In Lampedusa the reception of migrants is done by cockroaches

“The young doctors trying to at least examine the newly disembarked children are swatting cockroaches. Outside, competing for the rare shade of the trees, hundreds of people try to rest on stretches of mattresses thrown on the ground. They were special waste, full of scabies mites waiting to be disposed of. But here, at the Lampedusa hotspot, no one has picked up the rubbish for days. And even the washbasins in the toilets, which have now been ripped out, and the kitchen sinks are flooded with plastic bottles, shoes that are impossible even for these feet that have survived the desert, the remains of thermal blankets used to shelter from the heat during the day and to cover the children who sleep in the shelter at night’. (Source: Repubblica)

Immagine: www.it.quora.com

It is the former mayor of the island of Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, who denounces on social media the shame of a reception centre ‘mysteriously never restructured after the fires that destroyed part of the pavilions many years ago, reducing the capacity to a maximum of 300 places. But yesterday, as in recent days and as will happen in the coming weeks, there were more than 1,800 migrants. All together, women, men and children, vulnerable, injured, victims of trafficking, forced into indecent promiscuity, huddled together to sleep where they eat, on mattresses soiled with urine, among rubbish rotting in the heat. Without water for days, without being able to wash or change, without even someone to explain to them what to do or how to ask for asylum since the contracts of the cultural mediators have expired and policemen, social workers, doctors, do not know how to talk to these people’. (www:palermo.repubblica.it)

Photo: www.vaticannews

After surviving the camps in Libya and the crossing of the Mediterranean, they would have deserved a much different welcome… instead, hell continues on Italian soil, in the place that symbolises the suffering of so many migrants fleeing towards a life of dignity and rights.  It is no coincidence that Pope Francis had made it the destination of his first trip outside the Vatican, on 8 July 2013.

LET’S SHAKE HANDS

Photo: https://www.vaticannews.va

LET US NOT SURRENDER TO THE GLOBALISATION OF INDIFFERENCE
LET US WELCOME THEM WITH DIGNITY
IT IS NOT AN EMERGENCY, IT IS THE MOVEMENT OF FLEEING PEOPLES…

thus the Bishop of Agrigento, Monsignor Alessandro Damiano, nine years after Pope Francis’ visit to Lampedusa

SUMMARY OF MONSIGNOR DAMIANO’S MESSAGE:

“Nine years have passed and what happened in those years continues to happen: men, women and children fleeing. Brothers and sisters in humanity continue to die in the Mediterranean and beyond. We have fallen into the globalisation of indifference, the pope continued. We have become accustomed to the suffering of the other, it does not concern us, it is not our business. The figure of Manzoni’s Unnamed returns, the globalisation of indifference makes us all unnamed, nameless and faceless perpetrators. On this indifference resounds the divine call: where is your brother? Our consciences do not seem to have woken up, as much as they have become almost blind as a result of the habit of sin. It is not an emergency, it is the movement of fleeing peoples. What is urgently needed is a system for a dignified reception, rapid transfers and legal access routes. Now!”.