WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY LIVORNO - (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #32-25 - Borders that kill. Illegal pushbacks in ports (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Two young men died last October 30 in the waters of the port of Livorno

around 1:30 PM, sucked into the water by the propellers of maneuvering
ships. Found by the Maritime Police hidden inside a container unloaded
from the Danish-flagged ro-ro vessel Stena Shipper, owned by the Swedish
company Stena Line-but leased to the Tunisian state-owned company
CoTuNav-coming from Radès, Tunisia, the two were reportedly re-embarked
on the same vessel, entrusted to the captain's custody, for
repatriation. Locked in a cabin on board, they managed to free
themselves and jumped overboard to avoid repatriation. This is the
official version of events reported by the press. It is a completely
opaque reconstruction, which fails to clarify what happened in two key
moments. First, what happened when the two young men were already on
land, in the port, once they were identified by the authorities. Second,
how were these two people handed over to the captain of the Stena
Shipper, and what actually happened on board the vessel?

Even if we accept this version as true, many unanswered questions
remain. Was access to their asylum application granted? Were the two
people examined by a doctor or had their health status checked? Were
they identified by the authorities? Were they informed of their rights
in a language they understood? By what procedure and methods were they
handed over to the ship's captain's custody? On board the ship, which
flies the flag of an EU country, were the people informed of their
rights, including access to asylum? How was the custody of the two young
people arranged on board, and with what precautions? These questions
about the precise responsibilities of the authorities involved in the
matter must be answered.

This lack of clarity suggests that the pushback in the port of Livorno
was carried out illegally, even under EU law. It should be noted that
Italy has already been condemned for similar cases of immediate
refoulement at ports for failing to guarantee access to the right to
asylum. Among the most emblematic cases was the immediate refoulement
carried out between January 2008 and February 2009 in the ports of
Ancona and Venice against Afghan, Sudanese, and Eritrean citizens who
had illegally embarked in the port of Patras, Greece. Regarding these
cases, in its ruling "Sharifi and Others v. Italy and Greece" of October
21, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights recognized that Italy had
carried out expulsions without conducting an individual assessment and
without guaranteeing access to the asylum procedure.

With a demonstration and press conference in front of the Varco Zara on
Friday, November 7, various trade unions, political groups, and social
groups denounced the situation, demanding truth and justice for the two
young people. This commitment must continue to hold the authorities
accountable.

Other articles in the local press suggest that this incident cannot be
considered a fatality, or the result of unpredictable dynamics arising
from an exceptional event. According to data published by Tirreno, the
port of Livorno averages 20 pushbacks per year. While this is certainly
a small number, it's still enough to constitute the local average for an
overall phenomenon. So much so, according to the local newspaper, that
specific measures have been taken over time. For two years, the physical
barriers at the dock where ships from North Africa have been docked in
recent years have been reinforced, with the aim of making them more
difficult to cross. Some of these ships, 60 since the beginning of the
year, arrive from Tunisia, particularly from Tunis and Radès, including
several transports operated by the CoTuNav company. Tirreno even goes so
far as to refer to trafficking, though without truly clarifying the
meaning of this term. Whatever conclusion one draws from these reports,
it is clear that they cannot be considered unforeseeable, since measures
have already been implemented that have also affected port activities.
Indeed, it should be noted that despite this publicly acknowledged
situation, the port of Livorno is completely lacking a reception center
staffed by mediators and interpreters, as is the case in other ports.

Other issues have been raised by the USB union, which denounced that the
transit of ships through the port was not interrupted during the search
operations for the two young men. Initially, at least one was reported
missing, since, according to some witnesses, while one of the young men
was seen disappearing in the whirlpools produced by the propellers of
the Grimaldi ship ECO Napoli, the other was seen swimming away. The
bodies were only found in the following days. At the same time, lawyers
from ASGI (Association for Legal Studies on Immigration), who are
following the case, are also working to ensure the rights of the two
young men after their deaths, primarily so they can have a name and
ensure any family members are informed. This is particularly difficult
in this case, because any identification can unfortunately only be done
through DNA testing. For this reason, a Tunisian citizen, who may be the
uncle of one of the two young men, has arrived in the city for
identification tests.

The terrible deaths of two young men bring us face to face with the
reality of the port of Livorno. Behind the myth of Livorno's laws and
the institutional rhetoric about welcoming migrants, here too, people
die trying to enter Europe. Here too, there are pushbacks-even if we
call them rejections-here too, Italian and European border policies are
forcefully imposed. Here too, there are Frontex agents, arrived as a
result of the government's persecutory policy of distant ports, whereby
NGO search and rescue vessels endure additional days of travel,
additional days of tribulation for exhausted shipwrecks, to reach
disembarkation ports thousands of kilometers north of their rescue
sites, even sending them all the way here. Livorno, too, is a frontier
of Fortress Europe, and in the face of the denial of freedoms and
rights, in the face of the ongoing massacre, we must choose which side
to take.

Dario Antonelli

https://umanitanova.org/frontiere-che-uccidono-respingimenti-illegali-nei-porti/
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