RIGHTS-ITALY: Tunisia to Accept Returning Migrants

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jorge Pina

ROME, Aug 3 1998 (IPS) - Italy will grant Tunisia 90 million dollars in aid if they stem the flow of undocumented immigrants arriving in the former nation at the rate of more than a hundred each day.

Following a successful agreement of this type between Italy and Morocco, a bilateral Italian-Tunisian comission began negotiations Monday, scheduled to be completed before the end of the week.

The agreement will run for a three-year term, with loans aimed especially at job creation projects in Tunisia.

One of the clauses of the agreement will oblige Tunisia to accept the return of the undocumented immigrants Italy expels from its territory – a cornerstone element of any agreement, said Italy’s foreign minister, Lamberto Dini.

Meanwhile, unauthorised vessels continue to ferry consignments of people from the African coast to the island of Sicily, southern Italy, where reception centres are overwhelmed by the amounts of people.

Many immigrants have called for papal intervention. “Come and see the state we are in. We implore you to help us, as we too are the children of God,” said one young Moroccan, Boureali Tejeni.

In “days of shame covered by barbarous legality, I plead with you, your holiness, to make your voice heard,” implored mayor of Palermo, the Sicilian capital, Leoluca Orlando.

“How will we be able to celebrate the Jubilee with the required serenity in a Mediterranean which risks becoming a place of daily intolerance, death and disdain for human beings,” asked Orlando.

Some 2,000 of these immigrants are being housed in barns set up in various Sicilian cities. The air inside these buildings is unbreathable and temperature soar above 40 degrees centigrade.

There are violent confrontations everyday between immigrants or against the security forces.

“Italy must not treat people like livestock,” said one of the inmates.

The immigrants are herded into these centres to await expulsion, but this can only occur when their country of origin accepts them back, and in the case of Tunisia this can be a long wait.

Break outs and mutinies have taken place, leading even to deaths, and abuse is commonplace – one comatose Tunisian was taken to Agrigento hospital in handcuffs.

“If we want Italy to be an open, tolerant and welcoming society and if we want to avoid the trend of excluding and rejecting spreading and becoming dominant, we must campaign for immigration to be controlled,” said Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

The centre-right opposition demand the centre-left government take harsher action against immigrants.

Right-wing National Alliance deputy, Gustavo Selva, said the immigrants should be selected like cigarettes or cars for consumption.

Selva wrote in his party paper, Il Secolo, that entry should be barred to Muslims and Africans because “there is an excessive cultural gap and a different attitude to work.”

Eastern European immigrants are far better, he said, as “they are Christians, generally have a good basic education, and can offer far more than the Africans.

Asians also “have a pro-work cultural and family attitude,” he added.

His declarations were classed as racist even by representatives of parties which are co-members of the Liberty Pole – the Centre- Right coalition led by television magnate and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Pierferdinando Casini, head of the Democratic Christian Centre (CCD) – made up of former Christian Democrats – criticised Selva’s statements as “openly racist.”

And head of the Forza Italia bloc – Berlusconi’s party – in the Senate, Enrico La Loggia, declared his “absolute disagreement” with Selva, saying “immigrants are all equal in their desperation.”

Meanwhile, National Alliance co-ordinator, Maurizio Gasparri, reported the Italian government to the European Union, saying it “should be punished for being too permissive with immigrants.”

Vice Foreign Minister Piero Fassino said Gasparri’s complaint was “absurd.”

“He has no qualms about running down his own country just to get himself in the papers. No opposition MP in France or Germany would have done this,” he said.