The island of Lampedusa, off the coast of Sicily, has for a long time been a gateway for people wanting to escape for a better life in Europe. The most recent boat accident, where 300 migrants - mainly from Eritrea and Somalia - lost their lives in early October, is only the latest incident and I fear, not the last. In the city centre of Genoa, on Piazza de Ferrari, there is currently a very eye catching reminder that this problem is not Italy's alone.
This banner, hanging outside Palazzo Ducale says it all: "Deaths again. Lampedusa is not the graveyard of hopes".
Vittorio Longhi commented on the Guardian online (www.theguardian.com):
"So why do Eurocrats keep investing in security measures? Why don't they focus on a shared asylum policy, on serious multilateral agreements between transit and receiving countries, on building search-and-rescue capacity in the Mediterranean, on the full respect of the right to international protection?
Europe cannot go on sealing its borders and pretending not to see what's going on in the south, especially in still-troubled Northern Africa, and in a continent with growing poverty, along with a food and health crisis. Increasing social conflicts inevitably result in harsher repression by authoritarian regimes and therefore in further asylum-seekers, just like the Eritrean young men and women who drowned in Lampedusa."Well said.
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