

Do Not Lose Hope and the Strength to Always Be There

2016 has ended, and rereading some of the reports from the year just passed, the title of the last report from 2015 stands out: “Thankfully, 2015 Is Over”.
We cannot reprise the title while just changing the days, because 2016 has been even more deadly, and the dynamics still more repetitive, and have even become more violent than 2015. The numbers of daily massacres are terrifying, the official data speaking of more than 5,000 dead. People have never been killed in sea like this year, and these numbers do not do justice to all those who have died before and after the crossing.

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

Palermo: Fifty Expelled Migrants Wandering Aimlessly, No Money for the Trip

Source: Repubblica.it

Alert from voluntary associations: “This system is creating invisible people.”

The 250 North Africans, mainly from Morocco, who arrivedon board the Dattilo on Monday morning along with a further 798migrants, after being left at the port for almost 30 hours, spent a second night in the city, under the cold wind and rain with an expulsion notice in hand. In law they now have seven days to “voluntarily remove themselves”. The clock began from when they entered Italy without any right to a form of protection. Among them there are also 3 Libyans.

Contradictions and Violations of Human Rights in the Pozzallo Hotspot

Source: meltingpot.org

This is the first report from the Overthefortress campaign in South Italy, from the Province of Ragusa.

It includes an interview with Giuseppe Cannella from Doctors for Human Rights (MEDU*) as well as Lucia Borghi from Borderline Sicilia.

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.”

Diary from Campobello di Mazara

We are Simon and Verena, two anthropology students from Bolzano who decided to visit one of the many social realities of migration which our friends at Borderline Sicilia had “narrated” to us. We wanted to see it with our own eyes, and accompanied by some of the activists from Campobello spent more than a month in a village which today is host to a large number of migrants during the olive harvest. We tried to maintain a diary to record our experience.

Everyday, 28 Children Disappear from the Italian Reception System

By Oxfamitalia.org

The number of unaccompanied migrant and refugee children arriving in Europe this year has doubled. But this is taking place in the context of a reception system which is failing to provide them with the necessary support. Oxfam's new report released today, “Great Expectations Left to Drift”, exposes this situation.

It is enough to remember that every day, 28 unaccompanied children simply “disappear” due to an inadequate and malfunctioning system.

Extraordinary Reception Centers, the Case of Palermo. Borderline: “Some make a profit from the invisibility of the migrants.”

Source: MeridioNews

Alberto Biondo has visited some extraordinary reception centers in the region's capital for Borderline: “The asylum seekers are frustrated by the bureaucracy. The reception system has no beginning and no end and is purposefully conceived in a way that leaves people hanging.”

Photo: Alberto Biondo