corpidicarta:Meanwhile, in Europe.I don’t know if you have heard that Hungary is planning to build a
corpidicarta:Meanwhile, in Europe.I don’t know if you have heard that Hungary is planning to build a 4 metres high wall to keep immigrants out, because the news probably hasn’t reached the countries outside of Europe. To give a bit of context, Europe is facing issues caused by a heavy flow of migrants coming from Africa to Italy, Spain, Greece and, obviously, Hungary, which are, incidentally, the countries that are suffering the most from economic crises. In Ventimiglia, the closest area to the French border, French police is blocking immigrants from getting into the country (’France insists that the migrants are Italy’s responsibility. “The Dublin rules must be respected,” Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, said’), so that they’re camping out at the French border. The area was partly cleared when police were ordered to bring the migrants to nearby stations, causing clashes with the migrants themselves, but the Red Cross is still there if needed - especially now that Ramadan has begun and migrants could suffer from dehydratation.More than 170,000 people reached Italy last year, and more than 50,000 in 2015. I’m Italian, and I can assure you that we’re getting closer to a breaking point. The EU won’t help, and Italy can’t manage migrants on its own. We don’t have the space, nor the economic resources. Refugees camps in Sicily are overcrowded, and the continuous incoming flow of immigrants is feeding organised crime and human trafficking. David Cameron just now offered to send intelligence to Sicily to land a hand and ‘disrupt’ human traffickers, but that’s apparently as far as UK’s help will go. Hundreds of migrants are camped in train stations all over Italy as well, but Lombardy’s president Roberto Maroni said that “he would be writing to local mayors and prefects in his region to warn them not to accept any more ‘illegal immigrants’ allocated by the government”, backed by Liguria, Veneto, and Val D’Aoste.Now, I’m from Sicily, and I hear all kinds of stories every day. I will not say that Italians are not racist, because many are. But I’m going to tell you that I know where this racism is coming from, and I can tell you that it’s often a place of ignorance, desperation, and exhaustion. Farmers around the area of Mineo, in Sicily, are complaining that many of the migrants - those who have been located in houses once of property of soldiers from Sigonella - have destroyed plantations from time to time for God-knows-what reason. Frustration, boredom, I don’t know. Many are the women who are now prostitutes. Many get roped into local organised crime.A police officer recently told my uncle that migrants often voluntarily cause themselves to bleed to spit blood in the face of policemen and get them not to proceed identification for the fear of AIDS transmission. He, the police officer, personally saw one of the migrants slam his head against the wall hard enough to draw blood so that he could sleep in a bed at a hospital. Locals avoid bathing in the local seaside area because dead bodies of migrants were found last year, when 3419 migrants died by the end of 2014.A woman my mother know said she found a human finger inside of a squid fished locally. This is Italy right now, this is Sicily, people bathing in the Mediterranean are literally bathing in a tomb, and, despite the efforts from Italy to save as many migrants as possible, thousands still die.Italy can’t do this. Spain can’t do this. Greece can’t do this. We don’t have the economic or the human resources to solve this issue, and the other, wealthier countries from the EU simply won’t help. There is not much you can do, but spread awareness is enough; be aware that this is happening right now, and that this is happening in Europe. -- source link