We're Not Boat Drivers

Vita.it – They worked for days and nights to build Santa's Grotto. One cut the wood, one painted the sleigh or the tree, one gathered the leaves for the details, one the moss and the stones to make the grotto itself. Between a visit to the lawyer and a phone call to their parents in Senegal or Ghana who, till a short while ago, when they were in prison, thought they were dead. Between one word of hope and another. And before signing at the police station, as they have to every afternoon before returning to prison.

“They are trouble, that is the true reason behind the slander”

Currently, the Italian media is mounting a large-scale smear campaign targeting organizations for civil marine salvage in the Mediterranean. Not only Frontex but also prosecutors and politicians try to discredit NGOs. A status report from Italy by Judith Gleitze, borderline-europe Sicily. 

“It is an unbearable hypocrisy, especially if these attacks come from someone who holds office [...] The existence of ‘smugglers’ and of the criminal system that organizes the voyage to Europe for migrants in the most cases are a direct consequence of European and domestic immigration policies (and this is the case since the Schengen Agreement in 1985),” says Antonio Cinieri on his blog “Migr-azioni” (5).