Chapter Seven: Sbarco.

A Sicilian Diary of Nina Perkowski

The last week here has been pretty much bizarre, absurd, almost unreal…. now, Friday night, I am left with a curious mix of anger, helplessness, frustration and a great number of questions on my mind.

On Monday, the Italian Refugee Council (CIR) and a range of other organisations celebrated World Refugee Day with a slight delay, and welcomed a variety of speakers reflecting on current conditions and pressing needs regarding the situation of refugees in Italy. Speakers included delegates of various NGOs but also the UNHCR, the prefecture, and the local police station. Naturally, they came with varying viewpoints and agendas – and I am currently still in the process of writing and reflecting on some of my impressions from this day. Overall, the atmosphere was benevolent, many refugees attended, and it was a rather interesting afternoon and evening, which ended with an impressive movie.

Lampedusa: b4p and LampedusaInFestival (part 3)

Yesterday, 19th July, the 4th edition of LampedusaInFestival opened. All was made possible by the tireless and precious work of Askavusa, in collaboration with several other associations. The festival opened with the inauguration of a show of cartoon drawings on migration with works by artists of various different countries. Following straight on from this, Lorenzo Pezzani presented the project Watch the Med 

 https://watchthemed.crowdmap.com/, whose main objective is to "control the controllers" by allowing anyone who has information about migrants in the sea to bring it to public attention by posting it online in real time.

Lampedusa: boats4people and film festival 2

On 15th July, the activists began the preparations for the Lampedusa film festival by cleaning the beach! Cala Palme, a small beach in the town, is where the fourth edition of the festival will be held. Under a scorching sun, 15-20 people helped clean the beach which was full of rubbish, glass and wood. When that was completed, it was straight on with the cleaning of the rundown Porta d'Europa where the festival is due to start with a commemoration for migrants who have died or been lost at sea.