The Phnom Penh Post

Italy cannot be ‘refugee camp’

- Fanny Carrier

ITALY’S new hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said on Sunday that “common sense” was needed to stop the country from being “Europe’s refugee camp” as he visited a migrant centre in the south.

The newly minted deputy prime minister in Italy’s populist coalition government travelled to Sicily, one of the country’s main refugee landing points, to push the anti-immigratio­n platform that propelled his party to power.

“Italy and Sicily cannot be Europe’s refugee camp,” he told a crowd of supporters under the blazing sun in the southern Sicilian town of Pozzallo, a migration hotspot.

“Nobody will take away my certainty that illegal immigratio­n is a business . . . and seeing people make money on children who go on to die makes me furious,” he added.

His comments came as more than 50 migrants drowned in the Mediterran­ean on Sunday, with 48 bodies found off Tunisia’s southern coast and nine Syrians – including seven children – killed when their vessel sank off the coast of Turkey.

The port town of Pozzallo is also on the migration front line as one of the main landing points for refugees fleeing war, persecutio­n and famine in North Africa and the Middle East.

A crowd of enthusiast­ic supporters and a smaller group of protesters had earlier gathered in front of the gates of the town’s migrant centre, where Salvini would give his speech, trading insults and nearly coming to blows. One protester bran- dished a sign saying “refugees welcome”, while a supporter said “we don’t want any more pests” and others simply chanted “Matteo, Matteo”.

‘Not take a hard line’

After delivering his speech, Salvini went inside the centre to meet some of the 158 people who had landed in Pozzallo when they were rescued by a humanitari­an boat on Friday.

The rescue operation, which was coordinate­d by the Italian coast guard, happened just hours after Salvini took his oath of office, and said he would ask Aquarius, his ministry’s experts “how to reduce the number of arriving migrants and increase the number of expulsions”.

“The good times for illegals is over – get ready to pack your bags,” he said on Saturday.

However, while he retained the fighting tone that helped spur his rise to power, he did temper his words when it came to NGOs organising rescues at sea, which he has previously called “smugglers” and accused of complicity with trafficker­s.

“I think it’s better to spend money in the countries of origin, and now if there are NGOs that want to work for free, that’s fine,” Salvini said.

The leader of the far-right League party also said the new government would “not take a hard line on immigratio­n but one of common sense”.

His fellow deputy prime minister, head of the anti-establishm­ent Five Star Movement Luigi Di Maio, has also called rescue NGOs “taxis on the sea”, although his rhetoric on immigratio­n is more measured than that of the League.

Salvini is on the road seeking to rally support for his party’s candidates in munici- pal elections later this month, as part of a broader effort to boost the traditiona­lly northern party’s profile in the country’s poorer south.

‘Obvious imbalance’

European Union interior ministers will meet on Tuesday to discuss possible reforms of the EU’s controvers­ial Dublin rule, whereby would-be refugees must file for asylum in the first bloc member-state they enter.

However Salvini said he would not be attending, as he will be in Italy’s parliament for a confidence vote on the new coalition with Five Star.

Salvini has condemned the Dublin rule as unfairly burdening Mediterran­ean countries and leading to “an obvious imbalance in management, numbers and costs”.

The accord does heavily penalise Italy, which has seen more than 700,000 migrants arrive since 2013.

Previously, the vast majority would continue their journeys to northern Europe, but the introducti­on of EU-backed processing centres to ensure migrants are identified at their first European entry point and tighter border controls installed by France, Switzerlan­d and Austria are now creating roadblocks along this wellworn route.

A controvers­ial agreement between Italy’s former centreleft government and authoritie­s and militias in Libya has triggered a decline in overall arrivals of some 75 percent since the summer of 2017. But so far this year Italian authoritie­s have still registered more than 13,500 arrivals.

 ?? GOULIAMAKI/AFP LOUISA ?? Migrants watch the Sicilian coastline from aboard the MV a rescue vessel chartered by humanitari­an organisati­ons SOS Mediterran­ee and Doctors Without Borders (Medecins sans frontieres), on May 10.
GOULIAMAKI/AFP LOUISA Migrants watch the Sicilian coastline from aboard the MV a rescue vessel chartered by humanitari­an organisati­ons SOS Mediterran­ee and Doctors Without Borders (Medecins sans frontieres), on May 10.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Cambodia