Per la libertà di movimento, per i diritti di cittadinanza

Padova- The odyssey of refugees found in a container: beaten up in Greece then charged with illegal immigration in Italy

Reaching Italy must have been far more than a dream, a vital necessity, probably the only choice they had. It is hard to believe otherwise as 15 young men of African origins were found near Padova in a freight car full of seeds, having paid for a highly risky and potentially lethal 4-day long trip.
40 cm of living space, a blanket, some bottles of water and the agreement with a Pakistan smuggler that “shipped” them as human-cargo from Serbia to Italy, passing through Villa Opicina until S.Martino di Lupari, near Padova, where they could finally fill their lungs with fresh air after workers for the company Agriservice opened the doors of what could have turned into a railtrack-grave.

Their odyssey has made it to the news only once they saw the light, but their escape had started much earlier and much farther and it might not even be over yet, which is worse. This is no news because Italy is capable of reserving the worst vexations to all asylum seekers and refugees, not only to those who drown at see. Just a few hours earlier a group of Syrian families had been intercepted while walking on a highway near Rovigo. The maps of the cities of the whole peninsula are filled with big and small hideaways where those who have been abandoned by the institutions find shelter. Not far from Padova, in the harbour of Venice, far away from the spotlights set on Lampedusa, rights’ violations are consumed on a daily basis with the silent refoulement of hundreds of kurdi and afghan kids who, with the only purpose of getting to Italy hidden inside trucks coming from Greece, risk their lives year after year. A little far North from there, hundreds of migrants are confined for months in the First Help Center for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (in Italian CARA) of Grandisca d’Isonzo while waiting for an answer to their request for asylum. And these are just some examples, snapshots of a system that is not working, due to its “original sin” of fighting illegal immigration. On one side, the story of these 15 young is just one out of the hundreds biographies telling the tail of the EU policy’s cruelty, on the other it symbolizes the failure of any reception strategy in this country.

Lately the news of their finding has dominated the scene in local media. Many, journalists and not, have sought information on their fate, but a smoky blanket seems to be covering this story. Nobody has to know. Why?

We were able to meet with these young Africans less than 24h after their arrival to start casting some light upon what might turn into yet another episode of violation of rights and dirty dealings.

We sit at a table in a bar and they show us a piece of paper. The first and only document they received from Italian authorities is a record drafted by Carabinieri of Cittadella “as people subject to investigation”.

The charge is based on Article 10 bis of Legislative Decree 286/98, the Consolidated Act on Immigration: illegal entry and stay. They are charged with clandestine offence that disturbing stigma that even the actual Government believes to be detrimental and “abrogable”.

The journey

Let’s play backwards all their stories. Their narratives take us in the Northeast of Nigeria, a place witnessing a tremendous escalation of violence, destroyed by a never-ending armed conflict. UNHCR, many organizations and the Italian Foreign Affair Ministry (Farnesina) itself qualify it as a high-risk area. That is where many of them set out from. Some left by plane, others have walked towards Mali or have reached Libya crossing the Niger, and from there they set out to get to Europe by boat, finding themselves in Turkey instead. From Turkey they had to face a journey across frontiers. But before they got to Serbia, passing through Albania and Montenegro, before they even met each other, before boarding that railcar from Sid which could have been their last bed, they all stopped in Greece: a key component of their adventure, a key component of the adventure that brought them here and probably pivotal even in that which awaits them.

The first and only piece of paper from Italian authorities was the charge for clandestine offence

It is precisely in Greece that their stories crossed paths once again: there, where inside detention centres all rights become scrap paper, the country where recognition of refugee status’s percentages are close to zero, there where the economic crisis is worst, a country where the fight on blacks has become a real manhunt, in the periphery of the Europa as a Monetary Union, a country towards which even the Italian Council of State declared the necessity of suspending transfers of people due to the risk of irreparable damages.

They have lived as prisoners for a year and a half. Some have gone through three or four different detention camps while waiting to know their fate and start travelling again. Then Greek Police has set them free giving them one month time to leave the country. They went to Athens, where they lived with no food and no place to rest and where they experienced all the racist violence of Golden Dawn, a party that has gained consensus in Greece over the past few years. They have been violently beaten up and many still carry the scars of those nights spent near the Pantheon looking for a place to hide not much from the cold, but rather from neo-Nazi’s patrols.

The scars of such violence are likely not to be the only signs they still carry as their stop in Greece might bring them back there. Indeed, according to the Dublin Regulation that identifies the competent State in examining asylum requests, it is not possible to ask for international protection in a EU member state different from the one of entry. A real cage imposed upon migrants. Hence it is the Dublin Unit that will respond to their request for asylum, request which, unless something unexpected happens, they shall be presenting to the Italian police headquarters (Questura) in the coming hours.
It should not even be the case of pointing out the fact that the possible “refoulement” of asylum seekers would be a harsh violation of their rights, taking into account the copious number of precedents highlighting the risks caused by possible refoulements towards Greece. Not many hours ago has come in the news of a huge protest in Greek’s detention centres where migrants have sewed their lips together to manifest against the inhuman and degrading situation they suffer, defined as such even by the European Court of Human Rights and by the Council of Europe’ s Committee for the Prevention of Torture

Beaten up by Alba Dorata’s patrols. Dublin Regulation might send them back to Greece

Meanwhile these fifteen young man are still here, still wondering what will be of them, whilst yet no one seems to be willing to hear their story. A life on the knife-edge between irregularity and protection, as confirmed by the local newspapers that, despite the Rome Statute, still call them “clandestine”.

Still, after they had been saved from those deadly railcars and taken to the hospital there sure was enough time, at least the same amount used to write down their charge, that could have been used to consider their application for asylum. Once out of the hospital they were sent to spend the night Padova instead.

And this is where another dark chapter of the story begins. Because they were housed in the sadly famous “Casa a Colori”, a hostel that under emergency becomes the solution to eviction and refugees, the same place that between 2011 and 2012 hosted nearly 90 “asylum-seekers” from North Africa with a daily bonus, paid by the authority, of 46euros each. A fortune of over 1.500.000 euros cashed in at the migrant’s expenses.

To the press’ s requests the managing institution has repeatedly denied the presence of these fifteen people, uncertainty and worry coming from the offices in Via del Commissario have done nothing but cast longer shadows upon the story. No food, no clothes, no information. What is the logic under which Casa a Colori could host asylum seekers? It is certainly not a managing institution with competence in the sector and it does not even look like it is part of the new projects recently adopted by the Ministry of the Interior on Service of Protection for Asylum Seekers and Refugees.

Among the possible answers that might be given to such questions stands the circular diffused during the past few months by the Ministry of the Interior (Viminale) itself. The indications thereby contained look like a partially revisited edition of the disastrous experience of the North African crisis. Indeed, once again skipping the SPRAR system and without even slightly considering the minimum standards thereby imposed, the ministry asks the Prefectures to identify structures and managing institutions in the “social private sector” what may host asylum seekers outside the official circuits under compensation of 30 euros per day that, in any case, will never have ended in the migrants’ pockets. It is easy to imagine that he who has in the past been able to restore its budget properly thanks to the “reception business”, is now looking at this new deal as a speculation opportunity. Just a small detail: it is the very ministerial circular to point out that it would be best to identify places with a maximum capability of no more than 25/50 people.

Still inflating the business at the migrants’ expenses

It surely does not fall upon us to reject such allegations, otherwise one is driven to believe that the Casa a Colori solution was a temporary one, one given solely while waiting for the authorities to decide upon the course of actions, which depicts the same old cabaret made of unaccountability, infringed rights and iniquitous choices, a scenario Italians have become acquainted with thanks to the situation of asylum seekers and refugees’ protection.

Meanwhile, for the upcoming May 1st -Labour Day-, Stop Racism Association (Associazione Razzismo Stop), together with the association for labour rights of the independent trade union “Cobas” (ADL Cobas) and the housing rights movements, has launched a mobilization that includes migrants, refugees and logistics employees to reaffirm “the necessity of putting an end to the protection system based on camps and centres, to build up a system based on a holistic protection, decentred and grounded in the valorisation of people’s personal paths, promoting experiences of self-guided and self-organized protection/welcoming, also to prevent the formation of speculative monopolies” and together to reaffirm “the necessity of the immediate abrogation of the Dublin Regulation which forces migrants to submit their request for asylum to the first member state they enter, hence obstructing people’s plan of life’s realization” as stated by the Lampedusa Charter, the programmatic declaration signed last February 1st by the movements gathered in Lampedusa.

What the very story of these fifteen migrants forced to travel through the harsh Balkan route is telling us is how Lampedusa is not far, even from the distant North East.

Translated by Giulia Di Fiore