This time Minister Maroni even provides numbers. According to
information provided by the ANSA agency on 18 March: “while 2411
migrants landed in Puglia, Calabria and Sardinia in 2008, there were
no arrivals between 1 January and 15 March 2009 in Puglia and
Calabria, and only 34 people landed in Sardinia.”
Clearly, the practice of “informal” refoulement adopted by Italy
against potential asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq arriving at
the Adriatic ports of Brindisi, Bari, Ancona and Venice from Patras,
allows the statistics experts of the Ministry of the Interior to make
the hundreds of migrants, including minors, who are repulsed weekly to
the hell that is Patras, “disappear”. Even if there are no landings,
hundreds of migrants reach the Adriatic ports on regular ferries.
These people, including potential applicants for asylum and even
minors are sent back on the same ferries to Greece. It should be noted
by all that even according to the Report of the Council of Europe’s
Commissioner for Human Rights, Hammarberg, it is impossible for an Afghani or an Iraqi to present with any likelihood of success an
application for asylum or international protection in Greece. Even the
State Council has noticed and recently issued an order suspending the
operation of the Dublin Convention, blocking the transfer of an asylum
seeker who had arrived in Italy and who the Ministry of the
Dublin-Unit wanted to return to Greece. In this way, the Council of
State confirmed the criticisms of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees, outlined in a report dated 15 April 2008, still have a
basis in Greece, and that neither the right to seek asylum, nor
indeed, a fair and impartial procedure are guaranteed, as required by
Community directives, and which itself Greece has incorporated into
national law.
In fact, as confirmed by the Ansa agency, on the 7th and 9th of March
this year, in only two days, more than sixty “irregular” immigrants
reached the Puglia port border. For the Minister this would simply be
“zero.” Sometimes the veil is really too transparent, and the
statistics of convenience, intended to hide the failure of the
government’s immigration and asylum policies, are contradicted by the
same sources of propaganda.
We will shortly see, not only in government declarations and figures,
what effects of the agreements between Italy, Libya and Tunisia have
here. There are certainly many irregular migrants who, after receiving
an expulsion or refoulement order, are released and ordered to leave
the country within five days, because following the extension of the
period of administrative detention to six months, the CIE centres have
run out of places.
And the worst is yet to come. With the approval of the draft security
law introducing the crime of clandestine immigration, it will be open
season for mass denunciation by all and sundry, and lead to an
exponential increase in the number of immigrants who have to be locked
up in CIE centres, when they can not immediately be repatriated.
As has been shown by the lack of immigration quotas for non-seasonal
work, a policy that closes the door to legal entry, and which, in the
name of security and the defence of selfishness, unchains war among
the poor and leads to choices that have criminal results as
prohibition increases the power and the profits of the mafias cashing
in on irregular immigration. It’s a shame that the wrong numbers are
given out, and that when repressive actions are taken the first to pay
the price are the very immigrants who have been “forced” to enter
“illegally” by the absence of legal channels, even when they are
minors or asylum seekers. This happens regularly at the border ports
of the Adriatic.
Translated by Chris. B.