Breaking the Silence

Pozzallo, Augusta, Catania, Lampedusa, Palermo: people continue to arrive in Sicily, crossing the sea from Libya. In the bays of the coastline, the rescue missions continue, as do the shipwrecks and death. Migrants are dying in the freezer trucks which transport them like the cargo they have become from the deserts to the Libyan coast, from where the attempt to reach Europe is usually made. Those who found themselves cited in the daily papers last week make up only a small percentage of the thousands who are trafficked every day. Whoever does make it to Italy tries to explain the horrors they have seen, far too often left unheard.

Photo: The arrival of the Golfo Azzuro into the port of Pozzallo

Racist Laws and Daily Discrimination. Scenes of Every Day Violence in Eastern Sicily.

The Italian government is implementing a policy of racism and border of closure: deals with Libya, distinctively discriminatory official circulars, and the recent decree which was approved yesterday by the Council of Ministers. The decree introduces new measures for “speeding up the procedure to grant asylum to refugees”, clearing the way for the “utilisation” of migrants for unpaid labour on public works, and increasing the number of complexes for identification and “permanent” repatriation, centres which from today will be classed as Repatriation Centres (CPR*) instead of the old Identification and Expulsion Centres (CIE*).

Why The Death Continues

Little more than a hundred euros and a few weeks' wait. That's the price any Italian citizen has to pay and the procedure to follow if they want a passport. Who knows how many people who request and make use of their own document are aware that what to them is a banal and routine operation, is beyond the reach of thousands of others, indeed is impossible. Who knows if European citizens think even for a moment that to have the same freedom of movement there are people who, even today, are forced to pay with their very lives, to waste away in prison for months and to sell their bodies.