Reportage
Asylum seekers returned from Albania to Italy after court ruling ‘in shock’
For the 12 human beings who were briefly used as guinea pigs in the “Albania project,” this marks the start of another chapter in their story.
“Frightened and in shock” – this is how the Ansa news agency described the 12 asylum seekers, seven born in Bangladesh and five in Egypt, who were returned on Saturday from the Gjader detention center in Gjader, Albania, to the Cara reception facility in Bari.
After the difficult time in Libya, where they faced the usual violence, after the Mediterranean crossing, the incomprehensible deportation to Albania, and the three days among the prison bars and fences built by the Meloni government, their fear and shock is completely understandable. But now, they have a chance to finally breathe a sigh of relief. They have managed to arrive in Italy, the hasty denial of their asylum applications by the territorial commission will be appealed, and it is safe to assume that, at least for some, it will have a different outcome.
Their day began on the other side of the Adriatic sea. They woke up in the detention center in Gjader and were then taken to the port of Shengjin, where the Italian hotspot has been set up for expedited border procedures. According to the ruling of the court in Rome, and also courts in Palermo and Catania, these expedited procedures (only applicable to migrants from “safe countries”) cannot be applied to those coming from Bangladesh and Egypt, as well as Tunisia. At the start of October, the ruling of the EU Court of Justice established this principle, affirming that a country cannot be considered “safe” unless it is secure in every part of its territory and for all its citizens.
At 8:50 a.m. the asylum seekers stepped off a small blue bus, escorted by Italian law enforcement, and walked down the gangway to board CP 422 Aurelio Visalli, the red and white Coast Guard vessel that had left from Brindisi to pick them up. The ship's name is in honor of a petty officer in the corps who died Sept. 26, 2020, in Milazzo, Messina, after jumping into the water from the shore in a desperate attempt to rescue a 15-year-old boy who had been hanging from a buoy for two hours in stormy waters. The boy made it, but Visalli did not. He was true to the sailors' moral imperative: no one must be abandoned at sea.
The boarding of the migrants was followed from a distance by Albanian journalists, who were not allowed to enter the port of Shengjin. In Bari as well, news workers had to watch the arrival from afar, from the offices of the cruise terminal. In the Apulian capital, the Visalli docked at Pier 31 just before 4 p.m. It was all over in a few minutes, in the pouring rain. The people were transferred by two minibuses to the local Reception Center for asylum Seekers as the CP 422 quickly departed. They will undoubtedly be better off than in the Albanian detention facility – although the enormous reception center, which according to the most recent estimates holds about 900, can hardly be considered a shining example of reception.
“From the latest visits carried out and from what the people there have been saying, the conditions are very substandard,” says Erminia Rizzi, a legal worker with the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI). ”The testimonies report structural overcrowding and difficult conditions for all the migrants living inside, with insufficient housing modules and inadequate sanitation. Another problem is the presence of vulnerable individuals, due to their personal histories and health situation, who are not being transferred elsewhere.”
For the 12 human beings who were briefly used as guinea pigs in the “Albania project,” however, this marks the start of another chapter in their story. It’s not clear at all what will happen with the facilities across the Adriatic, which as of the weekend remained completely empty. The government, with the Prime Minister in the lead, announced a Council of Ministers for Monday that would aim to devise some legal solutions to legitimize the deportations. In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether there will be new transfers to Albania or not; perhaps aboard the same vessel, the Libra, that was reportedly spotted the other day in the Sicilian port of Augusta for refueling.
Some news agencies have raised the possibility that deportations will resume later this week. In any case, the seas around Lampedusa are currently rough, with waves up to two meters high. In these conditions, it is difficult for migrants to try to cross the Mediterranean aboard their barges of hope.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/dallalbania-a-bari-impauriti-e-sotto-choc on 2024-10-20