I'm Starting To Be Scared For My Children

The Minniti-Orlando decree, now law, came into force in a deeply concerning way the past few days, with raids across Italy, rejection notices from the police stations and deportations from the Hotspots. The style is fascist, even if the law was signed off by two politicians who, in theory, ought to be fighting fascism. This government's actions are nourishing a daily xenophobia and violence against migrants which increases by the day, just as the glaring security measures close in while the government gives the nod.

Lampedusa: 40 Nigerians made to alight on a Meridiane plane to be deported

“We Can't Stop”. The Signs Of The Borders Written On The Bodies Of Those Who Arrive

“It was a long journey, but I put some money aside from my 'pay' these last few months. And I had an accident too, when my finger was crushed. My friends took me to the hospital and they had to amputate it. I'm better now though, I'm in a reception centre, I can talk and be understood.” 'M' writes to us again after a month of silence, from his new hostel in Germany. In May he will turn 17, and in June it will have been a year since he landed at Pozzallo.

The Golfo Azzurro, from the NGO Proactiva, arriving at Catania

Deportations From Italy, With Frontex's Help

Despite the visible failure of the Hotspots, the Italian government is launching other such centres: according to announcements by Franco Gabrielli, Chief of Police, the new centres will be placed in Messina and Mineo. Sicily will thus continue to be subjected to the very worst process of militarisation, including the detention of thousands of migrants.

Capitalism. Illustration by Francesco Piobbichi

Serious Violations of Rights on Lampedusa

In these times, so arid from the standpoint of humanity, the question which we keep asking of ourselves is at what point can we push ourselves further. The direction is clear: walls, rejections, abandonment. Those paying the price of these inhumane political choices are migrants themselves, ending up as cannon fodder in Libya (a country which never signed the Geneva Convention), dying at sea, or being exploited and abandoned in Italy. Today the situation is worse still, after the migrant hunt has been officially opened, and the raids are already taking place in our cities.

Migrants landed at Porto Empedocles from Lampedusa. Ph: Alberto Todaro

The Deal with Libya and Migrant Raids: Italy and the EU's Approach to Immigration Is Increasingly Disturbing

Press release.

Borderline Sicilia is deeply concerned about the agreement signed in Malta today between Italy and Libya, as well as about the telegram sent by Giovanni Pinto (Chief of Border Police) to Italian police stations on January 26^th, which ordered the tracking down of undocumented Nigerian citizens in order to place them in detention centres and deport them. This meant that it is not only their lack of papers which has been given as a criteria for the operation, but also connection with a specific nationality.

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.

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.

So Many Arrivals, So Little Protection. Migrants In Ever Worse Conditions And Abandoned To Themselves.

In only a few days 4,500 people have been rescued and brought to the main Sicilian ports: Pozzallo, Augusta, Catania, Messina, Porto Empedocle and Palermo. The arrival of such a high number of migrants paradoxically corresponds to refugees' extraordinary invisibility and the lack of protection for them. As always happens when there are various landings on the same day, NGO workers are forced to divide themselves among the different ports, leaving somewhere uncovered.

Foto Lucia Borghi

“Hotel Acos”, a report from the CAS in Marsala

The protests on Monday, 18th August at the CAS (extraordinary refugee transition centre) Hotel Acos in Marsala have attracted the attention of journalists, the UNHCR, the IOM (International Organisation for Migration) and the NGO Borderline Sicily. Rather than clarifying the situation, the visit on the 21st of this month raised new questions. Almost from the moment I arrived in the parking lot, the young men are extremely eager to direct their complaints also to people who have nothing to do with the facility. Contrary to what usually is being told, the bureaucratic time frame is not the most urgent problem this time. The living conditions are perceived as the greatest injustice. The immigrants are willing to wait but not at the Hotel Acos. The protest on the 18th actually consisted of demanding relocation for which the migrants had turned to the local police.