Migrants, Mediterranean Hope: “Years of violence, torture and shipwrecks, legal channels of entry into the EU are needed”

“In Lampedusa the landings have never stopped. People always arrive, even in winter, and in very difficult conditions. Yet the island appears intermittently in the media in an often distorted story that calls for emergency in the face of a phenomenon that emergency is not “. Marta Bernardini is the coordinator of Mediterranean Hope, the program of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy dedicated to migrants and refugees. It arrived on the largest of the Pelagie Islands for the first time in 2014. “Seven years that have profoundly changed my whole life – he tells Adnkronos -. Working here has allowed me to look at things from another perspective”. To hear about the ‘landing emergency’ in Lampedusa is not there. “Last July, 60,000 tourists and just 6,000 migrants arrived. Yet news and newspapers continued to talk about ‘invasion’ and ‘collapsing island’ – he says -. Certainly these are numbers that can put a small community like this in difficulty, but the emergency is not that of the people who arrive here, but of those who continue to die at sea, of those who are brought back. Lampedusa is a place of transit, no one stops. The emergency lies in Europe’s inability to imagine long-term solutions “. For years, Mediterranean Hope has denounced the conditions in which migrants are forced. “First on the Favaloro pier for hours in the cold or under the sun, in the middle of the garbage and with the bathrooms that don’t work and then piled into the hotspot. The solution is not to enlarge the center, put an extra tent or lengthen the walkway a pier. The EU reflects on its responsibilities “. On the southernmost island of Italy, Marta Bernardini was able to experience first-hand the effects of political choices on migratory flows. “At the beginning many Syrian families arrived, then it was the turn of the Eritreans and Ethiopians. Finally, the Libyans – he says -. This summer more people arrived from Tunisia. The reason? Many of those who left Libya were rejected by the Guard borders of that country. Borders are fluid and linked together, people start from where they can, if you close on one side they will try to get to another “. One element, however, is common in all landings. “The trauma and violence that those who arrive have suffered,” he says. This is why, on the day on which the victims of the shipwreck of 3 October 2013 are remembered on the island, Mediterranean Hope will be present at the interreligious ceremony which will also be attended by the bishop of Agrigento, Monsignor Alessandro Damiano, and the president of the Federation of Evangelical Churches , Luca Maria Negro, returns to ask for humanitarian corridors. “We have been doing them for some time as a civil society, but it is not enough – he warns -. We are a model, a beacon that points the way, but it is up to the Italian and European institutions to take responsibility for a long-term structured solution. People cannot continue to arrive like this: legal and safe access routes are needed “. And Salvini’s policy of closed ports? “The arrivals continued even during the period in which he was at the Interior Ministry – he assures -. That strategy had a very violent impact on the NGOs, which were prevented from disembarking the rescued people. They were criminalized and opposed, but for us the rescues at sea are very important, we must guarantee them until everyone is allowed to arrive through legal means “. On the Favaloro pier, Mediterranean Hope operators offer hot tea, water, food and thermal blankets at each landing. “What always strikes me is their dignity, the determination with which they faced the sea voyage and the horror. They are witnesses of the resistance, men and women who are fighting for their lives”. Like those, 686, who arrived in recent days aboard an old fishing boat intercepted by the men of the Coast Guard and the Financial Police about twenty miles from the island. “We are used to landings – Marta Barabino, operator of Mediterranean Hope and for a year on the largest of the Pelagie Islands, tells Adnkronos – but to see that boat arriving beyond belief is something that has left us dismayed. We seemed to be back. back many years. Many have told us that they left Libya, that they have suffered violence and torture, they wanted to tell the nightmare they lived “. There are also many boys on board. “Very young, traveling alone”. A script already seen. Hundreds of times. “When many arrive they ask us to be able to call their mother or a family member to say that they have made it, that they are alive”. Stories that mark the life of those who chose to work in Lampedusa. Like the smiles of children. “Sometimes it is enough to inflate a balloon glove. We start drawing on the ground with chalks and for a moment we give them back that dimension of denied childhood”, he concludes. (by Rossana Locastro)