Hard to Accommodate: Trapani

Three landings in one week are too many even for Trapani, where there is no prospective for anyone who arrives, only unsurpassable walls. More than a thousand people in three landings put the Hotspot's mechanisms to the test, a centre which usually works better than the others.

Western Sicily: The Failure Paid For By Those In Search of Hope

The high number (over 40) of housing communities for minors in the Province of Agrigento makes monitoring them difficult. Many of the centres of very first reception for minors, called “highly specialised” centres, are specialised in nothing other than malfunctioning. The most serious situations are to be found in Licata, Palma di Montechiaro and Porto Empedocle, but the reports we are receiving are wide ranging.

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]

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.

Landings at Agrigento and Palermo: “Where is my husband? Please help me!”

Last Saturday (June 25^th), the Coast Guard ship “Diciotti” disembarked 886 people at Palermo, including around 150 women, many of them very young, and 96 minors. These Nigerians, Ivorians, Guineans and Senegalese set foot in the Sicilian capital only for a few hours. Around 13 Eritreans were present, including 3 young women who were taken for adults, despite the specific information provided by workers from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The "Diciotti" - Ph. Alberto Biondo

Western Sicily: A Week of Hell

Over the week just gone, our attention has turned not only to the landings at Palermo, Porto Empedocle, Trapani and back to Porto Empedocle again, but also to the number of requests for help from the provinces of western Sicily, a place interesting not only for its high climatic temperatures but also the neglect, abandonment and desperation which makes migrants' stay in Italy a living hell.

Foto: Alberto Biondo

Immigration. The call for reception centres in the province of Trapani and the investigations in the centres.

From Tp24
Among inquiries and parliamentary interrogations, the reception system for migrants is ready to change its profile in the province of Trapani. The deal is a radical change which is going to structurally overthrow the approach to the immigration issue. “We are no longer in a state of emergency – prefect Leopoldo Falco says – we can manage now”. Emergency is the key word which authorized unspeakable things in these last years (from the hell of Vulpitta, a reception centre, onwards) but that could now become archeology.

We Are Incapable of Welcoming

Not even at Christmas! Even now we are not capable of welcoming those in difficulty, having lost the fundamental values of civil life, of respect and of care for others.

Over the Christmas period, which is synonymous with the moment in which we are able to “lay a place at the table”, we are continuing to kill, in a deafening silence, a silence which hides the great continuation of murders carried out by a deaf Europe, one never satiated with power. A power which kills, a power which renders invisible, a power which produces irregular persons within an illegal system created out of racist and discriminatory laws.

Revolt of migrants living in the CIE in Milo

Revolt of migrants living in the CIE (Identification and expulsion center) in Milo. Three of them have been arrested. This has been the consequence of tensions caused by about 20 migrants in the CIE in the periphery of Trapani.  While trying to escape out of the center, 2 Moroccans and 1 Tunisian overwhelmed and harmed one soldier and some policemen. These three migrants have been arrested with the accusation of bodily injury of persons in authority. After the apprehension, they have been brought back to the CIE in Milo. None of the migrants had succeeded in escaping.   

Translated by Luisa Schilling

The Milo CIE (Immigration Detention Centre): the horror continues

  On 19 February some members of the associations borderline-europe and Borderline Sicilia visited the Immigrant Detention Centre (CIE) in Milo, a short distance from the city of Trapani.

Common tales of madness

(AGI) – Trapani – "I climbed over the gate and onto the perimeter fence, but then I fell down and in doing so broke both heels. A policeman then grabbed one of my feet whilst I tried to escape. I could see everyone else getting away while I was lying on the ground. Just me and five others didn't make it. I had decided to try and escape because I had no other option." This is the statement, translated from the French, of a 26 year old Tunisian who at around 5.30pm last Saturday attempted to break out of the Milo Immigration Detention Centre (CIE) on the outskirts of Trapani, with around 40 other co-nationals.

REPORT FROM THE MILO CONCENTRATION CAMP

Some of the migrants who we made contact with in Trapani during the monitoring project set up in February with Borderline Europe, called us to tell us about a riot and attempted jailbreak and the severe reactions of the police on Friday 16th March. 

WITNESS STATEMENTS FROM THE INFERNO OF MILO

"We are treated worse than pigs here. We can't cope anymore," a young migrant locked up in the Milo CIE (Immigration Detention Centre) in the Trapani countryside denounces the Centre. For the last three days, 240 migrants, the majority from the Maghreb Region, have been carrying out a thirst, hunger and medicine strike as a means of defending their dignity. "Here we are only animals. They put 12 of us in cells which are meant for 6. Some of us have to sleep on the floor." And it would also seem, according to the account of the migrant, that some also eat on the dirty floors. The situation  he describes is alarming, "Here inside there are epileptics, diabetics and people with mental health problems. How can they be kept in such conditions? We are people."

Further incidents of self- harm at the Milo CIE. Escape from Vulpitta

Gabriele del Grande, from fortress europe. Ali slit his wrists, Ahmed swallowed three bottles of shampoo and Redha put a noose round his neck. The names have been changed in order to respect their anonymity. The stories, however, are all too true and they are not isolated incidents. Standard administrative reports from "the circles of hell" at the Milo Immigrant Detention Centre (CIE) in Trapani. Where, yesterday afternoon for the umpteenth time in Section B there were a series of acts of self-harm and attempted suicides. It was carried out by three Tunsisians, two of who have been resident in Italy for many years. Everything kicked off after lunch, when Ali swallowed an iron screw and a piece of glass and then began to cut his veins. It is as if self- mutilation is the only means open to him to communicate his despair and his desire for freedom. A few hours later, in the same section, another Tunisian ripped up his sheets to hang himself with. Those with him managed to stop him just in time, before he put his head into the noose and jumped.