lunedì 31 dicembre 2012

Palace of desperate asylum seekers: Italy tramples its Constitution

di Emilio Drudi

 The Herald Tribune blew the case of the building of the desperate Romanina, the building which housed the University of Tor Vergata, left in a state of neglect and occupied since 2006 by hundreds of political refugees: young men and women, escaped mostly from the Horn of Africa, often with children, to escape war and persecution and who live by "non-persons", in a sort of ghost town, without being "seen" or listened to by anyone. Yet everyone knows that there are, in unacceptable conditions. Do you know the City of Rome, knows the Province, the Region, the Prefecture, the police, the police and, therefore, the Interior Ministry and the government. But no one has ever lifted a finger, reducing everything to a matter of public policy to be buried under a thick blanket of indifference and silence and forgetting the duties which the State has taken the very moment when he agreed to accept those desperate. Distracted and dumb also major Italian newspapers, so that the case, after the initial fanfare following the occupation, seemed closed. In fact, non-existent. He could not shake the feeling of Italian institutions and the press even Nils Muiznieks, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, at the beginning of last summer sent a report of fire, after finding the person as they are forced to live those men and women, left to themselves after having obtained the status of political refugees and asylum seekers. Nothing. Still silence. Until it came to service published on the front page Herald Tribune and the scandal has spread worldwide. Forcing Palazzo Chigi to say something, and waterfall, all other institutions, to the Capitol.

Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri - the same as in the name of the government signed last April a new agreement with Tripoli, as the one signed earlier by Berlusconi and Gaddafi, gives the control of migration in the Mediterranean to the police and lager Libyans - has finally discovered the problem of Romanina, which has dragged on since 2006, and has promised emergency response, as well as a future wider plan of "social inclusion". Seems to repeat the story of the 63 refugees, mostly Eritreans and Somalis, who fled from Libya in late March and early April of 2011 and left to die of thirst and starvation on a boat in distress, drifting for two weeks the Strait of Sicily. Even then, no one spoke for fifteen long days, or has found something to say. No government, no politics, nothing in the media. Despite complaints Habeshia agency and other humanitarian organizations. Until the case has captured the Guardian of London, making it an international scandal that cost Italy an official condemnation of the Council of Europe. Immediately after the ruling, the Monti government has pledged to abide by its directions, promising greater openness to refugees and migrants. But it has not changed almost nothing. Almost simultaneously, an investigation was initiated by the military prosecutor, but without disturbing the "political" in the viewfinder there would only be responsible for some, for various reasons, the Coast Guard.
Neither the case of Romanina is isolated. If anything it is the most famous symbol of a dramatic situation as widespread as it hushed up. In the former building of the University of Tor Vergata are 800, but hundreds of other refugees abandoned by all living in an old building on the busy street Collatina in Rome. And, in Rome, at least as many are forced to live in slums along the Tiber and Aniene. The largest is in Ponte Mammolo true "dump" of humanity defeat. Not to mention the many who had sought refuge in art nouveau villa on the Via Nomentana former seat of the consulate of Somalia. An "invasion" that has gone on for years, in conditions of absolute poverty and insecurity in practice without services, with one or two bathrooms at best, for everyone. But not if they have never spoken until there has been a dramatic fact of crime, the rape of a girl who had followed a friend in the "house of despair", became gradually a bomb ready to explode. Also because the number of asylum seekers and refugees, who had initially promoted employment, were added characters of all kinds.
And then the centers for identification and expulsion, the notorious Cie, authentic masked prisons, where the "guests" lose all rights in practice. And where, at the time of the Berlusconi government, express will of the Northern League interior minister Roberto Maroni, was banned from entering all journalists, humanitarian organizations, doctors and health care associations, local administrators. Now the ban has been dropped or even with a thousand precautions and no little difficulty the Cie are "inspected". But the internal situation has not changed much. Not by chance you explode periodically turned furious.
Is it any wonder, then, that image may have a country that pretends to accommodate thousands of refugees a year and then forgets about them, turning them into "non-persons". The complaint of the UN High Commissioner speaks for itself. In 2011 the number of asylum applications in Italy were more than 35,000 and more than a third, 35 percent, were accepted. But the National Service for assistance is made available only 3000 seats. That is, only one out of four was really "accepted". All the others, more than nine thousand young men and women, were left to themselves, doomed to become the "ghosts" of one of the many villages of despair arose in the palaces of abandoned suburbs. It then returns to the question. What credibility can claim international Italy. And what kind of country is this, which is enhanced for the show on TV about the "Constitution most beautiful in the world" explained Roberto Benigni, but insists on not apply. Enough to forget one of the most significant passages and advanced, paragraph three of Article 10, which says: "A foreigner who is denied his country in the effective exercise of the democratic liberties guaranteed by the Italian Constitution, the right of asylum in territory of the Republic. "
Right of asylum. Not alms hairy underground shelter in a cabin or in a building that is falling and sentenced to a life as outcasts. "Invisible".

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