Solidarity under attack

Anti-racist demonstration after clashes between Casapound right-wing extremists who want a Red Cross-run refugee centre to be closed down and neighbourhood anti-fascists in Rome, Italy. September 16, 2017. Patrizia Cortellessa/ Press Association. All rights reserved.Since
the EU-Turkey refugee deal, attention has shifted back to the North Africa-Italy
route – and particularly the Libya-Italy Mediterranean route. This stretch of sea
has for decades been among the deadliest for reaching Europe, and still is;
the death rate among
migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean to enter Europe has long ago reached
the body count of a war. Refugees are still dying at a quicker rate in the Mediterranean.

Many still
remember the tragedy that occurred on October 3, 2013 off the Lampedusa coasts,
which cost the life of more than 350 men, women and children – mostly from
Eritrea. Politicians paraded in front of the lined-up caskets in Lampedusa with
the promise that they would take action to prevent such tragedies from happening
again. The Italian government launched the Mare Nostrum humanitarian operation
to ‘provide safety at sea’. But already in 2014, the rescue task was handed
over to so-called Operation Triton, led by the Frontex EU agency.

This was
simply not adequate; several NGOs and international organisations duly had to take
action with their own vessels and manpower, to supply more than 40
pct. of the total search and rescue operations at sea. On
the initiative of the Italian government with the support of the EU, most of
the NGO search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean have now been severely
downsized. In fact, almost put on hold. NGOs operating in the Mediterranean
have furthermore been accused on several sides of acting as a ‘taxi service to
Europe’, thereby facilitating smugglers’ activities and their illicit business on
Libyan shores.

An attack on solidarity

These
measures can be interpreted as an attack against solidarity and as an acceleration
of the measures that criminalize pro-migrant solidarity in Italy and the EU. In
this regard, we argue that there is a very close relationship between: approval
of the new
immigration bill and the implementation of the so-called ‘Code
of Conduct’ for NGOs doing rescue operations in the Mediterranean. At the
same time, the frequent and often violent evictions of migrant squats, buildings
and encampments we are witnessing taking place in major cities such as Rome,
Milan, Bologna, and the rising number of trials against pro-migrant activists
facing persecution for their activities, reveal a concerted attempt on the part
of the authorities in Italy and Europe to undermine forms of solidarity with and
for migrants in civil society. It is time that civil
society resisted such attacks and actively reclaimed the role played by
solidarity in our societies, if we still want to call them democratic.   

It is time that civil society resisted such attacks
and actively reclaimed the role played by solidarity in our societies, if we still
want to call them democratic.

Criminalising immigration, criminalising solidarity  

Italy’s
new immigration bill and measures approved aim at: curbing migration flows, speeding
up asylum evaluations, and restoring ‘legality and dignity’ to sub-urban areas.
In reality, the common denominator is to criminalize migrants, pro-migrant groups,
organisations and activists and integrate such an approach by means of
regulations and the law. This entails the
merging of criminal with migration law into ‘crimmigration’,
to act as a better “gatekeeper of membership in our society”.

The ‘crimmigration’
approach has developed out of ‘securitization approaches’, inaugurated in the
aftermath of 9/11. It has contributed to the sponsorship of the migration
control industry, based on the adoption of restrictive and security-oriented measures
against migrants. Noteworthy examples include the increasing efforts to prevent
migration by using punishment, policing and crime prevention methods, such as:
detention, fingerprints, id-racial controls, walling, border patrolling, etc. These
policy developments exact a very high price: the weakening of human rights, the
rights of children and basic civil rights.  

Forms
of criminalisation at the policy-making level today go hand in hand with the
spreading of toxic narratives aimed at criminalizing refugees and pro-migrant solidarity.
The recently implemented Italian law on immigration (Minniti-Orlando decree) and the Code of Conduct for NGOs – alongside
other examples outside Italy, such as the Délit
de Solidarité (Article L.622-1) in France and the Lander Geographical Restrictions (Asylum Procedure Act 2008,
Article 56) in Germany epitomise what looks like an orchestrated attack against
solidarity and against human rights. The Italian
law on immigration (Minniti-Orlando
decree)… – alongside the Délit de
Solidarité in France and the Lander
Geographical Restrictions in Germany epitomise what looks like an
orchestrated attack against solidarity and human rights.

Nowadays,
a wide array of new infractions are directly itemised as criminal offences, and
are addressed not only against migrants, but also against
those individuals and groups “concealing, harbouring, shielding, aiding,
abetting, employing, carrying and associating with criminal migrants”. All such
measures legitimise and gather support for the joint criminalisation of immigrants
and solidarity.

The Minniti-Orlando Law: more incarcerations, fewer rights
 

In
Spring 2017, Italian PM Paolo Gentiloni heartily welcomed the Parliament’s
approval of the new  migration bill, the so-called
Minniti-Orlando
decree – aimed at providing “more effective instruments for the asylum
request evaluation, reception and potential expulsion of the asylum seekers”.
The decree presents three major amendments to previous legislation on migration
and asylum matters:

a)     The abolition of the second degree of judgement for
those who have appealed an asylum denial;

b)    The abolition of the judicial hearing;

c)     The construction of a network of centres for
identification and expulsion (similar to the former CIE), now called CPR
(Permanent Centres for Repatriation);

As for measures
a) and b): these will of course accelerate the process of asylum evaluations, but
at the same time they will severely restrict and worsen their conditions,
making procedures even more discretionary than they already are. These
adjustments indicate an alarming convergence of criminal and migration laws in
migration policy making. In particular, the removal of the possibility to appeal
for denied asylum status breaches one of the fundamental rights in the Italian
constitution (all are equal before the law), discriminating between Italian
citizens and foreigners. The asylum seeker is in this way constructed as a
distinct juridical person, and as such considered unentitled/undeserving to have
access to the same rights as all others.

Also,
this manner of proceeding can only exponentially augment so-called administrative
detention, given that deportation is an inhumane practice and in many cases
impractical, both for political and economic reasons.

The ‘Lock ‘em up’ approach

So-called
CIE (Centres for Identification and Expulsion) were first established at the
end of the 1990s by the Turco-Napolitano
migration law. This was later modified by the infamous 2002 Bossi-Fini Law
and subsequently by the Security Act in 2012.
All of these offer concrete examples of how incarceration was previously implemented
in relation to forced repatriation/deportation. The duration of the detention
should by law be limited to 30 days, which however often gets extended to up to
18 months, in the eventuality of “temporary circumstances obstructing the
expulsion practice”.  The ‘deportees’
are “deprived of their personal freedom, […] they are not allowed to receive
external visits and thus it is not provided for them any kind of legal
defence”.

The
introduction of the ‘clandestinity crime’ (art.10bis, T.U. Immigrazione) by the Bossi-Fini law also further restricted
basic legal rights and guarantees: it virtually allowed police authorities to detain
undocumented migrants, even in cases where these had not yet lodged an asylum
application, or were without their working permit. Today, refugees are
allowed to apply while in ‘detention’, but only to the police. An investigation
carried out in 2013 by MEDU (Medici per i Diritti Umani, Doctors for Human
Rights) showed that eleven out of thirteen operative Italian CIE at that time contained
degrading and completely inadequate living and health conditions. Economically
their management was inefficient and costly. In
spite of reports clearly showing the malfunction and inhumane conditions of
this system, the Italian government plans to increase the number of deportation
centres.

However,
and in spite of reports clearly showing the malfunction and inhumane conditions
of this system, the Italian government plans to increase the number of deportation
centres, thus continuing to reinforce paradigms that associate immigration with
crime, and crime with the need to lock people up.  

Migration is NOT a crime, Solidarity is NOT a crime

At the
end of July 2017, the Italian Interior Minister discussed a new Code of Conduct
for the NGOs doing search and rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean Sea.
The terms of the document had later to be signed by NGOs; Sea Watch, Jugend
Rettet and MSF declined to do this, which implied they had to interrupt their
SAR operations, followed few weeks later by MOAS.

The code
bans the entrance of the NGOs’ boats in Libyan waters, the trans-shipment of
migrants on other vessels (except in an emergency situation, which requires
coordination with the Italian Coast Guard) and the obligation to receive on
board armed judicial police officers for
investigations. According to the Italian government, these measures will
curb migration flow into Europe via the Mediterranean route, and also prevent potential
connections between NGOs and human traffickers, as blatantly stated by the public
prosecutor of Trapani, Carmelo Zuccaro, a few weeks before the code was approved.
Zuccaro’s declarations have ignited an aggressive furore directed at the role played
by NGOs, with many politicians and media sources describing the NGOs as ‘the
migrants’ private taxis to Europe’.

The
implementation of the Code coincided with renewed negotiations between the
Italian government and Libyan authorities, particularly with the Tripoli government
of Al Serraj. The meetings
promoted by Minniti to establish patrolling zones along the migration
routes and to strengthen Libyan
Coast Guard activities have the clear aim of externalizing the Italian and
European borders to Libya.

Since the
presence of NGOs and civil society representatives in Mediterranean waters would
potentially interfere with if not obstruct these activities and agreements, the
criminalization of migrant solidarity becomes an indispensable corollary of the
plan.    

Similarly,
attacks against migrant solidarity within Fortress Europe have increased in recent
months. At the beginning of August, the Bologna based grassroots association Làbas,
which also provides assistance and support to migrants in the city, was
brutally evicted by police. Two weeks later, an empty building squatted in
October 2013 nearby the Rome Termini station and hosting mostly Eritrean refugees
was cleared by the police forces sent by the Rome municipality. Later, clashes broke
out between police forces and the evicted, who had temporarily encamped
themselves in the nearby Piazza Indipendenza. Several people were injured. Most
of these people have not yet found a place to stay.

Independence Square,August 24, 2017. After hundreds were evicted, police use water cannon to 'disperse refugees'. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved.But these
kinds of practices are not new to the recently installed municipal council led
by M5S mayor Virginia Raggi who has declared that ‘no more migrants can move
into the city’. Allegedly those already living in the city will now also
be moved out. Prior to these recent events, the city council had shown
scant regard for the activities, for example, of the pro-migrant grassroots’
organization Baobab, which since 2015 has provided shelter, support and first-aid
to migrants. The Baobab group has been evicted eighteen times from different temporary
locations including squatted empty buildings and open-air parking lots. Today
the Baobab people have an informal address in a parking bay near a building
that was evicted in 2001 and which has stayed empty ever since.

These developments
are part of a clear strategy aimed at criminalising and demoralising civil
society mobilisation and pro-migrant solidarity and support. They go hand in
hand with the dismantling of basic human rights and the portrayal of migrants as
criminals. These are the next steps towards the creation of a migration policy
based on policing, control and on authoritarian measures that demand structured
and collectively coordinated transnational reactions from civil society at
large, in Italy and across Europe.