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. 

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.

Migration Policy and Inhumanity

"The suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an offence to the conscience of humanity”. These are not the words of an activist, but of a representatibe to the UN High Commission for Human Rights.

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

“Italyisverygood!”

The days have been hot, and not only because the temperature has reached 40 degrees. The current systemic violence its showing its discriminatory and murderous character. Sending thousands of people back to Libya, blocking their arrival in Italy, through making deals with militia that collude with people traffickers, is nothing less than criminal. These are collective push backs, the kind which Italy has already undertaken in the past and for which it has been condemned in the European Court of Human Rights.

A photo taken during the eviction at Via Curtatone, Rome. Photo: La Repubblica

Young Migrants Abused: “He Can Spit Blood For All I Care”

LiveSiciliaCatania – MASCALI. Big business in the migrant reception sector – particularly of unaccompanied foreign minors – is at the centre of an inquiry opened this morning by Operation Camaleonte. On request of the public prosecutor in Catania, an order for cautionary imprisonment has been made for Giovanni Pellizzeri – 56, employee of the provincial health service, former mayoral candidate in the last elections in Mascali – as well as his son, Mario Pellizzeri, 29, and Isabella Vitale, 48, the businessman's right arm. They are accused of the crimes of corruption, abuse of minors and forgery.

Giovanni and Mario Pellizzeri

Porta Felice: Exception Or The Rule?

For those working in the Italian migrant sector, “MSNA” is a well-known acronym. The following reflection ought be similarly well-known: “This is a complex phenomenon and to understand it, define it and in the end manage it better, it would be slowly move forward by starting from the objective data.” Even if it is not possible to proceed in this way here in any exhaustive way, we will nonetheless try to read and interpet the single case in question from within the general context.

Palermo – one of the rooms in Porta Felice, the community for minors on Via Marinuzzi

Migrants, the CIE* and the hotspots reminding of Lager. Between dirt, cold and loss of dignity

MeridioNews.it – The first report of the National Guarantor for the Rights of Detained and Semi-Detained Persons focuses on a long series of shortfalls which characterise the stay of foreign citizens arriving in Italy. In this context, structural problems are added to procedures casting doubt on whether rules are being respected.

The Initial Reception Centre for Minors in Giarre: The Residents Speak Out

Giarre, a small town of around 27,000 people in the foothills of Etna, has been host to a range of centres for unaccompanied minors. We have previously reported and officially complained about the serious issues at these projects, which were consequentially closed by Social Services, only to be reopened by the same managing bodies elsewhere, in accordance with a logic of business and power which remains extremely difficult to extinguish. 

The initial reception centre for unaccompanied minors in Giarre, Province of Catania

“We Can't Stop”. The Signs Of The Borders Written On The Bodies Of Those Who Arrive

“It was a long journey, but I put some money aside from my 'pay' these last few months. And I had an accident too, when my finger was crushed. My friends took me to the hospital and they had to amputate it. I'm better now though, I'm in a reception centre, I can talk and be understood.” 'M' writes to us again after a month of silence, from his new hostel in Germany. In May he will turn 17, and in June it will have been a year since he landed at Pozzallo.

The Golfo Azzurro, from the NGO Proactiva, arriving at Catania

Trapani: Landings, Monitoring, Encounters

The air was tense in Trapani last week, due to the landings and the overall situation in the province. We were there to visit two reception centres in Marsala: Borgo della Pace and the former welfare home Giovanni XXIII.

The Vos Prudence in port at Trapani

Landing at Messina on March 22, and the Amal Reception Centre for Minors (formerly the Liberty)

On March 22nd we assisted with a landing at Messina which brought the number of people to have arrived in the city since January up to 1,269. The landing, carried out by the Spanish ship Canarias (EUNAVFOR-MED), involved 636 people, including some women and children. The pre-identification operations and consequent transferrals from the port to the former barracks at Bisconte were interrupted by the police at around 6pm, leaving at least 200 people on board, who were forced to sleep in the open air on deck, with only thermal blankets for cover.

The Canarias in port at Messina

Recovered or Saved? Criminalisation of the Sea Missions and Still More Slaughter At Sea

A few hours ago the news broke of the latest, horrendous shipwreck off the coast of Libya, in which it is thought around 240 people lost their lives, according to the account of the NGO Pro-Activa Open Arms, which recovered five cadavers found near to two empty rubber boats. On March 20th another 38 deaths were confirmed off the Libyan coast. The migrants had been drifting on two rubber boats which were then “saved” by the Libyan Coast Guard.

The Ocean Carrier docks in at Pozzallo

Out of Initial Reception, Into Mineo: What Future Awaits 18 Year Olds?

“Things are going better now, because they're going to transfer me soon.” 'A', originally from Ghana, turned 18 a few months ago. For the past year he has been living in one of the big centres of initial reception for unaccompanied foreign minors in the Province of Catania, though he asked us not to name it. We met each other here in June last year. He was very different from how he is now. It has been a year of pain, confusion, attempts at dialogue and small “victories”. One of these was signing up at school, something for which 'A' and a dozen other young men at the centre campaigned from the start. It was in fact at one of these 'protests' in the form of a letter sent to the centre's managers that we met him.

The CARA at Mineo

Unaccompanied Foreign Minors: An Open-Air Orphanage

From Repubblica.it

According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, 25,846 minors arrived in Italy via the Mediterranean in 2016. Sicily is the region which hosts the highest proportion of them. As part of a project to monitor the new reception centres, the Guarantor for Childhood and Adolescence visited Catania and Noto. Oxfam and Borderline Sicilia, however, have provided damning reports.

Ph: Repubblica.it

Breaking the Silence

Pozzallo, Augusta, Catania, Lampedusa, Palermo: people continue to arrive in Sicily, crossing the sea from Libya. In the bays of the coastline, the rescue missions continue, as do the shipwrecks and death. Migrants are dying in the freezer trucks which transport them like the cargo they have become from the deserts to the Libyan coast, from where the attempt to reach Europe is usually made. Those who found themselves cited in the daily papers last week make up only a small percentage of the thousands who are trafficked every day. Whoever does make it to Italy tries to explain the horrors they have seen, far too often left unheard.

Photo: The arrival of the Golfo Azzuro into the port of Pozzallo

Racist Laws and Daily Discrimination. Scenes of Every Day Violence in Eastern Sicily.

The Italian government is implementing a policy of racism and border of closure: deals with Libya, distinctively discriminatory official circulars, and the recent decree which was approved yesterday by the Council of Ministers. The decree introduces new measures for “speeding up the procedure to grant asylum to refugees”, clearing the way for the “utilisation” of migrants for unpaid labour on public works, and increasing the number of complexes for identification and “permanent” repatriation, centres which from today will be classed as Repatriation Centres (CPR*) instead of the old Identification and Expulsion Centres (CIE*).

Messina: The Tent-City at PalaNebiolo Finally Taken Down. For Three And A Half Years It Housed Asylum Seekers In Shameful Conditions

From Stampalibera.it

Three and a half years since its transformation into a centre of bad reception for asylum seekers fleeing from war, famine and ecological crimes, the PalaNebiolo stadium at Conca d'Oro dell'Annunziata, property of the University of Messina, will perhaps finally return to being a baseball pitch for training the local teams.

Visit to the Camp at Pian del Lago

In January we visited the camp at Pian del Lago, in Caltanissetta, twice, along with staff from Oxfam as part of the OpenEurope project. The eviction of the encampment a few days before Christmas filled the pages of the daily newspapers, but had no effect at all on the migrants' lives: they were living on the street before, and they lived on the street immediately afterwards. As soon as the police had left the sit, in fact, a dozen people moved in under the motorway columns, rebuilding their makeshift homes our of beat up tents and plastic boxes and sheets, the only means they have to deal with one of the coldest winters in years.