Per la libertà di movimento, per i diritti di cittadinanza

Venice harbour repatriations

Rosanna Marcato, Immigration service and citizenship rights promotion (Venice)

Past week local newspapers referred of the border police declarations on controls and repatriations at Venice harbour.

The article title said “Seven hundred clandestines at the harbour in nine months”.
Some police reflections are chilling, they have a completely distorted idea of the journeys the so called clandestines have to pass through. People who reach Venice are often fleeing away from war and persecutions. They are often Kurds, Iraqi, Afghans, etc.
Police data leave no doubts. Out of 688 people stopped only seven of them applied for asylum…the others were all rejected.

Once again we have to talk about the situation of controls at borders and attitude performed by Venice harbour border police towards clandestinely embarked people. These people are trying to reach Europe, the famous Europe of rights.
We often considered this issue through out Melting pot broadcasts, it in fact a much treated in newspapers subject. Papers write of the strengh pursued by police in order to safeguard our territories from clandestines invasion. Papers also give the numbers of rejections.
Today we shall consider Thurday October 2nd article published by Venice Gazzettino.
The article is particularly representative. I shall read some of its lines:
“It was once called the journey towards hope…but the journey is more like travelling towards hell: a real nightmare ending up at Venice harbour… Venice is not Lampedusa of coarse, but clandestines stopped in our city are not few in numbers: border police say that in nine months 688 people were stopped:…Mainly Afghans, Kurds coming from Iraq and Iraqi reached our shores. Only seven of them appiled for asylum, whereas the others were all expelled. The most of them were men, very few women and children, rarely did we find families, when this occurred we managed to find accomodation and sometimes asylum…We are not talking of people effectively running away but they are people who organize their journey after a long stay in Greece”.

It seems to me very strange that out of 688 people coming from the most unstable countries, destroyed by our bombs, of the world only seven need protection and asked for asylum. We clearly hold some doubts.
It is also quite strange that these seven people are the only ones that the Accomodation service at the harbour border (a service opened in 2001 by Prefecture and run by the Italian refugees council) could actually meet. They weren’t sent there by police but they were signalled the service by others. It is quite strange that a service opended by Prefectures is everyday and always ignored by border police. It is also strange that police decides which country is to take care of the asylum application form instead of ministry of interion Dublin unity.
Police states:“They come from Greece, a safe country adhering to the Dublin convention, they are therefore to be rejected to Greece”. But Greece could be only a passage country, or there could be good enough reasons to ask for asylum in another country.
We are too often told by these people that – when they manage to reach our services – they do not even know where they are, they travel nights and days without ever stopping hidden in containers or in lorries. When police find them they do not understand the language nor are there interpreters understanding them: their only worry was to run away from border police.

We find it hard to understand how police manages to decently talk, often without interpreters, to scared tired people, who know nothing about their rights and duties and whose stories are usually complicated.
Another doubt we hold concerns the police declaration underlining that in case women with children or families are found, accomodation and asylum are favoured.
We’d also like to ask to Prefecture, which activated the accomodation service and should verify its work and its use, why this service where qualified operators and interpreters work is completely ignored. This is not a service only asylum seekers can take use of but it is an information service open to migrants, it gives information on duties/rights, Italian and European laws on immigration issues, the help to asylum seekers only then comes.
It would probably avoided what happened to the Afghan boy who was trying to run away from controls and jumped off the board breaking both his feet.
We wonder why he didn’t apply for asylum since, as the article states, he programmed the journey sitting in a bar during one of those beautiful Afghan nights brighten by our bombs.

How strange, instead of appealing to police to be then rejected he preferred the jump…