Libya: this is happening in detention centres for migrants

Asgi.it – Here are the grounds given for the sentence of 10 October 2017 with which the Court of Milan has sentenced to life imprisonment a Somali citizen held responsible for the extremely serious events of violence committed in the first months of 2016 in a camp in Libya (see the statement of 11 October)

Migrants' routes: Online Map Assembled with Stories, amongst Torture and Abuse

Redattoresociale.it - It is called Esodi and it was conducted by Doctors for Human Rights (MEDU), which have put together the stories of more than 2600 people that have travelled across the desert, lived through the atrocities of Libyan prisons and crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. Barbieri: ‘Not only numbers. We want to raise awareness about what these people go through.’

Migrants' Narratives from the Libyan Hell: “Sold As Slaves, Beaten and Forced to Leave.”

Repubblica.it – Long months of violence, detained in a condition of slavery without any contact with international bodies, right up till the departure for Italian shores: this is the shared narrative of three Africans who arrived in Italy before the Summer. All three are now being supported by the OpenEurope project jointly run by Oxfam, Borderline Sicilia and the Waldesian Deaconry.

Young People, Little Protection: From Landing to Turning Eighteen. The Situation in Some Centres in Eastern Sicily

For a few months, the Hotspot at Pozzallo has included a container for “welcoming” children and families. A space is “dedicated” to those who are meant to only be passing through the Hotspot after the landing, but in reality they are frequently illegally and lengthily detained, a fact which has now become “normal and inevitable.” The situation is submissively accepted by some of the organisations that ought to be defending the rights of migrants but in fact continually fail to report violations of those rights, more concerned as they are to obtain a piece of the pie within the system than protect and safeguard the new arrivals.

“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

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

Deaths at the Border. Control and Repression Replacing Reception

“Four survivors from a ship packed with 193 people”. “The numbers of missing are imprecise, but in the hundreds.” “Eight bodies but a massacre feared”. By now we do not speak about the dead, but those who did “not survive”, making calculations by exclusion. It is increasingly difficult to know how many people continue to lose their lives at sea. Understanding how many victims our borders have claimed is simply too shameful. Since the beginning of 2017, 240 people have already died crossing the Canal of Sicily, and we are only half way through January.

Market Commodities: Unaccompanied Minors Fleeing Without Any Protection

“I got out of Italy. Now I'm in a safe country.” 'A's message arrives early in the morning, a young Eritrean man who we met at Pozzallo and then followed throughout his first month at a centre for minors in the province of Syracuse. From the moment he arrived, 'A' had continued to repeat the first sentence he heard in Italian: “You are in Italy, a safe country.”

From the Sea to the Countryside, Passing Through Our Cities

 What do a young Ghanaian woman, a middle-aged Nigerian man and a Senegalese teenager have in common? Beyond the colour of their skin, without a shadow of a doubt, they share an experience of violence and exploitation, and the fact that they have been killed by our laws. This system has decided to sacrifice migrants so as to stay on its feet, has decided to outlaw anyone who wants to rise from the ashes we have left in the countries from which they arrive, young men and women who live daily with death on their doostep, which frequently gains the upper hand.

[Image: Landing at Palermo. Photo – Alberto Biondo]

“Don't Call Them Economic Migrants”. MEDU Explains the Exodus to Europe

From Redattoresociale.it

An interactive map shows refugees' voyages, from desert to boat. Ninety per cert of them are victims of violence, abuse and psychological trauma. “The dichotomy of economic migrant and refugee isn't up to explaining a complex reality like this.”

Everyday, 28 Children Disappear from the Italian Reception System

By Oxfamitalia.org

The number of unaccompanied migrant and refugee children arriving in Europe this year has doubled. But this is taking place in the context of a reception system which is failing to provide them with the necessary support. Oxfam's new report released today, “Great Expectations Left to Drift”, exposes this situation.

It is enough to remember that every day, 28 unaccompanied children simply “disappear” due to an inadequate and malfunctioning system.

Lampedusa: The transfers and deportations resume, and the protests continue

In recent days we have been present at the start of a series of protests in cities across Sicily which have spread throughout Italy, which show that this system is broken, even if our politicians pretend neither to see it nor find solutions.

The silence before and after the landing. Voices from Libyan hell

On February 25th, the corpse of five migrants arrived in the port of Augusta. They were on board of the military ship Cigala Fulgosi, which had taken refugees on board on already four different missions. For one day the attention of national media turned to the landings again, which seems foreseeable and usual, when the arrival of migrants is concomitant with people who didn’t survive the crossing. Especially when it concerns a higher number of deaths. Unfortunately, also the silence following the news was predictable and punctual, which was meant for reaching the national audience for a few minutes and with a few words and then to be forgotten, as it happens for a lot of events in the daily report.

“Beaten with electric truncheons”

Parliamentary question by Ms Spinelli, Member of the European Parliament

Meridionews - Salvo Catalano May 13 2015

Last April Meridionews reported the stories of a group of Syrian and Palestinian nationals who denounced of having been beaten by the police with electric truncheons in a CSPA, a first reception centre of the Italian authorities. Today some MEPs demand an explanation to the European Commission. And a multilingual leaflet, allegedly given by the police to the migrants, appears.