The Reception System in Agrigento, Trapani and Palermo: Between Disorganisation, Chaos and Abandonment

The deadly game does not stop. Europe has found a way out, and the only consequence will be the death of an entire society. The refrain we hear everyday is of an “invasion” and “help them in their own countries”. These phrases have contributed to the return of a regurgitated racism, spreading out across our cities in a series of episodes, from Aosta to Palermo, as seen by the latest protests in Castell'Umberto and Porto Empedocle.

Protest by shopkeepers in Porto Empedocle (Provincia of Agrigento) against the opening of a centre for minors

Hard to Accommodate: Agrigento

Looking over the most recent data, it seems that the practice of handing out rejections is once again in fashion at the Sicilian police stations. Last week there were rejections of 26 Moroccans and 3 Algerians in Agrigento, having arrived at Porto Empedocle on the ferry from Lampedusa. Along with them there was a Tunisian who was arrested as a “suspected boat driver”. On the ship connecting the Pelagian islands and Sicily there were also around 20 foreign unaccompanied minors, who will have joined the veritable army of minors hosted by the vast numbers of housing communities in the Province of Agrigento, even claiming a record for the number of centres of 'first reception' for minors, opened as usual in a situation of emergency.

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.

The Voices of Those Who Are Thrown Back by the Walls and a Lethal Indifference

In these muggy August days we have been reading tales of violence meted out on migrants in various ways: from the politician who comes up with a decree to prevent acts of solidarity extended to migrants asking for food, to teenagers who have died from the crushing effects of a society which remains indifferent to their attempts to reach their parents, all the way up to the shameful punitive deportations of the migrants living throughout many Italian cities. The climate we are living through is the result of a growing institutional racism, one which both creates and legitimates violence, which raises walls – and, above all, kills, because the sea continues to wash bodies up on the shores. The last 5 such bodies on August 21^st.

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.

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

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

Porto Empedocle and Lampedusa: The Final Result is indiscrimination

The arrivals are multiplying and the system, at the end of May, is already broken, despite the numbers being no greater than at the same time last year. Many continue to die, and many continue to arrive, saved from certain death, as we have seen from the tragic images taken by the Italian navy.

Foto Alberto Biondo

Tomorrow will be published the EU report about Italy. It pushes for two new hotspots in Pozzallo and Porto Empedocle

LaRepubblica.it - ​​Brussels asks Italy to "accelerate" in "giving the legal framework of the hotspot activities, in particular to permit the use of force in order to collect fingerprints and to retain any migrant longer who offer resistance ". This is an anticipation of the EU Commissions’ report on Italy.

We have lost even the last speck of humanity

The accounts provided by doctors present at the latest disembarkings at Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento leave no doubts about the atrocious situation being experienced by thousands of long-suffering people now arriving in Europe.

The time of rights. New arrivals and more deaths of migrants at sea.

At least ten dead and more than thirty lost at sea. In the lasts days, with the slight, brief improvement in weather conditions, came the umpteenth and sadly predictable announcement of the more deaths of migrants. (see GdS)

Transfers in refugee camps due to the lack of places in reception centers: 36 Nigerians deported

On April 25, 36 Nigerian men arrived in Porto Empedocle on the naval ship Cassiopea and were brought to the reception center Villa Sikania (Sicily).  On May 8, the Prefettura issued deportation notices for the 36 men.

Numbers of the latest arrivals

Over the past 48 hours, numerous boats have docked into Sicilian ports.
Whilst last night the disembarkation procedures of 361 migrants were being completed in Messina, Catania witnessed the arrival of 300 migrants, rescued by an oil tanker, and transported to the coast by tug boats. Among them there were a few women and one child.

The Lampedusa disaster: the bodies arrive in Sicily. Family members wait to learn of the final destination

It ended late yesterday afternoon, the transfer of the first coffins of over 300 victims of the devastating shipwreck of 3 October, transferred from Lampedusa to Porto Empedocle on an Italian Navy ship. Here we publish a number of photos showing the loading of coffins onto trucks, before a crowd of about 300 people, among which there stood also the families of the deceased migrants, who had wanted to pay tribute to the victims of the worst shipwreck in our times.

Porto Empedocle

This is the transit centre in Porto Empedocle, closed down in June last year after allowing hundreds of minors brought over from Lampedusa to be held there illegally. This year it underwent expensive refurbishment and has once again been in use, on an on-off basis, to detain migrants awaiting imminent refoulement on flights from Palermo to Tunisia. These migrants do not pass through the CIE (Immigrant Detention Centre) system and they do not undergo any of the procedures conforming to European directives and regulations on repatriation.