A Dog Is Worth More Than A Black

At Campobello di Mazara, a dog can be cured by a vet with the help of €2,000 from the local council, while at the same time, the money apparently cannot be found to guarantee some support – and a little dignity – for thw 1,800 migrants who harvest our olives. This sliver of news found while scrolling online once again confirms that migrants are worth less than nothing: we can take away all of their freedom and rights because we see them as animals, less worthy than even cats and dogs. 

Humanity Drowns On Lampedusa

The Italian government has always used the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean as a place to experiment with immigration policies. And the Lampedusans have always been treated as guinea pigs by different governments over the years in order to see how much can be tolerated.

Reports of a serious law infringement in the Hotspot of Lampedusa

Press release – Despite the sentence of the European Court of Human Rights on the Khlaifia case, arbitrary detentions, mass expulsions and the negation of the right to asylum continue to happen. Mister M. has been on a hunger strike for 4 days. With him, around 200 fellow Tunisians locked up in the Hotspot centre of Lampedusa are refusing to eat until they are granted their rights. One of his companions has been hospitalised a few hours ago. They are being detained without legal validation and they have not met anyone who could explain to them the procedure for a possible asylum request.

Ever More Isolated and Alone

Castellana, Collesano, Geraci, Isnello, Palazzo Adriano, Ciminna, San Cipirrello, Villafrati, Marineo and Godrano: these are just some of the provincial wards where there are now Extraordinary Reception Centres, or CAS*, in the province of Palermo. There are centres dispersed among the hills of the Madonie mountain range, centres which follow on from a logic of hiding people away. Old and new cooperatives have opened their doors amid forests and agro-tourism hostels, far from inhabited centres.

Tunisian migrants forced to sleep on the ground at the Agrigento train station

Confusion Reigns Supreme While Migrants Die

The war on migrants is claiming ever more victims. There is no pause: the victims are increasingly younger, victims of policies arising from Europe’s choice to be ever more closed in on itself. A Europe with a constant syndrome of believing itself to be under siege, rending people’s lives a living hell, as is the case for the 606 people who arrived last Friday in Palermo on border the SOS Mediterranee, a landing baptised by all of the newspapers as the “ship of children.”

The SOS Mediterranee at the Port of Palermo

No One Is Meant To Know

At the recent Paris talks, representatives from France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the EU confirmed their shared political line of cooperating with dictatorial states, of being the de facto ATM for blood thirsty regimes whose task is, and will increasingly be, to block people departing for Europe at all costs. It is important that nothing of what’s going on in Africa leaks into Europe, into public opinion. Minniti and the Italian government have already done the dirty work for this, gorging out indiscreet eyes by excluding the NGO ships from the Mediterranean, the unique and troublesome witnesses.

Rejected Tunisians at the Palermo train station

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

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.

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

Askavusa: tensions continue to run high on Lampedusa

Since the 7th September, the day of the sinking- of which there is still a huge lack of concrete information, a group of Tunisians have been held in the Centre in Lampedusa. For some days now, they have been displaying their discontent over the length of their stay on the island and their living conditions. Yesterday, they managed to get out of the Centre and went down to the port to protest in public and ask for an immediate transfer. They attempted to block a ship and many jumped into the water.

Migrants protest outside the Lampedusa Cie (Immigrant Detention Centre)

ANSA - Over 120 migrants went out of the Reception Centre in Lampedusa (Ag). They climbed a nearby hill and carried out a protest, requesting their immediate transfer off the island. The group was made up of the survivors of September 6th's sinking and the 74 migrants who were stopped the day before yesterday just off Lampedusa and then transferred to the Reception Centre.

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.

Bereavement for the dead, collective refoulements for the living

By Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo
The latest tragedy hit waters near the small uninhabited island of Lampione to the west of Lampedusa. Facing the Tunisian ports of Mahdia and Monastir, it is the first strip of Italian soil that can be reached from north Africa. Despite all the confusion surrounding this tragedy, it now seems clear that the control and rescue operations, initially deployed in an area covering up to 60 miles south of Lampedusa, are now being carried out only in close proximity to the Pelagie islands.

Migrant sacrifice at sea Boat capsizes with 136 aboard, 79 missing

From Lettera43.
The Coast Guard found the survivors at dawn on 7th September. In order to stay afloat and to reach the shore, many had removed their clothes. Half naked, cold and terrified, they had taken shelter on the tiny island of Lampione, little more than 1km². They had reached the very first strip of the "promised land" which they had risked their lives for.

Sinking off Lampedusa- more than 50 missing

Initial reports state that all those aboard the boat which sank on the night of the 6th September were of Tunisian origin. News coming from Lampedusa states that this morning at around 10am, 2 boys and a girl who survived the sinking were still being kept at the medical centre in Lampedusa for further tests. However, it was not necessary for any of the 56 survivors to be admitted to hospital.

Pozzallo Migrant Riots - 5 injured

Once again, another riot at the CSPA (First Reception Centre) in the port of Pozzallo. At around 11am, a group of migrants began protesting. The cause of the tension, as far as we know, was the news of a likely repatriation. Two security officers and three migrants were injured during the riot. It has been reported by workers within the centre that the situation had been tense since the previous day.

Carabinieri find boat with 24 migrants aboard

From lasiciliaweb.
The carabinieri have located 24 migrants, one of whom is a minor, on the beach of Eraclea Minoa, at Cattolica Eraclea (Ag). They had arrived during the night and the migrants, believed to be Tunisian, immediately attempted to leave the beach covering up all traces of their arrival. The military found their boat, which was around 8 metres in length and thought to have departed from Lybia. It is believed that there were around 80 people in the group. The search operation is still in progress.

Pozzallo. Fourteen Tunisians arrested for disturbances at the First Reception Centre

from Ragusanews. Pozzallo - Fourteen Tunisians were arrested by the police for provoking disorder within the Pozzallo reception centre. They had all arrived on Lampedusa between the 16th and 18th August and then been transferred to Pozzallo. With the fear of being repatriated, migrants carried out an attempted escape which left the accommodation in a state of devastation. Migrants climbed on to the roof and threw objects at the police. Two officers suffered serious bruising.

Pozzallo. Riots in the Recption Centre

The Pozzallo CSPA (First Reception Centre) has once again been the scene of riots and escapes by North African citizens awaiting repatriation. The hangar in the port is still being used as a detention centre without legally having been granted such a status. Initially set up as a reception and identification centre for migrants arriving on the Ragusa coastline, the centre has, for some time now, been used for all intents and purposes as a centre of transit. Tunisian and Egyptian citizens are brought here before being repatriated. This is a process which is carried out as quickly as possible without allowing the deportees to ever see the Judge of Peace (who would authorise such a ruling), a lawyer or members of the Praesidium organisation. It is a true case of collective expulsion which is forbidden under both national and international law.
For more information on what has happened today, please follow the link:
http://www.ilclandestino.info/2012/08/20/pozzallo-rivolta-al-centro-di-prima-accoglienza/#more-1943

Interview with Damiano Sferlazzo, deputy mayor of Lampedusa and Linosa

Finally we manage to have a chat with Damiano Sferlazzo, deputy mayor of Lampedusa- representative of the new administration- and ask him a few questions.

Boat Arrivals

Sferlazzo tells us that yesterday, 27th July, two boats arrived in Lampedusa. The first, with 41 people aboard arrived in the morning. It seems as if the boat departed from Tunisia. Aboard, there were 19 Algerians, 21 Tunisians and one Maroccan. While we are speaking in Piazza Castello, a worker from the Contrada Imbriacola reception centre informed him that one of the migrants, who suffers from diabetes, had remained on the island as he was unwell, while the other 40 had been transferred to Porto Empedocle by ferry that morning.

In the evening, a second boat had arrived with 20 Tunisians aboard. They were taken to the Contrada Imbriacola centre. On Monday they will also be transferred by ferry. Therefore, there are currently 21 people staying at the centre.