GJADER (Albania) – “It’s exactly what we expected to see: an Italian-style detention center for returnees (CPR), concrete and cages, a place that annihilates people because it was designed to make them do only one thing: nothing. There is no way that it can represent a model for migration management.” This is the immediate impression that Rachele Scarpa reports toDire Agency. The deputy of the Democratic Party is part of the delegation of parliamentarians – made up of Riccardo Magi (+Europa), Paolo Ciani (Ds) and Francesca Ghirra (Avs) – who visited the Repatriation Center (CPR) of Gjader, which hosts the 12 Bangladeshi and Egyptian migrants arrived from the Shengjin hotspot. Magi is even more clear to the cameras: “It’s a concentration camp.” Also promoting the mission is the Asylum Roundtable network, which in Italy brings together the organizations that fight to defend the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.
We are in Albania, an hour’s drive from Tirana. But the jurisdiction, like the funds used to build the two centers, is 100% Italian. Inside the CPR, where journalists are not allowed, state police officers. “We’ve been here for six months,” says one of them. “Let’s take a turn. It feels good.” All around, mountains, houses and farms. On the only road that runs alongside the metal cube, with nine meter high fences, shepherds pass with their flock, a few cars and tractors. But since the Navy ship Libra set sail for the small port of Shengjin between Sunday and Monday, it also set in motion the “welcome machine” designed by Giorgia Meloni’s government through a protocol signed in November last year.
But not everything went as planned. Of the 16 people transported here, four have already returned to Italy: two were found to be minors and two vulnerable, details which escaped the checks of the staff on board the Libra “but not the specialized operators we made available. Protection officers notice things they normally miss.” explains Flavio di Giacomo, spokesperson for theInternational Organization for Migration (Oim). “It is thanks to this careful work started on board the Libra and continued in Shengjin”, underlines the official, “that only 16 and finally 12 were transferred. We plan to continue this support work for another three months”.
Only 2 criteria: “Show documents” and “Are you in good health?”. According to the Democratic Party deputy “the procedures have many shortcomings starting from the fact that the selection was based on two criteria: whether the migrants were in possession of the documents and whether their state of health was good, without other evaluations, including psychological ones” .
Stories of torture in Libya. Scarpa explains: “Everyone we spoke to – who looked tired and tired – told us they had passed through Libya and the traffickers. They have been in prisons and suffered torture. They also told us about one building in particular, where the Bangladeshi mafia would lock up people in single rooms until the family pays the ransom.” Then emerges the story of a man originally from Egypt, a country considered by Italy as “safe” for repatriation: “He is a deserter – reports Scarpa– he didn’t want to do his military service and now he’s terrified of returning, he fears they’ll kill him.”
“I wanted to swim to Lampedusa”. In addition to not being heard during the first screening on the Navy ship, the migrants were not even informed that they would be transferred to Albania. The PD deputy warns: “One of them reported that before transferring to the Libra, he had seen the coast of Lampedusa. So he told us ‘if I had known they would bring me here, I would have dived in to swim to Italy’”. A detail, that of the proximity of the coasts, which made the delegates suspicious: “But didn’t the transfers take place in international waters?” the question. In fact, the Protocol provides that “no one goes to Albania starting from Italy”. But then where were the Coast Guard patrol boats that carried out the rescue, then joined by the Libra? This will be revealed by the naval tracks, which the opposition parliamentarians are now preparing to acquire together with other documentation.
* Alessandra Fabbretti – DIRE Agency
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