Lampedusa Counts the Dead.

The sea doesn't discriminate. It knows no racism, but swallows everything we offer it. And the Lampedusans will cry, and continue to count and gather the dead. A dead who have no common denominator save for being brought down by this system: fishermen who brave the waves to be able to live, to feed their own families, and migrants searching for freedom, and to feed their families in turn. 2017 has begun just as 2016 ended, with death upon death, with the daily murder of young men, women and children. A massacre without end.

Dozens of corpses on the Libyan beaches. The body of yet another victim of the crossing arrives at Pozzallo

On July 23^rd the media reported the news of around forty bodies given up by the sea and left on the Libyan beach of Sabrata. This number was destined to rise at the weekend, when a total of 87 bodies were recovered from the same beach.

The Violence Reproduced by Emergency

Emergency considered as the only possible response. It is the institutional reaction at an international, national and local level faced with this continuing, terrifying massacre. It is a response that is being invoked with ever more force in the context of managing the phenomenon of migration in Sicily. If we recall that an emergency is “an improvised situation which has to be confronted immediately”, we can understand quite quickly how inappropriate a word it is to be used to describe the situation of the arrival, placement and “welcoming” of migrants. To make a system out of an emergency that lasts years, shows the clear will of the relevant political actors, and the absence of any institutional transparency in involving the citizenry in what is actually going on.

The Parliamentary Commission Fails The Pozzallo Hotspot: New Minors Accepted Yesterday

On June 23^rd the parliamentary commission for the inquest into migrants visited the Hotspot of Pozzallo, in order to investigate the reception centre given over to official identification. The inspection revealed a critical and concerning situation within the centre: structural inadequacies, problems with the water supply, violations and privacy and prolonged detention of unaccompanied minors. Major “attention” is given over only to the identification procedures, perfectly in line with the logic of the Hotspot approach.

Migration: A war report - more than 300 victims within four days

By Redattore Sociale

Reporting on the migration flows in Europe these days turns into a war report. While it is discussed in the media all over the world what terminology to use to describe the phenomenon (migrants or refugees), the internet is overwhelmed with news of new tragedies that take place not far away from Europe, trying to get closer and closer to the heart of the so-called “old” continent that is closed like a “fortress”.

After the message that has shocked not only Austria but the whole of Europe, more news of deaths came from the Mediterranean. More than 100 migrants are said to have lost their lives on their way to Europe. The number of victims is increasing day by day. According to the UNHCR almost 2.500 people have been killed.

Migrants died below the deck, those bodies we want to ignore

They left in the night between Friday and Saturday from the Libyan city of Zwara. There were 326 people from Syria, Sub Sahara, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Today, however, only 313 of them touched the ground at the port of Catania with their own feet. The remaining 49 breathed their last breath below the decks of the boat in which, in the paradoxical and absurd hierarchy of the poorest of the poor, they had been relegated to "the third class". They died from the inhalation of toxic gas, asphyxiation, suffocation and drowning. They died from desperation and from having too much hope.

Mediterranean tragedy, the last call before the silence: “Help, we are 600 and the engine room is full of water”

By SALVO CATALANO, Meridionews

The first person to receive the SOS from the fishing vessel that later overturned was the activist Nawal Soufi. “But shortly later the phone stopped ringing”. Doctors Without Borders tell about the rescue operations: “Desperate people trying to hold onto anything to save themselves”. And accuse: “We have been called at 9, but then diverted to another operation, there is a severe lack of resources”.

New boat arrivals in Messina, Augusta and Pozzallo. Another 14 deaths and the hypocrisy of emergency continues

During the morning of the 29th July 453 migrants arrived in Messina along with the 14 bodies of those who did not survive the crossing. The first thing which those on the scene spoke of was the "the strong smell of death" . The fact that it could even be smelt from the sidelines offers an idea of just how dramatic the conditions aboard must have been throughout the journey.