Minister Maroni said that Libya doesn’t respect the agreements took with Italy because it lets hundreds of clandestines leave its coasts.
He spoke at the Lega Nord annual party, in Venice, receiving general applauses.
Next to him there was Angela Maraventano, deputy mayor and Lega Nord Senator that comes from Lampedusa. She started managing a pizza-restaurant and then went into politics taking advantage of the “landing panic” that from her island has been diffused in the whole Italy.
She, the Secretary of the Interior and the Lega Nord supporters only desire that foreigners cannot reach Italy from the sea. They don’t want thousands of desperate people every year, children and pregnant women that need somehow accomodation and food. People so out of God’s grace that burn their fingertips for not being identified and sent back.
It doesn’t matter which instruments the government needs to use to prevent the incoming of black people to Lampedusa (or “the Turkish”, as they are still called in Sicily).
It doesn’t matter the fate of the 341 migrants arrived Saturday, among which there were 67 women and 26 minors, if they weren’t able to leave Libya.
It doesn’t matter the journey they made to reach Italy, if the women were raped and the mens were robbed and beaten up during the desert crossing and if they could suffer again.
It doesn’t matter if the ones that reached Lampedusa were only the survivors of Mediterranean Sea waves, where thousands and thousands of cadavers vanish every year.
And obviously it doesn’t matter if all these problems could be avoided if only politicians opened legal admittance channels apart from the disastrous quote system.
People that reach Italy by sea passing for Maghreb, moreover, are potential political asylum applicants and they could have a right to an international protection. These are official datas of UNHCR (= UN High Commissioner for Refugees).
Thinking of how legitimized is this way of thinking today in Italy it’s scaring. It’s not a novelty related to Lega Nord’s Secretary of Interior or to Silvio Berlusconi’s government.
Under colonel Gheddafi tent there had been people of every political party. In the same way, all these politicians turned to the Libyan dictator on the international scene like if it was the last paladin of European frontiers.
Italy, one of the “democracy exporter” countries, in front line to bombard Afghan — and till yesterday also Iraqi — civil population under the pretext of protection of world human rights, doesn’t think it’s a problem promoting economic exchanges using humans as a coin, neither delegating to Libyan police the administration of their lives.
There are no more secrets concerning the inhuman and demeaning treatments suffered by migrants in that country. It’s well known the end of a lot of people deported from Lampedusa to Tripoli in 2004 and 2005, dead in the desert where Libyan authorities left them.
Authorative and detailed reports about Libyan detention centres demeanor aren’t lacking. These centres have been generously financed by Italy long since.
The last document that doesn’t leave doubts about this problem is the documentary of Riccardo Biadene, Andrea Segre and Dagmawi Yimer, produced by Asinitas Onlus in cooperation with Zalab, which preview will be at Milano Film Festival on 16th september 2008 and in Rome on 23th september.
These persons terrible suffering takes place at the instance of Italy and Europe. This request will be soon renewed by Maroni like previously done by D’Alema, Amato and other ones. The result will be only other violence and deaths.
The routes are going to move from Libya to Algeria and Egypt, countries that introduced the illegal emigration crime because so influenced by Europe. What sort will wait people intercepted, arrested, deported doesn’t seem a responsibility of whom, from Italy, can construct his politics on “the others” refuse, and turn the back on the consequences that this choice involves.
Translated by Alessia Bertin