A-Infos (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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