Italy Struggles With African Refugees
The New York Times reports:
MANDURIA, Italy — Under dark rain clouds on Tuesday afternoon, a group of about 10 immigrants hopped the thin wire fence surrounding the makeshift tent camp here and made a run for it into a silvery olive grove and the freedom of Italy beyond.
Perhaps they could have just walked.
“Oh, let them go,” a plainclothes officer standing near the camp’s gate said loudly, his metal badge visible on his breast pocket.
The Italian government hastily built this camp in the Puglia region, the heel of Italy’s boot, last weekend to help hold immigrants evacuated from Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily that is jammed with thousands of immigrants from North Africa who have crossed the Mediterranean in fishing boats and are now sleeping in the open air.
The Puglia center, which holds about 1,300 people, is an example of the logistical challenges that Italy — and Europe — face as they prepare for thousands of immigrants fleeing the unrest in North Africa. So far, most of them have been Tunisians seeking work, but last weekend the first boats arrived from Libya carrying Somalis and Eritreans who had been working there.
To some Italians, the tent camp is as much a political statement as a humanitarian reality, the product of a center-right government intent on demonstrating that theimmigration situation has become an emergency that requires a coordinated European response. If the authorities wanted to dramatize the problem, some say, what better way than with photographs of immigrants escaping from crowded holding areas?
Others see the camp as a bargaining chip in a diplomatic standoff between Italy and France, the former colonial power in Tunisia and the place where most of the Tunisians say they want to go.
Under European Union law, the country where immigrants arrive is responsible for determining their status. Italy has argued that it should not bear the brunt of the new arrivals just because it is so close to North Africa. In a television interview on Wednesday, the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, criticized France for its “lack of solidarity” after it returned more than 500 immigrants to Italy after they were caught trying to cross the border into France.
“It’s a political statement to France: ‘You want to start the war in Libya? We’ll give you immigrants,’ ” said Tonio Tondo, a journalist following the immigration situation for the daily La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. Italy, which colonized Libya in the early 20th century, stands to lose billions in investments there because of the allied intervention. Italy is taking part in the mission, but it was championed by France.
Here in Manduria, officials seem nonchalant about the escapes. Asked why the Italian authorities appeared to do so little to stop the immigrants’ jumping the fence, Giuseppe Caruso, the police chief of Palermo and the special commissioner for the immigration emergency, asked rhetorically: “What should we do? Should we shoot them?”
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