The failure of migration policies and the criminalization of "smugglers"

“What this government wants to do is to go and look for smugglers all over the globe,” declared the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, in the press conference of Cutro, a few days after the shipwreck that led to the death of 92 people.The so-called smugglers seem to have become the heart of the government's line on immigration, with a new decree which further tightens the penalties for those who drive a boat carrying migrants.The persecution of smugglers is not a new strategy:in the last decade it has been a cornerstone of Italian and European migration policies.What has it meant so far? Is this really the solution to stopping departures and deaths at sea?And who really are the smugglers?

“We cannot fail to see that it is a very hot political issue and that there is a strong demand, just read the newspapers, for the punishment of the highest possible number of smugglers on the face of the earth", explains to Blue suitcase Gigi Omar Modica, magistrate who has been dealing with irregular immigration for years. 

Every so-called smuggler has his own story, but the one told is too often only one.In common discourse, smugglers and traffickers are there same thing.It should be underlined that in most cases the person driving the boat is himself a migrant who has no nothing to do with the criminal organizations that manage the trips.It would be difficult to imagine high-profile criminals risking their lives on crossings very dangerous.Yet in Italy the arrests and convictions of alleged smugglers continue unabated, often after summary investigations, hasty trials, very severe sentences handed out with superficiality.In the last decade, it is estimated that more than 2.500 people have been arrested on this charge. 

Like Bakari.After a long journey that touched Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, the desert, Libya, the Mediterranean and finally Italy, at the end of 2015, he was accused of being a smuggler, taken to prison immediately after arrival, where it remained until April 2022.He has preserved everything from these years:from the white bracelet, number 44, given to him by the NGO that rescued his boat to the trial documents, which he browses as he tells his story.Explain to Blue suitcase that his experience resembles many others:“There are so many people who tell you their story and in the end you forget yours too.You can't even believe this is happening in Italy."

Ten years back

To take into account the complexity of these processes, we need to take a few steps back.After the massacre of Cutro, soon followed by another shipwreck in the international waters between Libya, Malta and Italy, it is difficult to look around without immersing yourself in an unbearable déjà-vu.It feels like going back ten years, to October 3, 2013, the day on which 368 people lost their lives a few miles from Lampedusa.After an initial outburst of solidarity, since 2014 the policies Italian and European societies in the Mediterranean have focused on protection of borders, rather than of the people trying to cross them.Frontex, the European agency that has ended up at the center of one, is responsible for the surveillance of external borders scandal for violating human rights and carrying out illegal pushbacks:his budget it went from 6 million euros in 2005 to 754 million in 2022. 

Since 2015 one of the central objectives of missions in the Mediterranean is the hunt for human traffickers:the arrest of CD.smugglers becomes the main strategy to combat irregular immigration.Also for this reason the first intervention off the coast of Steccato di Cutro was configured as a'police operation and not search and rescue.A choice which delayed the start of the rescue efforts, which arrived after the shipwreck had occurred.“This is the result of a strategic line that does not give priority to people's lives, rather it gives priority to investigations and the identification of the so-called smuggler”, he explains to Suitcase Blu Sara, Alarm Phone activist.

The leader of the investigations into the so-called smugglers is the National Anti-Mafia Directorate, whose meetings have also been attended by Frontex since 2015.As revealed by ainvestigation Of The Intercept, it was already known that most investigations focused on people who had nothing to do with traffickers.But as tensions grow in public opinion regarding migratory flows, the pressure for the arrests and convictions of alleged smugglers also increases, giving rise to trials that often appear opaque.“Are we sure that all the smugglers who have been convicted in Italian prisons are really guilty?How come they are even there minors?”, asks magistrate Gigi Modica.

Many of the boats arriving in Italy depart from the Libyan coast, an extremely difficult context intricate where migrant people suffer systematic violations of the human rights.Recent events also confirm this relationship on Libya by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which in three years of investigation found clear evidence of "arbitrary detention, murder, torture, rape, slavery and forced disappearances". 

In 2017, Italy signed a agreement with Libya for the management of immigration, still in force.It is an initiative that is part of the broader processes of outsourcing of European borders:to control migratory flows, their management is delegated to third countries, in exchange for funding and political agreements, as between EU and Türkiye.Italy has committed to spending more than one billion euros to stop migration in the Central Mediterranean, of which the main beneficiaries are Libya And Tunisia. 

In the case of Memorandum Italy-Libya, Italy provides means and training to the so-called Libyan coast guard.The latter intercepts e reports in the detention centers of the country the migrant people, in different cases with the help of European surveillance means.The relationship of the United Nations highlights that the documented crimes against humanity involve both the Libyan coast guard than other state apparatus.It also underlines that these subjects, colluding with traffickers and militias, they receive means and funds from the European Union and Italy for the interception, repatriation and detention of migrants.The same ones members of Libyan criminal organizations occupy top positions in state institutions and have been sitting with Italy for years official tables for the management of the Mediterranean border.

Despite numerous attempts to control migratory flows, often to the detriment of human rights, the Departures they never stopped.The security policies implemented end up financing governments repressive and criminal organizations, making migratory routes even more dangerous. They don't intervene on human traffickers, with which Italy collaborate while he treats with an iron fist those who limit themselves to driving a boat.

Who are the so-called smugglers?

“In a certain sense, asking who the smugglers are is like asking who the taxi drivers are:who are these bad guys who drive taxis?”, says a Blue suitcase Richard Brodie, activist of Arci Porco Rosso which, with Alarm Phone, Borderline Sicily And Borderline-Europe, published a report - From the Sea to the Prison - on the so-called smugglers.Or rather, about captains, the word that the protagonists of this story use to define their role. 

“People can find themselves driving a boat because they are forced to leave,” explains Sara from Alarm Phone.It's a typical scenario Libyan route, where those who monitor the country's concentration camps force people to drive with violence.“Others perhaps receive a discount on travel costs, or perhaps even a sum of money,” Sara continues. “Either they act in solidarity, or they find themselves in a dangerous situation at sea and one person takes control of the boat to try to help everyone get there.”There may then be people who travel between one coast and another, EU citizens and non-EU citizens, involved at different levels in organizing the trip. 

The possible scenarios are many and complex:depend on broken and by the countless obstacles that people on the move face during the journey.This complexity, however, is systematically undermined by the need to find a person in charge at all costs.

Summary investigations

The identification method of captains rely mainly on witnesses.In proximity to the landing, a very delicate moment after an often traumatic journey, passengers are asked two questions:“Who drove the boat?” and “Who is part of the crew?”.Nothing about the conditions of departure or of the crossing.Nothing even about the organization and top management of the traffic.The authorities only need a few witnesses to point to the same person to arrest him, in the face of hundreds of passengers.Furthermore, witnesses are often forced to respond through the promise of a residence permit or other benefits.“In any other situation it is obviously an abuse of power, the word of a witness put in that situation is worth nothing,” comments Richard Brodie.

Identification can also be based on videos or photographs taken by aerial surveillance and to identify a person as a smuggler it is enough that he is near the engine, or that he has the compass in his hand.For this reason, the sighting of planes creates panic on board and can cause fatal accidents.

Bakary says that, after landing in Taranto, a person who did not identify himself took him to a tent with 4 other boys:“I saw a person with whom we were on the same dinghy.I remembered it because it did me a favor on the trip:he gave me his shirt because I was sitting on the petrol can and it was burning me.”Hours passed before anyone told them they were going to prison:3 or 4 passengers had indicated them as smugglers by looking at a photo.“When they said that I was convinced that I could be free, because if there is a photo of the dinghy it will certainly be seen that I am not the smuggler”.

Superficial processes

From a legal point of view, the main crime charged against the captains is "aiding and abetting irregular immigration", regulated byart.12 of the Consolidated Law on Immigration.With the “Cutro decree”, the Meloni government increased the sentences to up to 30 years of imprisonment.Despite the spectacularization of the government's punitive intentions, the penalties already existing are not very different:they go up to life imprisonment, given that those who drive can also be accused of murder.And this severity has never stopped people from leaving. 

As regards the trials, magistrate Gigi Modica explains that "they are particular trials which, if approached in a superficial manner, lead easily and with the speed of light to a conviction".Often the only evidentiary material consists of 2 or 3 witnesses, who in many cases become untraceable after disembarkation.Bakary says that in his case there was only one witness.“The others withdrew because they said they didn't want to state a lie,” he explains.He also says that one of his lawyers (during the legal case he had to change four) showed the judges that the police had only brought this witness the 5 photographs of the people stopped at the disembarkation.5 out of 633 migrants crammed onto 4 different boats, which left the same night in two-hour increments.Bakary was nevertheless sentenced to 8 years in prison. 

His is not an isolated case:the report From sea to prison underlines how in courts procedural guarantees often take a back seat. The irregularities detected are different: interrogations done without an interpreter or a lawyer, testimonies collected from people in shock, police reports made with copy and paste."The risk, the probability of conditioning, of pressure, on the process there is. Those who carry out these trials must use a surplus of attention, precisely because the trials are held to condemn the guilty and acquit the innocent.Not to make statistics of those convicted of aiding and abetting illegal immigration”, concludes Gigi Modica.

Between prison and CPR

“In prison the days are hard, months, weeks, they are all hard.It feels like time never passes,” says Bakary. In prison the captains experience extreme isolation.The physical one, in a place on the margins of society.The legal one, because they often don't know their rights.The linguistic one, which makes it difficult to communicate with those outside and with those inside.And the social one, because without a network in the area.Bakary was able to hear from his family on the phone:10 minute calls, twice a week.“It's not a lot of time to talk about all the things you want to say.You have to get straight to the point.Sometimes they just pass the phone from one to the other so they can hear everyone,” he says.The pandemic allowed him to see their faces again, thanks to video calls:“I hadn't seen them for four years.”He was released from prison in April 2022.

Often for a person convicted under Article 12, release does not mean returning to prison freedom, but end up in a CPR.The Repatriation Permanence Centers are administrative detention centers where people are taken while awaiting forced expulsion from Italian territory.The inhuman conditions of these centers are well documented.

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

“After the end of your sentence, the police come to take you to a deportation center.There they have to decide again whether you stay in Italy or whether they take you back to your country.Covid prevented me from ending up in that place,” says Bakary.Upon release from prison he was in fact positive for Covid and after some difficulties he managed to get to Palermo, where he joined the activists of Arci Porco Rosso.During detention Bakary and the activists exchanged many letters, such as Porco Rosso continues to do so with dozens of detained captains, offering legal, but above all human, support.Bakary lives and works in Palermo and would like to stay in Italy, even if he was disappointed by the justice in which he placed his trust:“What I'm saying is that prison is no joke.Before ruining a person's life they must look at the case very carefully, not arrest some person just to have a smuggler's name in prison.It's not the law like that.They play with the lives of migrants like this."

The criminalization of so-called smugglers seems to take on more political than practical significance:find a scapegoat on which to unload all the symbolic and legal responsibility for the deaths that continue to occur on our borders.This passing the buck of responsibilities also involves the NGO, which has been at the center of a campaign for years criminalization And accused of the same crime as the captains:aiding irregular immigration.And while the security policies of border control are never questioned, the doors of Europe are transformed into cemeteries in the open air.“Who is responsible for the deaths that occur at these borders?Of the people who are operating the boat?”, asks Sara from Alarm Phone.“Or is it the responsibility of the policies that Italy and the European Union implement to create these extreme situations of death and violence?”.

Preview image:Irish Defense Forces, CC BY 2.0, go Wikimedia Commons