The Repatriation Permanence Centers like black holes swallow up the lives of foreign citizens

 

“In your city there is a concentration camp”.It's there complaint activists who have been fighting for years for the closure of the CPR (Permanence Centers for Repatriations), real black holes where foreign citizens without a regular residence permit end up, and sometimes even lose their lives.

With a total capacity of 1,100 places, there are ten centers currently operational in Milan, Turin, Gradisca d'Isonzo, Rome-Ponte Galeria, Palazzo San Gervasio, Macomer, Brindisi-Restinco, Bari-Palese, Trapani-Milo and Caltanissetta-Pian del Lake.

These are structures that in over twenty years have produced a long trail of despair, violence And dead.Established in 1998 by the centre-left government led by Romano Prodi with the immigration law Turco-Napolitano, the centers were initially called CPTA (Temporary Permanence and Assistance Centres), then CIE (Identification and Expulsion Centres) and finally renamed CPR with the law Minniti-Orlando of 2017.

Initially, people could be detained for a maximum period of 30 days, which became 60 with the changes made by the law Bossi-Fini of 2002.In the summer of 2011 the fourth and last Berlusconi government further tightened the restrictive measures, bringing the limit of detention in the CIE to 18 months.After a reduction to 3 months established by the European law 2013-bis, the period was then extended again up to 180 days, with the entry into force of safety decree in 2018.The decree 130/2020 wanted by the current Minister of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese has brought the detention period back to 90 days, with the possibility of extending it up to a maximum of 120.

In 2011 one circular of the then Interior Minister Roberto Maroni prohibited the press from accessing the immigrant centers "in order not to hinder their activities”.A provision only formally passed with the directive of the same year signed by Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri.The countryside Let CIEnter remember that “even today the suspension of the ban does not represent a de facto guarantee of freedom of information.Understanding and describing what happens in these places is extremely difficult due to the discretion with which access requests are managed and processed”. 

The latest cases linked to these structures concern Wissem Ben Abdel Latif, a 26-year-old Tunisian detained in the center of Ponte Galeria and died at the San Camillo hospital in Rome after being subjected to mechanical restraint, and his 44-year-old compatriot Anani Ezzeddine committed suicide in the Gradisca d'Isonzo CPR.

The causes that led to Abdel Latif's death still remain to be clarified.The Rome Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation against unknown persons for manslaughter.Family members still wonder what happened.They knew that at the end of September he had arrived in Italy, he had been to the Lampedusa hotspot "where he had slept on the floor surrounded by a net because the center was packed” and then held on a ship to carry out quarantine without having access to the request for international protection.All this had not weakened Abdel Latif's spirit, as reports sister Rania.

Once transferred to the CPR, however, things change.Abel Latif doesn't understand why he ended up in cell without having committed any crime.In October shoot a video inside the facility where he says he is ready to continue the hunger strike to prevent repatriation.In the following days, Abdel Latif seems to demonstrate a form of mental distress during the interviews with the CPR psychologist to the point of requesting a specialist visit from the psychiatrist, who prescribes pharmacological therapy.After a new visit, the psychiatrist orders admission to a hospital setting.

As rebuilds the Guarantor of persons deprived of liberty of the Lazio Region, Stefano Anastasia, in both hospitals Abdel Latif was held in a state of restraint (at San Camillo for 63 hours):“We know that this hospitalization, which appears to have arisen as a voluntary choice for medical assistance, lasted for five days in restraints.This is something that needs to be verified.The strict need for this restraint, which is not a medical act but rather a precaution for the safety of the environment and the person, must be monitored and limited to what is indispensable."

According to media reports, some people held in the CPR also spoke of possible mistreatment but explains again Anastasia, "none of us received reports of mistreatment of Ben Wassem Abdel Latif, before he voluntarily arrived from the Ponte Galeria CPR to the psychiatric diagnosis and treatment services of the San Camillo hospital".According to the documentation currently available, continues the Guarantor, "this mistreatment did not emerge during access to the Grassi emergency room where, if it had occurred, it would have been recorded at least for defensive medicine.From the autopsy we will see if there are other things that have not emerged to date."

An avoidable death according to what was declared by the lawyer Francesco Romeo. “On November 24, while Abdel Latif was hospitalized and bound in a state of restraint at the Grassi hospital in Ostia, the justice of the peace of Syracuse, upon appeal from the young Tunisian's lawyer, suspended the enforceability of the rejection decree and the detention at the CPR of Ponte Galerito".

One of the first to break the news of Abdel Latif's death was Majdi Karbai, deputy of the Tunisian left elected in Italy in the foreign constituency.TO Blue suitcase tells of «reports and testimonies of compatriots who are inside the CPR or who have already been repatriated.They all describe a system of stigmatization where it is impossible to receive information about their situation.Tunisia is now wrongly considered a safe country and therefore you are given no possibility of accessing the application for asylum or international protection". 

Tunisia comes back, in fact, among the 13 states present in the list of countries in which respect for people's fundamental rights is presumed to be guaranteed, drawn up by Italy on 7 October 2019 in implementation of European directive number 32 of 2013.“A classification that has produced striking effects”, explains Martina Costa member of Avocats Sans Frontières.“Not only are Tunisians pre-assessed but adequate legal information is not even provided.They are labeled as those who 'abuse' the right to request asylum.Tunisia, however, is not a safe country today."This system, among other things, does not stop the flows.In Tunisia, people who are rejected are ready to leave after being held for a few hours in police stations.

“Abdel Latif was just a number inside the papers of the agreements between Italy and Tunisia and inside the moldy and smelly drawers of the European Union”, he reports Let CIEnter. 

For Karbai «we cannot talk about agreements, because agreements are also discussed in Parliament".In fact the first bilateral Italy-Tunisia "agreement". signed on 6 August 1998 by Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini and the Tunisian ambassador in Rome, it was a verbal note in which the North African government committed to implementing effective coastal control measures in exchange for annual entry quotas for Tunisian citizens.

In the following years there were other agreements, some never made public as that of 2009, until the last agreement “ghost” of 2020 denied by Italy and confirmed by the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior:11 million euros for a radar, maintenance of patrol boats, training programs for border guards and a sea control information system.

Another problematic aspect is access to the centres, Karbai points out.«Last year I tried to contact the prefecture of Milan to enter and I was told no.On Saturday 4 December when I went to Rome to listen to the guys who were there with Wissem they wouldn't let me in".

They can access the Centers, at any time, without any authorization and after promptly reporting to the Prefecture, members of the government, parliamentarians and MEPs who have the right to be accompanied by their own assistant.Other figures with freedom of access are the delegate in Italy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (ACNUR) or his authorized representatives and the Guarantors of the rights of prisoners.Associations, journalists and staff of the diplomatic or consular representation of the inmate's country of origin can enter only if authorized by the prefecture.

In the relationship on the visits carried out in the CPRs by the National Guarantor of the rights of persons deprived of personal liberty, one of the recommendations is that "the permeability and osmosis of the centers with respect to the territories be increased, with the participation also of expressions of civil society, for the creation of also training activities aimed at detained persons, for a significant use of the time spent in deprivation of personal freedom".

Among the critical management aspects, the Guarantor highlights that "the impermeability of the CPR towards the outside, in the long run, plays a negative role with respect to the very life of the structures and those who live there.The desirable opening to external non-institutional observers - universities, media and associations - although perceived as a 'source of danger', would increase the degree of external visibility of the structures and their management, while at the same time lowering the gap between positions which are often ideological and antagonist".

Even more serious is the presence of minors in CPRs.«Never before have we seen such a transit of unaccompanied foreign minors in the centers as in the last year and a half, after the agreement with Tunisia, not only in Ponte Galeria but in Milan, Turin, Bari and Brindisi.In some cases they did not declare their minor age because they were not asked.Clearly when they had the opportunity to communicate it there were all the necessary checks, but in fact they spent days, or just a few hours, in an illegitimate place", says Yasmine Accardo of LetCIEntrare.

To the dramatic count of deaths linked to these places of detention must be added the numerous episodes of acts of self-harm carried out by imprisoned people:in Turin alone in the months of October and November 115 cases, defined by the provincial secretary of the Siulp police union Eugenio Bravo as "simulations of attempted suicides”.

From reading the relationship from the Italian Coalition for Civil Freedom and Rights (CILD) It clearly emerges how profitable these realities can be.A business model reminiscent of private prison market in the United States.According to CILD estimates, “in the last three years, 44 million euros have been spent to support private management of administrative detention which (...) does not guarantee the fundamental rights of those detained.An average daily expense of 40,150 euros to detain on average less than 400 people per day (from 192 people present on 22 May 2020 to 455 present on 20 November 2020) and then to note that only in 50% of cases is the purpose of the detention without crime.Administrative detention is, in fact, avery profitable supply chain' and the privatized management of the Centers (even for health-related services) is one of the most controversial issues”.

It is necessary to always keep in mind that these places represent a piece in a broader system of control and criminalization of migrant people which ranges from Libyan concentration camps financed by Italy to the refugee camps along the Balkan route (from Greece to Bosnia and Croatia), passing through hotspot, “quarantine ships" And illegitimate rejections. 

Structures which, according to Davide Cadeddu, author of “Cie and complicity of humanitarian associations” (Sensibili allefolia, 2013), are not reformable due to their very nature:

“What makes the CIE such is its biopolitical nature.In this device, power is exercised over the detained person not as the perpetrator of a crime, but as a living being, biological life, bare life.Therefore, even if in these internment camps decent standards were guaranteed with respect to the protection of personal safety, the hygiene of the place, the quality of the food, social assistance (through the presence of interpreters, psychologists, lawyers, linguistic mediators ) or to the realization of socialization activities, the nature of these places would not change in any case, they would remain what they are and would continue to always fulfill the same identical function within society”.

The CPR, as the report states “Punishments without crimes”, drawn up after the inspection carried out by Senator Gregorio De Falco and Senator Simona Nocerino inside the center in Via Corelli in Milan, together with the activists of the network No more concentration camps – NO to CPRs, è “a prison facility for innocent people, but with even fewer rights than those guaranteed to inmates of the penitentiary system, where moreover one ends up (this is the correct verb) without any trial being held”.

Among the rights denied to detained people are those to health and communication.He explains it to Blue suitcase the lawyer Maurizio Veglio, coordinator of the black book on the CPR of Turin made byAssociation for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI): «Inside the CPR in Corso Brunelleschi there is no ASL, but staff paid by the managing body whose income depends on the number of presences.If the doctor is the one who decides the compatibility of the person, he is obviously in a position of potential conflict of interest.Since January 2020, detainees have been deprived of their cell phones and can only use a landline phone which is not enabled to receive from outside.Calls are only possible with a prepaid card worth 5 euros which is distributed every two days, as an alternative to cigarettes.So the choice is between smoking or being able to use 5 euros for outgoing phone calls from the center.The number of fixed devices is even lower than that envisaged by the 2014 ministerial regulation and in fact there are no other communication channels".

The inability to communicate with relatives or loved ones has a heavy impact on psychophysical well-being of those who are forced to live in a condition of complete abandonment, with identical days that repeat themselves cyclically.

A problem, that of communication, which also concerns the right to contact institutional figures as reported by a Blue suitcase Stefano Anastasia, the Guarantor of persons deprived of liberty of the Lazio Region.«Those detained have the right now recognized by law to address complaints to the guarantors, but cannot communicate directly with them.The manager of the center put up a notice saying that anyone who wants to speak to the guarantor can make a request and he will contact him.I don't question his good faith, but this is not the way in which the detained people should come into contact with the guarantor".

For this reason Anastasia asked the prefecture to reactivate a Guarantor desk at Ponte Galeria.«Many years ago this activity existed on the basis of a protocol signed by the Region, the Guarantor and the prefecture.The protocol expired before I arrived, but in recent years all reminders to the prefecture have produced no results.In the prisons of Lazio, at least every 15 days there is an office delegation that meets prisoners who want to speak to the Guarantor to report a problem.I think why this thing can't be done in Ponte Galeria is totally incomprehensibleAnd".

In the Roman center there is a women's section, currently empty.During the first lockdown of March 2020, when there were 40 women inside the facility, access to the legal assistance groups that help the detainees - often victims of trafficking - to have their rights recognized and not be repatriated was prevented, a an all too frequent epilogue. 

Veglio, on the other hand, entered the Turin center for the first time in 2003 and after all these years «the most significant fact is the fact that nothing has changed.Regardless of living conditions, maximum length of detention and other factors, the repatriation rate of imprisoned people has always remained around 50%.Not to mention the jurisdictional suffering of a law that applies its most serious sanction - the deprivation of personal liberty - in the absence of a crime and its challenge.Here we are dealing with an administrative violation, furthermore validated by a judicial authority, the honorary judiciary, which in no other case has the power to intervene on the personal freedom of individuals".

At European level there are two directives that regulate the repatriation of irregular migrants:there 2008/15/EC which gives member states the power to detain persons present illegally on their territory and the 2013/33/EU which recognizes asylum seekers' freedom of movement within the national territory, but also allows them to be detained to ascertain their identity.

Regulation is entrusted to individual nations but, underlines Veglio, “a serious re-discussion and understanding of the distortions and horrors connected to the events of administrative detention is not yet underway at the moment.There are gestures of resistance, but it is an uphill battle because unfortunately public opinion seems addicted and being able to awaken it from this collective sleep is a truly challenging undertaking.to".

Let us in, at least at the start, he was able to count on the support of the information world.«Until 2014 we entered large delegations of 7-8 people, produced reports, parliamentary questions, reports of very serious cases", recalls Accardo.“Now it has become impossible”.

The media now only talks about CPR when a person loses their life.As happened in recent months with Moussa Balde in Turin and with the death of Abdel Latif.And previously with other victims:Harry, a twenty-year-old Nigerian with psychiatric problems who hanged himself in the Brindisi facility;Hossain Faisal, 32 year old Bangladeshi citizen who died in the premises ofLittle hospital of the CPR of Turin; Aymen Mekni, a 34-year-old Tunisian citizen struck down by an illness in Caltanissetta;Vakhtang Enukidze, Georgian citizen who died in Gradisca d'Isonzo;Orgest Turia, 28 year old Albanian citizen killed also in Friuli-Venezia Giulia by a methadone overdose.

Places that should instead be described in their daily life to understand their functioning, their organization and what happens inside them in the specificity of the different realities.«It is a very violent system that is talked about too little", says Accardo.«We do not welcome, we basically detain people in horrifying conditions and it is serious that the dead person has to arrive in order to be able to talk about what happens every day.Every day there are violent transfers, every day there is a lack of attention to the individual person.A tabloid type communication, which does not produce changes in political terms, is residual information which does not give a general picture of what is really happening".

Preview image:Adil Mauro