I said yesterday that
today would probably give me lots to write about. In fact, I want to say so
much that I am not sure where to start. I had three appointments today – one
with the Italian Refugee Council, one with the Centro Astalli of the Jesuits,
and a phone interview with a representative of the Greek asylum service. All
three were very successful from the point of view of Harald the PhD student,
and very troubling from the point of view of Harald the human being. Let me
tell you what happened.
This morning I drove back
into Catania at 9am, having no trouble at all with finding the IRC’s offices.
In fact they share offices with the intercultural centre of the city of
Catania, and I certainly felt like the attraction of the day when I entered the
building. I don’t know why, but everyone stared at me and two girls were
giggling in the corner when I sat down to wait for my appointment. The
interview was very useful. I will not summarise every single detail, but
essentially the situation is as follows: the agriculture of Southern Italy is
entirely dependent on migrant workers. Both my interview partners confirmed
that agriculture in Sicily would be “dead” without the cheap labour that immigrants
provide. Agriculture in turn is managed by the mafia. It is therefore in the
interests of the mafia to get immigrants to come to Sicily. One way this is
apparently done is vividly demonstrated by an incident that occurred two years
ago at the Italian maritime border. When a migrant boat from Egypt (!!) arrived
at that border, the people on it were transferred into a different boat – the
latter process was organised by people linked to the mafia. One of my interview
partners said that he would not be surprised if the mafia manages the smuggling
operations on the other side of the Mediterranean. But this is not were
business ends.
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| Seemingly idyllic Sicilian scenery |
About 50 kilometres from
Catania there is a small town called Mineo. Although the town is in the middle
of nowhere and hardly worth mentioning, it had gained a reputation among the
Sicilians since it housed an American army base of about 400 soldiers. The US
army had built a whole village for itself, including an entire infrastructure,
villas and lots of pretty houses. A couple of years ago, the Americans
abandoned the base and left behind a ghost town. The owner of the land the base
was built on, an extremely rich man named Pizzarotti, was now in trouble. For
years the Americans had paid insane amounts of rent, and now he was left with a
worthless piece of land nobody would ever be interested in renting. That’s when
he had the idea of converting the place into a camp for immigrants. Mineo now
houses 4,500 people. As could be expected, Pizzarotti is notorious for being a
Mafiosi himself. Every year the Italian government pays him hundreds of
thousands of euros in rent for his property. Most shockingly of all, the
Italian government pays with money from the European refugee fund – €37 per day
per person. Spend ten seconds calculating in your head and you will begin to
see what dimensions we are talking about. Initially the people who lived around
Mineo were very upset about the relocation of the refugee camp to their
doorstep. Now, they have begun to base their livelihoods on it. Hundreds of
people are either employed in the camp itself, or they live off it indirectly
by selling food to the residents. Officially the place is called Residenze dei Aranci – Residence of
Oranges.
After this meeting I went
to the Centro Astalli. It is an amazing institution that provides help for
immigrants of all kinds. Many immigrants avoid submitting their fingerprints to
the Eurodac-database, because it will ruin their chances of applying for asylum
in another EU member state according to the Dublin-Regulation (in most cases
anyway). However, this also means not having access to many basic services such
as receiving medication. In Sicily, everyone has to right to essential care at
public hospitals, but medication costs money. That’s why the Centro Astalli
provides all kinds of meds for free, including anti-retrovirals antibiotics.
Assistance is also provided for people suffering from alcoholism, which is
increasingly wide-spread because people are sleeping outdoors in the cold.
Although the centre is run by Jesuits and there were crosses on the walls, I
also saw posters with the Islamic prayer times on the walls.
One of the most shocking
things the lady who showed me around told me also concerns Mineo. Some
criminals have made it a business to drive the residents to Catania and back,
expecting money in return. Money is obviously something immigrants lack, which
is why the drivers often ask for alternative means of payment. There have been
numerous incidents involving prostitution. Furthermore, the drivers will ask
the Mineo residents to smuggle drugs back into the camp. This is another way
that immigration has benefitted the Sicilian mafia.
After I left, I walked for
a bit around town. At the train station there were immigrants sitting on every
single bench, many of them no older than 15. At the IRC I was told that 300
unaccompanied minors had recently escaped from a nearby ‘reception’ centre. Of
course, 300 people do not just escape – it is obvious that the authorities who
were theoretically responsible for protecting them let them leave, knowing very
well that this would result in their homelessness.
The amount of human
suffering here is difficult to grasp. I remember being in the European
Commission a year ago, being told by someone working in the asylum unit that
the Italians exaggerate about their problems with immigration. She pointed to
the statistics, which show that the number of asylum applications on Italy is
totally normal for a country of that size. It is obvious that the people in the
Commission have no idea what they are talking about. Spend fifteen minutes in
the city centre of Catania or Palermo and you will know that this problem is
real.
I’ll stop for today. The
phone interview I had with the Greek asylum service was so insightful that it
merits a post of its own, which I will write later.
