In the plots of the mazes that weave attempts to grasp the crucial pivot of the first decade of the century is rare to find an intersection where many roads converge. Lampedusa is one of them. A place where the physical harm it invests directly, without too much space to the artifices of rhetoric and the mediation of subtle reason that calculates and divides.
"There are scenes of Mediterranean" Apocalypse Now ". At noon on the third day of spring crowd on the pier of the marine station at least a thousand Tunisians. In the small promontory of dolomite rock planted behind them waving the tattered remnants of tents and cellophane where they have taken refuge for the night. A few miles offshore, visible from the coast, dominated by the ship San Marco, a huge aft helicopter and three others attacked each other in the bow area the size of a football field.
Meanwhile, a Coast Guard patrol boat download at the foot of the thousands of immigrants just landed another 82 Tunisians, the roar of three Air Force fighters flying to Libya pierces the air. Lampedusa is at war, Italy is at war. "So wrote Mariano Laugero on the" Sole 24 ore "on March 24.
Lampedusa is the emblem of the border, a line about anything on a map of all blue sea, a line of anything that separates the saved from submerged.
A line of anything where thousands of bodies piling up, like in a theater, where the smell of fear is stronger than that of someone who spends his nights on the ground, with nothing.
Those living on the frontier lives of fear, fear of the nearby, poor, young looking for a future flight to catch. The same hands that are often stretched to accommodate refugees were exhausted in a fist close to dismiss.
 A huge mass grave
It could have gone differently. But this government - who the opposition is not far off place - that has a recipe but cages, cops, deportation. It is a temptation to abandon the uncomfortable rock in the middle of the Strait of Sicily, to make an open-air prison. Only the rising tide forces the Northern League minister to decide to touch those bodies, telling the old Europe the revolt that shook the southern shores of the Mediterranean, witnessing the end of regimes deprecated but supported, funded, pampered by the governments of the north bank .
They are the young Tunisian who chased Ben Ali, who have tasted the bitter and seductive taste of freedom and seize the opportunity that has opened. On the way there are less than guardians of the sea: from the adventure is desired and feared. The adventure of brothers and friends, often an adventure that has engulfed the lives of many children. The Mare Nostrum is a huge common grave, a shroud that wraps up hope. Journalists looking for information on the units will not ever tame a photo caption with a slice of any this blue, mute witness to the ferocity of civil, democratic, north shore.
For a short time, the Tunisians were considered refugees who arrived and conveyed in the DEAR, the centers for asylum seekers. Only those who had the foresight to apply for a reception ended up in refugee camps, prisons for immigrants without papers. But not last long: the growing number of landings has prompted the government to make things clear: Tunisians are illegal immigrants, only Libyans can be considered refugees. Of course I am not arrived to the Libyans.
The only boats depart from Libya carrying Somalis, Eritreans, Sudanese. The first two years. The first after criminals agreements between Italy and Libya for the rejections in the sea. People fleeing war and persecution, they sought asylum in our country, but were postponed to hell. The government in Tripoli did the dirty work for the government of Rome. A complete rejections service, prisons, abandoned in the desert.
They know something the Eritrean war refugees spend years in the prisons of Misurata and Brak.
The Northern League printed a poster with a picture of a boat full of people and says "we have stopped the invasion." Human rights, on which so often are traced to discriminate against civilization, they become waste paper when it suits. In the face of international conventions, in spite of the feeble protests dell'ANHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The umpteenth game of civilizations between the bombs and the satrap democratic Middle East in turn, has the bitter taste of the joke. Berlusconi and Gaddafi - as Sarkozy, Obama, Merkel, Cameron - decline of human rights in the same way. Gaddafi is now a criminal. Yet it is the same man who kissed and accepted, the same that the Italian government paid to keep closed the doors to the desperate of Africa.
Today these same desperate, probably escaped from Libyan jails in the commotion of the civil war that ravaged the country, reappeared in Lampedusa. And the government had to make the best of a bad job and welcome them, waiting for the new Libyans rulers can keep his promise to respect the agreements concluded with Italy by Gaddafi.
Two years ago the image of an adult man kneeling on a boat clung to the hands in plastic gloves is not a financier broke the silence of the people back in to the sea.
Today newspaper is the photo of the mother of the Ethiopian and Eritrean husband after the birth of their child into the sea. Nothing is said about them, because their history of riding a distant war, it is good that you do not know. Enough photos to make everyone feel good, a place with a clear conscience.
The Italians, you know, are good people, Mammon with the tear really easy. And a decent business sense. When the landings came from Tunisia a thousand a day, Maroni and Frattini, flew to Tunis with an offer to those who can not refuse. A credit of up to EUR 150 million more patrol boats and men of the Guardia di Finanza for training. In the package there is also the promise of $ 2000 to Tunisians who agree to go back voluntarily.
In return, the Tunisian government has promised to stop departures to Italy and to facilitate the repatriation operations. A package very similar to that offered and accepted at the time by Libya.
Memory and shame
When you read this you will know whether Tunisia was able to keep the commitments and collect the reward promised. So far, nothing is moved.
To put a patch, the society rewarded the barbed wire is opening 13 new CIE in temporary abandoned army structures. The first tent city was opened in the former military Manduria airfield. The others are preparing to, reopening abandoned military barracks and areas crumbling for decades.
But who cares. What matters is to turn off the fear aroused and fed by years of racist propaganda: what counts is to erect walls. The border line has become mobile, crosses the peninsula, with hundreds of meters of barbed wire and armed men.
In the chaos who can jumps the fence and gets back on the road. To the cities of the north, to France.
A few say it but does not add up. If the figures released by the Interior Ministry are true, if the last two and a half months have landed more than 24,000 Tunisians, many are missing the call. Only a small part was transferred to the CIE - revolt (1) in two months - or CARA or the former residence of the U.S. military Mineo been restored to the ICE / CARA. Several thousand have been transferred to the tents.
And the others? Or the numbers of landings were deliberately inflated or phantom, the Tunisians have gone to swell - in Italy and France - the ranks of those without papers, who live working in black.
The fight against illegal immigration is the toll to an electorate grown in hatred and fear of "illegal" and at the same time, the means to deal with foreign workers. With or without papers. Owners and owner-silent thanks to the arrival of fresh meat to be put to work. Without safeguards, no schedules, no pretension.
We are at war. Now in Lampedusa in Italy as everywhere the line between civil war and foreign war has become untouchable. It was crushed in Libyan prisons, including the waters of the Mediterranean, in the countryside of Rosarno, on the outskirts of cities, tent cities behind barbed wire.
Not enough to stop the testimony will not be enough outrage, you should get in the middle, by making a concrete solidarity with those who stumbled in the nets of the hunters of men. We need strong shear. Symbolic and real. To break the barbed wire and break the wall of hatred and fear that there is crushing.
There are memory and shame. A memory that is not there, the memory of Italy's colonial past, the memory of criminal wins, a ferocious repression of racism never vanished. Without memory and without shame we will not stop the war. The inner one, directed against refugees and migrants, such as that for Libya.
It is not easy. Yet one can not feel the urgency. The urgent need to remove that line of nothing all the same in the blue paper.
Maria Matteo
Front of CIE
Riots, fires, escapes
Brindisi, Bari, Milan, Turin, Gradisca. The Italian CIE between February and March were again inflamed. For more than a month have followed riots, fires, acts of self harm, running away.
The stars of the protests are almost always the Tunisian immigrants, often imprisoned after landing in Lampedusa. In their country they fought for freedom and bread and will not resign themselves to the cages where the Italian State locked up them.
Here is the chronicle of this long-term resistance. Resistance to which the State has responded with unprecedented ferocity.
Restinco. Friday, February 18 in five try to escape from the CIE of Brindisi. One only gains freedom, three are arrested.
Wednesday, February 23 two inmates trying to escape from the Bari Palese CIE: were arrested following a scuffle with the officers on duty. The accusation of injury and resisting a public officer.
Also on 23 February in Turin, in the center of the course Brunelleschi, a guy cuts his wrists while being led out, two others trying to climb over the fence. One can but it is immediately taken up and beaten by police.
The ICE in Trapani, where the tension is always very strong on the night between February 23 and 24 inmates smash everything that comes to hand.
Thursday, February 24 for the ICE in Bologna a Tunisian boy has sewn his lips. The next day was persuaded to shell out and get back to the Centre. Of course the newspapers, pretending not to know that his lips and eyelids are sewn a form of struggle now sadly usual in the cages of the immigrants say the boy is "crazy."
To accept, the protest began Feb. 24. In the morning the inmates set fire to mattresses, severely damaging four rooms in the blue zone. A dozen immigrants are beaten by the police.
The rooms are invested by the fire in all seven, including three completely unusable. In the evening, five Tunisians were arrested and imprisoned in Gorizia on charges of fomenting the revolt. The five had been transferred into the isontina structure with a direct flight from Lampedusa.
Friday, February 25 airs the replication of the previous day: other dormitories burn. A Tunisian was arrested on charges of having set the fire.
Saturday, February 26, the police station in Gorizia decided to leave off with 32 immigrants with expulsion papers, chosen among those "less dangerous".
Twenty more should be released Sunday, February 20, but the Interior Ministry blocks all. It explodes the protest louder than before: burning six other rooms. After a long day of Gradisca Centre there is very little: a room with 8 beds for 105 inmates.
In three days, the inmates set fire to their prison, demolishing, room after room.
Maroni does not know how to get on: the CIE are overflowing and there is no place anywhere. Admitting the failure of repressive policies towards illegal immigrants would be too great a humiliation for a Minister of the Northern League, that on the "hard" toward immigrants has built much of their fortunes. For this, cheerfully disregarding the living conditions of inmates, Maroni pretend that nothing has happened. The center, though that is more accessible, is not closed: one hundred immigrants.
The prisoners sleep and eat on the floor, couches in luck, like animals.
Turin, Monday, February 28. CIE in the yellow area is on fire: the prisoners, mostly Tunisians, burning mattresses and furnishings: the area is cleared and the immigrants moved to another area.
The chief of staff of the prefecture, Erminia Cicoria, reads: "Stay where they are." In the late evening of Sunday 20 March, a Tunisian boy has cut his throat, after a lively discussion with the inspector of the center, which had targeted, with amenities such as "I do your sister."
Bari On the afternoon of March 15th a 29 year old Tunisian swallows razor blades: rushed to the hospital runs, regaining their freedom. In the evening, six Tunisians set fire to mattresses and are arrested and put into prison for aggravated damage. Other inmates in the night destroying some furniture.
Milan. In the night between Saturday March 19 and Sunday, 20 at the CIE in via Corelli there have been five suicide attempts. Three boys have been drinking and washing were hurt, two others have tried to hang themselves. Perhaps the five hoped to be freed or escaped. Perhaps the despair of being denied any future has become contagious in an evening of early spring.
Likes. It is not long-term peace to the CIE. Sunday, March 20 a group of prisoners tried to escape, six immigrants can lose their tracks while seven were arrested. During the riot, four or five inmates are able to climb onto the roof and are let down by force. The rooms still viable after the revolt of the end of February were further damaged.
Turin. Around midnight on March 20 inmates of the green fire damage to mattresses and furniture. The damage is severe: incapacitating fire three of the five living units. The inmates, according to the tried and tested "grade models" are not transferred elsewhere but in the crowded cafeteria. On March 22, are on fire even tables and chairs in the canteen. Gathered in the courtyard and searched the prisoners are deprived of the lighters. In another section, some inmates are cut in protest: two are in hospital are medicated.
On March 23 is the turn of the blue area: some mattresses are burned. The next day in the same area immigrants are a beacon of mattresses in the yard. Friday, March 25 Police arrest two immigrants, accusing them of corruption. For summary trial and sentenced to five and six months, the two are reported to ICE.
Only on March 27, after five nights in the open, the green area ones are sorted in other sections. To do this they also filled the isolation cells.
Ma. Ma. |
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