The majority of illegal immigrants enter Western Europe through the south-eastern Puglia region of Italy. The area is poor but it has two important ports, Bari and Brindisi, which connect Italy with the Balkans, Greece and Albania with regular ferry services used by many freight vehicles. A flat, scrubby coastline dotted with abandoned buildings makes clandestine landings from the small craft _ mainly fast rubber boats with outboard motors _ used by the Italian and Albanian smugglers (known as Scafisti) and the dispersal of their cargo of asylum seekers relatively easy.
It is general knowledge that most of the smuggling operates from southern Albania, from the port of Vlora (Italian Valona) from where high - powered speed boats that carry around 40 passengers usually evade the Italian coastguard patrols to reach the coast. Although the trade in refugees has been publicized widely since the Kosovo crisis _ many Kosovan refugees paid middlemen to arrange their departure from camps in Albania _ it has been going on for some time. In January 1998 BHHRG representatives saw groups of mainly young men making their way in broad daylight towards boats waiting along beach of the bay in Vlora. Police stood nearby doing nothing even though the new Albanian government (elected in summer 1997) had assured European governments of its commitment to stamp out the trade.
Formal cooperation between the Albanian authorities and the Italian coastguards has only brought about the confiscation of one boat so far despite the presence of experts from the Italian Guardia di Finanzia on the Albanian side of the Adriatic.
Michele Emiliano, deputy-chief investigating magistrate for the anti-mafia squad in Bari told BHHRG that the Albanian state agreed to undertake all kinds of measures to control the smuggling but there was nothing to show for it. In reality, it is very difficult to police the Albanian coast where rocky inlets and bad roads make it a paradise for the smuggler. But the interpenetration of the Albanian mafia with the police and other local authorities along the Albanian coast make effective cooperation with Italian and other Western law and order agencies highly problematic.
Michele Emiliano whose particular remit is Albanian crime in Italy explained how difficult it was to catch the smugglers as well as other Albanian mafia operating in Italy. One problem is that the main culprits are constantly evading identification by changing their names. Multiple identities and frequent changes of address render effective policing of suspects and their separation from law-abiding Albanian residents in Italy frequently impossible.
While Albania is the centre of people smuggling, the republic of Montenegro is regarded as the source of the smuggling of contraband into Italy. Cigarettes worth millions of lira enter from ports like Budva, Bar and Kotor on the Montenegrin coast each week. Apart from the loss of revenue, the trade has produced its own human tragedies. Police have died giving chase and colliding with the smugglers' heavily armoured cars along the busy coast road between Bari and Brindisi.
The Albanian government has entered into (albeit formal) cooperation with Rome to crack down on smugglers but the reformist President Djukanovic in Podgorica has yet to allow Italian coastguards to patrol the Montenegrin coast. This seems remarkably obtuse and unhelpful for such a pro-Western government. However, as BHHRG has revealed [see reports] Djukanovic himself and his government were elected in dubious polls which were, nevertheless, hailed as triumphs for democracy by the international community. It seems that the president's reputation as a smuggler and black-marketeer, earned during the war in Bosnia, seems to have left a more enduring legacy than was perhaps anticipated by NATO governments who focused on him solely as a de facto ally against Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic.
The Refugees
Already in 1999, 21,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the province of Lecce which is more than the registered number of arrivals in the whole of 1998. About 100 arrive every day although others put the figures higher, at c.160. However, these figures represent the ones who enter the system _ all local observers whether official or NGO admit that many elude the coastguards and police altogether. The tragic case of four Indians apparently suffocated in the back of a vehicle and then discarded by their smugglers on the side of the autostrada near Mantua [See "Soffocati nel camion dei clandestini" in Corriere della Sera (8 September, 1999), 16.] illustrates the risks taken by those who manage to by-pass Italian border controls. While the war in Kosovo accounts for much of the augmentation of numbers this is not the complete story; there are also large numbers of Kurds and Iraqis as well as Albanians themselves. And, despite the fact that the war ended in June with Kosovan Albanians the 'victors' under the protection of NATO many still continue to leave the province. Inevitably, it can be difficult to detect whether or not an Albanian- speaker is from Albania proper or Kosovo, especially when that person might originate in the Geg populated areas of northern Albania.
While some may feel they owe a debt to the human traffickers for giving them a chance to build a better life in the West, the trade is fundamentally exploitative.
Although Italy abandoned efforts to turn would-be immigrants back at sea after the heavy loss of life in April, 1997, when an Italian naval vessel collided with a heavily-laden smuggler boat, the people-smugglers wish to avoid arrest since although their passengers will be allowed a temporary right to stay in Italy (which will enable them to move on into the rest of the EU), the smugglers's own boat may be confiscated. Should the coastguards approach or the smugglers' boats feel too heavy someone or everyone can be thrown overboard. Bodies are washed up regularly on the Italian coast including those of children. 100 gypsies were tossed into the sea after leaving Montenegro in mid-August. The body of a Chinese man was discovered on the Puglian coast a few days before BHHRG arrived.
Italy's humane response and help...
The response of the authorities in Puglia to the influx is efficient and humane. Those caught are sent to a reception centre near Otranto from where they are dispersed to one or other local residential centres while their applications for temporary residence permits are processed which usually takes about 10 days. The applicant must have asked for political asylum and stated that he or she fears persecution at home. Once the formalities are completed the person is free to go while their applications for political asylum are considered in Rome. In fact, over 80% disappear completely and are deemed to have left the country altogether. They will probably dispose of their Italian identity documents en route and apply for asylum ab initio at their next destination. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Italian authorities are able to dispose of an asylum application within months rather than years - unlike the United Kingdom.
...hides expectation that refugees will move on elsewhere in EU
The majority of arrivals in Italy do not wish to remain there despite their generous treatment at the reception centers. An unwritten social contract appears to exist: Italy will provide an opportunity for illegal arrivals to recuperate from an often hazardous and certainly strenuous journey and it will provide them with temporary permits to remain at large in Italian territory while the fiction of their asylum application is reviewed and they in reality move on elsewhere in the European Union across its post-Schengen unregulated borders.
Some groups are subject to rulings and decrees that give them a special status. The Kurds for instance are regarded by the Italian government to be persecuted in Toto and therefore, prima facie, entitled to asylum. During the NATO air strikes residents of Kosovo, in practice almost only Albanians from the province were also given automatic rights to remain by a special decree due to expire on 31st December 1999. Prime Minister D'Alema has since revoked the decree and Kosovans have to apply under the normal law. Once detected by the system ordinary Albanians are sent back immediately although many try to return again and again, no doubt, eventually succeeding.
BHHRG visited two reception centers at San Foco near Otranto and Squinzano a few miles south of Brindisi. There are now 1370 centers in Italy providing temporary accommodation to would-be asylum seekers and de facto transient migrants.
Casa Regina Pacis is a church-run centre by the sea at San Foca. The British visitor is immediately struck by the fact that this is, effectively, a camp surrounded by a high wire-mesh fence from which the asylum seeker is prevented from leaving by police posted at the gate and at observation points along the perimeter inside. Talk of utilizing or constructing holding centers like these in the United Kingdom is met by outrage from civil libertarians. Occasionally people attempt to escape and even succeed as the atmosphere is relaxed and unthreatening. However, it would be hard to imagine anyone wanting to escape. The centre is impeccably run by a host of volunteers who maintain high standards of comfort and cleanliness. There is a clinic with its own doctor, a shop offering various kinds of soaps and shampoos and a 'boutique' stocked with every kind of clothing and footwear as well as three changing rooms for the residents to try on their choice clothing.
In addition to the donated clothing and other supplies, the Italian state offers the centers 30,000 lira per refugee per day for their upkeep which is all the money provided at this stage. Phone calls and cigarettes have to be paid for from their own pockets. Judging by the amounts some refugees will have paid to leave _ we heard of figures ranging from 1600 DM for a trip from Albania to $3000 for a lorry ride from eastern Turkey _ it is hardly surprising to note that several are on the phone during the BHHRG visit and many were smoking (though charities will not donate tobacco products). "They all have money" said the spokesman for the centre.
In the last 2 years between 16,000 and 17,000 people have passed through San Foco _ there were 500 inmates at the time of the BHHRG visit with 3 to 4 boats arriving each day. The numbers are growing every day, according to a spokesman for the charity. As was the case in both Calais and Dover, most of the inhabitants were young men. 'Toni" who claimed to come from Pec in Kosovo was typical. He had paid 1600 DM to the Scafisti to get to Italy. His ambition is to make money and then return to Kosovo in one or two years time. He made no mention of persecution or fear. In fact, only one person in the centre gave BHHRG visitors the impression of being a refugee from political persecution, and he came from the Arab world, not Kurdistan or Kosovo.
Unlike San Foco the Centro L'Orizzonte at Squinzano is run by a secular charity. It, too, keeps asylum seekers incarcerated while their residence permits are processed with security provided by armed police from the Italian Garda di Finanzia. Again, human rights activists usually object to the presence of armed police in black uniforms such as these. However, the authorities say that the police are necessary to protect the refugees as local Scafisti try to enter the camp to steal documents or recruit the inmates for criminal purposes like prostitution.
There were 300 people at the centre during the BHHRG visit, mostly claiming to be Kurds and Kosovars. As usual, the greater number was young men although there were some girls including a group of Kurds heading, eventually, for an address in Stoke Newington, London. Two girls from Moldova and Romania (both member-states of the Council of Europe like Turkey) were looking for 'a better life' with no mention of political persecution. In fact the center’s main courtyard/exercise yard was daubed with political slogans mainly for the Kurdish Workers Party, PKK but also for anti-Ocalan groups, as well as the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) and its rival, Ibrahim Rugova.
Despite the Italian state's apparent sympathy for liberation struggles in Turkey or Yugoslavia, others from insurgent regions fare less well. Only 2 out of 50 Tamils who asked for asylum in Italy in 1997 were successful. The others were sent back to Sri Lanka.
This centre was not as well-appointed as the Casa Regina Pacis but it was still properly and humanely run. A separate building catered for minors (under 18s). Unlike their adult counterparts they can leave the centre and seek work. They can also remain there until they are 18. This is particularly important to the center’s director who knew of many tragic cases in which boys are 'sold' to pedophiles in Belgium and girls into prostitution. Of course, when these minors reach adulthood they are able to apply to bring their relatives to join them in Italy.
NOT-IN-MY-BACKYARD (NIMBY) as usual attitude to asylum-seekers
The Italian people feel sympathy for the refugees and the sensitive and generous way in which the reception centers are organized testifies to this. However, such sympathy is stronger in Puglia than elsewhere in Italy. Few refugees are visible in the towns and villages of the region _ everyone knows that they move on either to the more prosperous north of Italy and then to Germany and Great Britain. Newspapers in northern Italy are full of stories dealing with asylum-related crime like theft and robbery. The newly elected city council and mayor of Bologna have demanded that the Italian state stop sending asylum-seekers to centers in that formally traditional bastion of the Italian Left.. Under the headline "Brescia, seat of a new mafia" the liberal Corriere dell Sera warned [on 8th September, 1999] that violent crime associated with some of the 24,000 immigrants in the region threatened to provoke "xenophobia."
But the attitude so aptly described as NIMBY or "not in my backyard" pervades the debate on asylum seekers from the heel of Italy to central London. A typical example are recent remarks made by the mayoral candidate for London, MP Glenda Jackson [The Guardian, 3rd September, 1999]who, on the one hand, attacks those who wants stricter control on asylum seekers while at the same time promising to disperse the many presently housed disproportionately in certain London boroughs. People in Puglia from different backgrounds admitted that their tolerance was largely as a result of the tendency of the new arrivals to move north very quickly Rosanna Metrangolo a journalist on the Quotidiano di Lecce said that refugees moved on and the issue was no longer "news" for the paper's readers - unlike the Dover Express and Folkestone Herald in England whose letters' editors are overwhelmed by mail.
