Cpr in Albania, the government’s silence while Meloni argues with SeaWatch

Formal questions in the House and Senate, speeches and interviews. The opposition asked for clarification on the Albania operation in vain, the government continued in silence. Only on SeaWatch.

The Italian section of the German NGO wrote on its profile last night: “The Meloni Government of self-proclaimed patriots spends hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ euros to deport and incarcerate a few thousand migrants in Albania. Perhaps Italians’ taxes can be spent better, to welcome and include, rather than reject.”

A few hours pass, it’s 11pm or a little later, and here comes the response from the prime minister’s official account: “What a scandal! A government that – with a clear mandate received from citizens – works to defend the Italian borders and stop human trafficking, through concrete actions and international agreements”.

Among the activists there was almost no belief in it. “But how? Does he ignore deputies and senators and answer to us?”. With a tweet they immediately replied: “And what would be the concrete actions President Meloni? Fund so-called coast guards made up of real human traffickers? Incarcerate thousands of innocent people because they were driving the boat they arrived on? Spend millions of Italian euros on overseas prisons?”.

Questions to which the prime minister did not answer. After that surgery she returned to entrench herself in her usual silence on an operation that appears more and more controversial day after day. And potentially bankrupt. The sentence of the European Court of Justice which, by reviewing the criteria necessary to define a safe country, eliminated the legal basis for detention and accelerated border procedures.

“We find all this bizarre to say the least. Ours was a general consideration, which anyone could make, on how the government administers citizens’ contributions, precisely at a time when cuts are being announced. It would be important for the prime minister to give an institutional or to the press when questions are asked,” she says Giorgia Linardispokesperson for Sea Watch Italia. “As Sea Watch we would expect reactions whenever we document the consequences of Italian policies in the Mediterranean in terms of human costs, which fuel human trafficking by having people captured at sea and put back into the hands of the traffickers the government claims to fight. In those cases, however, the only response is to shut our mouths and close our eyes, hindering rescue at sea and attempting to block our planes as done with the latest flow decree”.