Tunisia

“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 im...

Migrants, EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding signed Update July 18, 2023: On 16 July the European Union signed the memorandum of understanding with Tunisia providing economic support from Brussels in exchange for border control and the implementation of economic reforms. According to the agreement, achieved by the Tunisian President, Kais Saied, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the EU is committed to providing financial support to Tunisia to improve the its search and rescue system at sea, the patrolling of territorial waters and border control, while Tunisia will promote the repatriation of Tunisian citizens who arrived irregularly in Europe.Saied – underlines Annalisa Camilli – reiterated her intention not to open refugee camps or centers to which non-Tunisian migrants could also be sent, as had been proposed by the EU during the negotiations. The funds...

As has often happened in recent years, the Cutro shipwreck overnight turned the spotlight back on the massacres in the Mediterranean, but not on the authoritarian and repressive contexts of the countries of transit or departure.According to the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, the solution would be simple:“They shouldn't have left,” they said, without taking into consideration that the sea journey is only the latest in a long series of risks that migrants take, most of them before embarking.Minister Piantedosi's statements to the press confirm the tendency of Italian politics to re-propose a formula that has already demonstrated its limits, and which is based on the allocation of more funds to the countries of departure in exchange for a tougher border control policy .Demonstrating why this recipe doesn't work is one of the main starting countries, into which Italy has injected more funds:Tunisia. In recent weeks, the poli...

Abuse.Violence.Rape and sexual assault.For a year and a half, the list of abuses and violations affecting the Tunisian security apparatus has become longer and longer.In particular since February 2023 when the President of the Republic Kais Saied delivered a harsh state speech against the sub-Saharan community present in the country accusing it of carrying out a real ethnic substitution of the Tunisian population.Since then, the xenophobic and racist violence has become increasingly visible and has directly affected the security forces of the small North African state. To stop migrants we pay authoritarian, racist, violent governments:what is happening in President Saied's Tunisia An investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian has documented what this segment of the population has been forced to endure for some time.It is also undergoing it through tools, equipment and training made available by the European Union and with a brutality that demonstrates the complete opp...

  “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...