Amnesty, ‘Italy violates the rights of migrants and refugees’

(ANSA) – BRUSSELS, JULY 4 – In Italy, migrants and asylum seekers are being unlawfully disadvantaged of their liberty in detention centres that fall wanting worldwide requirements. That is what Amnesty Worldwide stated in its report “Freedom and Dignity: Amnesty Worldwide’s observations on the executive detention of migrants and asylum seekers in Italy”. “Detention needs to be a measure of final resort. Nevertheless, within the centres we visited, we met individuals who ought to by no means have been detained: with severe psychological well being issues or in search of asylum due to their sexual orientation or political activism, however from nations that the Italian authorities has arbitrarily outlined as secure”, stated Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty Worldwide’s Deputy Regional Director for Europe. The NGO’s delegates visited the Ponte Galeria (Rome) and Pian del Lago (Caltanissetta) CPRs from 8 to 13 April, the place they had been in a position to communicate to legislation enforcement officers and operators employed within the services, in addition to have personal interviews with detainees. Amnesty Worldwide discovered that situations contained in the centres weren’t consistent with relevant worldwide legislation and requirements. “Administrative detention associated to migration should not be punitive and should not impose prison-like situations, however the centres visited appeared extraordinarily restrictive, naked and insufficient from a well being and security perspective,” the NGO stated in a press release. “These situations violate folks’s proper to dignity and have to be improved by the Italian authorities,” it added. Plans to construct new centres in Italy, mixed with the introduction of obligatory border procedures underneath the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and the upcoming implementation of the Italy-Albania settlement, make motion to stop additional violations of worldwide legislation affecting “a rising variety of folks” “more and more pressing”. (ANSA).