Young People, Little Protection: From Landing to Turning Eighteen. The Situation in Some Centres in Eastern Sicily

For a few months, the Hotspot at Pozzallo has included a container for “welcoming” children and families. A space is “dedicated” to those who are meant to only be passing through the Hotspot after the landing, but in reality they are frequently illegally and lengthily detained, a fact which has now become “normal and inevitable.” The situation is submissively accepted by some of the organisations that ought to be defending the rights of migrants but in fact continually fail to report violations of those rights, more concerned as they are to obtain a piece of the pie within the system than protect and safeguard the new arrivals.

The Initial Reception Centre for Minors in Giarre: The Residents Speak Out

Giarre, a small town of around 27,000 people in the foothills of Etna, has been host to a range of centres for unaccompanied minors. We have previously reported and officially complained about the serious issues at these projects, which were consequentially closed by Social Services, only to be reopened by the same managing bodies elsewhere, in accordance with a logic of business and power which remains extremely difficult to extinguish. 

The initial reception centre for unaccompanied minors in Giarre, Province of Catania

Letter From a Mother

The barbarism which befalls the vast majority of migrants, people simply searching a dignified life, leaves deep and indelible wounds on their psyches, exacerbated by the violence which the Italian reception system so often inflicts upon them as well. Every day, people tell us about their tragic experiences in Libya, in the desert, on the crossing, all moments in which so many people lose someone along the way. These are journeys in which death is always present, burrowing deep down into these people's souls.

Illustration by Francesco Piobbichi

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.

Refugee children live alone on Sicily’s streets after having risked their lives in the Mediterranean

By Meltingpot.org

“Ahmed! Ahmed! Ahmed!“ – a breathless voice can be heard at the opposite side of the square and, like a domino effect, awakens everyone who rests in the area. They get up and nervously try to find out who is the lucky one, reverently repeating the name. The one who called out holds a cell phone in his hand, Ahmed (a made-up name) jumps up from a bench and runs towards the person to receive a gift that is very precious in the Italian city of Catania: a telephone call from a different European country.

An Egyptian minor shows photographs of friends and relatives who have found refuge in Sudan, Ethiopia, Sweden, and Germany (Photograph taken by Gabriela Sanchez)

The Violence Reproduced by Emergency

Emergency considered as the only possible response. It is the institutional reaction at an international, national and local level faced with this continuing, terrifying massacre. It is a response that is being invoked with ever more force in the context of managing the phenomenon of migration in Sicily. If we recall that an emergency is “an improvised situation which has to be confronted immediately”, we can understand quite quickly how inappropriate a word it is to be used to describe the situation of the arrival, placement and “welcoming” of migrants. To make a system out of an emergency that lasts years, shows the clear will of the relevant political actors, and the absence of any institutional transparency in involving the citizenry in what is actually going on.

Fortress Europe's Revolving Doors

The image which comes to mind so often at the moment is that of a hotel's revolving door, the kind in which children play endlessly, and when they do finally emerge from all the spinning end up back where they started, but with a dizzy head. 

For migrants, it's the same thing but with dramatic consequences: in the moment in which they're saved by a merchant vessel, a navy ship or volunteers, migrants step into this revolving door, but as soon as they touch Italian soil they begin to understand that it is no game, and that the door will set them down where they started, but in a worse state.

An evening in the square in Lampedusa

It's 7 pm, and a group of young Eritrean men and women are sitting silently on the steps in front of the church, holding in paper signs in their hands reading “we are refugees”,and “no to fingerprints”:squeezed up against each other due to the cold weather.

I am passing by, carrying my shopping bags and stop in front of the group to get an idea of what is happening. They are a group of about 200 Eritreans who have been here since beginning of December, refusing for their fingerprints to be registered, as they have the right to request asylum in countries other than Italy, where they would however have to remain if they were to be give their fingerprints here in Lampedusa, Italy’s first Hotspot. This was certainly not a threatening crowd. They blank stares, and weren't even talking among themselves, but when I smiled and got closer, they reciprocated. 

The migrant hunt is open

Faruk, a young migrant from an African country rich of diamond mines, gets off the train with sad and empty eyes full of fear, together with other two friends he met on his journey. Notwithstanding his young age, Faruk has gone through a lot: A mother who was killed in his country, a younger brother who did not survive the desert and the violence of military people trained by European military, a father, destroyed by the pain of losing first his wife and then his little son, who vanished at sea.

Eritreans: placards and slogans on Lampedusa: “We are refugees, not fingerprints”

Redattore Sociale – Around 250 people protested this morning, mainly Eritreans who have been on the island for at least two weeks and have been held in the CPSA* of Contrada Imbriacola**. Many are on hunger strike.
ROME – Around 250 people held a political rally in the streets of Lampedusa, holding signs and chanting slogans including: “Freedom, freedom!” The majority of the group are Eritrean citizens who have been on the island for at least two weeks – the final group having arrived on December 4th. They are being held in the CPSA* at Contrada Imbriacola**, a couple of kilometers from the port. According to local sources the protest was caused by the issuing of an order yesterday to take everyone's fingerprints. 

3,300 new arrivals over few hours

Today at 7.30 am, 200 Eritreans (including 10 children) disembarked at Lampedusa. They stayed on the Favarolo pier the entire morning. Gazebos were put up, but the migrants did not move from the pier (meaning that the centre does not even open in case of emergency). The Red Cross asked for children’s clothing , and some citizens of Lampedusa started a charity collection. The Lampedusa Accoglienza bus closed off the entrance to the pier and guaranteed its privacy (the centre’s staff is still entirely under contract), aided by 4 army jeeps from the “Safe Streets” operation. Currently, the ferry is still docked, and will only reach Porto Empedocle later tonight, at about 3.30 am.

The Borderline Sicilia Editorial Department

The arrivals continue at Lampedusa. Survivors’ testimonies of the shipwreck of 11 October, "the Libyans shot at us"

Lampedusa is still receiving new arrivals of migrants, mainly from Syria and the Horn of Africa but also from some West African countries, particularly Ghana. Nights ago migrants arrived at the Favaloro pier, transported by Coast Guard patrol boats. The 14 migrants from Somalia and Eritrea were found in the hold of a boat that was taking on water off the coast of Libya. Some of the Somalis who arrived in Lampedusa recounted that all the other fleeing migrants had been transferred from their boat into an unidentified ship with Libyan personnel and Bengalese, to be taken back to Libya. These 14 had been the exception since they had been physically unable to climb up onto the deck from the hold where they were later found. They were abandoned at sea, until the Italian patrols spotted them.