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.

Pala Nebiolo in Messina: Forceful Fingerprinting and Lying to Those in Need of Protection

At the end of the seminar “Sicily, crossroads of the Mediterranean: Between open war and (open) borders,” which we attended on January 30th, we went to the Palanebiolo* with representatives of Migralab to monitor the situation there throughout interviews with some of the inhabitants.

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.