• #Calendario_Incivile, Desenzano decoloniale.
    https://resistenzeincirenaica.com/2024/03/20/calendario-incivile-desenzano-decoloniale

    Terzo appuntamento con la rassegna “Calendario incivile, rinnegare per non restaurare”, proposta allo scopo di riaffermare l’opposizione del territorio all’opera di riabilitazione di contenuti politicamente equivoci, dissimulati attraverso il riferimento a fatti di carattere storico, spesso approcciati secondo prospettiva memoriale. L’incontro “L’Italia coloniale e la politica dell’amnesia” ospiterà Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfaù e #Alessandra_Ferrini e... Continua a leggere

    #Colonialismi #La_Federazione #abriale_D'annunzio #Gabriale_D'annunzio #Garda #Giorgio_Almirante #Gloria_Elsa_Pelizzari #L'ascaro #Mackda_Ghebremariam_Tesfau' #Negotiating_Amnesia #Yekatit_12


    https://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a58008e2faff908bf3bce3deda6cae65d83f56b910f14098523ef4fc18c7427a?s=96&d=

  • Une gravure d’Alexandre Mairet
    https://www.partage-noir.fr/le-reveil-communiste-anarchiste-un-dessin-d-alexandre-mairet

    Né le 23 avril 1880 à La Tour-de-Peilz (canton de Vaud, Suisse), mort le 9 février 1947 à Genève. Peintre, graveur, illustrateur de périodiques anarchistes et communistes. Partages

    / Alexandre Mairet , Le Réveil/Il Risveglio , Archives Autonomies

    #Alexandre_Mairet_ #Le_Réveil #Archives_Autonomies
    https://www.partage-noir.fr/IMG/pdf/lra_1918_05_01.pdf

  • Ratures 10 : Entretien avec Alèssi del Umbria - La Grappe
    https://lagrappe.info/?Ratures-10-Entretien-avec-Alessi-del-Umbria-649

    https://lacledesondes.fr/audio/ratures-2024-02-185.mp3

    Dans cet entretien pour la Clé des Ondes autour de son livre « Du fric ou on vous tue ! », Alèssi Dell’Umbria revient sur son expérience dans le groupe Os Cangaceiros. Plus qu’un groupe de hors-la-loi radicalisés, cette association construite autour d’affinités dans la dissidence sociale n’aura de cesse de déstabiliser toutes les formes d’assignation et de domination.

    « Du fric ou on vous tue ! » : j’ignore qui avait pu écrire ça sur un mur, au début des années 1980, à Marseille, mais j’avais bien aimé cette menace de braqueur qui résonnait là comme une injonction plus générale à ceux qui tiennent les cordons de la Bourse. Une association de hors-la-loi révolutionnaires, ainsi pourrait-on qualifier le groupe Os Cangaceiros, qui prit ce nom en hommage aux bandits du Nordeste brésilien. Ce livre raconte l’histoire de cette bande de jeunes qui, refusant d’aller travailler, s’était organisée pour arnaquer les banques et prêter main-forte aux luttes qui secouaient alors les prisons, les usines et les banlieues. Ce récit de première main peut être lu comme une contre-histoire de la décennie 1980, durant laquelle se mit en place le régime de gouvernance que nous subissons depuis.

    #Alessi_Dell'Umbria #années_80 #Os_Cangaceiros #histoire #illégalisme #livre #interview #audio #radio #La_clé_des_ondes

    • Os Cangaceiros - Rapport sur Marseille (1985) - Marseille Infos Autonomes
      https://mars-infos.org/os-cangaceiros-rapport-sur-335

      Il y a trente ans, en janvier 1985, le groupe Os Cangaceiros publiait son premier numéro, dans lequel se trouvait cet article, sobrement intitulé Rapport sur Marseille. Aujourd’hui, en 2015, les stratégies urbanistiques et sécuritaires ont évolué. Mais le fond de la chose reste semblable.

      Marseille n’est pas une ville très civilisée. C’est une ville exclusivement vouée au trafic marchand, et il n’est rien qui n’y soit déterminé par les impératifs du trafic. La cité entière est consacrée à cette activité, et à rien d’autre. C’est la circulation des marchandises qui a édifié cette ville, à sa convenance et à son image. Nulle trace de passé historique, la marchandise ne laisse rien derrière elle, se contentant de passer.

      #Marseille

  • Discussion avec Alessandro Pignocchi sur la colère du monde agricole - La Grappe
    https://lagrappe.info/?Discussion-avec-Alessandro-Pignocchi-sur-la-colere-du-monde-agricole-631

    Elle en est la base, car le capitalisme, pour fonctionner, a besoin d’un prolétariat abondant et docile, et donc d’une population massivement dépossédée de ses moyens de subsistance. Notre dépendance générale au marché pour subvenir à l’ensemble de nos besoins, en premier lieu alimentaires, est sans doute la principale raison de notre impuissance politique. Un article de Gaspard d’Allen paru dans Reporterre montre la corrélation, au cours du 20e siècle, entre la perte progressive des liens entre la classe ouvrière et les campagnes vivrières et la diminution du temps des grèves. L’agriculture industrielle est aussi la matrice de notre monde dans la mesure où elle contribue, directement ou par le système institutionnel qui s’organise autour d’elle, à façonner nos subjectivités et nos façons d’être. Nous tenons pour acquis, pour « naturel », notre dépendance vitale au marché. Nous nous habituons à traverser des paysages ou les forces naturelles et les dynamiques du vivant sont contraintes, amoindries, contrôlées et mises au travail. Bref, pour un gouvernement libéral autoritaire, le complexe agro-industriel, grâce auquel la production alimentaire est prise en charge par un nombre minimal de personne, est un pilier vital.

    #Alessandro_Pignocchi #capitalisme #subsistance #agriculture #prolétariat #rapport_de_force

  • L’#anguille française victime d’un vaste #trafic_international
    https://reporterre.net/L-anguille-francaise-victime-d-un-vaste-trafic-international

    Très prisée en #Asie, l’anguille fait l’objet d’un vaste #trafic international. Chaque année, des millions d’#alevins sont #pêchés illégalement dans nos cours d’eau. Une menace de plus pour cette espèce au bord de l’#extinction.

    Vous lisez la seconde partie de l’enquête « L’anguille, énigme du vivant menacée d’extinction ». Elle est publiée en partenariat avec la #Revue_Salamandre. La première partie, sur le mode de vie étonnant de ce #poisson_migrateur, est disponible ici.

    • Canzone di Alekos

      Alekos è preso
      Gli hanno strappato le unghie
      Nel cazzo ha un uncino rovente
      Le piante dei piedi livide, battute
      Le costole spaccate, frantumate
      Alekos sputa e morde
      Perde conoscenza, sputa e morde

      E Lelia l’han portata via
      Che dormiva nel letto a casa sua
      È stata bendata, è stata legata
      Sul tavolo di ferro è stata violentata
      La corrente alternata nei neuroni
      I calci, i bastoni
      Lelia urla e trema

      Se ci sentissero ora, se ci vedessero cosı̀
      Molli assuefatti collusi distratti
      Riderebbero o forse si sparerebbero in fronte
      Per non saperne più niente?

      E Jan si è dato fuoco
      In mezzo alla piazza si è dato fuoco
      Il suo cervello si è incenerito
      Il suo cuore gonfio di fatica è bruciato
      Per la Cecoslovacchia umiliata e disperata

      Hanno sparato a Giancarlo sul portone di casa
      Dieci colpi non solo uno
      Dieci buchi sulla faccia, dieci buchi nella testa
      Giancarlo non percepiva salario
      Ventisei anni, carne da martirio

      Se ci sentissero ora, se ci vedessero cosı̀
      Molli assuefatti collusi distratti
      Riderebbero o forse si sparerebbero in fronte
      Per non saperne più niente?

      E Alekos scrive poesie con il suo sangue
      Alekos scrive poesie con il suo sangue
      Non chiede pietà, sputa e morde
      Alekos scrive poesie con il suo sangue

      E a tutti gli altri noti o sconosciuti chiedo scusa per tutto
      Dico grazie, e chiedo scusa per tutto

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUoOv3QcGZE


      #torture #Alekos_Panagulis #chanson #musique #Aléxandros_Panagoúlis #dictature #dictature_des_colonels #Giancarlo_Siani #Lelia_Perez #Jàn_Palach

  • Une vraie #souveraineté_alimentaire pour la #France

    Le mercredi 6 décembre 2023, la FNSEA sortait du bureau d’Elisabeth Borne en déclarant fièrement que l’État abandonnait son projet de taxer l’usage des pesticides et des retenues d’eau. Cela vient conclure une séquence historique. Le 16 novembre déjà, l’Europe reconduisait l’autorisation du glyphosate pour 10 ans. Et, six jours plus tard, abandonnait aussi l’objectif de réduction de 50 % de l’usage des pesticides à l’horizon 2030.

    Comment en est-on arrivé là ? La question a été récemment posée dans un rapport de l’Assemblée nationale. En plus du #lobbying habituel de la #FNSEA et de l’état de crise permanent dans laquelle vivent les agriculteurs et qui rend toute #réforme explosive, la question de la souveraineté alimentaire – qui correspond au droit d’un pays à développer ses capacités productives pour assurer la sécurité alimentaire des populations – a joué un rôle clé dans cette dynamique.

    La souveraineté alimentaire est ainsi devenue, depuis la crise du Covid et la guerre en Ukraine, l’argument d’autorité permettant de poursuivre des pratiques qui génèrent des catastrophes écologiques et humaines majeures. Il existe pourtant d’autres voies.

    Le mythe de la dépendance aux #importations

    De quelle souveraineté alimentaire parle-t-on ? Les derniers chiffres de FranceAgrimer montrent que notre « #dépendance aux importations » – comme aiment à le répéter les défenseurs d’un modèle intensif – est de 75 % pour le blé dur, 26 % pour les pommes de terre, 37 % pour les fruits tempérés ou 26 % pour les porcs.

    Mais ce que l’on passe sous silence, c’est que le taux d’#autoapprovisionnement – soit le rapport entre la production et la consommation françaises – est de 148 % pour le blé dur, 113 % pour les pommes de terre, 82 % pour les fruits tempérés et 103 % pour le porc. Le problème de souveraineté alimentaire n’en est pas un. Le vrai problème, c’est qu’on exporte ce que l’on produit, y compris ce dont on a besoin. Cherchez l’erreur.

    D’autres arguments viennent encore se greffer à celui de la souveraineté, dans un monde d’#interdépendances : la #France serait le « grenier à blé de l’Europe », il faudrait « nourrir les pays du Sud », la France serait « une puissance exportatrice », etc.

    Au-delà de l’hypocrisie de certaines de ces affirmations – en effet, les #exportations des surplus européens subventionnés ont détruit tout un tissu productif, en Afrique de l’Ouest notamment – il ne s’agit pas là d’enjeux liés à la souveraineté alimentaire, mais d’enjeux stratégiques et politiques liés à la #compétitivité de certains produits agricoles français sur les marchés internationaux.

    Comprendre : la France est la 6e puissance exportatrice de #produits_agricoles et agroalimentaires au monde et elle entend bien le rester.

    Voir la #productivité de façon multifonctionnelle

    S’il ne faut évidemment pas renoncer aux objectifs de #productivité_alimentaire nationaux, ces derniers gagneraient à être redéfinis. Car comment évoquer la souveraineté alimentaire sans parler des besoins en #eau pour produire les aliments, de la dépendance aux #énergies_fossiles générée par les #intrants de synthèse, de l’épuisement de la #fertilité des #sols lié à la #monoculture_intensive ou encore des effets du #réchauffement_climatique ?

    Comment évoquer la souveraineté alimentaire sans parler des enjeux fonciers, de l’évolution du #travail_agricole (25 % des #agriculteurs sont en passe de partir à la retraite), du #gaspillage_alimentaire – qui avoisine les 30 % tout de même – des #besoins_nutritionnels et des #habitudes_alimentaires de la population ?

    La #productivité_alimentaire doit dorénavant se conjuguer avec d’autres formes de productivité tout aussi essentielles à notre pays :

    – la capacité de #rétention_d’eau dans les sols,

    – le renouvellement des #pollinisateurs,

    – le maintien des capacités épuratoires des milieux pour conserver une #eau_potable,

    – le renouvellement de la #fertilité_des_sols,

    – la régulation des espèces nuisibles aux cultures,

    – ou encore la séquestration du carbone dans les sols.

    Or, il est scientifiquement reconnu que les indicateurs de productivité relatifs à ces services baissent depuis plusieurs décennies. Pourtant, ce sont bien ces services qui permettront de garantir une véritable souveraineté alimentaire future.

    La #diversification pour maintenir des rendements élevés

    Une revue de littérature scientifique parue en 2020, compilant plus de 5000 études menées partout dans le monde, montrait que seules des stratégies de diversification des #pratiques_agricoles permettent de répondre à ces objectifs de #performance_plurielle pour l’agriculture, tout en maintenant des #rendements élevés.

    Les ingrédients de cette diversification sont connus :

    – augmentation de la #rotation_des_cultures et des #amendements_organiques,

    – renoncement aux #pesticides_de_synthèse et promotion de l’#agriculture_biologique à grande échelle,

    - réduction du #labour,

    - diversification des #semences et recours aux #variétés_rustiques,

    - ou encore restauration des #haies et des #talus pour limiter le ruissellement de l’#eau_de_pluie.

    Dans 63 % des cas étudiés par ces chercheurs, ces stratégies de diversification ont permis non seulement d’augmenter les #services_écosystémiques qui garantissent la souveraineté alimentaire à long terme, mais aussi les #rendements_agricoles qui permettent de garantir la souveraineté alimentaire à court terme.

    Les sérieux atouts de l’agriculture biologique

    Parmi les pratiques de diversification qui ont fait leurs preuves à grande échelle en France, on retrouve l’agriculture biologique. Se convertir au bio, ce n’est pas simplement abandonner les intrants de synthèse.

    C’est aussi recourir à des rotations de cultures impliquant des #légumineuses fixatrices d’azote dans le sol, utiliser des semences rustiques plus résilientes face aux #parasites, des amendements organiques qui nécessitent des couplages culture-élevage, et enfin parier sur la restauration d’un #paysage qui devient un allié dans la lutte contre les #aléas_naturels. La diversification fait ainsi partie de l’ADN des agriculteurs #bio.

    C’est une question de #réalisme_économique. Les exploitations bio consomment en France deux fois moins de #fertilisant et de #carburant par hectare que les exploitants conventionnels, ce qui les rend moins vulnérables à l’évolution du #prix du #pétrole. En clair, l’agriculture biologique pourrait être la garante de la future souveraineté alimentaire française, alors qu’elle est justement souvent présentée comme une menace pour cette dernière du fait de rendements plus faibles à court terme.

    Au regard des éléments mentionnés plus haut, il s’agit évidemment d’un #faux_procès. Nous sommes autosuffisants et nous avons les réserves foncières qui permettraient de déployer le bio à grande échelle en France, puisque nous sommes passé de 72 % du territoire dédié aux activités agricoles en 1950 à 50 % en 2020. Une petite partie de ces surfaces a été artificialisée tandis que la majorité a tout simplement évolué en friche, à hauteur de 1000 km2 par an en moyenne.

    Par ailleurs, le différentiel de rendement entre le bio et le #conventionnel se réduit après quelques années seulement : de 25 % en moyenne (toutes cultures confondues) au moment de la conversion, il descend à 15 % ensuite. La raison en est l’apprentissage et l’innovation dont font preuve ces agriculteurs qui doivent en permanence s’adapter aux variabilités naturelles. Et des progrès sont encore à attendre, si l’on songe que l’agriculture bio n’a pas bénéficié des 50 dernières années de recherche en #agronomie dédiées aux pratiques conventionnelles.

    Relever le niveau de vie des agriculteurs sans éroder le #pouvoir_d’achat des consommateurs

    Mais a-t-on les moyens d’opérer une telle transition sans réduire le pouvoir d’achat des Français ? Pour répondre à cette question, il faut tout d’abord évoquer le #revenu des #agriculteurs. Il est notoirement faible. Les agriculteurs travaillent beaucoup et vivent mal de leur métier.

    Or, on oublie souvent de le mentionner, mais le surcoût des produits bio est aussi lié au fait que les consommateurs souhaitent mieux rémunérer les agriculteurs : hors subventions, les revenus des agriculteurs bio sont entre 22 % et 35 % plus élevés que pour les agriculteurs conventionnels.

    Ainsi, le consommateur bio consent à payer plus parce que le bio est meilleur pour l’environnement dans son ensemble (eau, air, sol, biodiversité), mais aussi pour que les paysans puissent mieux vivre de leur métier en France sans mettre en danger leur santé.

    Par ailleurs, si le consommateur paie plus cher les produits bio c’est aussi parce qu’il valorise le #travail_agricole en France. Ainsi la production d’aliments bio nécessite plus de #main-d’oeuvre (16 % du total du travail agricole pour 10 % des surfaces) et est très majoritairement localisée en France (71 % de ce qui est consommé en bio est produit en France).

    Cette question du #travail est centrale. Moins de chimie, c’est plus de travail des communautés humaines, animales et végétales. C’est aussi plus d’incertitudes, ce qui n’est évidemment pas simple à appréhender pour un exploitant.

    Mais il faut rappeler que le discours sur le pouvoir d’achat des français, soi-disant garanti par le modèle hyper-productiviste de l’agriculture française, vise surtout à conforter les rentes de situations des acteurs dominants du secteur agricole. Car les coûts sanitaires et environnementaux de ce modèle sont payés par le contribuable.

    Rien que le #traitement_de_l’eau, lié aux pollutions agricoles, pour la rendre potable, coûte entre 500 millions d’euros et 1 milliard d’euros par an à l’État. Or, ce que le consommateur ne paie pas au supermarché, le citoyen le paie avec ses #impôts. Le rapport parlementaire évoqué plus haut ne dit pas autre chose : la socialisation des coûts et la privatisation des bénéfices liés aux #pesticides ne sont plus tolérables.

    Le bio, impensé de la politique agricole française

    Une évidence s’impose alors : il semblerait logique que l’État appuie massivement cette filière en vue de réduire les coûts pour les exploitants bio et ainsi le prix pour les consommateurs de produits bio. En effet, cette filière offre des garanties en matière de souveraineté alimentaire à court et long terme, permet de protéger l’eau et la #santé des Français, est créatrice d’emplois en France. Il n’en est pourtant rien, bien au contraire.

    L’État a promu le label #Haute_valeur_environnementale (#HVE), dont l’intérêt est très limité, comme révélé par l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB). L’enjeu semble surtout être de permettre aux agriculteurs conventionnels de toucher les aides associés au plan de relance et à la nouvelle #PAC, au risque de créer une #concurrence_déloyale vis-à-vis des agriculteurs bio, d’autant plus que les #aides_publiques au maintien de l’agriculture biologique ont été supprimées en 2023.

    La décision récente de l’État de retirer son projet de #taxe sur l’usage des pesticides créé aussi, de facto, un avantage comparatif pour le conventionnel vis-à-vis du bio. Enfin, rappelons que la Commission européenne a pointé à plusieurs reprises que la France était le seul pays européen à donner moins de subventions par unité de travail agricole aux céréaliers bio qu’aux conventionnels.

    Ainsi, un céréalier bio français reçoit un tiers de subventions en moins par unité de travail agricole qu’un céréalier conventionnel, alors qu’en Allemagne ou en Autriche, il recevrait 50 % de #subventions supplémentaires. En France, l’État renonce aux taxes sur les pesticides tout en maintenant des #charges_sociales élevées sur le travail agricole, alors que c’est évidemment l’inverse dont aurait besoin la #transition_agroécologique.

    Que peuvent faire les citoyens au regard de ce constat déprimant ? Consommer des produits bio malgré tout, et trouver des moyens de les payer moins cher, grâce par exemple à la #vente_directe et à des dispositifs tels que les #AMAP qui permettent de réduire le coût du transport, de la transformation et de la distribution tout autant que le gâchis alimentaire, les variabilités de la production étant amorties par la variabilité du contenu du panier.

    Les agriculteurs engagés pour la #transition_écologique, de leur côté, peuvent réduire les risques associés aux variabilités naturelles et économiques en créant de nouvelles formes d’exploitations coopératives combinant plusieurs activités complémentaires : élevage, culture, transformation, conditionnement et distribution peuvent être organisés collectivement pour mutualiser les coûts et les bénéfices, mais aussi se réapproprier une part significative de la #chaîne_de_valeur laissée aujourd’hui au monde de l’agro-industrie et de la grande distribution.

    Il ne s’agit pas d’une #utopie. De nombreux acteurs essaient de faire émerger, malgré les résistances institutionnelles, ces nouvelles pratiques permettant de garantir la souveraineté alimentaire de la France à long terme.

    https://theconversation.com/une-vraie-souverainete-alimentaire-pour-la-france-220560
    #foncier #industrie_agro-alimentaire #alimentation #collectivisation
    #à_lire #ressources_pédagogiques

  • Spagna condannata per il rimpatrio illegale di minori migranti
    https://www.meltingpot.org/2024/01/spagna-condannata-per-il-rimpatrio-illegale-di-minori-migranti

    La Corte suprema ha stabilito che questi rimpatri devono essere conformi alla legislazione spagnola e alle sue garanzie e non possono basarsi esclusivamente sull’accordo spagnolo-marocchino per il rimpatrio concertato dei minori. Sottolinea inoltre che si è trattato anche di un’espulsione collettiva di stranieri vietata dalla Convenzione europea dei diritti dell’uomo. Ceuta. La Camera amministrativa della Corte Suprema spagnola ha condannato la Spagna per il rimpatrio di otto minori migranti non accompagnati avvenuto nell’agosto 2021 . Ciò ha fatto seguito alla crisi migratoria del maggio dello stesso anno, in cui circa 12.000 persone, tra cui più di 1.500 minori, hanno (...)

    #Approfondimenti #Alessandra_Pelliccia #Antonio_Sempere_foto_ #Notizie

  • #Alexandre_Sapoundjiev (1893-1975)
    https://www.partage-noir.fr/alexandre-sapoundjiev-1893-1975

    Né à Bobochevo, district de Kustendil, le 18 février 1893, Alexandre Sapoundjiev demeura, à la fin de sa vie, à Biala, district de Varna, comme exploitant agricole (petit viticulteur) et militant coopérateur. La vie et les activités de Sapoundjiev, comme libertaire, sont étroitement liées au développement tout entier et aux luttes du mouvement anarchiste organisé en #Bulgarie. Il occupa maintes fois le poste de directeur et de rédacteur responsable des journaux et des revues du (...) 16-17 - Histoire du mouvement libertaire en Bulgarie (Esquisse) - G. Balkanski

    / Alexandre Sapoundjiev, Bulgarie, Volonté (...)

    #Balkanski #Volonté_Anarchiste

  • Terre : aux racines du capitalisme

    L’élément terre, dans son acception économique peut s’entendre de deux manières : la terre à exploiter, dont on peut tirer des ressources et du profit, et la Terre à préserver et à “sauver” d’un #capitalisme_prédateur qui l’épuise. L’idée de parler de capital Terre reprend deux notions incluses dans le terme Terre, à savoir comprendre la Terre à la fois comme notre planète et à la fois comme une ressource foncière. On ressent bien l’ambivalence dans l’expression capital Terre : la Terre est à la fois notre espace de vie, un espace commun et un bien précieux à préserver, mais elle est aussi une ressource dans laquelle puiser des richesses et dont on peut retirer des profits.
    Du 12ème au 19ème siècle : comment la croissance se fonde-t-elle sur le travail de la terre ?

    Selon Alessandro Stanziani, l’histoire économique de la terre comme capital commence au 12ème siècle, il précise "selon Fernand Braudel et Werner Sombart le capitalisme commence au 12ème siècle. Le capitalisme selon Braudel est identifié par le monopole, plutôt que la concurrence, et par la finance. Je complète cette définition avec la notion que les ressources sont uniquement à exploiter et non pas à préserver pour le futur et surtout que le travail doit être soumis à des contraintes sévères au long de plusieurs siècles. De ce point de vue-là, je n’associe pas, comme Marx, le travail et le capitalisme au travail salarié et au prolétaires, au contraire, j’associe les formes multiples du capitalisme aux formes différentes du travail contraint. D’où la possibilité d’inclure les régimes qui commencent au 12ème siècle sous le nom de capitalisme". Par ailleurs, du 12e au 19e, la hausse de la production agricole correspond à une augmentation des surfaces cultivées, en effet les déforestations n’ont cessé d’être présentes du néolithique au haut Moyen-Âge et elles s’accélèrent fortement entre le 8e et le 13e siècle. Cependant, même au 12ème siècle des contestations contre le déboisement et l’exploitation de la terre à des fins productives agraires existaient déjà, Alessandro Stanziani ajoute "les résistances sont importantes, plusieurs acteurs se rendent compte de la nécessité de préserver les forêts afin d’avoir de bonnes récoltes à côté, mais aussi pour des intérêts économiques, politiques et sociaux. Cette résistance est celle d’un capitalisme que j’appelle foncier, agraire et quasi industriel, qui va du 12ème au 19ème siècle".
    De 1870 à 1970 : vers un modèle productiviste et une surexploitation de l’élément terre

    Pendant ces décennies, l’exploitation des ressources de la terre et le système capitaliste connaissent des changements majeurs, marqués par une intensification remarquable. Alessandro Stanziani précise "dans l’agriculture et dans le pays du Nord, la mécanisation est très lente, mais on constate un changement significatif avec les semences. Après la crise de 29, aux Etats-Unis, on s’intéresse aux semences hybrides. Il y a des investissements massifs, on donne des semences hybrides aux fermiers américains et ensuite, on vend ces mêmes semences à l’Europe avec l’aide du plan Marshal et on impose aux agriculteurs européens d’avoir recours aux semences hybrides. L’avantage des semences hybrides, ce sont des rendements faramineux, ça commence par le maïs, la plante des plaines américaines, et de fait on arrive à nourrir de plus en plus de population à l’échelle mondiale. L’inconvénient c’est que les semences hybrides ont une durée de vie très courte, de un ou deux ans, pour qu’elles soient rentables il faut beaucoup de fertilisants chimiques. Les producteurs de semences produisent aussi le fertilisants chimiques, ils sont gagnants des deux côtés. Par ailleurs, ces producteurs ont le monopole et l’exclusivité de ce marché. Enfin, les rendements des hybrides commencent à décroître après 20 ans".
    De 1970 à 2050 : spéculer sur le capital Terre : la terre face à la libéralisation des marchés

    Les bouleversements majeurs ont lieu pendant les années 1970 : la fin du système de Bretton Woods, les chocs pétroliers, le déclin du keynésianisme et de l’État social en Occident et le début des réformes en Chine.
    Par ailleurs, la spéculation sur les produits agricoles s’élargit aux terres elles-mêmes : il ne s’agit pas seulement d’échanger des produits virtuels dont la plupart ne verront jamais le jour, mais de contrôler ces flux hypothétiques à l’échelle mondiale. Selon Alessandro Stanziani "avec le néolibéralisme des années 80 et surtout dans les années 1990, on assiste à la libéralisation totale des Bourses de marchandises, avec les spéculations sur les matières premières et sur le blé, et on arrive jusqu’aux crises de 2008/2010 et jusqu’au crise de nos jours sur la vie chère. C’est-à-dire que c’est une pénurie qui est provoquée, non pas par de mauvaises récoltes, mais surtout par les spéculations".

    https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/entendez-vous-l-eco/terre-aux-racines-du-capitalisme-8719942

    #capitalisme #terre #agriculture #histoire #économie_capitaliste #terres #Alessandro_Stanziani #capital_terre #spéculation #exploitation #foncier #ressource_foncière #à_écouter #ressources_pédagogiques #croissance #déforestation #forêts #déboisement #mécanisation #semences #semences_hybrides #plan_Marshal #maïs #rendements #industrie_agro-alimentaire #fertilisants #néolibéralisme #blé #matières_premières #pénurie #podcast #audio

    • Capital Terre. Une histoire longue du monde d’après (XIIe-XXIe siècle)

      Et si le cœur du problème de la faim dans le monde n’était pas la hausse de la population mais plutôt les modalités de la production agricole et surtout de la distribution au profit des plus riches ? Dans cet essai engagé pour des sociétés plus solidaires et plus justes, qui retrace l’histoire longue du capitalisme, Alessandro Stanziani propose de renouer avec le contrat social cher à J.-J. Rousseau et de faire de la démocratie, de l’égalité sociale et de l’environnement les trois piliers du monde d’après. Défenseur d’une politique publique conciliant croissance économique et démographique, droits du travail, lutte contre les inégalités et protection de la planète, il plaide pour la fin des spéculations sur les denrées alimentaires, de l’accaparement des terres et de la propriété industrielle, en particulier sur les semences, véritable « patrimoine de l’humanité », et prône une refonte plus égalitaire de la fiscalité et des finances publiques.
      Une pensée économique globale, qui se préoccupe autant de l’avenir de l’Asie et de l’Afrique que de celui de l’Europe, par un brillant historien reconnu à l’international et fort de décennies de recherches sur le terrain dans le monde entier.

      https://www.payot-rivages.fr/payot/livre/capital-terre-9782228929257
      #livre

  • „Hauptstadt des Verbrechens“
    https://anwaltsblatt.berlin/hauptstadt-des-verbrechens-2

    Bemerkenswert: Verbrechen als Krankheit, von der Verbrecher befallen werden.

    Von Julia Steinmetz - Zeitreise zu den historischen Gerichts- und Gefängnisgebäuden der 1920er-Jahre.

    Schon der Treffpunkt der Reisegruppe, bestehend aus Mitgliedern des Berliner Anwaltsvereins und des Richterbunds, war am 14. Juni um 16 Uhr ein historischer: der #Tränenpalast an der #Friedrichstraße. Von dort aus sollte das diesjährige Sommerhighlight, die „Krimitour durch Berlin“, organisiert durch den Berliner Anwaltsverein, starten. Aufgrund einer kleinen Busverspätung (der Berliner Verkehr) stellen die beiden Referenten Arne Krasting und Alexander Vogel vor dem Einstieg in den Bus sich und auch die Idee zur gemeinsamen Tour vor.

    Arne Krasting ist Historiker und Autor zweier Bücher. Sein erstes Buch „Fassadengeflüster. Berliner Bauten der Weimarer Republik“ erschien 2021. Gemeinsam mit dem Juristen Alexander Vogel veröffentlichte er 2022 das Buch „Justizgeflüster. Gerichte und Gefängnisse in Berlin“. Um Letzteres sollte es bei der Kriminaltour gehen, in der ein Blick auf die „dunkle Seite“ von Berlin, auch inspiriert von der Kultserie „Babylon Berlin“, geworfen werden sollte. Die Gegend um den #Bahnhof_Friedrichstraße schien hierfür der optimale Startpunkt, war sie doch in den 1920er-Jahren ein Ort des Amüsements, aber auch der Kriminalität und Prostitution mit zahlreichen Theatern und Bars in der Nähe.

    „Die Geschichte Berlins ist eine Geschichte von Kriminalität“

    Die Tour beginnt mit dem zwischenzeitlich eingetroffenen Reisebus, welcher im Inneren mit großen Bildschirmen ausgestattet ist, auf denen die Referenten untermalendendes Bild- und Videomaterial zeigen. Passend zur Fahrt über die Berliner Friedrichstraße und der Straße #Unter_den_Linden berichten die Referenten von der Diebstahlsgeschichte der Quadriga auf dem #Brandenburger_Tor sowie über die weithin bekannte Geschichte des Betrügers Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt, dem Hauptmann von Köpenick. Vorbei an der #Marienkirche, die im 13. Jahrhundert das Zentrum des mittelalterlichen Berlins darstellte und damals Schauplatz eines berüchtigten Lynchmordes wurde, der einen päpstlichen Bann über Berlin nach sich zog und erst nach Zahlungen und dem Aufstellen eines Sühnekreuzes wieder aufgehoben wurde, geht es zum #Alexanderplatz. Vogel macht schon zum Beginn der Tour deutlich: „Die Geschichte Berlins ist eine Geschichte von Kriminalität“.

    DER ALEXANDERPLATZ – SCHON VOR 100 JAHREN EIN KRIMINALITÄTSHOTSPOT

    Da gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts die Kriminalität um den Alexanderplatz immer mehr zunahm, wurde 1890 genau dort das große neue Polizeipräsidium von Berlin gebaut, welches sich vorher am #Molkenmarkt befunden hatte. In das neue Gebäude zog auch der berühmteste Kommissar der Zeit ein: Ernst Gellert, auch der „Buddha vom Alex“ genannt. Er leitete die erste modern arbeitende Mordkommission und erfand, laut Vogel und Krasting, die Tatortarbeit. Auch neu war ein Fernsehformat, was in den zahlreich eröffnenden Berliner Fernsehstuben ab 1935 gezeigt wurde. In „Die Polizei bittet um Mithilfe“ zog Gellert die Bevölkerung in seine Ermittlungsarbeit ein; ein Format, was auch heute noch im Fernsehen zu finden ist. Nach der Fahrt rund um den Alex kommt die Reisegruppe in der #Littenstraße an. Ziel ist hier das Gerichtsgebäude, der sogenannte „Justizpalast“, der 1904 fertiggestellt wurde. Der Architekt des Gebäudes, so erklärt Krasting, sei Otto Schmalz, der für die Architektur vor allem Elemente des Rokokos und des Jugendstils gewählt habe, darüber hinaus gebe es viele Einzelheiten, die Krasting den Teilnehmenden vor Ort und anhand von Bildern erläutert. Nachdem alle Teilnehmer wieder sicher im Bus sitzen, geht die Fahrt über den #Straußberger_Platz, im Mittelalter der als „#Rabenstein“ bekannte Hinrichtungsplatz vor den Toren Berlins, weiter in das #Scheunenviertel.

    DAS VERBRECHERVIERTEL DER 20ER-JAHRE

    Vogel erklärt, dass die Gegend in den 1920er-Jahren der Ort des organisierten Verbrechens in Berlin gewesen sei und daher auch in „Babylon Berlin“ immer wieder Ort des Geschehens ist. In den sogenannten Ring-Vereinen, die ursprünglich gemeinnützige Organisationen zur Wiedereingliederung von Strafgefangenen und ehemaligen Häftlingen sein sollten, entwickelten sich damals kriminelle Strukturen und Verbrecherbörsen. Ort der Planung für die nächsten Coups waren oft Bars und Kneipen wie die „Mulackritze“, in der sich Gestalten wie „Muskel- Adolf“ oder Adolf Leu (der Schränker) trafen.

    „In den sogenannten Ring-Vereinen entwickelten sich damals kriminelle Strukturen und Verbrecherbörsen“

    Wie sehr Verbrechen und Tod zu dieser Zeit zum Alltag der Bevölkerung dazugehörten, wird auch in der #Hannoverschen_Straße 6 deutlich, dem ehemaligen Leichenschauhaus. Hier war es laut Vogel in den 1920er-Jahren üblich, am Sonntag zur Leichenschau zu kommen, in der unbekannte Opfer von Tötungstaten hinter Glasfenstern ausgestellt wurden, damit Besucher diese identifizieren konnten.

    RUND UM DIE LEHRTER STRASSE

    Ziel der letzten Station der Tour sollte die Gegend um die #Lehrter_Straße sein, in der seit den 1840er-Jahren verschiedene Gefängnisgebäude entstanden waren, die heute nur noch teilweise bestehen. An das große Zellengefängnis in der Lehrter Straße erinnert nur noch der Geschichtspark Zellengefängnis #Moabit, der 2006 eröffnet wurde. Kriminalität wurde 1840 als ansteckende Krankheit angesehen, sodass Ziel des damaligen Gefängnisneubaus die Unterbringung der Gefangenen in Einzelzellen war, in der zwischenmenschliche Kommunikation nicht möglich sein sollte. Auch beim einstündigen Freigang am Tag kamen die Gefangenen durch die panoptische Architektur niemals mit ihren Mithäftlingen in Kontakt. Diese unmenschliche Art der Unterbringung bestand bis 1910. Nach dem Attentat auf Adolf Hitler 1944 wurden in dem Gefängnis verdächtigte Beteiligte festgehalten, unter anderem Albrecht Haushofer und Klaus Bonhoeffer, die im April 1945 dort erschossen wurden. Ersterer schrieb während seiner Gefangenschaft die „Moabiter Sonette“, 80 Gedichte, die heute im Park in einer nachempfundenen Zelle über Lautsprecher vorgelesen werden.

    Zu Fuß ging es zum Schluss noch zum ehemaligen Frauengefängnis in der #Lehrter_Straße 60, in dem von 1945–1985 weibliche Gefangene aus Westberlin untergebracht waren. Ursprünglich war dieses Gebäude eine Militär-Arrestanstalt, nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg ein Gefängnis für Männer ohne Militärgerichtsbarkeit, in dem auch Kurt Tucholsky einsaß. 1973 und 1975 gelingt weiblichen Gefangenen zweimal der spektakuläre Ausbruch aus dem Gefängnis, sodass anschließend ein neues Frauengefängnis in Berlin-Charlottenburg gebaut wurde. Seit 2012 steht das Gebäude leer. Zukünftig geplant sei hier, laut Krasting, Proberäume für Musiker und Kunstateliers unterzubringen. Zudem diente das ehemalige Gefängnis als Drehort für „Babylon Berlin“.

    Auf dem Weg zurück zur Friedrichstraße und somit dem Endpunkt der gemeinsamen Tour erzählten die Referenten noch einen letzten Fall: die „Pleiten, Pech und Pannen-Karriere“ der Gebrüder Sass, Einbrecher, die als erstes auf die Idee kamen, Geldschränke nicht mehr aufzustemmen, sondern aufzuschweißen. Gegen 18:30 Uhr endete die sehr kurzweilige, höchst interessante Tour, an die alle Teilnehmenden sicher gern zurückdenken werden.

    #Berlin #Geschiichte #Kriminalität #Stadtführung #Sightseeing #Krankheit #Fernsehstube #Fernseh-Großbildstelle

  • Sprecher der Berliner Fahrgäste: „Mit der U8 fahre ich nicht mehr“
    https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/sprecher-der-berliner-fahrgaeste-mit-der-u8-fahre-ich-nicht-mehr-li

    Die Bettler sind da und bevölkern die U-Bahn Linie 8. Unterträglich ist das für alle biederen Bürger.

    26.01.2023 von Peter Neumann - Zum Fototermin mit der Berliner Zeitung steigt Jens Wieseke in den U-Bahnhof Heinrich-Heine-Straße hinab. Doch normalerweise nutzt der Vizevorsitzende und Sprecher des Fahrgastverbands IGEB die düstere Station an der U8 nicht mehr. Im Interview erklärt der 58-jährige Berliner, der aus dem Osten der Stadt stammt und seinen Berufsweg als Briefträger mit Abitur begann, warum er manchmal lieber mit seinem Auto fährt. Der Fahrgastlobbyist äußert sich auch zum Desaster auf der U2 unter dem Alexanderplatz, zu Gottesdienstbesuchen mit Mobilitätssenatorin Bettina Jarasch, ob der BER einen U-Bahnanschluss braucht – und darüber, ob er wählen geht.
    ...
    Apropos Frau Jarasch: Vor Weihnachten haben Sie ein Foto getwittert, das Sie und die Grünen-Politikerin nach einem katholischen Gottesdienst in Berlin zeigt. Sehen Sie sich häufiger in der Kirche?

    Ich möchte nur so viel dazu sagen: Wir sind beide Katholiken, und es kommt vor, dass wir uns in dieser Eigenschaft sonntags sehen. Und ja, es kommt vor, dass es danach auch um unser gemeinsames Thema geht. Als nach dem Fahrplanwechsel im Dezember Probleme im Regionalzugverkehr deutlich wurden, schrieb mir die Senatorin zwei Stunden nach dem Gottesdienst eine Mail und bat um Hinweise. Wenige Tage später lud der Senat die Beteiligten zu einem Krisentreffen ein. Aber ich achte darauf, die Begegnungen nicht zu überfrachten. Auch Frau Jarasch hat ein Recht auf einen möglichst arbeitsfreien Sonntag.
    ...
    Wie kommen Sie zur Arbeit?

    Derzeit nicht mit dem öffentlichen Verkehr. Zwar liegt der Bahnhof Südkreuz nicht weit von meinem Arbeitsplatz in Schöneberg entfernt. Ich weigere mich aber, die U8 zu nutzen. Mit der U8 fahre ich nicht mehr, diese U-Bahn-Linie tue ich mir seit einigen Jahren nicht mehr an. In der warmen Jahreszeit gehe ich stattdessen ein paar Schritte weiter zur U2, zum U-Bahnhof Spittelmarkt, vom Potsdamer Platz nehme ich dann die S-Bahn oder den Regionalexpress. Aber im Winter fahre ich in den meisten Fällen mit meinem Auto zur Arbeit.
    ...
    Warum fahren Sie nicht mehr mit der U8?

    In unserem Verein gibt es den Spruch: Alles ist besser als die U8. Es sind viele negative Erlebnisse, die sich über die Jahre zu einem negativen Bild verdichtet haben. Es geht um Schmutz, Verwahrlosung und um vieles andere mehr, sowohl in den U-Bahnhöfen als auch in den Zügen. Wenn ich auf den Bahnhof Heinrich-Heine-Straße komme und alle Sitzbänke sind mit Drogenabhängigen oder Wohnungslosen besetzt, ist das einfach nicht schön. Ich stelle nicht in Abrede, dass es den Junkies schlecht geht und dass man sich um sie kümmern muss. Aber der Nahverkehr kann nicht die sozialen Probleme Berlins zulasten der Fahrgäste lösen. Das wäre unzumutbar. Auf der U8 ist es schon seit vielen Jahren nicht schön, und es wird immer schlimmer. Ich werfe den Bezirken und dem Senat vor, dass sie zu wenig unternehmen.

    #Berlin #U-Bahn #Alexanderplatz #Heinrich-Heine-Straße #Potsdamer_Platz #Spittelmarkt #Südkreuz #Religion #Bettler

  • More than 1,000 unmarked graves discovered along EU migration routes

    Bodies also piling up in morgues across continent as countries accused of failing to meet human rights obligations.

    Refugees and migrants are being buried in unmarked graves across the European Union at a scale that is unprecedented outside of war.

    The Guardian can reveal that at least 1,015 men, women and children who died at the borders of Europe in the past decade were buried before they were identified.

    They lie in stark, often blank graves along the borders – rough white stones overgrown with weeds in Sidiro cemetery in Greece; crude wooden crosses on Lampedusa in Italy; in northern France faceless slabs marked simply “Monsieur X”; in Poland and Croatia plaques reading “NN” for name unknown.

    On the Spanish island of Gran Canaria, one grave states: “Migrant boat number 4. 25/09/2022.”

    The European parliament passed a resolution in 2021 that called for people who die on migration routes to be identified and recognised the need for a coordinated database to collect details of the bodies.

    But across European countries the issue remains a legislative void, with no centralised data, nor any uniform process for dealing with the bodies.

    Working with forensic scientists from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other researchers, NGOs and pathologists, the Guardian and a consortium of reporters pieced together for the first time the number of migrants and refugees who died in the past decade along the EU’s borders whose names remain unknown. At least 2,162 bodies have still not been identified.

    Some of these bodies are piling up in morgues, funeral parlours and even shipping containers across the continent. Visiting 24 cemeteries and working with researchers, the team found more than 1,000 nameless graves.

    These, however, are the tip of the iceberg. More than 29,000 people died on European migration routes in this period, the majority of whom remain missing.

    –—

    What is the border graves project?
    Hide

    About the investigation

    The Guardian teamed up with Süddeutsche Zeitung and eight reporters from the Border Graves Investigation who received funding from Investigative Journalism for Europe and Journalismfund Europe.

    We worked with researchers at the International Committee of the Red Cross who shared exclusively their most up-to-date findings on migrant and refugee deaths registered in Spain, Malta, Greece and Italy between 2014 and 2021.

    Other partners included Marijana Hameršak of the European Irregularized Migration Regime at the Periphery of the EU (ERIM) project in Croatia, Grupa Granica and Podlaskie Humanitarian Emergency Service (POPH) in Poland and Sienos Grupė in Lithuania. The journalist Maël Galisson provided data for France.

    Reporters and researchers also checked death registers, interviewed prosecutors and spoke to local authorities and morgue directors, as well as visiting two dozen cemeteries to track the number of unidentified migrants and refugees who have died trying to cross into the EU in the past decade and find their graves.

    –—

    The problem is “utterly neglected”, according to Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatović, who has said EU countries are failing in their obligations under international human rights law.

    “The tools are there. We have the agencies and the forensic experts, but they need to be engaged [by governments],” she said. The rise of the hard right and a lack of political will were likely to further impede the development of a proper system to address “the tragedy of missing migrants”, she added.

    Instead, pockets of work happen at a local level. Pathologists, for example, collect DNA samples and the few personal items found on the bodies. The clues to lives lost are meagre: loose change in foreign currency, prayer beads, a Manchester United souvenir badge.

    The lack of coordination leaves bewildered families struggling to navigate localised, often foreign bureaucracy in the search for lost relatives.

    Supporting them falls to aid organisations such as the ICRC, which has recorded 16,500 requests since 2013 for information to its programme for restoring family links from people looking for relatives who went missing en route to Europe. The largest number of requests have come from Afghans, Iraqis, Somalians, Guineans and people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea and Syria. Only 285 successful matches have been achieved.

    And now even some of this support is about to disappear. As governments cut their aid budgets, the ICRC has been forced to refocus its reduced resources. National Red Cross agencies will continue the family links programme but much of the ICRC’s work training police and local authorities is being cut.
    A race against time

    The mini set of scissors and comb worn on a chain were unique to 24-year-old Oussama Tayeb, a small talisman that reflected his job as a barber. For his cousin Abdallah, they were the hope that he had been found.

    Tayeb set sail last year from the north-west of Algeria just before 8pm on Christmas Day. Onboard with him were 22 neighbours who had clubbed together to pay for the boat they had hoped would take them to Spain.

    His family has been searching for him since. Abdallah, who lives in France, fears it is a race against time.

    Spanish police introduced a database in 2007 in which data and genetic samples from unidentified remains are meant to be logged. In practice, the system breaks down when it comes to families searching for missing relatives, who have no clear information about how to access it.

    The family had provided a DNA sample soon after Tayeb’s disappearance. With no news by February, they travelled to southern Spain for a second time to search for him. At the morgue in Almería, a forensic doctor reacted to Tayeb’s photo, saying he looked familiar. She recalled a necklace, but said the man she was thinking of was believed to have died in a jet ski accident.

    “It was a really intense moment because we knew that Oussama was wearing a jet ski lifejacket,” Abdallah said.

    Even with the knowledge that Tayeb’s body may have been found, his cousin was unable to see the corpse lying in the morgue without a police officer. Abdallah remembered the shocking callousness with which he was greeted at one of the many police stations he tried. “One policeman told us that if ‘they don’t want to disappear, they shouldn’t have taken a boat to Spain’.”

    Looming over Abdallah’s continuing search is a practical pressure mentioned by the Spanish pathologist: bodies in the morgue are usually kept for a year and then buried, whether identified or not. “We only want an answer. If we see the chain, this would be like a death certificate. It’s so heartbreaking. It’s like we’re leaving Oussama in the fridge and we can’t do anything about it,” he said.
    ‘Here lies a brother who lost his life’

    The local authorities that receive the most bodies are often on small islands and are increasingly saying they cannot cope.

    They warn that an already inadequate system is going backwards. Spain’s Canary Islands have reported a record 35,410 men, women and children reaching the archipelago by boat this year. In recent months, most of these vessels have sought to land on the tiny, remote island of El Hierro. In the past six weeks alone, seven unidentified people were buried on the island.

    The burial vaults of 15 unidentified people who were found dead on a rickety wooden vessel in 2020, in the town of Agüimes on Gran Canaria, bear identical plaques that read simply: “Here lies a brother who lost his life trying to reach our shores.”

    In the Muslim section of Lanzarote’s Teguise cemetery, the graves of children are marked with circles of stones. They include the grave of a baby believed to have been stillborn on a deadly crossing from Morocco in 2020. Alhassane Bangoura’s body was separated from his mother during the rescue and was buried in an unmarked grave. His name is only recorded informally, engraved on a bowl by locals moved by his plight.

    It is the same story in the other countries at the edge of the EU; unmarked graves dotted along their frontiers standing testament to the crisis. Along the land borders, in Croatia, Poland, Lithuania, the numbers of unmarked graves are fewer but still they are there, blank stones or sometimes an NN marked on plaques.

    In France, the anonymous inscription “X” stands out in cemeteries in Calais. The numbers seem low compared with those found along the southern coastal borders: 35 out of 242 migrants and refugees who died on the Franco-British border since 2014 remain unidentified. The high proportion of the dead identified reflects the fact that people spend time waiting before attempting the Channel crossing so there are often contacts still in France able to name those who die.
    Fragments of hope

    Leaked footage of Polish border guards laughing at a young man hanging upside down, trapped by his foot, stuck in the razor wire on the top of the 180km (110-mile) steel border fence separating Belarus from Poland caused a brief social media storm.

    But the moment he is caught in the searchlights, his frightened face briefly frozen, has haunted 50-year-old Kafya Rachid for the past year. She is sure the man is her missing child, Mohammed Sabah, who was 22 when she last saw him alive.

    Sabah had flown from his home in Iraqi Kurdistan in the autumn of 2021 to Belarus, for which he had a visa. He was successfully taken across the EU border by smugglers but was detained about 50km (30 miles) into Poland and deported back to Belarus.

    Waiting to cross again, his messages suddenly stopped. The family had been coming to terms with the fact he was probably dead. Then the video surfaced. With little else to go on, fragments such as this give families hope.

    Sabah’s parents, as so often happens, were unable to get visas to travel to the EU. Instead, Rekaut Rachid, an uncle of Sabah who has lived in London since 1999, has made three trips to Poland to try to find him.

    Rachid believes the Polish authorities lied to him when they told him the man in the video was Egyptian, and this keeps him searching. “They are hiding something. Five per cent of me thinks maybe he died. But 95% of me thinks he is in prison somewhere in Poland,” he said, adding: “My sister calls every day to ask if I think he is still alive. I don’t know how to answer.”
    Shipping container morgues

    In a corner of the hospital car park in the Greek city of Alexandroupolis, two battered refrigerated shipping containers stand next to some rubbish bins. Inside are the bodies of 40 people.

    The border from Turkey into Greece over the Evros River nearby is only a 10- to 20-minute crossing, but people cross at night when their small rubber boats can easily hit a tree and capsize. Corpses decompose quickly in the riverbed mud, so that facial characteristics, clothing and any documents that might help identify them are rapidly destroyed.

    Twenty of the corpses in the containers are the charred remains of migrants who died in wildfires that consumed this part of Greece during the summer’s heatwave. Identification has proved exceptionally difficult, with only four of the dead named to date.

    Prof Pavlos Pavlidis, the forensic pathologist for the area, works to determine the cause of death, to collect DNA samples and to catalogue any personal effects that might help relatives identify their loved ones at a later date.

    The temporary container morgues in Alexandroupolis are on loan from the ICRC. The humanitarian agency has loaned another container to the island of Lesbos, another migration hotspot, for the same purpose.

    Lampedusa does not have that luxury. “There are no morgues and no refrigerated units,” said Salvatore Vella, the Sicilian head prosecutor who leads investigations into shipwrecks off its coast. “Once placed in body bags, the bodies of migrants are transferred to Sicily. Burial is managed by individual towns. It has happened that migrants have sometimes been buried in sort of mass graves within cemeteries.”

    The scale of the problem was becoming so acute, said Filippo Furri, an anthropologist and an associate researcher at Mecmi, a group that examines deaths during migration, that “there have been cases of coffins abandoned in cemetery warehouses due to lack of space, or bodies that remain in hospital morgues”.
    ‘It’s not only a technical difficulty but also a political one’

    “If you count the relatives of those who are missing, hundreds of thousands of people are impacted. They don’t know where their loved ones are. Were they well treated, were they respected when they were buried? That’s what preys on families’ minds,” said Laurel Clegg, the ICRC forensic coordinator for migration in Europe. “We have an obligation to provide the dead with a dignified burial; and [to address] the other side, providing answers to families through identification of the dead.”

    She said keeping track of the dead relied on lots of parts working well together: a legal framework that protected the unidentified dead, consistent postmortems, morgues, registries, dignified transport and cemeteries.

    The systems are inadequate, however, despite the EU parliament resolution. There are still no common rules about what information should be collected, nor a centralised place to store this information. The political focus is on catching the smugglers rather than finding out who their victims are.

    A spokesperson for the European Commission said the rights and dignity of refugees and migrants had to be addressed alongside tackling people smuggling. They said each member state was responsible individually for how it dealt with those who died on its borders, but that the commission was working to improve coordination and protocols and “regrets the loss of every human life” .

    In Italy, significant efforts have been made to identify the dead from a couple of well-reported, large-scale disasters. Cristina Cattaneo, the head of the laboratory of forensic anthropology and odontology (Labanof) at the University of Milan, has spent years working to identify the dead from a shipwreck in 2015 in which more than 1,000 people lost their lives.

    Raising the wreck to retrieve the bodies has cost €9.5m (£8.1m) already. Organising the 30,000 mixed bones into identifiable remains of 528 bodies has been a herculean task. Only six victims have so far been issued official death certificates.

    As political positions on irregular migration have hardened, experts are finding official enthusiasm for their complex work has diminished. “It’s not only a technical difficulty but also a political one,” Cattaneo said.

    In Sicily, Vella has been investigating a fishing boat that sank in October 2019. It was carrying 49 people, mostly from Tunisia. Just a few miles off shore, a group onboard filmed themselves celebrating their imminent arrival in Europe before the boat ran out of fuel and capsized. The Italian coastguard rescued 22 people but 27 others lost their lives.

    Coastguard divers, using robots, captured images of bodies floating near the vessel, but were unable to recover all of them. The footage circulated around the world. A group of Tunisian women who had been searching for their sons contacted the Italian authorities and were given permits to travel to meet the prosecutor, who showed them more footage.

    One mother, Zakia Hamidi, recognised her 18-year-old son, Fheker. It was a searing experience for both her and Vella: “At that moment, I realised the difference between a mother, torn apart by grief, but who at least will return home with her child’s body, and those mothers who will not have a body to mourn. It is something heartbreaking.”
    The torture of not knowing

    The grief that people feel when they have no certainty about the fate of their missing relatives has a very particular intensity.

    Dr Pauline Boss, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota in the US, was the first to describe this “ambiguous loss”. “You are stuck, immobilised, you feel guilty if you begin again because that would mean accepting the person is dead. Grieving is frozen, your decision-making is frozen, you can’t work out the facts, can’t answer the questions,” she said.

    Not knowing often has severe practical consequences too. Spouses may not be able to exercise their parental rights, inherit assets or claim welfare support or pensions without a death certificate. Orphans cannot be adopted by extended family without one either.

    Sometimes relatives are left in the dark for years. A decade on from a shipwreck disaster in 2013, bereaved families continue to gather in Lampedusa every year, still searching for answers. Among them this year was a Syrian woman, Sabah al-Joury, whose son Abdulqader was on the boat. She said that not knowing where he ended up was like having “an open wound”.

    Sabah’s family said the torture of not being able to find out what happened to him was “like dying everyday”. Abdallah thinks he must make another trip from Paris to southern Spain before the end of the year. “What is difficult is not to have the body, not to be able to bury him,” he said.

    Rituals around death were indicative of a deep human need, said Boss. “The most important thing is for the name to be marked somewhere, so the family can visit, and the missing can be remembered. A name means you were on this Earth, not forgotten.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2023/dec/08/revealed-more-than-1000-unmarked-graves-discovered-along-eu-migration-r

    #migrations #asile #réfugiés #frontières #mourir_aux_frontières #tombes #fosses_communes #Europe #morts_aux_frontières #enterrement #cimetières #morgues #chiffres

    • The Border Graves Investigation

      More than 1,000 migrants who died trying to enter Europe lie buried in nameless graves. EU migration policy has failed the dead and the living.

      A cross-border team of eight journalists has confirmed the existence of 1,015 unmarked graves of migrants buried in 65 cemeteries over the past decade across Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, Poland, Lithuania, France, and Croatia. The reporters visited more than half of them.

      Unidentified migrants lay to rest in cemeteries in olive groves, on hilltops, in dense forests, and along remote highways. Each unmarked grave represents a person who lost their life en route to Europe, and a fate that will remain forever unknown to their loved ones.

      This months-long investigation underlines that Europe’s migration policies have failed more than a thousand people who have died in transit and the families who survive them.

      In 2021, the European Parliament passed a resolution recognsing the need for a “coordinated European approach” for “prompt and effective identification processes” for bodies found on EU borders. Yet in 2022, the Council of Europe called this area a “legislative void”.

      These failures mean that the responsibility of memorialising unidentified victims often ends up falling to individual municipalities, cemetery keepers and local good Samaritans, with many victims buried without any attempt at identification.

      https://twitter.com/Techjournalisto/status/1733100115781386448

      In the absence of official data from European and national governments, the Border Graves Investigation collaborated with The Guardian and Suddeutsche Zeitung to count 2,162 unidentified deaths of migrants across eight countries in Europe between 2014 and 2023.

      The cross-border team conducted over 60 interviews in six languages. They spoke with families of the missing and deceased, whose loved ones left for Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Algeria and Sri Lanka.

      They revealed the institutional and bureaucratic hurdles of searching for bodies and burying the remains of those that are found. One mother compared her unresolved grief to an “open wound,” and an uncle said it was like “dying every day”.

      To understand the complex legal, medical and political landscape of death in each country, the journalists spoke with coroners, grave keepers, forensic doctors, international and local humanitarian groups, government officials, a European MEP and the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner.

      The in-depth investigation reveals that the European Union is violating migrants’ last rights. The stories below show how.
      The team

      The Border Graves Investigation team consists of Barbara Matejčić, Daphne Tolis, Danai Maragoudaki, Eoghan Gilmartin, Gabriela Ramirez, Gabriele Cruciata, Leah Pattem, and is coordinated by Tina Xu. The project was supported by the IJ4EU fund and JournalismFund Europe.

      Gabriele Cruciata is a Rome-based award-winning journalist specialising in podcasts and investigative and narrative journalism. He also works as a fixer, producer, journalism consultant, and trainer.

      Gabriele Cruciata IG @gab_cruciata

      Leah Pattem is a Spain-based journalist and photographer specialising in politics, migration and community stories. Leah is also the founder and editor of the popular local media platform Madrid No Frills.

      X @leahpattem
      IG @madridnofrills

      Eoghan Gilmartin is a Spain-based freelance journalist specialising in news, politics and migration. His work has appeared in Jacobin Magazine, The Guardian, Tribune and Open Democracy.

      X @EoghanGilmartin
      Muck Rack: Eoghan Gilmartin

      Gabriela Ramirez is an award-winning multimedia journalist specialising in migration, human rights, ocean conservation, and climate issues, always through a gender-focused lens. Currently serving as the Multimedia & Engagement Editor at Unbias The News.

      X @higabyramirez
      Linkedin Gabriela Ramirez
      Instagram @higabyramirez

      Barbara Matejčić is a Croatian award-winning freelance journalist, non-fiction writer and audio producer focused on social affairs and human rights

      Website: http://barbaramatejcic.com
      FB: https://www.facebook.com/barbara.matejcic.1
      Instagram: @barbaramatejcic

      Danai Maragoudaki is a Greek journalist based in Athens. She works for independent media outlet Solomon and is a member of their investigative team. Her reporting focuses on transparency, finance, and digital threats.

      FB: https://www.facebook.com/danai.maragoudaki
      X: @d_maragoudaki
      IG: @danai_maragoudaki

      Daphne Tolis is an award-winning documentary producer/filmmaker and multimedia journalist based in Athens. She has produced and hosted timely documentaries for VICE Greece and has directed TV documentaries for the EBU and documentaries for the MSF and IFRC. Since 2014 she has been working as a freelance producer and journalist in Greece for the BBC, Newsnight, VICE News Tonight, ABC News, PBS Newshour, SRF, NPR, Channel 4, The New York Times Magazine, ARTE, DW, ZDF, SVT, VPRO and others. She has reported live for DW News, BBC News, CBC News, ABC Australia, and has been a guest contributor on various BBC radio programs, Times Radio, Morning Ireland, RTE, NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’, and others.

      X: https://twitter.com/daphnetoli
      Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daphne_tolis/?hl=en
      Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/daphne-tolis

      Tina Xu is a multimedia journalist and filmmaker working at the intersection of migration, mental health, socially engaged arts, and civil society. Her stories often interrogate the three-way street between people, policy, and power. She received the Excellence in Environmental Reporting Award from Society of Publishers in Asia in 2021, was a laureate of the European Press Prize Innovation Award in 2021 and 2022, and shortlisted for the One World Media Refugee Reporting Award in 2022.

      X: @tinayingxu
      IG: @tinayingxu

      https://www.investigativejournalismforeu.net/projects/border-graves

    • 1000 Lives, 0 Names: The Border Graves Investigation. How the EU is failing migrants’ last rights

      What happens to those who die in their attempts to reach the European Union? How are their lives marked, how can their families honor them? How do governments recognize their existence and their basic rights as human beings?

      Our cross-border team confirmed 1,015 unmarked graves of migrants in 65 cemeteries buried over the last 10 years across Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, Poland, Lithuania, France, and Croatia. We visited over half of them.

      Each unmarked grave represents a person who lost their life en route to Europe, and a fate that remains painfully unknown to their loved ones.

      In 2021, the European Parliament passed a resolution recognizing the need for a “coordinated European approach” for “prompt and effective identification processes” for bodies found on EU borders. Yet last year, the Council of Europe called this area a “legislative void.”

      In the absence of official data from European and national governments, the Border Graves Investigation counted 2,162 unidentified deaths of migrants across eight countries in Europe from 2014-2023.

      Our cross-border team conducted over 60 interviews in six languages. We spoke with families of the missing and deceased, whose loved ones left for Europe from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraqi Kurdistan, Algeria, and Sri Lanka. They spoke about the institutional and bureaucratic hurdles of searching for, and if found, burying a body.

      One mother compared the unresolved grief to an “open wound,” and an uncle said it was like “dying every day.”
      Here is how Europe violates the “last rights” of migrants.

      https://unbiasthenews.org/border-graves-investigation

    • Widowed by Europe’s borders

      “No water, I think I’ll die, I love you.” This is the last text Sanooja received from her husband, who disappeared after a pushback into the dense forest that stretches between Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland. For families searching for missing loved ones, the EU inflicts a second death of identity and acknowledgment.

      Samrin and Sanooja were high school classmates. Both born in 1990, they grew up together in Kalpitiya, a town of 80,000 on the tip of a small peninsula in Sri Lanka. When Samrin first asked Sanooja out in the ninth grade, she said no. But years later, when her roommates snuck through her diary, they asked about the boy in all her stories.

      When they turned 20, Sanooja was studying to be a teacher, while Samrin left town for work. After six years of video calls and heart emoji-laden selfies, Samrin returned home in 2017 and they got married, her in a white headscarf and indigo-sleeved dress, him in a matching indigo suit. Their son Haashim was born a year later. They called each other “thangam,” or gold.

      She hoped the birth of their son meant that Samrin would stay close by from now on. They took their son to the beach, to the zoo. Then the 2019 economic crisis hit, the worst since the country’s independence in 1948. There were daily blackouts, a shortage of fuel, and runaway inflation. In 2022, protests rocked the country, and the government claimed bankruptcy.

      Samrin was a difficult person to fall in love with, says Sanooja, because he was so ambitious. Sanooja smiles bitterly over a video call from her home in Kalpitiya. The sun filters through the mango tree in the yard, where the two often sat together and made plans for their future.

      But part of loving him, she explains, meant supporting him even in his hardest decisions. One of these decisions was to take a plane to Moscow, then to travel to Europe and send money home. “He went to keep us happy, to make us good.”

      Their last day together, Sanooja surprised him with a cake: Sky blue icing, an airplane made of fondant, ascending from an earth made of chocolate sprinkles. In big letters: “Love you and will miss you. Have a safe journey, Thangam.” In their last photos together, Haashim sits laughing on Samrin’s lap as he cuts the cake. That night, Samrin squeezed his son and wept. The next day he put on a pair of blue Converse All-Stars, packed a black backpack, and set out. It was June 26, 2022. He had just turned 32 years old.

      Things did not go according to plan. He boarded a bus from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, but the fake Schengen visa they paid so much for was rejected at the Finnish border. Sanooja told him he could always come home. But in order to finance the journey, they had sold a plot of Samrin’s land and Sanooja’s jewelry, and borrowed money from friends. Samrin decided there was no turning back. He pivoted to plan B: He could go to Belarus, where he didn’t need a visa, and cross the border to Lithuania, in the Schengen zone.

      When Samrin checked into the Old Town Trio Hotel in Vilnius on August 16, 2022, the first thing he did was call home: He had survived the forest. Sanooja was relieved to hear his voice. He told her about the eight days crossing the forest between Belarus and Lithuania, the mud up to his knees. Days without food, drinking dirty water. He told her especially about the pains in his stomach as he walked in the forest, due to his recent surgery to remove kidney stones. Sometimes he would urinate blood.

      But he was in the European Union. He bought a plane ticket for a departure to Paris in four days, the city where he hoped to make his new life. What happened next is unclear. This is what Sanooja knows:

      On the third day, Samrin walked into the hotel lobby, and the manager called security. Plainclothes officers shuttled him into a car and whisked him 50 kilometers back once more to the Belarusian border. In less than 72 hours, Samrin found himself trapped again in the forest he had fought to escape.

      It was already dark when Samrin was left alone in the woods. He had no backpack, sleeping bag, or food. His phone was running out of battery. The next morning, Samrin came online briefly to send Sanooja a final message on WhatsApp: “No water, I think I’ll die. Trangam, I love you.”

      That was the beginning of a deafening silence that stretched four and a half months. When she gets to this part of the story, Sanooja, ever talkative and articulate, apologizes that she simply cannot describe it. Her eyes glaze and flit upward.

      The Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatović asserts that families have a “right to truth” surrounding the fates of their loved ones who disappear en route to Europe. In 2021, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for “prompt and effective identification processes” to connect the bodies of those who perished to those searching for them. Two years on, Mijatović tells us not much has been done, and the issue is a “legislative void.”

      As part of the Border Graves Investigation, conducted with a cross-border team of eight freelance journalists across Europe in collaboration with Unbias the News, The Guardian and Sueddeutche Zeitung, we followed the stories of those who have disappeared in the forest that covers the borders in Eastern Europe, between Belarus and the EU (Lithuania, Poland, Latvia).

      We spoke with their families, as well as over a dozen humanitarian workers, lawyers, and policymakers from organizations in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus, to piece together the question of what happens after something goes fatally wrong on Europe’s eastern border—and who is responsible.
      Who counts the dead?

      The forest along the Belarussian border is a dense landscape of underbrush, moss and swamps, and encompasses one of the largest ancient forest areas left in Europe.

      Spanning hundreds of square kilometers across the borders with Lithuania and Poland, the forest became an unexpected hotspot when Belarus began issuing visas and opening direct flights to Minsk in the summer of 2021. This power play between Belarussian President Lukashenko and his EU neighbors has been called a “political game” in which migrants are the pawns.

      Since 2021, thousands of people, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, have sought to enter the EU from Belarus via its borders in Poland and Lithuania. Hundreds of people have been caught in a one-kilometer no man’s land between Belarusian territory and the EU border fence, chased back and forth by border guards on both sides under threat of violence. Belarusian guards reportedly threatened to release dogs, and photographs emerged of bite wounds.

      Since 2021, Poland and Lithuania have ramped up on “pushbacks,” in which border guards deport people immediately without the opportunity to ask for asylum, a process that is growing in popularity across Europe despite violating international law. Poland reports having conducted 78,010 pushbacks since the start of the crisis, and Lithuania 21,857. Samrin was apparently one of these cases.

      While these two countries publish precise daily statistics for pushbacks, they do not publish data for deaths at the border, nor people reported missing.

      “National states want to do this job secretly,” explains Tomas Tomilinas, a member of the Lithuanian Parliament. “We are on the margins of the law and constitution here, any government pushing people back is trying to avoid publicity on this topic.”

      Official data is an intentional void. Both the Polish and Lithuanian Border Guards declined to share any numbers with us. However, there are organizations striving to keep count: Humanitarian groups in Poland, including Grupa Granica (“Border Group” in Polish) and Podlaskie Humanitarian Emergency Service (POPH), have documented 52 deaths on the Poland-Belarus border since 2021, and are tracking 16 unidentified bodies.

      In Lithuania, the humanitarian group Sienos Grupė (“Border Group” in Lithuanian) has documented 10 deaths, including three minors who died while in detention centers, and three others who died in car accidents when chased by local authorities after crossing the border region. In Belarus, the NGO Human Constanta reports that 33 have died according to government data shared with them, but it was not recorded whether these bodies have been identified, and whether or where they are buried.

      On the borders between Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, humanitarian groups have compiled a list of more than 300 people reported missing. The organizations emphasize that their numbers are incomplete, as they have neither the access nor the capacity to monitor the full extent of the problem.

      Where to turn?

      It was already past midnight in Sri Lanka when Samrin stopped responding to messages. From 8,000 km away, Sanooja tried to call for help. She found his last known coordinates on Find My iPhone, a blue dot in Trokenikskiy, Grodno region, just across the Belarus side of the border, and tried to report him missing.

      The Lithuanian and Belarussian border guards picked up the phone. She begged them to find him, even if it meant arresting or deporting him. They responded that he had to call himself. It was baffling: How can a missing person call to report themselves?

      She called the migrant detention camps, where people are often detained without access to a phone for months. Maybe he was locked up somewhere. As soon as she said “hello,” they responded, “no English,” and hung up. She emailed them instead, no response. She emailed UNHCR and the Red Cross Society. Both institutions said they had no information about the case. She emailed the police, who responded a week later that they had no information.

      Sanooja had run into the rude reality that there is no authority responsible for nor prepared to respond to such inquiries. Even organizations dedicated to working with migrants, such as the migrant detention camp staff, would or could not respond to basic queries in English.

      International humanitarian organizations, too, are almost absent in the region. Compared to the Mediterranean countries of Spain, Italy, and Greece, which have had a decade to organize to respond to mass deaths on their border, the presence of formal aid in Eastern Europe is much smaller.

      Weeks passed, and in the terrible silence, every possibility behind her husband’s disappearance invaded Sanooja’s mind. Four-year-old Haashim began to cry out for his father every night, who used to wake him up with kisses. When they lost contact, Haashim often wet the bed and refused to go to school. “He must have had some intuition about his father,” said Sanooja.

      Then Sanooja began to wonder if he could be in another country in the region: Latvia? Poland? She broadened her search to all four countries. There was no Sri Lankan Embassy in Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, or Latvia, so she emailed the closest one in Sweden. Then, she went on Facebook. That’s how she found the account of Sienos Grupė, and sent them a message.

      Like many local humanitarian groups across the region, Sienos Grupė is a small team of four part-time staff and around 30 volunteers. The group banded together in 2021 to respond to calls for help through WhatsApp and Facebook and drop off vital supplies in the forest, such as food, water, power banks, and dry clothes.
      “There is a body, please go”

      Local volunteer groups were doing their best to aid the living, but it wasn’t long before they were being contacted to find the missing or the dead.

      On the Polish border, everyone has heard of Piotr Czaban. A local journalist and activist, his contact is shared among migrants attempting to cross the border. He is known as the man who can help find the bodies of people left behind in the woods, a reputation he has lived up to many times. The demands of the work have led him to leave his full-time job.

      He sits on the edge of a weathered log in a forest near Sokolka, a city near the Poland-Belarus border region where he lives. Navigating the thick undergrowth with ease in jeans and trekking boots, he recounts the first search he coordinated back in February 2022. He received a message on Facebook from a Syrian man in Belarus: “There is a body in the forest, here is the place, please go.”

      Piotr was taken off guard. He asked his friends in the police what to do, and they told him the best way was to go himself, take photos, and then call the police. However, the border guards had closed the border region to all non-residents, including journalists and humanitarian workers, so he couldn’t pass the police checkpoints for the area where the body lay.

      So Piotr made another call. This time to Rafal Kowalczyk, the 53-year-old director of the Mammal Research Institute, who has worked in the Bialowieza Forest for three decades. (“In my previous TV job, I interviewed him about bison, and thought he was a good man,” said Piotr by way of introduction).

      Rafal was up for the task. As a wildlife expert, he had access to the restricted forest area, and now he ventured into the woods not to track bison, but to follow the clues sent by a despairing Syrian man.

      In the swamp, Rafal found 26-year-old Ahmed Al-Shawafi from Yemen, barefoot and half-submerged in the water, one shoe in the mud nearby.

      It was difficult for Rafal to point his camera at the face of a dead man, but he did, and this image still haunts him. Piotr forwarded the photos Rafal had taken to the police, with a straightforward message: “We know there’s a body there. Now you have to go.”

      But what if Ahmed could have been found earlier, even alive?

      “The police have no competence”

      Until there is a photo of a dead body, police and border guards have often declined to search for missing or dead migrants.

      Ahmed’s traveling companions, including the man who contacted Piotr, had personally begged Polish border guards for emergency medical aid for Ahmed. They had left Ahmed by the river in the throes of hypothermia to ask for help. Instead of calling paramedics, or searching for Ahmed at all, the border guards pushed the group back to Belarus, leaving Ahmed to die alone in the forest.

      In our investigation, we heard of at least three other deaths that are eerily similar to Ahmed’s: Ethiopian woman Mahlet Kassa, 28; Syrian man Mohammed Yasim, 32; and Yemeni man Dr. Ibrahim Jaber Ahmed Dihiya, 33. In all three cases, traveling companions approached Polish officers for emergency medical attention, but instead got pushed back themselves. Help never arrived.

      Each time the activists receive a report of a missing or dead person, they first share this information with the police. Piotr says he has received responses from the police, including, “We’re busy,” or “Not our problem.”

      After police were provided with the photos and exact GPS location of Ahmed’s body, they called back to say they still couldn’t find him. When Rafal turned his car around to personally lead the police to his body, he found out why: The police had ventured into the swamp without waterproof boots or even a GPS to navigate in a forest where there is often no cell connection.

      “The police are unequipped,” said Rafal, full of disbelief. Two years on from the crisis, the police still do not have the proper basic equipment nor training to conduct searches for people missing or dead in the forest. He recounts that in one trip to retrieve a body with police, they could only walk 300 meters in one hour, and one officer had lost the sole of his shoes in the mud.

      The Polish police responded to our email, “The police is not a force with the competence to deal with persons illegally crossing borders.” As a result, eight of 22 bodies found this year on the Polish side of the border were discovered by volunteers like Piotr and Rafal.

      On the Lithuanian side, Sienos Grupė says there are no such searches. “We are afraid there are many bodies in Lithuanian forests and the area between the fence and Belarus, but we are not allowed there,” says Aušrinė, a 23-year-old medicine student and Sienos Grupė volunteer in Lithuania. “Nobody is looking for them.”
      “In two weeks, there is nothing there”

      Rafal sits down in a wooden lodge on the edge of the forest and orders tea for himself while his two young children play on a tablet. It was his turn with the kids, he explains in a deep voice. His wife came home at four in the morning, after spending the whole night volunteering with POPH on a search for a man with diabetes in the forest.

      He feared that time was running out. We met with Rafal on Thursday evening. The man was found on Saturday morning, already dead. He is the 51st death recorded in Poland this year.

      In the forest, each search is a race against both time and wild animals.

      The winter may preserve a body for two months, but in the summer, the time frame is much shorter. A few times, Rafal has come across mere skeletons. He explains, “When there is a smell, the scavengers go immediately. When you’ve got summer and flies, probably in two weeks, it’s done, there’s nothing there.”

      In such advanced stages of decomposition, the body is exponentially more difficult to identify. However, DNA can be collected from bone fragments, in case families come searching. If they’re lucky, there are objects found close by: glasses, clothes, or jewelry. In one case, a family portrait found near the body was the key to identification.

      However, the Suwałki Prosecutor’s Office in Poland explained to us that the Prosecutor’s Offices keep no central register of data on deceased migrants, such as DNA, personal belongings, or photographs.
      “As a wife, I know his eyes”

      Four and a half months after Samrin disappeared, Sanooja’s phone rang. It was January 5, 2023. She will never forget the voice of the man that spoke. He was calling from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sri Lanka, and informed her that her husband’s DNA had been matched to a body found in the Lithuanian forest. Interpol had drawn Samrin’s biometric data from the UK.

      She considers it fate that the dots came together this way. When they were 20 years old, Samrin’s father passed away, and Samrin left for London on a student visa. Instead of studying, he washed dishes at McDonald’s and KFC, and stocked shelves at Aldi, Lidl, and Iceland. When his visa expired, he lived a clandestine existence, evading the authorities. At age 26, the Home Office arrested him, took his DNA, and deported him. This infraction turned out to be an unexpected lifeline for his identification.

      “Getting the message that my husband was no more, that was nothing compared to those four and a half months,” said Sanooja. She had begun to fear that she would have to live with “lifelong doubt” around Samrin’s fate. Now she knew that four days after Samrin sent his goodbye message, his body was pulled from a river on the Lithuanian side of the border.

      Sanooja has read the police report countless times now: On August 21, 2022, witness Saulius Zakarevičius went for a morning swim in the Neris River. After bathing, he saw something floating. Through binoculars, he was able to decipher human clothes. The river bank is covered with tall grass. At the end of the patch there was a male corpse lying face down. The surface of the skin was swollen, pale, chaotically covered with pink lines, resembling the surface of marble. The skin was peeling from the palms of the corpse…

      She was asked to identify the corpse.

      “As a wife, I know him. I know his eyes. To see them on a dead body, that was terrible.”
      Sanooja

      In photos of his personal items, she instantly recognized Samrin’s shoes: a muddy pair of blue Converse All-Stars, with the laces looped just the way he always did.

      To be able to transport a dead body from Europe to any other part of the world, families must face the financial challenge of costs up to 10,000 euros. But the decision was not only about money for Sanooja. It was about time and dreams.

      For one, she believed that he had suffered enough. “As Muslims, we believe that even dead bodies can feel pain,” she says softly. “I felt broken that he was in the mortuary, feeling the cold for four and a half months.”

      And perhaps most of all, she recites what Samrin had told her before he left: “If I go, this time I’m not coming back.” In the end, Sanooja relied on her husband’s last will. “His dream was to be in Europe. So, at least his body will rest in Europe.”
      “Graves without a plate”

      Samrin’s death was the first border death publicly recognized by the Lithuanian government. Despite being the first, he did not receive any distinctive attention, and his resting place remained an unmarked mound of earth for more than eight months.

      On a hot summer day in July, co-founder of Sienos Grupė, Mantautas Šulskus brings a green watering can and measuring tape to our visit to the Vilnius cemetery where Samrin was buried in February. Green grass is sprouting all over Samrin’s grave. But it is not the only one.

      There are three smaller graves lined in a row. Among them, an eleven-year-old, a five-year-old, and a newborn baby rest side by side, their lives cut short in 2021. “These are three minors who died in detention centers in Lithuania,” Mantautas points out somberly.

      These cases have not been officially acknowledged by Lithuanian authorities, and none of the graves of the minors bear a name, even though their identities were also known to authorities. This lack of recognition paints a haunting picture, suggesting a second, silent death—a death of identity and acknowledgment.

      Bodies are sent to municipal or village governments to bury, and if they do not receive explicit instructions to create a plate, they often opt not to. As a result, the nameless graves of migrants are scattered across cemeteries in the region.

      Yet Mantautas is here in the scorching heat to measure a stone plate nearby in the Muslim corner of the cemetery. Sanooja saw it during a video call with Sienos Grupė volunteers, so that she could pray virtually at her husband’s grave. She asked for a plate with Samrin’s name on it—“just exactly like that one there,” she pointed.

      After some months, Sienos Grupė crowdfunded around 1,500 euros to buy and place stone plates for all four graves. The graves of Samrin and the three children now have names: Yusof Ibrahim Ali, Asma Jawadi, and Fatima Manazarova.

      Resting at the feet of the grave is a plate made of stone bearing the inscription “M.S.M.M. Samrin, 1990-2022, Sri Lanka,” precisely as Sanooja has requested. She explains that, according to Islamic beliefs, this will ensure that her husband will rise when the last days come.

      Hidden graves, unknown bodies

      The chilling thing, Mantautas explains, is nobody knows how many graves of migrants there might be, except for the government, which buries them quietly, often in remote villages.

      Organizations like Sienos Grupė find themselves grasping in the dark for leads. Last month, volunteers came across the grave of Lakshmisundar Sukumaran, an Indian man reported dead in April “quite by accident,” says Mantautas. The revelation came on the Eve of All Saint’s Day, when activists preparing for a control ran into a local returning from a visit to his mother’s grave: “There is a migrant buried in town.”

      Indeed, Sukumaran’s grave stands alone in an isolated corner of a small cemetery in Rameikos, a village of 25 people on the Lithuanian-Belarus border. Set apart from crosses of various sizes, a vertical piece of wood bears the inscription: “Lakshmisundar Sukumaran 1983.06.05 – 2023.04.04.” The border fence is visible from his grave. The earth is decorated by the colorful leaves of Lithuanian autumn.

      Sienos Grupė maintains a list of at least 40 people reported missing on the Lithuania-Belarus border, information the government does not record. When bodies are found, they strive to connect the dots: Location, gender, age, ethnicity, possessions, birthmarks, anything. But if authorities do not report when a body is found, the chances of locating anybody on this list are small.

      Emiljia Śvobaitė, a lawyer and volunteer from Sienos Grupė, explains that the Lithuanian government will only confirm whether something they already know is correct. “It seems like they are hiding these kinds of stories and information unless somebody exposes it. They would only confirm the deaths after activists have said something about it.”
      “No political will”

      The Lithuanian Parliament building, known as the Seimas Palace, is an imposing glass-and-concrete building in downtown Vilnius. It is where the Lithuanians declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. From an office with a view over the square, Member of Parliament Tomas Tomilinas wryly explains that their government has legalized pushbacks essentially because Europe has not established that it’s illegal.

      “I would say Europe has no political will to make pushbacks illegal. If there were a European law, the European Commission would put a ban on it. It would put a fine on Lithuania. But nobody’s doing that.”
      Member of Lithuanian Parliament, Tomas Tomilinas

      The Polish parliament legalized pushbacks in October 2021, and the Lithuanian parliament followed suit by legalizing pushbacks in April this year.

      Emiljia raises concerns about the violence of pushbacks her clients have seen. “The government keeps telling us they do everything really nicely. They give people food, and even wave goodbye to them, in the daytime. But when we look at specific cases, where people end up without their limbs on them, those pushbacks are performed at night.”

      She also raises concerns about legalized pushbacks in Lithuania, and whether border guards should be given the right to assess and deny asylum claims on the spot. “It’s funny because border guards should decide right away on the border whether a person is running from persecution, meaning a border guard should identify the conflict in the country of origin, and do all the work that the migration department is doing.”

      “It’s naive to believe that the system would work.”
      Fighting back in court

      With the help of Sienos Grupė’s support for legal expenses, Sanooja took the case to court. If the Lithuanian officials wouldn’t speak with her, perhaps they would speak to lawyers.

      Yet last month, Sanooja’s case was closed for the final time by the Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office after seven appeals. The case never made it to trial.

      The Vilnius court claims there is no basis for a criminal investigation. Emiljia, who was on the team representing Sanooja in the case, responds that the pre-trial investigation didn’t investigate the cause of death properly, nor how the acts of the border police might have caused or contributed to the death of the applicant’s husband.

      Rytis Satkauskas, law professor, managing partner of ReLex law firm, and the lead attorney on Sanooja’s case, questions whether the Lithuanian courts are trying to hide something greater: he points to a series of inconsistencies in Samrin’s autopsy report.

      Autopsies should be conducted immediately to determine the cause of death. However, Samrin’s autopsy report claims that the cause of death cannot be established because the body was in an advanced state of decomposition of up to five months.

      Five months after Samrin’s death is the same time around which Sanooja got in touch to pursue the truth of the matter. Satkauskas does not think this is a coincidence: “I believe they left the body in the repository, then when they established the identity of the person, they had to do this autopsy.”

      The autopsy report explains the advanced state of decomposition by referencing the marshy area in which it was found, claiming the heat of the marsh had accelerated decomposition by up to five months within a matter of days.

      Satkauskas asks further: If Samrin simply drowned, then why do other measurements not add up? He references a table of measurements in the autopsy report, in which the weight and algae content of the lungs are normal. However, Satkauskas says, in cases of drowning, both weight and algae content should be much higher. “I’m convinced they have invented all those measurements,” Satkauskas puts simply.

      As Sanooja’s case has exhausted all legal avenues in Lithuania, it is now eligible for appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

      Emilija points to a promising parallel: in Alhowais v. Hungary, the European Court of Human Rights ruled this February that a Hungarian border guard’s violent pushback ending in the drowning of a Syrian man violated Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which protects the “right to life” and against “torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

      The decision came in February this year, seven years after the death of the defendant’s brother. Yet for Sanooja and her team, the case provides hope that there is a growing legal precedent for victims of pushbacks.

      A battle in court for Sanooja could be a long and expensive one. The case in Vilnius courts had cost 600 euros for each of the seven appeals, and after Sanooja ran out of funds after the first case, Sienos Grupė stepped in to shoulder the costs of the appeals.

      For the ECHR, it will cost 1500 euros to submit the proposal. Sanooja is exploring the possibility of raising money through NGOs or other means to continue the long quest for truth.

      The window of eligibility to appeal will close in February 2024.
      “Wherever I go, I have memories”

      Day by day, Sanooja’s son grows to look more like Samrin.

      She has tried not to cry in front of him. “It makes him upset. I am the only person now for my son, so I should be strong enough to face these things,” says the 32-year-old widow. “But wherever I go, I have memories. And everything my son does reminds me of him.”

      Before Samrin’s body was found, she told her son “false stories,” but with his body now interred, she has opened up to her son about her father’s death. He understands it the way a child might—he runs around telling neighbors his father is in heaven, and it’s a great place. It will be years before he can point to where Lithuania is on a map.

      Thanks to the cooperation of the Sri Lankan embassy in Sweden, Sanooja is one of the few families who have been able to receive a death certificate. She notes this will be crucial when her son enrolls for school and if they decide to sell or expand their property. However, to correct the misspelling on the document, she needs to travel to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, which takes ten hours and nearly 10,000 rupees.

      Meanwhile, Samrin’s death has ruptured the family into those who can accept the reality of his death, and those who cannot. Sanooja’s mother-in-law has ceased contact with her, unable to wrap her head around the fact that her boy is gone. When Samrin had left, he promised his mother to send money so that she would no longer have to wake up early to make pastries to sell in the morning. On the day of Samrin’s funeral, she told the family, “That is not my son.”

      “What difference does it make, finding the body and burying it?” asks Pauline Boss, the Psychology Professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota who coined the term “ambiguous loss,” which encompasses the unique stress of not knowing whether someone you love is alive or dead.

      Professor Boss states that burying someone is a distinct human need—not just for the dead, but for the living. “In all cases, a human being has to see their loved one transform from breathing to not breathing, and have the power and control to deal with the remains in their particular cultural way. It’s a human need, and it has been for eons.”

      Yet few families are able to attend the funerals of their loved ones in Europe, for the same reason their loved ones tried to travel to Europe on such a dangerous road in the first place: inability to obtain a visa, or lack of funds.

      “I hope one day I will visit, and I will show our son his father’s grave,” Sanooja declares.

      When Samrin was interred into the snow-covered February earth of Liepynės cemetery in Vilnius on Valentine’s Day this year, a volunteer present at the burial offered to video call Sanooja through FaceTime.

      In the grainy constellation of pixels of the phone screen in her palm, from 8,000 kilometers away, she watched her husband disappear forever into the cold European soil.

      https://unbiasthenews.org/widowed-by-europes-borders

      #Lituanie #Biélorussie #forêt #Pologne #Bialowieza

    • Missing data, missing souls in Italy

      How Italy’s failing system makes it almost impossible for families to identify their relatives who passed away while reaching the EU.

      Before the Syrian civil war erupted, Refaat Hazima was a barber in Damascus. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had also been barbers. Thanks to his craftsmanship, flair, and a reputation built over four generations, Refaat was a wealthy man. Together with his wife – a doctor for the national service – he could afford to have his three children study instead of sending them to work at a young age.

      “They were always the top of the class,” he recalls in a nostalgic voice as he sits alone in a seaside restaurant on Lampedusa, a small Sicilian island halfway between Malta and the eastern coast of Tunisia. The rocky shores along which he now slowly enjoys eggplant served with fresh tuna were the scene of the most traumatic episode of his life.

      “President Bashar al-Assad had centralized all power in his hands, and our daily life in Syria had become complicated.” Refaat was also temporarily imprisoned for political reasons. But the point of no return for him and his wife was the outbreak of civil war in 2011. It became clear that not only their children’s educational future was in jeopardy, but even the survival of their entire family.

      So they decided to leave.

      The couple paid smugglers more than fifty thousand dollars to attempt to reach Germany, where their children could continue their education. But amid rejections, hurdles, and hesitations that forced the family into months-long stages in different countries, Refaat and his family had to wait until 2013 to finally set sail to the European shores of Lampedusa.

      Although it was autumn, the sea was calm that night. Initial concerns related to the sea conditions and the wooden boat that was all too heavily laden with humans now dissipated. In the darkness of the night sea, the shorelines and the flickering lights of street lamps and restaurants were in sight. But suddenly the boat in which they were traveling capsized.

      “Everyone was screaming as we ended up in the sea,” Rafaat recalls. “I grabbed one of my children, my wife grabbed another child. But in the commotion and screaming of the nighttime shipwreck, two of my children disappeared.”
      \

      The couple were rescued by Italian authorities and brought to the mainland along with one of their children. The other two, however, disappeared. “One of them told me Dad, give me a kiss on the forehead, and then I never saw him ever again.”

      From 2013 to the present, Refaat has searched everywhere for their children. For 10 years he has been traveling, asking, and searching. He has even appeared on TV hoping one day to be reunited with them. But to this day he still does not know if his children were saved or if they are two of the 268 victims of the October 11, 2013 shipwreck, one of the worst Mediterranean disasters in the last three decades.

      Uncertain and partial numbers

      For more than two decades, Italy has been one of the main gateways for migrants wanting to reach the European Union. Between thirty and forty thousand people have died trying to reach Italy since 2000. But despite this strategic location, authorities have never created a comprehensive register to census the dead returned from the sea, and thus sources are confusing and approximate.

      In any case, the figure of bodies found is only a percentage of the people who lost their lives while attempting to cross over to Europe. In fact, the bodies of those who die at sea are rarely recovered. When this happens, they are even more rarely identified by Italian authorities.

      A study conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross tried to map the anonymous graves of migrants in various European countries and count the number of deaths recovered at sea. According to the report, between 2014 and 2019, 964 bodies of people – presumed migrants – were found in Italy, of which only 27 percent were identified. In most of the cases analyzed, identification occurred through immediate visual recognition by their fellow travelers, while those traveling without friends or relatives almost always remained anonymous.

      Overall, 73 percent of the bodies recovered in Italy between 2014 and 2019 remain unknown.

      A DNA test for everyone

      “The vast majority of bodies end up at the bottom of the sea and are never recovered, becoming fish food,” explains Tareke Bhrane, founder of the October 3 Committee, an NGO established to protect the rights of those who die trying to reach Europe. “The Committee was born in the aftermath of the two disastrous shipwrecks on October 3 and 11, 2013 to make Italy understand that even those who die have dignity and that respecting that dignity is important not only for those who die, but also for those who survive,” Bhrane recounts.

      On October 3, 2023, the Committee organized a large event on the island of Lampedusa to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the shipwreck. Dozens of families of people who died or disappeared gathered on the island, traveling from many European and Middle Eastern countries.

      On the island were also forensic geneticists from Labanof, a leading forensic medicine laboratory at the University of Milan that has been working with prosecutors and law enforcement agencies for decades now to solve cases and identify unnamed bodies. Relatives of missing persons were thus able to undergo a free DNA test to find out more about their loved ones.

      One of the committee’s main activities in recent years has been to lobby Sicilian municipalities for better management of anonymous graves. Thanks in part to the NGO, today almost all Sicilian provinces now house some victims of migration, often anonymous, in their cemeteries.

      “Among the essential points of our mission,” Bhrane explains, “is to create a European DNA database for the recognition of victims, so that anyone who wants to can take a DNA test anywhere in Europe and find out if a loved one has lost their life trying to get here.”
      Resigned and hopeful

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RhbqUACTv8&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Funbiasthenews.org%2

      While Refaat has not yet resigned himself to the idea that his children may have died at sea, other relatives have become more aware and would like to know where Italy buried their loved ones. But this is often impossible because the graves are anonymous and there is a lack of national records that they can consult to find their loved ones.

      This is the case for Asmeret Amanuel and Desbele Asfaha, two Eritrean nationals who are respectively the nephew and brother of one of the people aboard the boat that capsized in 2013.

      “We heard from the radio that the boat he was traveling on had sunk. We never heard from him again,” Asmeret says. The two traveled all the way to Lampedusa to undergo DNA testing, hoping to match their loved one’s name for the first time with one of the many acronyms that have appeared on migrants’ anonymous graves and find out where he rests.

      “I remember as children we used to play together,” says Desbele. “And instead today I don’t even know where to mourn him. Yet it would take so little.”

      An organizational failure

      Many Italian cemeteries hold anonymous graves of people who died while migrating, especially in the South. It is difficult to map them all and provide an exact number, just as it is nearly impossible to quantify the number of anonymous graves. Again, there is no centralized, national database, and even at the municipal level information is scarce and partial.

      But thanks to an international investigation project called the “The Border Graves Investigation” and promoted by IJ4EU and Journalism Fund of which Unbias the News is one of the partners, it is now possible to shed light on what resembles a large European mass grave.

      From the Italian side of the investigation, large gaps emerge on Italy’s part in the construction of a national cemetery archive. According to protocol, data on anonymous graves are supposed to be sent every three months from individual cemeteries and work their way up a long bureaucratic chain until they reach the desk of the government’s Special Commissioner for Missing Persons, an office created by the Italian government in 2007 precisely to create a single national database.

      But sources from the Special Commissioner told the Border Graves Investigation team that unidentified bodies are not within their jurisdiction because in cases where there is an alleged crime (e.g., illegal immigration) the jurisdiction passes to the local magistrate. Thus, the source confirmed that no office systematically collects this data and that figures areeverything is scattered in individual prosecutors’ offices.

      However, the documentary traces of migrants’ anonymous graves are often already lost in the records of the cemeteries themselves or municipal records, that is, at the first step in the chain. For example, in Agrigento, it is possible to visit the graves of men and women who died at sea marked by numbers, but in the paper registers consulted by our team of journalists there is no trace of them.

      Yet the records are deposited a few meters from the graves themselves.

      In Sciacca, Agrigento province, the municipal administration moved some anonymous graves of migrants inside a mass grave to make room for new burials. However, it did not follow the prescribed regulations and did not notify the relatives of the few victims who had been identified and whose names were listed on the grave. The matter was discovered at the time when a woman went to the cemetery to pray at her sister’s grave and did not find her in her usual place.

      In other cases, anonymous graves have been moved from one cemetery to another due to the need for space, but without alerting the population.
      The bureaucratic snag

      Finding out the fate of a loved one is so complicated for several reasons. First, the identification of the body, which the Italian authorities do not generally consider a priority. Then there is the difficulty of recognition itself, especially when relatives are abroad or have difficulty contacting Italian authorities.

      In addition, there is the problem of traceability of the bodies, which often remain on the seabed and, in the few cases where they are found, enter a bureaucratic machine in which it is arduous to recover their traces. Researcher and anthropologist Giorgia Mirto explained this to our investigative team: “The corpses should be registered in the registrar’s office where the body is found. But then the body is often moved within the same cemetery, from one cemetery to another or from one municipality to another, and so there is documentation that travels along with the body. Moves that are difficult to track.”

      “Moreover,” Mirto adds, “adding to the difficulty is the absence of unified procedures. “With the Human Cost of Border Control project, we have seen that the only way to count these people and their graves is to do a blanket search of all the municipalities, all the cemetery offices, all the registrars’ offices and all the cemeteries, possibly adding the funeral homes as well.”

      Thus, there is a problem with centralization and transparency of data that is often also linked to the huge austerity cuts that have forced municipalities to work understaffed. Emblematic is the Commissioner’s Office for Missing Persons, which would be responsible for compiling a list of unidentified bodies found on Italian soil, but has been left without a portfolio.

      “As anthropologist Didier Fassin says,” the researcher concludes, “missing data is not the result of carelessness but is an administrative and political choice. It should be understood how much this choice is conscious and how much is the result of disinterest in the good work of municipal archives (an essential resource for historical memory and for the peace of victims’ families) or in understanding the cost of borders in terms of human lives.”

      EU responsibilities

      Forensic scientist Cristina Cattaneo – a professor at the University of Milan and director of the Labanof forensic laboratory – explained to our team that from a forensic point of view, the most important procedure for identifying a body is to collect both post-mortem (from tattoos to DNA, through cadaveric inspections and autopsies) and antemortem medical forensic information, that is, that which comes from family members regarding the missing person.

      However, in many countries, including Italy, no law makes this procedure mandatory. In the case of people who die while migrating, this is done only in egregious cases, such as large shipwrecks that become news. “These cases have shown that a broad and widespread effort to identify the bodies of those who die at sea is possible,” says Cattaneo. “However, most people lose their lives in very small shipwrecks that don’t make too much news. And because there is no protocol to make data collection systematic, many family members are left in doubt as to whether their loved ones are alive or dead.”

      All this happens despite the great efforts made over the years by the government’s Extraordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons, which, despite being the only national institution of its kind at the European level, has to manage a huge amount of data from all Italian municipalities. Data that are often disorganized, reported late, and collected without adhering to common and strict procedures.

      This is why Cattaneo is among the signatories of an appeal calling for the enactment of a European law that would once and for all oblige member states to identify the bodies of migrants.

      “Yet a European solution would exist and from a technical point of view it is already feasible,” Cattaneo adds. It involves data exchange systems such as Interpol, which at the European level already collects, organizes, and can share information and organically to member countries.

      “It would be enough to expand the analysis to include missing migrants and thus make it possible to search and identify them on a European scale. But this is not being done because of a lack of political will on the part of Brussels,” Cattaneo concludes.
      “The art of patience”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlDtBRg02aU&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Funbiasthenews.org%2

      Identifying the bodies of people who lose their lives coming to Europe is an important issue on several levels.

      First and foremost, international humanitarian law protects the right to identity for both those who are alive and those who have died. But identifying is also an essential issue for those who remain alive. Indeed, without a death certificate, it is almost impossible for a spouse to marry again or to access survivor’s pensions, just as it is impossible for a minor relative to leave their country with an adult without running into a blockade by the authorities, who cannot rule out the possibility of child abduction.

      Then there is the issue of suspended grief, namely the condition of those who do not know whether to search for a loved one or mourn his or her death.

      This is the case for Asmeret and Desbele, but also for many relatives interviewed by our team.

      Sabah and Ahmed, for example, are a Syrian couple. One of their sons disappeared in 2013 after a shipwreck in Italian waters. For 10 years, Ahmed retraced the same land and sea route followed by his son, hoping to find his body or at least get more information. But the efforts were in vain and to this day the family still does not know what happened to him.

      “His children are still with us and often ask, ‘where is Dad? Where is Dad?’ but without a grave and a body, we still don’t know what to answer.”

      Both Sabah and Ahmed are very religious and today rely on Allah to give them the comfort they have not found in the work of institutions. “The greatest gift from Allah,” they recount, “was the patience with which to be able to move forward in the face of such unnatural grief for a parent.”

      A similar lesson was learned by Refaat, who like Ahmed and Sabah has been living in ignorance for ten years. Today he has opened a barber store in Hamburg and realized his dream of having his surviving son study in Germany.

      “I have been searching for my children for ten years, and Allah knows I will search for them until the end of my days, should I find their dead bodies, or should I find them alive who knows where in the world. But I want to die knowing that I did everything I could to find them.”
      Refaat Hazima

      Sometimes his voice trembles. “I often talk to them in my sleep, I feel that they are still alive. But even if I were to find out they are dead, in all these years I would still have learned how to deal with frustration and pain, how to live with emptiness. And most importantly,” he concludes, “I would have learned the art of patience.”


      https://unbiasthenews.org/missing-data-missing-souls

      #Italie #Tareke_Brhane #comitato_3_ottobre #3_octobre_2013 #Lampedusa

    • Unmarked monuments of EU’s shame in Croatia and Bosnia

      Amid pushbacks and torture, many of the victims of the treacherous Balkan route are laid to an anonymous final resting place in Croatian and Bosnian cemetaries.

      In the village of Siče in eastern Croatia, there are more inhabitants in the cemetery than among the living. The village has 230 living residents, and 250 dead. To be more precise, the cemetery is home to 247 locals and three unknown persons. There would be more people six feet under if Siče hadn’t gotten its own cemetery only in the 1970s. There would also be even more of the living if they hadn’t, like many from that region, gone to bigger cities in search of a better life. Abroad as well, mainly to Germany.

      The graves of Siče’s inhabitants briefly tell the visitor who these people were, where they belong, and whether their loved ones care for them. That’s the thing with graves, they summarise the basic information of our life.

      If the grave bears only the inscription “NN”, that summarises a tragedy.

      Who are these three people whose names are unknown? How come their last resting place is a plain grave in Siče?

      Even if you didn’t know, it’s clear that those three people don’t belong there.

      They have been buried completely separated from the rest of the cemetery. Three wooden crosses with NN inscriptions, stuck in the ground at the edge of the cemetery. NN, an abbreviation of the Latin nomen nescio, literally means, “I do not know the name.” The official explanation from the public burial ground operator is that space has been left for more possible burials of those whose names are not known. However, the explanation that springs to mind when you get there is that they were buried separately so they wouldn’t mix with the locals. Or as the mayor of another town, where NN migrants have also been buried at the edge of the cemetery, let slip in a telephone conversation, “So that they’re not in the way.”

      At the cemetery in Siče, these are the only three graves that no one takes care of. In about five years, all trace of them could disappear. The public burial ground operator is obliged to bury unidentified bodies, but not to maintain graves unless the grave belongs to a person of “special historical and social significance.”

      NN1, NN2 and NN3 are of special significance only to their loved ones, who probably don’t even know where they are. Maybe they are waiting to finally hear from them from Western Europe. Maybe they’re looking for them. Maybe they mourn them.

      Identities known but buried as unknown

      If you do dig a little deeper, you will learn a thing or two about those who rest here nameless.

      In the early, cold morning of December 23, 2022, the police found two bodies on the banks of the Sava, the river that separates Croatia from Bosnia and Herzegovina. It separates the European Union from the rest of Europe. According to the police report, they also found a group of twenty foreign citizens who illegally entered Croatia via the river. The group was missing one more person. After an extensive search, a third body was found in the afternoon. The pathologist of the General Hospital in the town of Nova Gradiška established the time of death for all three people as 2:45 A.M. Two died of hypothermia, one drowned.

      Identity cards from a refugee camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina were found on them. We learned that, according to their IDs, all three were from Afghanistan: Ahmedi Abozari was 17 years old, Basir Naseri was 21 years old and Shakir Atoin was 25 years old. NN1, NN2 and NN3.

      Other migrants from the group also confirmed the identity of two of them, as the Brodsko-Posavska County police administration told us. Then why were they buried as NN? If it was known that they were from Afghanistan, why were they buried under crosses? If families are looking for them, how will they find them?

      The cemetery management was kind and said that they perform burials according to what is written in the burial permit signed by the pathologist – and it said NN.

      The pathologist said that he enters the data based on the information he receives from the police.

      The competent police department told us that the person is buried according to the rules of the local municipality.

      Siče cemetery belongs to the municipality of Nova Kapela, whose mayor, Ivan Šmit, discontentedly listed all the costs that his municipality incurred for those burials and said that whoever is willing to pay for it can change the NN inscription into names.

      We came across a series of similar administrative ambiguities while investigating how authorities deal with the deceased people they recover at EU borders as a part of the Border Graves Investigation carried out by a team of eight freelancers from across Europe together with Unbias the News, The Guardian and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

      There is no centralised European database on the number of migrants’ graves in Europe.

      But the team managed to confirm the existence of at least 1,931 migrants’ graves in Greece, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Malta, Poland and France, dating from 2014 to 2023. Of these, 1,015 were unidentified. More than half of the unidentified graves are in Greece, 551, in Italy 248, and in Spain 109. The data were obtained based on the databases of international organizations, non-governmental organizations, scientists, local authorities and cemeteries, and field visits.

      The team visited 24 cemeteries in Greece, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Poland and Lithuania, where there are a total of 555 graves of unidentified migrants in the last decade, from 2014 to 2023.

      These are only those whose bodies have been found. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates that more than 93% of those who go missing on Europe’s borders are never found.
      Families lost in bureaucracy

      December 2022, when the three young Afghans died, was rainier than usual and the Sava River swelled. It is big and fast to begin with.

      In that area, just three days earlier, five Turkish citizens went missing after their boat overturned on the Sava. Among them were a two-year-old girl, a twelve-year-old boy and their parents. The brother of the missing father came from Germany to Croatia to find out what happened to the family. From the documentation, which we have in our possession, it is evident that with the help of translator Nina Rajković, he tried to get information about his missing relatives from several police stations. Even months later, he hasn’t received any updates.

      The two had wanted to file a missing person’s report, but the police told them that there was no point in doing so if the person had not previously been registered in the territory of Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina.

      We encountered a number of similar examples. A young man had come to Croatia and reported to the police in both Croatia and Slovenia that his brother had drowned in the Kupa River that separates the two countries. However, his brother’s disappearance was not recorded in the Croatian national database of missing persons, which is publicly available. The police did not contact him after several unidentified bodies were found in the Kupa in the following days.

      In another example, an Afghan man waited six months for the body of his brother, who drowned when they tried to cross the Sava together, also in December 2022, to be transferred from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina so that he could bury him. Although he had confirmed that it was his brother, the identification process was lengthy and complicated.

      There are numerous families who tried from afar to track down their loved ones who had disappeared in the territory of Croatia, only to finally give up in discouragement.

      There are many questions and few clear answers when it comes to the issue of missing and dead migrants on the so-called Balkan Route, of which Croatia is a part. There are no clear protocols and procedures defining to whom and how to report a missing person. It is not known whether missing migrants are actively searched for, as tourists are when they disappear in the summer. It is not clear how much and which information is needed for identification.

      “The circulation of information between institutions and individual departments seems almost non-existent to me."

      “In one case, it took me more than two months and dozens of phone calls and emails to different addresses, police stations, police departments, hospitals, and the state attorney’s office, just to prompt the initiation of identification, which to this day, more than a year later, has not been completed,” says Marijana Hameršak, activist and head of the project “European Regime of Irregular Migration on the Periphery of the EU” of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb, which collects knowledge and data on missing and dead migrants.

      Searches for missing migrants and attempts to identify the dead in Croatia, as well as in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, most often rely on the efforts of volunteers and activists, who, like Marijana, untiringly search for information in the chaotic administration because families who do not know the language find this task practically insurmountable.
      “Die or make your dream come true”

      The Facebook group “Dead and Missing in the Balkans” became the central place to exchange photos and information about the missing and the dead between families and activists.

      The competent Ministry of the Interior does not have a website in English with an address where one can write from Afghanistan or Syria and inquire about the fate of loved ones, leave information about them, and report them missing. There is also no regional database on missing and dead migrants on which the police administrations would cooperate, not even the ones from the countries where the most crossings are recorded – from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia.

      In an interview with our team, Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, emphasised that the creation of a centralised European database of missing and dead migrants is extremely important. If such a database combined ante-mortem and post-mortem data on the deceased, the chances of identification would greatly increase.

      “Families have a right to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones.”
      Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

      Yet, police cooperation in keeping the EU’s external border impervious is effective.

      Previously, people attempting to migrate did not try to cross the Sava so often. They knew it was too dangerous. They share information with each other and do not venture across such a river in children’s inflatable boats or inner tubes. Unless they are utterly desperate. With pushbacks and the use of force, which many organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been warning about for years, the Croatian police made it difficult to cross at other, less dangerous points along the Croatian border, which is the longest external land border in the European Union. As a young Moroccan in Bosnia and Herzegovina who tried to cross the border to Croatia 11 times but was pushed back by the Croatian police each time told us, “You have two choices: die or make your dream come true.”

      It is difficult to determine how many died on the Balkan Route in an attempt to fulfil their dream. The most comprehensive data for ex-Yugoslav countries is collected by the researchers of the “European Regime of Irregular Migration on the Periphery of the EU (ERIM)” project. It records 346 victims from 2014 to 2023 in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, North Macedonia and Kosovo. Each entry in ERIM’s database is individual and contains as much data as the researchers managed to collect, and they use all available sources – media reports, witnesses, official statistics, activist channels. But the figure is certainly significantly higher. Some who went missing were never even registered anywhere.

      Many bodies were never found. For example, another common border crossing, the Stara Planina mountain range between Bulgaria and Serbia, is a rough and inaccessible terrain. Only those who have been driven to this route by the same fate will come across the bodies, and they will not risk encountering authorities to report it.

      If people die in the minefields remaining from the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, there will not be much left of their bodies. Most bodies were found drowned in rivers, but there is no estimate of how many who drowned were never reported missing, or were never found.

      The Croatian Ministry of the Interior provided us with data on migrants who have died in Croatia since 2015, when records began to be kept, until the end of November 2023: according to the data, a total of 87 migrants died on the territory of the Republic of Croatia. To put it more precisely: that’s how many bodies were found in Croatia. Not a single official body in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia keeps records of migrants buried in that territory.

      However, we managed to obtain data for Croatia, thanks to inquiries sent to over 500 addresses of cities, municipalities and municipal companies that manage cemeteries. According to the data obtained, there are 59 graves of migrants in 32 cemeteries in Croatia who were buried in the last decade, namely from 2014 until September 2023. Of these, 45 have not been identified. The Ministry of the Interior says that since 2001, DNA samples have been taken from all unidentified bodies. We asked the Ministry to allow us to talk with experts who work on the identification of migrants, but we were not approved.

      Some of the buried were exhumed and returned to their families in their country of origin, although this is a demanding and extremely expensive process for the families.
      The burden of not knowing

      Among the NN graves is a stillborn baby from Syria buried in 2015 in the town of Slavonski Brod. A five-year-old girl who drowned in the Danube was buried in Dalje in 2021. Last summer, a young man died of exhaustion in the highlands in the Dubrovnik area. Some were hit by a train. Many died of hypothermia. Some die because they were not provided medical help early enough. Some don’t believe anything can help them, so they committed suicide.

      According to the law, they are buried closest to the place of death, which are mostly small cemeteries, such as the one in Siče. Often, just like in that village, their graves are separated from the rest of the cemetery. In some places, like in Otok, one of the tender-hearted local women has given herself the task of taking care of the NN grave. In others, like the cemetery in Prilišće, the NN wooden cross from 2019 has already rotted.

      Each of these NN graves leaves behind loved ones who bear the burden of not knowing what happened. In psychology, this is called ambiguous loss, which means that as long as relatives do not have confirmation that their loved ones are dead, and as long as they do not know where their bodies are, they cannot mourn them.

      If they go on with their lives, they feel guilty. And so they remain frozen in a state between despair and hope. American psychologist Dr. Pauline Boss is the author of the concept and theory of “ambiguous loss.”

      “A grave is so important because it helps to say goodbye,“ she said in an interview for our investigation.

      There are also practical consequences of this frozen state: succession rights cannot be carried out, bank accounts cannot be accessed, family pensions cannot be obtained, the partner cannot remarry, and custody of children is complicated.

      Many families in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina know ambiguous loss very well. Both countries went through war in the 1990s that left thousands of people missing.

      Both countries have special laws on the missing in those wars and well-developed mechanisms of search, identification, data storage and mutual cooperation. But this does not apply to migrants who vanish and die among the thousands who are on the move along the Balkan Route.
      Croatia responsible for death of a child

      Croatia became an important point of entry into the European Union after Hungary closed its borders in September 2015. From then until March 2016, it is estimated that around 660,000 refugees passed through the Croatian section of the Balkan corridor – the interstate, organised route. This corridor allowed them to get from Greece to Western Europe in two or three days. Most importantly, their journey was safe.

      Of these hundreds of thousands of people on the move, the Croatian Ministry of the Interior did not record a single death in 2015 and 2016.

      The corridor was established to prevent casualties after a large number of refugees died on the railway in Macedonia in the spring of 2015. However, with the conclusion of the EU-Turkey refugee agreement in March 2016, the corridor closed. The EU committed to generously funding Turkey to keep refugees on its territory, so that they do not come to the European Union. And so the perilous, informal Balkan Route remained the only option. Many take it. In the first ten months of 2023 alone, the Croatian police recorded 62,452 actions related to illegal border crossings.

      Both the Croatian Ombudswoman Tena Šimonović Einwalter and Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatović warn of the same thing: border and migration policies have a clear impact on the risk of migrants going missing or die. It is necessary to establish legal and safe migration routes in the EU.

      However, the EU expects Croatia to protect its external border, and Croatia is doing so wholeheartedly. Croatian Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović calls such practices “techniques of discouragement” and says they are fully in line with the EU Schengen Border Code.

      The result of such practices is, for example, the death of Madina Hussiny. The six-year-old girl from Afghanistan was struck by a train and killed after Croatian police “discouraged” her and her family away from the Croatian border and told them to follow train tracks back to Serbia in the middle of the night in 2017. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in November 2021 that Croatia was responsible for Madina’s death.

      In a typical “discouragement,” Croatian police transport people to points along the border and order them to cross. In the testimonies we heard, as well as in many reports of non-governmental organisations, people described having to wade or swim across rivers, climb over rocks or make their way through dense forest. They often cross at night, sometimes stripped naked, and without knowing the way because the police usually take away their mobile phones.

      Up to 80% of all pushbacks by Croatian police may be impacted by one or more forms of torture, indicates data collected by Border Violence Monitoring Network in 2019. That means that thousands were victims of border torture.

      According to data collected by the Danish Refugee Council, in the two-year period from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2022, at least 30,000 people were pushed back to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
      “While trying to reach Europe”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=112&v=SFLYVVtsjGc&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fu

      Among them is Arat Semiullah from Afghanistan. In November 2022, he intended to cross the Sava River and enter Croatia from Bosnia. He was 20 years old. He drowned and was buried at the Orthodox cemetery in Banja Luka. His family in Afghanistan did not know what happened to him. He had sent his mom a selfie with a fresh haircut for entering the European Union and then he stopped answering.

      The mother begged her nephew Payman Sediqi, who lives in Germany, to try to find him. Payman got in touch with the activist Nihad Suljić, who voluntarily helps families find out what happened to their loved ones in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They spent weeks trying to get information. Payman travelled to Bosnia and managed to find his relative thanks to the helpfulness of a policewoman who showed him forensic photographs. Arat’s mom confirmed by phone that it was her son.

      Arat’s obituary published in Bosnia and Herzegovina said that “Croatian police sank the boat using firearms, and he tragically drowned.” With the help of the Muslim community, and at the request of the family, his body was transferred to the Muslim cemetery in the village of Kamičani. The family wanted to bury him in Afghanistan, but it was too expensive and bureaucratically complicated.

      In September 2023, we met with Nihad and Payman when a large tombstone was erected for Arat. It says, “Drowned in the Sava River while trying to reach Europe.” Payman told us that Arat was crossing the Sava with a group of others trying to enter Europe. Some of them managed to cross over to the Croatian side, but then the Croatian police shot at the rubber boat Arat was in. The boat sank and Arat drowned. That’s what a survivor who crossed over to the Croatian bank of the Sava told Payman. Payman says that Arat’s family is in great pain, but at least they know where their son is and that he was buried according to their religious customs. It is important to Payman that his relative’s grave says he died as a migrant.

      “People die every day in Europe, fleeing countries where there is no life for them. Their dreams are buried in Europe. No one cares about them, not even when European policemen shoot at them,” Payman says.

      Payman knows what kind of dreams he’s talking about. He himself came to Germany illegally at the age of 16. He says he was lucky.

      Nihad advocates that other graves of migrants in Bosnia and Herzegovina also be permanently marked as such. He takes us to the cemetery in the town of Zvornik, where 17 NN migrants are buried. Nihad says he was informed that some of them had their passport on them when they were found. From the cemetery, you can see the river Drina, which separates Serbia from Bosnia and where many lives have been lost during crossing attempts. About 30 bodies were found in the Drina this year alone. Nihad says that they are lucky if they wash up on the Bosnian riverbanks, because in Serbia the authorities often do not perform autopsies nor take DNA samples. This was confirmed to us by activists from Serbia. In those cases, they are forever and completely lost to their families.

      The earthen NN graves in Zvornik are overgrown and not demarcated, so you wouldn’t know if you are stepping on them. Nihad managed to convince the Town of Zvornik to replace the wooden signs with black stone. It is important to him that they are buried with dignity, but he also finds it important that they stand there as a memorial.

      “My wish is that even 100 years from now these graves stand as monuments of the EU’s shame. Because it was not the river that killed these people, but the EU border regime,” Nihad says.

      https://unbiasthenews.org/unmarked-monuments-of-eus-shame-croatia-bosnia

      #Bosnie #Croatie #Zvornik #Madina_Hussiny

    • Counting the invisible victims of Spain’s EU borders

      Investigation finds hundreds of victims of migration to the EU lie in unmarked graves along Spain’s borders, with government taking no coordinated action to guarantee “last rights.”

      In January 2020, Alhassane Bangoura was buried in an unmarked grave in the Muslim area of Teguise municipal cemetery in Lanzarote as city officials and members of the local Muslim community watched on. He had been born only a couple of weeks earlier onboard a cramped patera migrant boat on which his mother, who is from Guinea, and 42 others were trying to reach the Spanish Canary Islands. Their boat was adrift on the Atlantic ocean after its motor had failed two days earlier, and Alhassane’s mother had gone into labour at sea. Her child only lived for a few hours before dying just off the coast of Lanzarote.

      Alhassane’s case shocked the island and made national news. Yet as mourners paid their respects, his mother was 200 kilometres away in a migrant reception centre on the neighbouring island of Gran Canaria, having been unable to get permission from authorities to remain on Lanzarote for the funeral.

      “She’d been allowed to see the body of her son one more time before being transferred, and I accompanied her to the funeral home,” says Mamadou Sy, a representative of the local Muslim community. “It was very emotional as she was leaving. All we could do was promise her that her son would not be alone; that like any Muslim, he’d be brought to the Mosque where his body would be washed by other mothers; that we would pray for him and that afterwards we’d send her a video of the burial.”

      Nearly four years later, Alhassane’s final resting place remains without a formal headstone. It lies next to more than three dozen graves of unidentified migrants – whose names are completely unknown but who, like Alhassane, are also victims of Europe’s brutal border regime.

      Border Graves

      Such a scene is no anomaly along Spain’s vast coastline. Border graves like these can be found in cemeteries stretching from Alicante on the country’s eastern Mediterranean coast to Cádiz on the Atlantic seaboard and south to the Canaries. Some have names but, more often than not, the inscription reads some variation of “unidentified migrant,” “unknown Moroccan,” or “victim of the Strait [of Gibraltar],” or there is simply a hand-painted cross.

      In Barbate cemetery in Cádiz, where the deceased are sealed into niches in traditional brick-walled stacks around two metres in height, groundskeeper Germán points out over 30 different migrant graves, the earliest of which date from 2002 and the most recent are from a shipwreck in 2019.

      "No one ever comes to visit, but on days when there are funerals here and flowers are about to be thrown out, I place them on the tombs containing the unknown migrants,” he explains. “In some of the older graves, you have the remains of up to five or six migrants together, each placed in separate sacks within the same niche to save space.”

      Along the coast, in Tarifa, Spain’s earliest mass grave of unidentified migrants, containing 11 victims from a 1988 shipwreck, overlooks the northern reaches of the African continent, which can be seen on a clear day. Meanwhile, around 400 kilometres west of the African coast, on the remote Canarian island of El Hierro, seven unidentified migrants have been buried in the last two months, along with the remains of 30-year old Mamadou Marea. “Locals joined us to accompany the remains of each of these people to their last resting place,” explains Amado Carballo, a councillor on El Hierro. “What upset all of us was not being able to put a name on the tombstone and simply having to leave the person identified by a police code.”

      Such concern was less evident in Arrecife, Lanzarote where two unidentified graves from February this year have been left sealed with a covering that still bears a corporate logo.

      There is no comprehensive data on how many identified and unidentified migrant graves exist in Spain, and the country’s Interior Ministry has never released figures for the total number of bodies recovered across the various maritime migration routes. But in exclusive data from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Unbias The News can reveal that the bodies of an estimated 530 people who died at Spain’s borders were recovered between 2014 and 2021 – of which 292 remain unidentified.

      In the six month Europe-wide Border Graves Investigation, undertaken in conjunction with Unbias the News, The Guardian and Süddeutsche Zeitung, 109 unidentified migrant graves from 2014-21 were confirmed in Spain across 18 locations. According to a study by the University of Amsterdam, a further 434 unidentified graves stem from 2000-2013 in at least 65 cemeteries.

      These graves are symbols of a much wider humanitarian tragedy. The ICRC estimates that just 6.89% of those who go missing on Europe’s borders are found, while the Spanish NGO Walking Borders gives an even lower figure for the West African Atlantic route to the Canaries, estimating that only 4.2 percent of the bodies of those who die are ever recovered.

      Guaranteeing “last rights”

      The unvisited and anonymous graves are also a reflection of the fact that the rights to both identification and a dignified burial for those who have died on migration routes have been consistently neglected by national authorities in Spain. As in other European countries, successive Spanish governments have failed to develop legal mechanisms and state protocols to guarantee these “last rights” of victims, as well as their families’ corresponding “right to know” and to mourn their loved ones.

      The problem is “utterly neglected,” says Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, who insists that EU countries are failing in their obligations under international human rights law to secure families’ “right to truth”. In 2021, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for “prompt and effective identification processes” to inform families about the fate of their loved ones. Yet last year, the Council of Europe called the area a “legislative void.”

      “People are always calling the office and asking us how to search for a family member, but you have to be honest and say there’s no clear official channel they can turn to,” explains Juan Carlos Lorenzo, director of the Spanish Refugee Council (CEAR) on the Canary Islands. “You can put them in touch with the Red Cross, but there’s no government-led programme of identification. Nor is there the type of dedicated office needed to coordinate with families and centralise information and data on missing migrants.”

      This year alone we are working with over 600 families whose loved ones have disappeared. These families, who are from Morocco, Algeria, Senegal, Guinea and as far afield as Sri Lanka are very much alone and are poorly protected by public administrations. In turn, this means that there are criminal networks and fraudsters seeking to extract money from them.”
      Helena Maleno, director of Walking Borders

      Even in the case of a victim’s identification, a recent report from the Human Rights Association of Andalucia lays out the legal and financial barriers families face in terms of repatriating their loved ones. In 2020/21, ICRC figures show that 284 bodies were recovered but that, of the 116 identified, only 53 were repatriated. The Andalusian Association for Human Rights (APDHA) report also notes, with respect to border graves, that “many people end up buried in a manner contrary to their beliefs.” Just half of Spain’s 50 provinces have Muslim cemeteries, not all of which are on the Spanish coast.

      For Maleno, these state failures are no accident: “Spain and other European states have a policy of making the victims, as well as the border itself, invisible. You have policies of denying the number of dead and of concealing data, but for the families this means obstacles in terms of accessing information and burial rights, as well as endless bureaucratic hurdles.”
      “I dream of Oussama”

      Abdallah Tayeb has gained first-hand experience of the dysfunctionality of the Spanish system in his attempts to confirm whether a body recovered almost a year ago is that of his cousin Oussama, a young barber from Algeria who dreamed of joining Tayeb in France.

      The unnamed corpse, which Tayeb strongly believes is his cousin, is currently in a morgue in Almería and looks set to be buried in an unmarked grave in the new year – unless he can achieve a last minute breakthrough.

      “The feeling is one of powerlessness,” he admits. “Nothing is transparent.”

      Abdallah Tayeb was born in Paris to Algerian parents but spends every summer in Algeria with his family. “As Oussama and I were pretty much the same age, we were really close. He was obsessed with the idea of coming to Europe, as two of his brothers were already living in France. But I didn’t know he had actually arranged to leave on a patera last December.”

      Oussama was among 23 people (including seven children) who vanished after setting out from Mostaganem, Algeria, on a motor boat on Christmas Day 2022. Soon after the patera went missing, his brother Sofiane travelled from France to Cartagena in southern Spain – the destination the vessel had hoped to reach. With the help of the Red Cross, Sofiane was able to file a missing persons report with the Spanish authorities and submit a DNA sample, which he hopes will result in a match with a body held in a morgue. However, so far, he has been unable to piece together any concrete information regarding his brother’s fate.

      A second trip to Spain in February did lead to a breakthrough, however. After driving down the Mediterranean coast together, Tayeb and his cousin Sofiane managed to speak to a forensic pathologist working in the Almería morgue, who seemed to recognise a photo of Oussama. “She kept saying ‘This face looks familiar’ and also mentioned a necklace – something he’d been wearing when he left.” According to the pathologist, there was a potential match with an unidentified body recovered by the coastguard on 27 December 2022.

      Feeling that they were finally close to getting some answers, they were informed at the police headquarters in Almería that, in order to view the body for a visual identification, they would need permission from the police station where the corpse had initially been registered. “This was when the real nightmare began,” Tayeb remembers. Handed a list of five police stations from across the wider region where the corpse could have been registered, they spent the next two days driving from station to station along the Murcian coast.

      “The first police station we visited wouldn’t even let us in the door when we told them we were asking about a missing migrant, and after that it was always the same script: this is not the right place; we don’t have a body; you have to go there instead.” When the pair returned to the first station in Huércal de Almeria after being repeatedly told it was the right place to ask, impatient officers refused to engage, citing privacy laws, and even told them to warn other families searching for missing migrants not to keep coming to inquire.

      “In the end,” Tayeb explains, “we came to the reality that they will never let us have any information. It was very heartbreaking, especially going back to France. It felt like we were leaving him [there] in the fridge.”

      As the subsequent months passed, the frustration and anxiety built for the family. “In May we were told that the DNA sample we gave five months earlier had only just arrived in Madrid and had still not been processed and sent to the database.” No further information has been forthcoming, and Spanish authorities have a policy of only getting in touch with families when there is a positive match and not if the test comes back negative.

      Tayeb is contemplating one final visit to Spain to try and retrieve his cousin Oussama, partly to be certain for his own sake that he’s done everything in his power to find him, but he’s worried that the journey could reopen his trauma of ambiguous loss. “The effort of going is not painful, but what is painful is coming back with nothing,” he says. “This lack of information is the worst thing.”

      “All the people on board were from the same neighbourhood in Mostaganem. I have had a chance to talk to many of their families, and they are destroyed. There is such grief but also no answers. There are only rumours, and some of the mothers believe their sons are in prisons in Morocco and Spain. We all have dreams [about the missing]. In the end, you trust what you will see in your dreams, like cosmic reality telling you he is coming. I dream of Oussama.”

      Dr Pauline Boss, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota, USA, explains the concept of ambiguous loss: “It looks like complicated grief, intrusive thoughts,” she says. “There’s nothing else on your mind but the fact that your loved one is missing. You can’t grieve because that would mean the person is dead, and you don’t know for sure.”
      A defective system

      Of all the families of those who went missing on Oussama’s patera, only Tayeb and four other families have been able to file a missing persons report with the Spanish authorities, and only two have been able to give a DNA sample. According to a 2021 study from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), one of the major complications families face in their searches is that in order to register someone as a missing person in Spain, you have to file a report with police in the country itself, which for many families is “a virtually impossible feat” as there are no visas to travel for this purpose.

      The IOM report also notes that, while many families file missing person reports in their home countries, they are “aware of the almost symbolic nature of their efforts” and that “it will never result in any kind of investigation being launched in Spain.”

      Along with the IOM, there have been efforts by domestic NGOs, including APDHA and more than a hundred grassroots organisations, to call out Spain’s failure to adapt existing missing person procedures to the transnational challenges of cases of people who disappeared while migrating. These organisations have repeatedly argued that the country’s legal framework regarding missing persons must be adapted to ensure families can file missing person cases from abroad.

      They have also pushed for the development of specific protocols for police handling cases of disappeared migrants, as well as the creation of a missing-migrant database so as to centralise information and allow it to be exchanged with authorities in other countries. The latter would include a full range of both post-mortem data (from tattoos to DNA, through cadaveric inspections and autopsies) and antemortem medical forensic information, that is, that which comes from family members regarding the missing person.

      “The reality is that the situation across Europe is consistently poor,” explains Julia Black, an analyst with IOM’s Missing Migrant Project. “Despite our research showing these pressing needs of families, neither Spain nor any other European country has significantly changed policy or practice to help this neglected group [in recent years]. Support for families is available only on a very ad hoc basis, mostly in response to mass casualty events that are in the public eye, which leaves many thousands of people without meaningful support.”

      Non-state actors such as the Red Cross and Walking Borders, as well as a network of independent activists, try to fill this void. “It’s a terrible job that we shouldn’t be doing, because states should be responding to families and guaranteeing the rights of victims across borders,” Maleno explains. In the case of the Mostaganem patera, Walking Borders is now planning to visit Algeria next year to take DNA samples from family members and bring them back to Spain. But Maleno also acknowledges that her NGO often has to then “apply a lot of pressure” to get authorities to accept these samples.

      This is something left-wing MP Jon Iñarritu from the Basque EH Bildu party also confirms: “As I sit on the Spanish parliament’s Interior Committee, I’ve had to intervene on a number of occasions to help families seeking to register DNA samples, talking with the foreign ministry or the interior ministry to get them to accept the samples. But it shouldn’t require action from an MP to get this to happen. The whole process needs to be standardised with clear and automatic protocols [for submission]. Right now, there’s no one clear way to do it.”

      Even when IOM recommendations have become the subject of parliamentary debate in Spain, they have tended not to translate into government action. In 2021, for example, a resolution was passed by the Spanish Congress calling on the government to establish a dedicated state office for the families of disappeared migrants. “It’s clear we need to ease the administrative and bureaucratic ordeal for families by offering them a single point of contact [with state authorities],” explains Iñarritu, who sponsored the motion.

      Yet while even government parties voted in favour of the resolution, the countries’ current centre-left administration has failed to act on it in the 18 months since. “From my point of view, the government has no intention of implementing the proposal,” Iñarritu argues. “They were only offering symbolic support.”

      When the above points were put to Spain’s Interior ministry, the reply was that: “The treatment of unidentified corpses arriving on the Spanish coast is identical to that of any other corpse. In Spain, for the identification of corpses, the law enforcement agencies apply the INTERPOL Disaster Victim Identification Guide. Although this guide is especially indicated for events with multiple victims, it is also used as a reference for the identification of an isolated corpse.”

      NGOs and campaigners insist, however, that the application of the INTERPOL guide is no substitute for a specific protocol tailored to the demands of missing migrant cases or for the creation of particular mechanisms to allow for the exchange of information with families and authorities in other jurisdictions.

      Close connections with the people they have helped compensate for strained social interactions and online hate. “They call me brother, sister, and even father,” Rybak shares.
      Burial rights

      APDHA migration director Carlos Arce argues that, within a European framework that views irregular migration predominantly “through the prism of serious crime and border security, […] not even death or disappearance puts an end to the repeated assault on the dignity of migrant people.” Iñarritu also points to the EU’s wider border regime: “Many issues that don’t fit into this dominant policy framework, such as the right to identification, are simply left unmanaged on a day-to-day basis. They are simply not a priority.”

      This is also clear with respect to the Spanish government’s inaction on guaranteeing a dignified burial to those whose bodies are recovered. As noted by a 2023 report from APDHA, “while repatriation is the most desired option for families […,] the cost is very high (thousands of euros) and very few of their [home countries’] embassies help [to cover it].” The NGO recommends that Spain establish repatriation agreements with the countries where migrants come from so as to create “mortuary safe passages” guaranteeing their return at a reduced cost.

      Furthermore, Spain’s central government has also failed to put in place mechanisms to ensure the right of unidentified migrants to a dignified burial within the country, instead maintaining that local councils are responsible for all charitable burials. This has meant that very specific municipalities where coastguard rescue boats are stationed are left legally responsible for the bulk of the interments – and most of these municipalities lack local cemeteries able to cater for traditional Muslim burials.

      The potential for this issue to become a flashpoint for anti-immigration sentiment was made clear this September when the mayor of Mogán in Gran Canaria, Onalia Bueno, insisted that her municipality would no longer pay for such burials, as she did not want to “detract the costs from the taxes of my neighbours.”

      CEAR’s Juan Carlos Lorenzo condemns such “divisive language, which frames the issue in terms of wasting my ‘neighbours’ money’ on someone who is not a neighbour,” and points instead to the actions of municipalities in El Hierro as a positive counterexample.

      Carballo notes that “over 10,000 people have arrived in El Hierro since September, the same as the island’s population. These are quite long trips, between six and nine days at sea, and right now people are arriving in a terrible state of health. With those who have died in recent months, we’ve tried to offer them a dignified burial within the means at our disposal. We’ve had an imam present, with Islamic prayers said before the remains were laid to rest.”

      Currently, the responsibility of memorialising unidentified victims comes down to individual municipalities and even cemetery keepers. Like Gérman at the cemetery in Barbate, who tries to dignify the unmarked tombs by placing flowers on top of them, the cemetery of Motril has adorned tombs with poems. In Teguise, the council has an initiative encouraging locals to leave flowers on the migrant graves when they come to visit the remains of their own families.

      In another memorial, a collection of around 50 discarded fishing boats has become a distinctive feature of Barbate port. These small wooden boats with Arabic script on their hulls were used by migrants attempting to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. Instead of the boats’ being scrapped, APDHA was able to convert the scrapyard into a memorial site and to place plaques on boats stating how many migrants were travelling on them and where and when they were found.

      In the case of little Alhassane Bangoura, residents routinely come to leave fresh flowers and tokens of affection, among which is a small granite bowl with his first name inscribed on it. But many victims are buried without any attempt at identification – and as countless NGOs, politicians and activists demand, it should not be simply left to good-willed residents, grave keepers or local councillors to ensure the last rights of the victims of Fortress Europe.

      https://unbiasthenews.org/counting-the-invisible-victims-of-spains-eu-borders

      #Espagne #Lanzarote #îles_Canaries #route_Atlantique #Teguise #Barbate #Cádiz #Tarifa #Arrecife

    • The unidentified: Unmarked refugee graves on the Greek borders

      Graves marked only with a stick, graves covered with weeds: a cross-border investigation documents official indifference surrounding the dignified burial of refugees who lose their lives at the Greek border.

      The phone rang on a morning in October 2022 at work, in Finland, where 35-year-old Mohamed Samim has been living for the last ten years or so.

      His nephew did not have good news: his brother Samim, Tarin Mohamad, along with his son and two daughters, was on a boat that sank near a Greek island, having sailed from the Turkish coast to Italy.

      When Samim arrived in Kythera the next day, he learned that – although weak after not eating for three days – his brother had managed to save his family before a wave took him away. He immediately went to the site of the wreck. In the water he saw bodies floating – he couldn’t see his brother’s face, but he recognized his back.

      The Coast Guard said that the bad weather had to pass before they could pull the dead from the sea. The first day passed, the second day passed, until on the third day it was finally possible. The coastguard confirmed that 8 Beaufort winds and the morphology of the area made it impossible to retrieve the bodies. Samim will never forget the sight of his brother at sea.

      In Kalamata, it took four days of shifting responsibility between the hospital and the Coast Guard, and the help of a local lawyer who “came and yelled at them” to allow him to follow the identification process of his brother.

      He was warned that it would be a soul-crushing procedure, and that he would have to wear a triple mask because of the smell. Samim says that due to a lack of space in the morgue’s refrigerators, some of the wreck victims were kept in the chamber outside the refrigerator.

      “The stress and the smell. Our knees were shaking”, recalls Samim when we meet him in Kythera a year later.

      They started showing him decomposing bodies. First the ones outside the refrigerator. He didn’t recognize him among them. They went out and changed the masks they wore, returned, opened the refrigerators in turn, reaching the last one.

      “He was lying there, calm. The man you love. We were kind of happy that, after days, we could see him,” Samim said.

      Unclaimed dead

      The number of people dying at Europe’s borders is growing. In addition to the difficulty of recording the deaths, there is also the challenge of identifying the bodies, a traumatic process for the relatives. In some cases, however, there are bodies that remain unidentified, hundreds of men, women and children buried in unidentified graves.

      In July 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution recognising the right to identification of people who lose their lives trying to reach Europe, but to date there is no centralised registration system at a pan-European level. Nor is there a single procedure for the handling of bodies that end up in mortuaries, funeral homes – even refrigerated containers.

      The problem is “utterly neglected”, European Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic told Solomon, and added that EU countries are failing in their obligations under international human rights law”. The tragedy of the missing migrants has reached horrifying proportions. The issue requires immediate action,” she added.

      The International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants platform, which acknowledges that its data is not a comprehensive record, reports more than 1,090 missing refugees and migrants in Europe since 2014.

      As part of the Border Graves investigation, eight European journalists, together with Unbias the News, the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Solomon, have spent seven months investigating what happens to the thousands of unidentified bodies of those who die at European borders, and for the first time they have recorded almost double that number: according to the data collected, more than 2,162 people died between 2014 and 2023.

      We studied documents and interviewed state coroners, prosecutors and funeral home workers; residents and relatives of the deceased and missing; and gained exclusive access to unpublished data from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

      In 65 cemeteries along the European border - Greece, Spain, Italy, Malta, Poland, Lithuania, France, Spain, Italy, Malta, Lithuania, France and Croatia - we have recorded more than 1,000 unidentified graves from the last decade.

      The investigation documents how state indifference to the dignified burial of people who die at the border is pervasive in European countries.

      In Greece, we recorded more than 540 unidentified refugee graves, 54% of the total recorded by the European survey. We travelled to the Aegean islands and Evros, and found graves in fields sometimes covered by weeds, and marble slabs with dates of death erased, while in other cases a piece of wood with a number is the only marking.

      The data from our survey, combined with the data from the International Committee of the Red Cross, is not an exhaustive account of the issue. However, they do capture for the first time the gaps and difficulties of a system that leads to thousands of families not knowing where their relatives are buried.

      Lesvos: 167 unidentified refugee graves

      A long dirt road surrounded by olive trees leads to the gate of the cemetery of Kato Tritos, which is usually locked with a padlock.

      The “graveyard of refugees,” as they call it on the island, is located about 15 kilometers west of Mytilene. It is the only burial site exclusively for refugees and migrants in Greece.

      During one of our visits, the funeral of four children was taking place. They lost their lives on August 28, 2023, when the boat they were on with 18 other people sank southeast of Lesvos.

      The grieving mother and several women, including family members, sat under a tree, while the men prayed near the shed used for the burial process, according to Islamic tradition.

      In Kato Tritos and Agios Panteleimonas, the cemetery on Mytilene where people who died while migrating had been buried until then, we counted a total of 167 unidentified graves from between 2014-2023.

      Local journalist and former member of the North Aegean Regional Council Nikos Manavis explains that the cemetery was created in 2015 in an olive grove belonging to the municipality of Mytilene due to an emergency: a deadly shipwreck in the north of the island on October 28 of that year resulted in at least 60 dead, for whom the island’s cemeteries were not sufficient.

      Many shipwreck victims remain buried in unidentified graves. Gravestones are marked with the estimated age of the deceased and the date of burial, sometimes only a number. Other times, a piece of wood and surrounding stones mark the grave.

      “What we see is a field, not a graveyard. It shows no respect for the people who were buried here.”
      Nikos Manavis

      This lack of respect for the Lower Third Cemetery mobilized the Earth Medicine organization. As Dimitris Patounis, a member of the NGO, explains, in January 2022 they made a proposal to the municipality of Mytilene for the restoration of the cemetery. Their plan is to create a place of rest with respect and dignity, where refugees and asylum seekers can satisfy the most sacred human need, mourning for their loved ones.

      Although the city council approved the proposal in the spring of 2023, the October municipal elections delayed the project. Patounis says he is positive that the graves will soon be inventoried and the area fenced.

      Christos Mavrachilis, an undertaker at the Agios Panteleimon cemetery, recalls that in 2015 Muslim refugees were buried in a specific area of the cemetery.

      “If someone was unidentified, I would write ‘Unknown’ on their grave,” he says. If there were no relatives who could cover the cost, Mavrachilis would cut a marble himself and write as much information as he could on the death certificate. “They were people too,” he says, “I did what I could.”

      For his part, Thomas Vanavakis, a former owner of a funeral parlour that offered services in Lesvos until 2020, also says that they often had to cover burials without receiving payment. “Do you know how many times we went into the sea and paid workers out of our own pockets to pull out the bodies and didn’t get a penny?” he says.

      Efi Latsoudi, who lives in Lesvos and works for Refugee Support Aegean (RSA), says that in 2015 there were burials that the municipality of Mytilene could not cover, and sometimes “the people who participated in the ceremony paid for them. We were trying to give a dignity to the process. But it was not enough,” she says.

      Latsoudi recalls something a refugee had mentioned to her in 2015: ’The worst thing that can happen to us is to die somewhere far away and have no one at our funeral’.

      The municipality of Mytilene did not answer our questions regarding the dignified burial of refugees in the cemeteries under its responsibility.

      Chios and Samos: graves covered by weeds

      According to Greek legislation, the local government (and in case of its inability, the region) covers the cost of the burial of both unidentified people who die at the border and those who are in financial difficulty.

      For its part, the Municipal Authority of Chios stated that funding is provided for the relevant costs, and that “within the framework of its responsibilities for the cemeteries, it maintains and cares for all the sites, without discrimination and with the required respect for all the dead.”

      But during our visit in August to the cemetery in Mersinidi, a few kilometers north of Chios town, where refugees are buried next to the graves of the locals, it was not difficult to spot the separation: the five unidentified graves of refugees were marked simply by a marble, usually covered by vegetation.

      Natasha Strachini, an RSA lawyer living in Chios, has taken part in several funerals of refugees both in Chios and Lesvos. For her, the importance of the local community and presence at such a difficult human moment is very important.

      Regarding burials, he explains that “only a good registration system could help relatives to locate the grave of a person they have lost, as usually in cemeteries after three to five years exhumations take place.” He says that sometimes a grave remains unidentified even though the body has been identified, either because the identification process was delayed or because the relatives could not afford to change the grave.

      In Heraion of Samos, next to the municipal cemetery, on a plot of land owned by the Metropolis and used as a burial site for refugees, we recorded dozens of graves dating between 2014-2023. The plaques – some broken – placed on the ground, hidden by branches, pine needles and pine cones, simply inscribe a number and the date of burial.

      Lawyer Dimitris Choulis, who lives in Samos and handles cases related to the refugee issue, commented: ‘It is a shameful image to see such graves. It is unjustifiable for a modern society like Greece.”
      Searching for data

      The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the few international organisations working to identify the dead refugees. Among other things, they have conducted several training sessions in Greece for members of the Coast Guard and the Greek Police.

      “We have an obligation to provide the dead with a dignified burial; and the other side, providing answers to families through identification of the dead. If you count the relatives of those who are missing, hundreds of thousands of people are impacted. They don’t know where their loved ones are. Were they well treated, were they respected when they were buried? That’s what preys on families’ minds,” says Laurel Clegg, ICRC forensic Coordinator for Migration to Europe.

      She explains that keeping track of the dead “consists of lots of parts working well together – a legal framework that protects the unidentified dead, consistent post-mortems, morgues, registries, dignified transport, cemeteries”

      However, countries’ “medical and legal systems are proving inadequate to deal with the scale of the problem,” she says.

      Since 2013, as part of its programme to restore family links, the Red Cross has registered 16,500 requests in Europe from people looking for their missing relatives. According to the international organisation, only 285 successful matches (1.7%) have been made.

      These matches are made by the local forensic experts.

      “We always collect DNA samples from unidentified bodies. It is standard practice and may be the only feasible means of identification,” says Panagiotis Kotretsos, a forensic pathologist in Rhodes. The samples are sent to the DNA laboratory of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Greek Police, according to an INTERPOL protocol.

      According to the Red Cross, difficulties usually arise when families are outside the EU, and are due to a number of factors, such as differences in the legal framework or medical systems of the countries. For example, some EU countries cannot ‘open’ a case and take DNA samples from families without a mandate from the authorities of the country where the body of the relative being sought has been recovered.

      The most difficult part of the DNA identification process is that there needs to be a second sample to be compared with the one collected by the forensic experts, which has to be sent by the families of the missing persons. “For a refugee who started his journey from a country in central Africa, travelled for months, and died in Greece, there will be genetic material in the morgue. But it will remain unmatched until a first-degree relative sends a DNA sample,” says Kotretsos.

      He explains that this is not always possible. “We have received calls from relatives who were in Syria, looking for missing family members, and could not send samples precisely because they were in Syria.”

      Outside the university hospital of Alexandroupolis, two refrigerated containers provided by the Red Cross as temporary mortuaries house the bodies of 40 refugees.

      Pavlos Pavlidis, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Democritus University of Thrace, has since 2000 performed autopsies on at least 800 bodies of people on the move, with the main causes of death being drowning in the waters of Evros and hypothermia.

      The forensic scientist goes beyond the necessary DNA collection: he or she records data such as birthmarks or tattoos and objects (like wallets, rings, glasses), which could be the missing link for a relative looking for a loved one.

      He says a total of 313 bodies found in Evros since 2014 remain unidentified. Those that cannot be identified are buried in a special cemetery in Sidiro, which is managed by the municipality of Soufli, while 15-20 unidentified bodies were buried in Orestiada while the Sidiro cemetery was being expanded.

      The bodies of Muslim refugees who are identified are buried in the Muslim cemetery in Messouni Komotini or repatriated when relatives can cover the cost of repatriation.

      “This is not decent”

      In response to questions, the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum said that the issue of identification and burial procedures for refugees does not fall within its competence. A Commission spokesman said that no funds were foreseen for Greece, but that such expenditure “could be supported under the National Programme of the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund”, which is managed by the Migration Ministry.

      Theodoros Nousias is the chief forensic pathologist of the North Aegean Forensic Service, responsible for the islands of Lesvos, Samos, Chios and Lemnos. According to the coroner, the DNA identification procedure has improved a lot compared to a few years ago.

      Nusias says he was always available when asked to identify someone. “You have to serve people, that’s why you’re there. To serve people so they can find their family,” he adds.

      The coroner lives in Lesvos, but says he has never been to the cemetery in Kato Tritos. “I don’t want to go. It will be difficult for me because most of these people have passed through my hands.”

      In October 2022, 32-year-old Suja Ahmadi and his sister Marina also travelled to Kythera and then to Kalamata to identify the body of their father, Abdul Ghasi.

      The 65-year-old had started the journey to Italy with his wife Hatige – she survived. The two brothers visited the hospital, where they were shown all eight bodies, male and female, although they had explained from the start that the man they were looking for was a man.

      Their father’s body was among those outside the freezer.

      “My sister was crying and screaming at them to get our father out of the refrigerator container because he smelled,” Suja recalls. “It was not a decent place for a man.”

      https://unbiasthenews.org/the-unidentified-unmarked-refugee-graves-in-the-greek-borders

      #Grèce #Chios #Evros #Samos #Alexandroupolis #Lesbos #Kato_Tritos #Sidiro #Mersinidi #Mersinidi #Pavlos_Pavlidis

    • Enterrar a más de mil personas sin nombre: las trabas de la UE y España para identificar los cuerpos de migrantes

      Cientos de personas fallecidas en la última década yacen en tumbas sin nombre en España, sin que el Gobierno tome medidas coordinadas para garantizar su identificación

      En enero de 2020, Alhassane Bangoura fue enterrado en una tumba sin nombre en la zona musulmana del cementerio municipal de Teguise, en Lanzarote, ante la presencia de funcionarios municipales y miembros de la comunidad musulmana local. El pequeño había nacido apenas un par de semanas antes a bordo de una patera abarrotada en la que su madre, originaria de Guinea, y otras 42 personas intentaban llegar a las Islas Canarias. La embarcación llevaba dos días a la deriva en el océano Atlántico, tras averiarse el motor, y la madre de Alhassane se puso de parto en el mar. Su hijo sólo alcanzó a vivir unas pocas horas antes de morir frente a la costa de Lanzarote.

      El caso de Alhassane conmocionó a la isla y saltó a las noticias de todo el país. Sin embargo, mientras los asistentes al entierro ofrecían sus condolencias, la madre del bebé fallecido se encontraba a 200 kilómetros de distancia, en un centro de acogida de migrantes de la vecina isla de Gran Canaria, al no haber podido obtener permiso de las autoridades para permanecer en Lanzarote durante el funeral.

      “Le habían permitido ver el cuerpo de su hijo una vez más antes de ser trasladada, y yo la acompañé a la funeraria”, cuenta Mamadou Sy, representante de la comunidad musulmana local. “Fue muy emotivo cuando se tuvo que marchar. Lo único que pudimos hacer fue prometerle que su hijo no estaría solo; que, como cualquier musulmán, sería llevado a la mezquita, donde su cuerpo sería lavado por otras madres; que rezaríamos por él y que después le enviaríamos un vídeo del entierro”.

      Casi cuatro años después, el lugar donde reposan los restos de Alhassane sigue sin tener una lápida formal. La tumba se encuentra junto a los restos de más de tres docenas de personas migrantes no identificadas, cuyos nombres se desconocen por completo pero que, como Alhassane, también son víctimas del brutal régimen fronterizo de Europa.
      Las tumbas de la frontera

      A lo largo de las fronteras de la Unión Europea, miles de personas están siendo enterradas de forma precipitada en tumbas sin nombre. El equipo de investigación de Border Graves (Las Tumbas de la Frontera) ha contabilizado que, en los últimos 10 años, al menos 2.162 cadáveres de migrantes han sido encontrados en las fronteras europeas sin identificar.

      El equipo de investigación también ha confirmado la existencia de 1.015 tumbas de inmigrantes sin identificar entre 2014 y 2021 en 103 cementerios, todas ellas pertenecientes a personas que intentaban emigrar a Europa.

      El problema está “absolutamente abandonado”, afirma Dunja Mijatović, Comisaria de Derechos Humanos del Consejo de Europa, que insiste en que los países de la UE incumplen sus obligaciones en virtud de la legislación internacional sobre derechos humanos. “La tragedia de los migrantes desaparecidos ha alcanzado una magnitud espantosa. El asunto exige una actuación inmediata”.

      Las condiciones de sepultura de estos migrantes varían en todo el continente. En la última década, en la isla griega de Lesbos, un olivar se ha convertido en un cementerio informal para refugiados. Al menos 147 tumbas sin identificar se pueden encontrar en el pequeño pueblo de Kato Tritos, que según explica el periodista Nikos Manavis brotaron tras la gran oleada de refugiados de 2015. “Los otros cementerios de la isla eran inapropiados y no podían cubrir el número de muertos que había que enterrar en Lesbos”, afirma. “Pero no es un cementerio. Es sólo un campo. No se muestra ningún respeto por la gente enterrada aquí”.

      En Siče, una población al este de Croacia, se hallan las tumbas de tres refugiados afganos al borde del cementerio del pueblo, separadas de las de los residentes locales. Los tres hombres no identificados, que se ahogaron intentando cruzar el río Sava desde Bosnia a Croacia, están enterrados bajo sencillas cruces de madera en las que se lee “NN” (desconocido).

      En la frontera entre Lituania y Bielorrusia, un pequeño cementerio de la tranquila localidad de Rameikos alberga la tumba de un emigrante indio. El lugar está marcado por un trozo de madera vertical, a pocos metros de la valla fronteriza. En el cementerio de Piano Gatta, en Agrigento (Sicilia), están enterrados decenas de cadáveres sin identificar del naufragio de Lampedusa en 2013, en el que perdieron la vida 368 personas de Eritrea y Somalia al hundirse el pesquero en el que viajaban.

      En cuanto a la extensa costa española, pueden encontrarse tumbas de inmigrantes desde Alicante hasta Cádiz, y hacia el sur hasta las Canarias. Algunas tienen nombre, pero lo más frecuente es que las inscripciones sean del estilo de “inmigrante no identificado”, “marroquí desconocido” o “víctima del Estrecho [de Gibraltar]”. O, simplemente, una cruz pintada a mano.

      En el cementerio de Barbate, en Cádiz, donde los difuntos están sepultados en nichos, el jardinero Germán señala más de 30 tumbas de inmigrantes: las más antiguas datan de 2002 y las más recientes son de un naufragio de 2019. “Nunca viene nadie a visitarlos, pero los días que hay funerales aquí y se van a tirar las flores antiguas, las coloco en las tumbas de los migrantes desconocidos”, explica. “En algunas de las más antiguas hay restos de hasta cinco o seis emigrantes juntos, cada uno colocado en bolsas separadas dentro del mismo nicho para ahorrar espacio”.

      Tal preocupación era menos evidente en Arrecife, Lanzarote, donde dos tumbas no identificadas de febrero de este año se han dejado selladas con una cubierta que aún lleva el logotipo de una empresa.

      No existen datos exhaustivos sobre cuántas fosas de inmigrantes identificadas y no identificadas existen en España, y el Ministerio del Interior nunca ha dado a conocer cifras sobre el número total de cadáveres recuperados en las distintas rutas migratorias marítimas. Pero los datos del Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja (CICR) revelan que entre 2014 y 2021 se recuperaron los cuerpos de alrededor de 530 personas fallecidas en las fronteras españolas, de las cuales 292 permanecen sin identificar.

      En los diez meses que ha durado la investigación europea Border Graves, llevada a cabo de manera conjunta entre un grupo de periodistas independientes y los medios Unbias the News, The Guardian y Süddeutsche Zeitung y publicada en exclusiva en España por elDiario.es, se ha confirmado la existencia de 109 tumbas de migrantes no identificados entre 2014 y 2021 en 18 lugares de España. Según un estudio de la Universidad de Ámsterdam, otras 434 tumbas sin identificar se remontan al periodo 2000-2013 en al menos 65 cementerios del territorio nacional.

      Estas tumbas son símbolos de una tragedia humanitaria mucho mayor. El CICR calcula que sólo el 6,89% de los restos mortales de las personas que desaparecen a lo largo de las fronteras europeas son recuperados, mientras que la ONG española Caminando Fronteras da una cifra aún más baja para la ruta atlántica de África Occidental a Canarias, estimando que sólo se recupera el 4,2% de los cuerpos de los fallecidos.
      Garantizar los “últimos derechos”

      Las tumbas anónimas y sin visitar reflejan también el hecho de que el derecho a la identificación y a un entierro digno de los fallecidos en las rutas migratorias ha sido sistemáticamente desatendido por las autoridades nacionales españolas. En 2021, el Parlamento Europeo aprobó una resolución que reconoce el derecho a la identificación de los fallecidos en las rutas migratorias, y la necesidad de una base de datos coordinada que recoja los datos de la frontera. Pero, al igual que en otros países europeos, los sucesivos gobiernos han sido incapaces de desarrollar mecanismos legales y protocolos estatales para garantizar estos “últimos derechos” de las víctimas, así como el “derecho a saber” y a llorar a sus seres queridos que corresponde a las familias.

      “La gente siempre llama a la oficina y nos pregunta cómo buscar a un familiar, pero hay que ser sincero y decir que no hay un canal oficial claro al que puedan dirigirse”, explica Juan Carlos Lorenzo, coordinador del Consejo Español para los Refugiados (CEAR) en Canarias. “Se les puede poner en contacto con la Cruz Roja, pero no hay un programa de identificación liderado por el Gobierno. Tampoco existe el tipo de recurso especializado necesario para coordinarse con las familias y centralizar la información y los datos sobre los migrantes desaparecidos”.

      Helena Maleno, directora de Caminando Fronteras, afirma: “Sólo este año estamos trabajando con más de 600 familias cuyos seres queridos han desaparecido. Estas familias, procedentes de Marruecos, Argelia, Senegal, Guinea y países tan lejanos como Sri Lanka, están muy solas y poco protegidas por las administraciones públicas. A su vez, esto significa que hay redes criminales y estafadores que buscan sacarles dinero”.

      Incluso en el caso de la identificación de una víctima, un reciente informe de la Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA) expone las barreras legales y financieras a las que se enfrentan las familias para repatriar a sus seres queridos. En 2020/21, las cifras del CICR muestran que se recuperaron 284 cuerpos pero que, de los 116 identificados, sólo 53 fueron repatriados. El informe de la APDHA también señala, respecto a las tumbas fronterizas, que “muchas personas acaban enterradas de manera contraria a sus creencias”. Apenas la mitad de las 50 provincias españolas cuentan con cementerios musulmanes, y no todos están en la costa española.

      Para Maleno, estos fallos del Estado no son casualidad: “España y otros Estados europeos mantienen una política de invisibilización de las víctimas y de la propia frontera. Tienen políticas de negación del número de muertos y de ocultación de datos, pero para las familias esto significa obstáculos en cuanto al acceso a la información y a los derechos de sepultura, así como interminables trabas burocráticas”.
      “Sueño con Oussama”

      Abdallah Tayeb ha sufrido en primera persona las deficiencias del sistema español en sus intentos por confirmar si un cadáver recuperado en diciembre de 2022 es el de su primo Oussama, un joven barbero argelino que soñaba con reunirse con Tayeb en Francia.

      Tayeb está convencido de que el cuerpo sin identificar, que se cree que está en un depósito de cadáveres de Almería, es el de su primo. Está previsto que los restos sean enterrados a comienzos del próximo año en una tumba sin nombre, a menos que se consiga algún avance de última hora. “La sensación es de impotencia”, admite. “No hay nada de transparencia”.

      Tayeb nació en París, de padres argelinos, pero pasa todos los veranos en Argelia con su familia. “Como Oussama y yo teníamos más o menos la misma edad, estábamos muy unidos. Le obsesionaba la idea de venir a Europa, pues dos de sus hermanos ya vivían en Francia. Pero yo no sabía que en realidad ya había organizado su viaje en una patera a finales del año pasado”.

      Oussama formaba parte de un grupo de 23 personas (entre ellas siete niños) que desaparecieron tras zarpar de Mostaganem, Argelia, en una lancha motora el día de Navidad de 2022. Poco después de la desaparición de la patera, su hermano Sofiane viajó de Francia a Cartagena, el destino al que esperaba llegar la embarcación. Con la ayuda de la Cruz Roja, Sofiane pudo presentar una denuncia por desaparición y dar una muestra de ADN, pero no pudo reunir ninguna información concreta sobre la suerte de su hermano.

      Sin embargo, un segundo viaje a España en febrero condujo a un gran avance. Tras recorrer juntos la costa mediterránea, Tayeb y su primo Sofiane consiguieron hablar con una patóloga forense que trabaja en la morgue de Almería, quien pareció reconocer una foto de Oussama. “No paraba de decir ’esta cara me suena’ y también mencionó un collar, algo que llevaba cuando se fue”. Según la forense, había una posible coincidencia con un cuerpo sin identificar recuperado por los guardacostas el 27 de diciembre de 2022.
      El laberinto burocrático

      Con la sensación de que por fin estaban cerca de obtener alguna respuesta, en la comisaría de Almería les informaron de que, para poder ver el cadáver –o incluso las pertenencias– y proceder a su identificación visual, necesitarían el permiso de la comisaría donde se había registrado inicialmente el cadáver. “Fue entonces cuando empezó la verdadera pesadilla”, recuerda Tayeb. Les entregaron una lista de cinco comisarías de toda la región en las que se podría haber registrado el cadáver, y se pasaron los dos días siguientes conduciendo de comisaría en comisaría a lo largo de la costa murciana.

      “En la primera comisaría que visitamos ni siquiera nos dejaron entrar cuando les dijimos que estábamos buscando a un inmigrante desaparecido, y después siempre fue la misma consigna: éste no es el lugar adecuado; no tenemos ningún cadáver; tenéis que ir a este otro lugar…”, continúa. Cuando ambos regresaron a la primera comisaría de Huércal de Almería, después de que les dijeran repetidamente que era el lugar adecuado para preguntar, los agentes, impacientes, se negaron a atenderlos, alegando leyes de protección de la intimidad, e incluso les dijeron que advirtieran a otras familias que buscaban a migrantes desaparecidos que no siguieran viniendo a preguntar.

      “Al final”, explica Tayeb, “nos dimos cuenta de que nunca nos darían ninguna información. Fue muy desgarrador, sobre todo volver a Francia. Fue como si le dejáramos [allí] en la nevera”.
      Incertidumbre

      A medida que pasaban los meses, la frustración y la ansiedad aumentaban para la familia. “En mayo nos dijeron que la muestra de ADN que habíamos dado cinco meses antes acababa de llegar a Madrid y aún no había sido procesada ni enviada a la base de datos”. No se les ha facilitado más información, y las autoridades españolas tienen la política de ponerse en contacto con las familias sólo cuando hay una coincidencia positiva, pero no si la prueba da negativo.

      Tayeb se plantea una última visita a España para intentar recuperar a su primo Oussama, en parte para estar seguro de que ha hecho todo lo posible por encontrarlo, pero le preocupa que el viaje pueda reabrir su trauma de “pérdida ambigua”. “El esfuerzo de ir no es doloroso, lo doloroso es volver sin nada”, dice. “Esta falta de información es lo peor”.

      La Dra. Pauline Boss, catedrática emérita de Psicología de la Universidad de Minnesota (EE.UU.), explica el concepto de pérdida ambigua: “Se parece a un duelo complejo, con pensamientos intrusivos”, dice. “No tienes otra cosa en la cabeza más que el hecho de que tu ser querido ha desaparecido. No puedes afrontar el duelo, porque eso significaría que la persona está muerta, y no lo sabes con certeza”.

      Tayeb lo explica con sus propias palabras: “Todas las personas que iban a bordo eran del mismo barrio de Mostaganem. He podido hablar con muchas de sus familias y están destrozadas. Hay mucho dolor, pero tampoco hay respuestas. Sólo hay rumores, y algunas de las madres creen que sus hijos están en cárceles de Marruecos y España. Todos tenemos sueños [sobre los desaparecidos]. Al final, confías en lo que ves en tus sueños, como si la realidad cósmica te dijera que va a venir. Sueño con Oussama”.
      Un sistema defectuoso

      De todas las familias de los desaparecidos en la patera de Oussama, sólo Tayeb y otras tres familias han podido presentar denuncias de desaparición ante las autoridades españolas, y únicamente en dos casos se han podido entregar muestras de ADN. Según un informe de 2021 de la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (OIM), una de las mayores complicaciones a las que se enfrentan las familias en sus búsquedas es que, para registrar a alguien como desaparecido en España, hay que presentar una denuncia ante la policía del propio país, lo que para muchas familias es “una hazaña prácticamente imposible”, ya que no existen visados para viajar con este fin.

      El informe de la OIM también señala que, aunque muchas familias presentan denuncias de personas desaparecidas en sus países de origen, son “conscientes del carácter casi simbólico de sus esfuerzos” y de que “nunca darán lugar a que se inicie ningún tipo de investigación en España.”

      Junto con la OIM, algunas ONG nacionales, como la APDHA y más de un centenar de organizaciones comunitarias, han denunciado la incapacidad de España para adaptar los procedimientos vigentes en materia de personas desaparecidas a los retos transnacionales que plantean los casos de migrantes desaparecidos. Estas organizaciones han defendido en repetidas ocasiones que el marco jurídico del país en materia de personas desaparecidas debe adaptarse para garantizar que las familias puedan presentar denuncias desde el extranjero por casos de personas desaparecidas.

      También han presionado para que se elaboren protocolos específicos para la policía al tratar casos de migrantes desaparecidos, así como para que se cree una base de datos de migrantes desaparecidos que permita centralizar la información y haga posible el intercambio con autoridades de otros países. Esta incluiría todos los datos disponibles post mortem (desde tatuajes hasta ADN, pasando por inspecciones de cadáveres y autopsias) como de información médica forense ante mortem, es decir, la que procede de los familiares en relación con la persona desaparecida.

      “La realidad es que la situación en toda Europa es sistemáticamente deficiente”, explica Julia Black, analista del Proyecto Migrantes Desaparecidos de la OIM. “A pesar de que nuestras investigaciones muestran estas necesidades acuciantes de las familias, ni España ni ningún otro país europeo ha cambiado [en los últimos años] de forma significativa sus políticas, ni tampoco han mejorado las prácticas para ayudar a este grupo desatendido. El apoyo a las familias sólo está disponible de forma muy puntual, sobre todo en respuesta a sucesos con víctimas masivas que están en el punto de mira de la opinión pública, lo que deja a muchos miles de personas sin un apoyo adecuado”.

      Actores no estatales como la Cruz Roja y Caminando Fronteras, así como una red de activistas independientes, intentan llenar este vacío. “Es un trabajo terrible que no deberíamos estar haciendo, porque los Estados deberían responder a las familias y garantizar los derechos de las víctimas más allá de las fronteras”, explica Maleno. En el caso de la patera de Mostaganem, Caminando Fronteras tiene previsto viajar a Argelia el año que viene para tomar muestras de ADN de los familiares y traerlas a España. Pero Maleno también reconoce que su ONG a menudo tiene que “ejercer mucha presión” para que las autoridades acepten estas muestras.

      Es algo que también confirma Jon Iñarritu, diputado de EH Bildu: “Como miembro de la Comisión de Interior del Congreso de los Diputados, he tenido que intervenir en varias ocasiones para ayudar a las familias que querían registrar muestras de ADN, hablando con el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores o con el Ministerio del Interior para que aceptaran las muestras. Pero no debería ser necesaria la intervención de un diputado para conseguirlo. Es necesario normalizar todo el proceso con protocolos claros y automáticos [para la presentación de las muestras]. Ahora mismo, no hay una forma clara de hacerlo”.

      Incluso cuando las recomendaciones de la OIM han sido objeto de debate parlamentario en España, no han tendido a traducirse en medidas gubernamentales. En 2021, por ejemplo, el Congreso de los Diputados aprobó una Proposición no de Ley en la que se instaba al Gobierno a crear una oficina estatal específica para las familias de migrantes desaparecidos. “Está claro que necesitamos aliviar el calvario administrativo y burocrático para las familias ofreciéndoles un único punto de contacto [con las autoridades estatales]”, explica Iñárritu, impulsor de la moción.

      Sin embargo, aunque los partidos en el gobierno votaron a favor de la resolución, no se ha tomado ninguna medida al respecto en los 18 meses transcurridos desde la aprobación de la resolución. “Desde mi punto de vista, el Gobierno no tiene ninguna intención de aplicar la propuesta”, argumenta Iñárritu. “Sólo ofrecían un apoyo simbólico”.

      Cuando se expusieron las cuestiones anteriores al Ministerio del Interior, la respuesta fue la siguiente: “El tratamiento de los cadáveres sin identificar que llegan a las costas de España es idéntico al hallazgo de cualquier otro cadáver. En España, para la identificación de cadáveres, las Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad del Estado aplican la Guía de INTERPOL para la Identificación de Víctimas de Catástrofes. Esta Guía, aunque está especialmente indicada para los sucesos con víctimas múltiples, también es aplicada como referencia para la identificación de un cadáver aislado”.
      Derechos de sepultura

      El director de migraciones de APDHA, Carlos Arce, escribe que, en un marco europeo que contempla la migración irregular predominantemente a través del prisma de la criminalidad grave y la seguridad fronteriza, “ni siquiera la muerte o desaparición de las personas migrantes pone freno a la concatenación de ataques a su dignidad”. Por su parte, Iñárritu también apunta al régimen fronterizo más amplio de la UE: “Muchas cuestiones que no encajan en este marco político dominante, como el derecho de identificación, simplemente se dejan sin gestionar en el día a día. Sencillamente, no son una prioridad”.

      Esto también queda claro en lo que respecta a la inacción del gobierno español a la hora de garantizar un entierro digno a las personas cuyos cuerpos son recuperados. Como señala un informe de 2023 de APDHA, “aunque la repatriación es la opción más deseada por las familias [...] el coste es muy elevado (miles de euros) y muy pocas de sus embajadas ayudan [a sufragarlo]”. La ONG recomienda a España que establezca acuerdos de repatriación con los países de procedencia de los inmigrantes para crear “salvoconductos mortuorios” que garanticen su retorno a un coste reducido.

      A esto se suma que el gobierno central tampoco ha establecido mecanismos para garantizar el derecho de los inmigrantes no identificados a un entierro digno dentro del territorio español, sino que sostiene que los ayuntamientos son responsables de todos los entierros de carácter benéfico. Esto ha supuesto que municipios muy concretos, en los que están estacionadas las embarcaciones de salvamento marítimo, sean legalmente responsables de la mayor parte de los entierros, y la mayoría de estos municipios carecen de cementerios locales capaces de acoger entierros musulmanes tradicionales.

      La posibilidad de que este asunto se convierta en un caldo de cultivo para el rechazo a la inmigración quedó patente el pasado mes de septiembre, cuando la alcaldesa de Mogán (Gran Canaria), Onalia Bueno, insistió en que su municipio dejaría de sufragar estos entierros, ya que no quería “detraer los costes de los impuestos de mis vecinos”. Juan Carlos Lorenzo, de CEAR, condena ese “lenguaje divisivo, que enmarca la cuestión en términos de malgastar el dinero de mis ’vecinos’ en alguien que no es un vecino”, y señala en cambio la actuación de los municipios de El Hierro como contraejemplo positivo.

      En esta isla poco poblada, en los últimos dos meses han sido enterrados siete inmigrantes no identificados, junto con los restos de Mamadou Marea, de 30 años. “Los habitantes de la isla se unieron a nosotros para acompañar los restos de cada una de estas personas hasta su lugar de descanso”, explica Amado Carballo, concejal de El Hierro. “Lo que nos entristeció a todos fue no poder poner un nombre en la lápida y simplemente tener que dejar a las personas identificadas con un código policial”.

      Carballo señala que “más de 10.000 personas han llegado a El Hierro desde septiembre, lo mismo que la población de la isla. Son viajes muy largos, de entre seis y nueve días en el mar, y ahora mismo la gente llega en un pésimo estado de salud. A los que han muerto en los últimos meses hemos intentado ofrecerles un entierro digno dentro de los medios de que disponemos. Hemos contado con la presencia de un imán, que ha rezado oraciones del Islam antes de depositar los restos”.

      En la actualidad, la responsabilidad de conmemorar a las víctimas no identificadas recae en los municipios e incluso en los responsables de los cementerios. Al igual que Germán en el cementerio de Barbate, que intenta dignificar las tumbas sin nombre colocando flores sobre ellas, el cementerio de Motril ha adornado las tumbas con poemas. En Teguise, el Ayuntamiento ha puesto en marcha una iniciativa que anima a los vecinos a dejar flores en las tumbas de los inmigrantes cuando vienen a visitar los restos de sus familiares.

      En otro gesto conmemorativo, una colección de unas 50 barcas de pesca desechadas se ha convertido en un rasgo distintivo del puerto de Barbate. Estas pequeñas embarcaciones de madera con escritura árabe en el casco eran utilizadas por los emigrantes que intentaban cruzar el Estrecho de Gibraltar. En lugar de ser desguazadas, APDHA pudo convertir el astillero en un lugar conmemorativo y colocar placas en las embarcaciones en las que se indicaba cuántas personas viajaban en ellas y dónde y cuándo fueron encontradas.

      En el caso del pequeño Alhassane Bangoura, los vecinos acuden habitualmente a dejar flores frescas y otras muestras de afecto, entre ellas un pequeño cuenco de granito con su nombre de pila inscrito. Pero muchas víctimas son enterradas sin ningún intento de identificación y, tal y como exigen innumerables ONG, políticos y activistas, no debería dejarse en manos de la buena voluntad de residentes, trabajadores de cementerios o concejales el garantizar los últimos derechos de las víctimas de la Fortaleza Europa.

      https://www.eldiario.es/desalambre/enterrar-mil-personas-nombre-trabas-ue-espana-identificar-cuerpos-migrantes

    • « Αγνώστων στοιχείων » : Πάνω από 1.000 αταυτοποίητοι τάφοι στα ευρωπαϊκά σύνορα

      Τάφοι με μόνη σήμανση ένα ξύλο, μνήματα που καλύπτονται από αγριόχορτα : μια διασυνοριακή έρευνα οκτώ δημοσιογράφων σε συνεργασία με Solomon, Guardian και Süddeutsche Zeitung καταγράφει την αδιαφορία γύρω από την αξιοπρεπή ταφή των προσφύγων που χάνουν τη ζωή τους στα ευρωπαϊκά σύνορα.

      Το τηλέφωνο χτύπησε ένα πρωινό του Οκτωβρίου 2022 στη δουλειά, στη Φινλανδία όπου ο 35χρονος Μοχάμεντ Σαμίμ ζει τα τελευταία δέκα περίπου χρόνια.

      Ο ανιψιός του δεν είχε καλά νέα : ο αδερφός του Σαμίμ, Ταρίν Μοχαμάντ, μαζί με τον γιο και τις δύο κόρες του, βρισκόταν σε ένα σκάφος που βυθίστηκε κοντά σε ένα ελληνικό νησί, έχοντας αποπλεύσει από τα τουρκικά παράλια για την Ιταλία.

      Όταν ο Σαμίμ έφτασε την επομένη στα Κύθηρα, έμαθε πως —παρότι αδύναμος αφού δεν είχε φάει επί τρεις μέρες— ο αδερφός του είχε καταφέρει να σώσει την οικογένειά του πριν ένα κύμα τον πάρει μακριά. Πήγε αμέσως στο σημείο του ναυαγίου. Μέσα στο νερό είδε σώματα να επιπλέουν — δεν μπορούσε να δει το πρόσωπο του αδερφού του, αλλά αναγνώρισε την πλάτη του.

      Το Λιμενικό είπε πως έπρεπε να περάσει η κακοκαιρία για να μπορέσουν να βγάλουν τους νεκρούς από τη θάλασσα. Πέρασε η πρώτη μέρα, πέρασε και δεύτερη, ώσπου την τρίτη ημέρα κατέστη τελικά δυνατό. Το Λιμενικό επιβεβαίωσε στο Solomon πως άνεμοι έντασης 8 μποφόρ και η μορφολογία της περιοχής καθιστούσαν την ανάσυρση των σορών αδύνατη. Ο Σαμίμ δεν θα ξεχάσει ποτέ την εικόνα του αδερφού του στη θάλασσα.

      Στην Καλαμάτα, χρειάστηκε να περάσουν τέσσερις ημέρες μετακύλισης της ευθύνης μεταξύ νοσοκομείου και Λιμενικού, και η βοήθεια μιας ντόπιας δικηγόρου που « ήρθε και τους έβαλε τις φωνές », προκειμένου να του επιτραπεί να ακολουθήσει τη διαδικασία ταυτοποίησης του αδερφού του.

      Τον προειδοποίησαν πως θα ήταν μια ψυχοφθόρα διαδικασία, και πως θα έπρεπε να φορέσει τριπλή μάσκα λόγω της μυρωδιάς. Ο Σαμίμ λέει πως, λόγω έλλειψης χώρου στα ψυγεία του νεκροτομείου, ορισμένα από τα θύματα του ναυαγίου βρίσκονταν στον θάλαμο εκτός ψυγείου.

      « Το άγχος και η μυρωδιά. Τα γόνατά μας έτρεμαν », θυμάται ο Σαμίμ όταν τον συναντάμε στα Κύθηρα ένα χρόνο μετά.

      Ξεκίνησαν να του δείχνουν σώματα σε αποσύνθεση. Πρώτα αυτά εκτός ψυγείου. Δεν τον αναγνώρισε ανάμεσά τους. Βγήκαν έξω και άλλαξαν τις μάσκες που φορούσαν, επέστρεψαν, άνοιξαν με τη σειρά τα ψυγεία φτάνοντας στο τελευταίο.

      « Βρισκόταν εκεί, ήρεμος. Ο άνθρωπος που αγαπάς. Ήμασταν κάπως χαρούμενοι που, μετά από μέρες, μπορούσαμε να τον δούμε », είπε ο Σαμίμ.
      Νεκροί πρόσφυγες στα αζήτητα

      Ο αριθμός των προσφύγων που πεθαίνουν στα σύνορα της Ευρώπης ολοένα και μεγαλώνει. Πέρα από τη δυσκολία καταγραφής των θανάτων, υπάρχει και η πρόκληση της ταυτοποίησης των σορών, μια διαδικασία ψυχοφθόρα για τους συγγενείς. Σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις, ωστόσο, υπάρχουν σοροί που μένουν αταυτοποίητες, εκατοντάδες άνδρες, γυναίκες και παιδιά που θάβονται σε τάφους αγνώστων στοιχείων.

      Τον Ιούλιο του 2023, το Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινοβούλιο υιοθέτησε ψήφισμα που αναγνωρίζει το δικαίωμα στην ταυτοποίηση των ανθρώπων που χάνουν τη ζωή τους στην προσπάθεια να φτάσουν στην Ευρώπη, έως σήμερα ωστόσο δεν υπάρχει κεντρικό σύστημα καταγραφής σε πανευρωπαϊκό επίπεδο. Ούτε ενιαία διαδικασία για τη διαχείριση των σορών που καταλήγουν σε νεκροτομεία, γραφεία κηδειών — ακόμη και κοντέινερ ψύξης.

      Το πρόβλημα είναι « εντελώς παραμελημένο », είπε στο Solomon η Ευρωπαία Επίτροπος Ανθρωπίνων Δικαιωμάτων, Dunja Mijatović, η οποία αναφέρει ότι οι χώρες της ΕΕ δεν εκπληρώνουν τις υποχρεώσεις τους βάσει του διεθνούς δικαίου των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων. « Η τραγωδία των αγνοούμενων μεταναστών έχει λάβει τρομακτικές διαστάσεις. Το ζήτημα απαιτεί άμεση δράση », πρόσθεσε.

      Η πλατφόρμα Missing Migrants του Διεθνούς Οργανισμού Μετανάστευσης (ΔΟΜ), που αναγνωρίζει πως τα στοιχεία της δεν αποτελούν ολοκληρωμένη καταγραφή, κάνει λόγο για πάνω από 1.090 αγνοούμενους πρόσφυγες και μετανάστες στην Ευρώπη από το 2014.

      Στο πλαίσιο της έρευνας Border Graves, οκτώ Ευρωπαίοι δημοσιογράφοι, από κοινού με την βρετανική εφημερίδα Guardian, την γερμανική εφημερίδα Süddeutsche Zeitung, και το Solomon για την Ελλάδα, ερεύνησαν επί επτά μήνες τι συμβαίνει με τις χιλιάδες αταυτοποίητες σορούς όσων χάνουν τη ζωή τους στα ευρωπαϊκά σύνορα, και καταγράφουν για πρώτη φορά έναν σχεδόν διπλάσιο αριθμό : σύμφωνα με τα στοιχεία που συγκεντρώθηκαν, περισσότεροι από 2.162 άνθρωποι πέθαναν την περίοδο 2014-2023.

      Μελετήσαμε έγγραφα και πήραμε συνεντεύξεις από κρατικούς ιατροδικαστές, εισαγγελείς και εργαζομένους σε γραφεία τελετών· από κατοίκους και συγγενείς θανόντων και αγνοουμένων· και αποκτήσαμε αποκλειστική πρόσβαση σε αδημοσίευτα στοιχεία της Διεθνούς Επιτροπής του Ερυθρού Σταυρού.

      Σε 65 νεκροταφεία κατά μήκος των ευρωπαϊκών συνόρων –Ελλάδα, Ισπανία, Ιταλία, Μάλτα, Πολωνία, Λιθουανία, Γαλλία και Κροατία– καταγράψαμε περισσότερους από 1.000 τάφους αγνώστων στοιχείων κατά την τελευταία δεκαετία.

      Η έρευνα καταγράφει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο η κρατική αδιαφορία γύρω από την αξιοπρεπή ταφή των ανθρώπων που χάνουν τη ζωή τους στα σύνορα διαπερνά τις ευρωπαϊκές χώρες. Στην Ιταλία, συναντήσαμε ξύλινους σταυρούς. Στην Κροατία και τη Βοσνία, συναντήσαμε δεκάδες τάφους με την ένδειξη « ΝΝ » (αγνώστων στοιχείων), στη Γαλλία απλώς με ένα « Χ ».

      Στα ισπανικά Γκραν Κανάρια, εντοπίσαμε πλάκες που δεν αναφέρουν την ταυτότητα των θανόντων, αλλά σε ποιο ναυάγιο πέθαναν : « Βάρκα μεταναστών νούμερο 4. 25/09/2022 ».

      Στην Ελλάδα, καταγράψαμε περισσότερους από 540 αταυτοποίητους τάφους προσφύγων, το 54% όσων συνολικά κατέγραψε η ευρωπαϊκή έρευνα. Ταξιδέψαμε στα νησιά του Αιγαίου και τον Έβρο, και εντοπίσαμε τάφους σε χωράφια που ενίοτε καλύπτονται από αγριόχορτα, και μαρμάρινες πλάκες με ημερομηνίες θανάτου που έχουν σβηστεί, ενώ σε άλλες περιπτώσεις ένα κομμάτι ξύλο μαζί με έναν αριθμό αποτελεί τη μόνη σήμανσή τους.

      Τα στοιχεία της έρευνάς μας, σε συνδυασμό με τα στοιχεία της Διεθνούς Επιτροπής του Ερυθρού Σταυρού, δεν αποτελούν εξαντλητική καταγραφή του ζητήματος. Ωστόσο, αποτυπώνουν για πρώτη φορά τα κενά και τις δυσκολίες ενός συστήματος, που οδηγεί χιλιάδες οικογένειες να μην γνωρίζουν πού είναι θαμμένοι οι συγγενείς τους.

      Λέσβος : 167 αταυτοποίητοι τάφοι προσφύγων

      Ένας μακρύς χωματόδρομος, που τριγυρίζεται από ελαιόδεντρα, οδηγεί στην πύλη του νεκροταφείου του Κάτω Τρίτου, που συνήθως παραμένει κλειδωμένη με λουκέτο.

      Το « νεκροταφείο των προσφύγων », όπως το αποκαλούν στο νησί, βρίσκεται περίπου 15χλμ δυτικά της Μυτιλήνης. Αποτελεί τον μοναδικό χώρο ταφής αποκλειστικά για πρόσφυγες και μετανάστες στην Ελλάδα.

      Κατά τη διάρκεια μίας από τις επισκέψεις μας, λάμβανε χώρα η κηδεία τεσσάρων παιδιών. Έχασαν τη ζωή τους στις 28 Αυγούστου 2023, όταν η βάρκα στην οποία επέβαιναν μαζί με 18 ακόμη ανθρώπους βυθίστηκε νοτιοανατολικά της Λέσβου.

      Η πενθούσα μητέρα και αρκετές γυναίκες, μεταξύ των οποίων μέλη της οικογένειας, κάθονταν κάτω από ένα δέντρο, ενώ οι άνδρες προσεύχονταν κοντά στο υπόστεγο που χρησιμοποιείται για τη διαδικασία της ταφής σύμφωνα με την ισλαμική παράδοση.

      Στον Κάτω Τρίτο και τον Άγιο Παντελεήμονα, το νεκροταφείο της Μυτιλήνης όπου θάβονταν οι πρόσφυγες έως τότε, μετρήσαμε συνολικά 167 τάφους αγνώστων στοιχείων μεταξύ 2014-2023.

      Ο τοπικός δημοσιογράφος, και πρώην μέλος του Περιφερειακού Συμβουλίου Βορείου Αιγαίου Νίκος Μανάβης, εξηγεί πως το νεκροταφείο δημιουργήθηκε το 2015 σε έναν ελαιώνα που ανήκει στο δήμο Μυτιλήνης λόγω ανάγκης : ένα πολύνεκρο ναυάγιο στα βόρεια του νησιού, στις 28 Οκτωβρίου του έτους, είχε ως αποτέλεσμα τουλάχιστον 60 νεκρούς, για τους οποίους τα νεκροταφεία του νησιού δεν επαρκούσαν.

      Πολλά θύματα ναυαγίων παραμένουν θαμμένα σε τάφους αγνώστων στοιχείων. Στις ταφόπλακες αναγράφεται η εκτιμώμενη ηλικία των θανόντων και η ημερομηνία ταφής, ενίοτε μόνο ένας αριθμός. Άλλες φορές, ένα κομμάτι ξύλο και περιμετρικά τοποθετημένες πέτρες σηματοδοτούν τον τάφο.

      « Αυτό που βλέπουμε είναι ένα χωράφι, όχι ένα νεκροταφείο. Δεν δείχνει σεβασμό στους ανθρώπους που τάφηκαν εδώ », λέει ο Μανάβης.

      Αυτή η έλλειψη σεβασμού στο νεκροταφείο του Κάτω Τρίτου κινητοποίησε την οργάνωση Earth Medicine. Όπως εξηγεί ο Δημήτρης Πατούνης, μέλος της ΜΚΟ, τον Ιανουάριο του 2022 έκαναν πρόταση στο δήμο Μυτιλήνης για την αποκατάσταση του νεκροταφείου. Το σχέδιό τους είναι να δημιουργήσουν ένα χώρο ανάπαυσης με σεβασμό και αξιοπρέπεια, όπου οι πρόσφυγες και οι αιτούντες άσυλο θα μπορούν να ικανοποιήσουν την πιο ιερή ανθρώπινη ανάγκη, το πένθος για τους αγαπημένους τους.

      Παρόλο που το δημοτικό συμβούλιο ενέκρινε την πρόταση την άνοιξη του 2023, οι δημοτικές εκλογές του Οκτωβρίου καθυστέρησαν το έργο. Ο Πατούνης δηλώνει θετικός ότι σύντομα θα γίνει καταγραφή των τάφων και περίφραξη της περιοχής.

      Ο Χρήστος Μαυραχείλης, νεκροθάφτης στο νεκροταφείο του Αγίου Παντελεήμονα, θυμάται ότι το 2015 οι μουσουλμάνοι πρόσφυγες θάβονταν σε συγκεκριμένη περιοχή του νεκροταφείου.

      « Αν κάποιος ήταν αγνώστου ταυτότητας έγραφα στον τάφο του “Άγνωστος” », λέει. Εάν δεν υπήρχαν συγγενείς, που θα μπορούσαν να καλύψουν το κόστος, ο Μαυραχείλης έκοβε ο ίδιος ένα μάρμαρο και έγραφε όσα στοιχεία μπορούσε από το πιστοποιητικό θανάτου. « Άνθρωποι ήταν κι αυτοί », λέει, « έκανα ό,τι μπορούσα ».

      Από την πλευρά του, ο Θωμάς Βαναβάκης, πρώην ιδιοκτήτης γραφείου τελετών που πρόσφερε υπηρεσίες στη Λέσβο έως το 2020, λέει επίσης πως συχνά χρειάστηκε να καλύψουν ταφές δίχως να λάβουν αμοιβή. « Ξέρετε πόσες φορές μπήκαμε στη θάλασσα και πληρώσαμε εργάτες από την τσέπη μας για να τραβήξουμε τα πτώματα και δεν παίρναμε φράγκο ; », λέει.

      « Το να βλέπεις τόσα μωρά, να τα μαζεύεις και να τα πετάς σε ένα κουτί… Πώς μπορείς να πας σπίτι και να κοιμηθείς μετά από αυτό ; », λέει ο Βαναβάκης.

      Η Έφη Λατσούδη, που ζει στη Λέσβο και εργάζεται στην οργάνωση Refugee Support Aegean (RSA), λέει πως το 2015 υπήρχαν ταφές που δεν μπορούσε να καλύψει ο δήμος Μυτιλήνης, και ορισμένες φορές τις « πληρώναν οι άνθρωποι που συμμετείχαν στην τελετή. Προσπαθούσαμε να δώσουμε μια αξιοπρέπεια στη διαδικασία. Αλλά δεν ήταν αρκετό », λέει.

      Η Λατσούδη θυμάται κάτι που της είχε αναφέρει μια προσφύγισσα το 2015 : « Το χειρότερο που μπορεί να μας συμβεί είναι να πεθάνουμε κάπου μακριά και να μην είναι κανείς στην κηδεία μας ».

      Ο δήμος Μυτιλήνης δεν απάντησε στα ερωτήματά μας σχετικά με την αξιοπρεπή ταφή των προσφύγων στα νεκροταφεία ευθύνης του.
      Χίος και Σάμος : τάφοι καλύπτονται από αγριόχορτα

      Σύμφωνα με την ελληνική νομοθεσία, η τοπική αυτοδιοίκηση (και σε περίπτωση αδυναμίας της η περιφέρεια) καλύπτει το κόστος για την ταφή τόσο των αταυτοποίητων προσφύγων που πεθαίνουν στα σύνορα, όσο και εκείνων που βρίσκονται σε οικονομική αδυναμία.

      Από πλευράς της, η δημοτική Αρχή Χίου δήλωσε πως προβλέπεται χρηματοδότηση για τις σχετικές δαπάνες, καθώς και ότι « στο πλαίσιο των αρμοδιοτήτων της για τα νεκροταφεία, συντηρεί και φροντίζει όλους τους χώρους, χωρίς διακρίσεις και με τον απαιτούμενο σεβασμό, για όλους τους νεκρούς ».

      Αλλά κατά την επίσκεψή μας τον Αύγουστο στο νεκροταφείο του Μερσινιδίου, λίγα χιλιόμετρα βόρεια της πόλης της Χίου, όπου πρόσφυγες βρίσκονται θαμμένοι πλάι στα μνήματα των ντόπιων, δεν ήταν δύσκολο να εντοπίσει κανείς τον διαχωρισμό : οι πέντε τάφοι αταυτοποίητων προσφύγων σηματοδοτούνταν απλώς από ένα μάρμαρο, το οποίο έτεινε να υπερκαλύψει η βλάστηση.

      Η Νατάσα Στραχίνη, δικηγόρος του RSA που ζει στη Χίο, έχει λάβει μέρος σε αρκετές κηδείες προσφύγων τόσο στη Χίο όσο και στη Λέσβο. Για εκείνη, είναι πολύ μεγάλη η σημασία της τοπικής κοινότητας και η παρουσία σε μια τόσο δύσκολη ανθρώπινη στιγμή.

      Σχετικά με τις ταφές, εξηγεί πως « μόνο ένα καλό σύστημα καταγραφής θα μπορούσε να βοηθήσει τους συγγενείς να εντοπίσουν τον τάφο ενός ανθρώπου που έχασαν, καθώς συνήθως στα νεκροταφεία μετά από 3-5 χρόνια γίνονται εκταφές ». Αναφέρει πως ενίοτε ένας τάφος παραμένει αγνώστων στοιχείων παρότι η σορός έχει ταυτοποιηθεί, είτε γιατί καθυστέρησε η διαδικασία ταυτοποίησης, είτε γιατί οι συγγενείς δεν είχαν την οικονομική δυνατότητα να αλλάξουν το μνήμα.

      Στο Ηραίο Σάμου, δίπλα στο δημοτικό νεκροταφείο, σε ένα οικόπεδο που ανήκει στη Μητρόπολη και χρησιμοποιείται ως χώρος ταφής προσφύγων, καταγράψαμε δεκάδες μνήματα που χρονολογούνται μεταξύ 2014-2023. Οι πλάκες –ορισμένες σπασμένες– που έχουν τοποθετηθεί στο έδαφος, « κρυμμένες » από κλαδιά, πευκοβελόνες και κουκουνάρια, αναγράφουν απλώς έναν αριθμό και τη χρονολογία της ταφής.

      Ο δικηγόρος Δημήτρης Χούλης, που ζει στη Σάμο και χειρίζεται υποθέσεις γύρω από το προσφυγικό, σχολίασε σχετικά : « Είναι ντροπιαστική εικόνα να βλέπεις τέτοιους τάφους. Είναι αδικαιολόγητο για μια σύγχρονη κοινωνία όπως η Ελλάδα ».

      Αναζητώντας στοιχεία

      Η Διεθνής Επιτροπή του Ερυθρού Σταυρού είναι από τις λίγες διεθνείς οργανώσεις που εργάζονται για την ταυτοποίηση των νεκρών πρσοφύγων. Μεταξύ άλλων, και στην Ελλάδα έχουν πραγματοποιήσει αρκετές σχετικές εκπαιδεύσεις σε στελέχη του Λιμενικού και της Ελληνικής Αστυνομίας.

      « Είναι υποχρέωσή μας να παρέχουμε στους νεκρούς μια αξιοπρεπή ταφή. Παράλληλα, οφείλουμε να δίνουμε απαντήσεις στις οικογένειες μέσω της ταυτοποίησης των νεκρών. Αν υπολογίσουμε τους συγγενείς των αγνοουμένων, αυτή η διαδικασία επηρεάζει εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες ανθρώπους. Δεν γνωρίζουν πού βρίσκονται οι αγαπημένοι τους. Τους φέρθηκαν καλά ; Τους σεβάστηκαν όταν τους έθαψαν ; », αναφέρει η Laurel Clegg, συντονίστρια ιατροδικαστής για τη μετανάστευση στην Ευρώπη.

      Εξηγεί πως η καταγραφή των νεκρών αποτελεί διαδικασία που « απαιτεί την καλή συνεργασία μεταξύ πολλών μερών : ένα νομικό πλαίσιο που να προστατεύει τους αταυτοποίητους νεκρούς, συστηματικές νεκροψίες (consistent post-mortems), νεκροτομεία, ληξιαρχεία, αξιοπρεπή μεταφορά, νεκροταφεία ».

      Ωστόσο, τα ιατρικά και νομικά συστήματα των χωρών αποδεικνύονται ανεπαρκή για να αντιμετωπίσουν τη διάσταση του προβλήματος, προσθέτει.

      Από το 2013, στο πλαίσιο του προγράμματος για την αποκατάσταση οικογενειακών δεσμών, ο Ερυθρός Σταυρός έχει καταγράψει στην Ευρώπη 16.500 αιτήματα από ανθρώπους που αναζητούν αγνοούμενους συγγενείς τους. Σύμφωνα με τον διεθνή οργανισμό έχουν επιτευχθεί μόλις 285 επιτυχείς αντιστοιχίσεις (1,7%).

      Τις αντιστοιχίσεις αυτές αναλαμβάνουν οι κατά τόπους ιατροδικαστές.

      « Συλλέγουμε πάντα δείγματα DNA από τις σορούς αγνώστων στοιχείων. Είναι συνήθης πρακτική και μπορεί να είναι το μόνο εφικτό μέσο ταυτοποίησης », αναφέρει ο Παναγιώτης Κοτρέτσος, ιατροδικαστής στη Ρόδο. Τα δείγματα αποστέλλονται στο εργαστήριο DNA της Διεύθυνσης Εγκληματολογικών Ερευνών της Ελληνικής Αστυνομίας, σύμφωνα με πρωτόκολλο της INTERPOL.

      Σύμφωνα με τον Ερυθρό Σταυρό, οι δυσκολίες συνήθως προκύπτουν όταν οι οικογένειες βρίσκονται εκτός ΕΕ, και οφείλονται σε διάφορους παράγοντες, όπως τυχόν διαφορές στο νομικό πλαίσιο ή στα ιατρικά συστήματα των χωρών. Για παράδειγμα, ορισμένες χώρες της ΕΕ δεν μπορούν να « ανοίξουν » υπόθεση και να πάρουν δείγματα DNA από οικογένειες, χωρίς εντολή από τις Aρχές της χώρας στην οποία έχει ανασυρθεί η σορός του συγγενή που αναζητάται.

      Το πιο δύσκολο μέρος στη διαδικασία ταυτοποίησης μέσω DNA είναι ότι χρειάζεται να υπάρχει κι ένα δεύτερο δείγμα που θα συγκριθεί με εκείνο που συνέλεξαν οι ιατροδικαστές, το οποίο πρέπει να σταλεί από τις οικογένειες των αγνοουμένων. « Για έναν πρόσφυγα που ξεκίνησε το ταξίδι του από μια χώρα της κεντρικής Αφρικής, ταξίδεψε για μήνες, και πέθανε στην Ελλάδα, θα υπάρχει το γενετικό υλικό στο νεκροτομείο. Αλλά θα παραμείνει αταίριαστο μέχρι κάποιος συγγενής πρώτου βαθμού να στείλει δείγμα DNA », λέει ο Κοτρέτσος.

      Εξηγεί πως αυτό δεν είναι πάντα εφικτό. « Έχουμε δεχτεί τηλεφωνήματα από συγγενείς που βρίσκονταν στη στη Συρία, και αναζητούσαν αγνοούμενα μέλη της οικογένειάς τους, και δεν μπορούσαν να στείλουν δείγματα ακριβώς επειδή βρίσκονταν στη Συρία ».

      Έξω από το πανεπιστημιακό νοσοκομείο της Αλεξανδρούπολης, δύο κοντέινερ ψυγεία που έχουν παραχωρηθεί από τον Ερυθρό Σταυρό ως προσωρινοί νεκροθάλαμοι φιλοξενούν τα σώματα 40 προσφύγων.

      Ο καθηγητής Ιατροδικαστικής στο Δημοκρίτειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θράκης, Παύλος Παυλίδης, έχει από το 2000 πραγματοποιήσει αυτοψίες σε τουλάχιστον 800 σώματα ανθρώπων σε κίνηση, με βασικές αιτίες θανάτου τον πνιγμό στα νερά του Έβρου και την υποθερμία.

      Ο ιατροδικαστής δεν αρκείται στην απαραίτητη συλλογή DNA : καταγράφει δεδομένα όπως σημάδια γέννησης ή τατουάζ και αντικείμενα (π.χ. πορτοφόλια, δαχτυλίδια, γυαλιά), τα οποία θα μπορούσαν να αποτελέσουν τον συνδετικό κρίκο για έναν συγγενή που αναζητά το αγαπημένο του πρόσωπο.

      Λέει πως συνολικά 313 σοροί που βρέθηκαν στον Έβρο από το 2014 παραμένουν αγνώστων στοιχείων. Όσες δεν μπορούν να ταυτοποιηθούν θάβονται σε ειδικό νεκροταφείο στο Σιδηρώ, το οποίο διαχειρίζεται ο δήμος Σουφλίου, ενώ 15-20 αταυτοποίητες σοροί τάφηκαν στην Ορεστιάδα όσο γινόταν η επέκταση του νεκροταφείου Σιδηρού.

      Οι σοροί των μουσουλμάνων προσφύγων που ταυτοποιούνται ενταφιάζονται στο μουσουλμανικό νεκροταφείο στη Μεσσούνη Κομοτηνής ή επαναπατρίζονται, όταν οι συγγενείς μπορούν να καλύψουν το κόστος επαναπατρισμού.

      « Αυτό δεν είναι αξιοπρεπές »

      Απαντώντας σε σχετικά ερωτήματα, το υπουργείο Μετανάστευσης και Ασύλου είπε πως το ζήτημα των διαδικασιών ταυτοποίησης και ταφής προσφύγων δεν εμπίπτει στις αρμοδιότητές του. Εκπρόσωπος της Κομισιόν δήλωσε πως σχετικά κονδύλια προς την Ελλάδα δεν προβλέπονται, ωστόσο εν λόγω δαπάνες « θα μπορούσαν να υποστηριχθούν στο πλαίσιο του Εθνικού Προγράμματος του Ταμείου Ασύλου, Μετανάστευσης και Ένταξης », το οποίο διαχειρίζεται το υπουργείο Μετανάστευσης.

      Ο Θεόδωρος Νούσιας είναι επικεφαλής ιατροδικαστής της Ιατροδικαστικής Υπηρεσίας Βορείου Αιγαίου, δηλαδή υπεύθυνος για τα νησιά Λέσβο, Σάμο, Χίο, και Λήμνο. Σύμφωνα με τον ιατροδικαστή, η διαδικασία ταυτοποίησης μέσω DNA έχει βελτιωθεί πολύ σε σχέση με πριν από μερικά χρόνια.

      Ο Νούσιας λέει ότι πάντα ήταν διαθέσιμος, όταν του ζητήθηκε να αναγνωρίσει κάποιον. « Πρέπει να εξυπηρετείς τους ανθρώπους, γι’ αυτό βρίσκεσαι εκεί. Να εξυπηρετείς τους ανθρώπους για να μπορούν να βρουν την οικογένειά τους », προσθέτει.

      Ο ιατροδικαστής ζει στη Λέσβο, αλλά λέει πως δεν έχει πάει ποτέ στο νεκροταφείο στον Κάτω Τρίτο. « Δεν θέλω να πάω. Θα είναι δύσκολο για μένα γιατί οι περισσότεροι από αυτούς τους ανθρώπους έχουν περάσει από τα χέρια μου ».

      Τον Οκτώβριο του 2022, ο 32χρονος Σουτζά Αχμαντί και η αδελφή του Μαρίνα ταξίδεψαν επίσης στα Κύθηρα και, στη συνέχεια, στην Καλαμάτα προκειμένου να αναγνωρίσουν τη σορό του πατέρα τους, Αμπντούλ Γασί.

      Ο 65χρονος είχε ξεκινήσει το ταξίδι για την Ιταλία μαζί με τη γυναίκα του Χατίτζε — εκείνη επέζησε. Τα δύο αδέλφια επισκέφθηκαν το νοσοκομείο, όπου τους έδειξαν και τα οκτώ πτώματα, άνδρες και γυναίκες, παρότι είχαν εξαρχής εξηγήσει πως ο άνθρωπος που αναζητούσαν ήταν άνδρας.

      Το σώμα του πατέρα τους ήταν μεταξύ εκείνων που βρίσκονταν εκτός ψυγείου.

      « Η αδελφή μου έκλαιγε και τους φώναζε να πάρουν τον πατέρα μας από το κοντέινερ ψυγείο γιατί μύριζε », θυμάται ο Σουτζά. « Δεν ήταν αξιοπρεπές μέρος για έναν άνθρωπο ».

      Για την έρευνα συνεργάστηκαν οι : Gabriele Cruciata, Eoghan Gilmartin, Danai Maragoudaki, Barbara Matejčić, Leah Pattem, Gabriela Ramírez, Daphne Tolis and Tina Xu (συντονίστρια).

      Η έρευνα υποστηρίχθηκε από το Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) και Journalismfund Europe.

      https://wearesolomon.com/el/mag/format-el/erevnes/agnoston-stoixeion-pano-apo-1000-ataftopoihtoi-tafoi-sta-evropaika-syn

    • U Hrvatskoj pronađeno 45 neimenovanih grobova migranata, među njima je bila i 5-godišnja curica: ‘Policija ih često tjera u rijeku’

      Telegram ekskluzivno donosi veliku priču Barbare Matejčić koja je, kao jedina novinarka iz Hrvatske, sudjelovala u međunarodnoj novinarskoj istrazi s kolegama iz uglednih medija poput britanskog Guardiana i njemačkog Süddeutsche Zeitunga. Otkrili su kako završavaju tijela onih koji su stradali pokušavajući ući u Europsku uniju

      U selu Siče u istočnoj Hrvatskoj više je Sičana na groblju nego među živima: živih je 230, a umrlih 250. Točnije, na groblju je 247 Sičana i tri nepoznate osobe. Bilo bi ih još više pod zemljom da Siče svoje groblje nema tek od 1970-ih. Bilo bi još više i živih da nisu, kao mnogi iz tog kraja, odlazili u veće gradove ili u inozemstvo u potrazi za boljim životom. Grobovi Sičana, ukratko, posjetitelju kažu tko su ti ljudi bili, gdje pripadaju i posjećuju li ih bližnji. Tako to biva s grobovima, sažimaju osnovne informacije naših života. Ako na grobu stoji samo NN, to sažima tragediju.

      Tko su te tri osobe kojima se ne zna ime? Kako im je posljednja adresa skromni humak u Siču? Migranti, utopili su se u obližnjoj rijeci, reći će vam mještani. Malo je mjesto, malo je groblje, sve se zna. I da ne znate ništa, jasno vam je da te tri osobe tu ne pripadaju. Ukopani su sasvim izdvojeno od ostatka groblja. Tri drvena križa s NN natpisima, zabodena u zemlju na rubu groblja. NN, kao skraćenica od latinskog nomen nescio, doslovno znači: ne znam ime.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQAGqiWBB78&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegram.hr%2F&

      Službeno objašnjenje komunalnog poduzeća koje upravlja grobljem je da je ostavljeno mjesta za još mogućih ukopa onih kojima se ne zna ime. A objašnjenje na koje pomislite kad tamo dođete jest da su ukopani izdvojeno kako se ne bi miješali s mještanima. Ili, kako nam se u telefonskom razgovoru izlanuo načelnik jednog drugog mjesta gdje su također na margini groblja NN migrantski grobovi: “Da nam ne smetaju.”

      Afganistanci pod križem

      Na groblju u Sičama to su jedina tri groba o kojima nitko ne vodi računa. Za nekih pet godina mogao bi im nestati svaki trag. Komunalna poduzeća su dužna ukopati neidentificirana tijela, ali ne i održavati grobove osim ako grob nije od “osobe od posebnog povijesnog i društvenog značaja”, kako zakon nalaže. NN1, NN2 i NN3 su od posebnog značaja samo svojim bližnjima, koji vjerojatno ni ne znaju gdje su. Možda čekaju da im se konačno jave iz zapadne Europe. Možda ih traže. Možda ih oplakuju. No, ako zakopate malo dublje, saznat ćete ponešto o onima koji tu počivaju bez imena.

      U rano i hladno jutro 23. prosinca 2022. policija je pronašla dva tijela na obali Save, koja je u tom području odvaja Hrvatsku od Bosne i Hercegovine. Odvaja Europsku uniju od ostatka Europe. Prema policijskom izvještaju, pronašli su i skupinu od dvadeset stranih državljana koji su tim putem nezakonito ušli u Hrvatsku. Skupini je nedostajala još jedna osoba. Nakon opsežne potrage u popodnevnim satima je pronađeno i treće tijelo. Patolog Opće bolnice u Novoj Gradiški ustanovio je da je smrt za sve troje nastupila u 2.45 u noći. Dvojica su umrla od pothlađenosti, jedan se utopio.

      Kod njih su pronađene iskaznice iz izbjegličkog kampa u Bosni i Hercegovini. Saznali smo da su, prema iskaznicama, sva trojica bila iz Afganistana: Ahmedi Abozari imao je 17 godina, Basir Naseri imao je 21 godinu i Shakir Atoin je imao 25 godina. NN1, NN2 i NN3. Za dvojicu od njih su i drugi iz skupine migranata potvrdili identitet, rekli su nam iz Policijske uprave brodsko-posavske. Zašto su onda pokopani kao NN? Ako se znalo da su iz Afganistana, zašto su pokopani pod križem? Ako ih traže obitelji, kako će ih naći?
      ‘Neka plate za ime na grobu’

      U upravi groblja su bili ljubazni i rekli da pokapaju prema tome kako stoji u dozvoli za ukop koju potpisuje patolog. A stajalo je NN. Patolog je rekao da podatke ispisuje na temelju informacija dobivenih od policije i mrtvozornika. Iz nadležne policije su nam rekli da se osoba sahranjuje po pravilima lokalne uprave. Groblje Siče pripada Općini Nova Kapela, čiji nam je načelnik Ivan Šmit nezadovoljno nabrojao sve troškove koje je njegova općina snosila za te ukope i poručio da ako će netko za to platiti, onda može promijeniti oznaku NN u imena.

      Na niz smo takvih administrativnih nejasnoća naišli istražujući kako nadležna tijela postupaju s tijelima onih koji su stradali pokušavajući ući u Europsku uniju, kao dio Border Graves Investigation koje je proveo tim od osam slobodnih novinara u zemljama na migrantskim rutama, zajedno s britanskim Guardianom i njemačkim Süddeutsche Zeitungom.

      Nema jedinstvene europske baze podataka o broju migranata koji su pokopani u Europi. No tim je uspio potvrditi najmanje 1.931 takav grob u Grčkoj, Italiji, Španjolskoj, Hrvatskoj, Malti, Poljskoj i Francuskoj u zadnjem desetljeću, dakle od 2014. do 2023. Od toga je 1.015 NN grobova. Više od polovice neidentificiranih grobova je, očekivano, u Grčkoj – 551, u Italiji 248 i u Španjolskoj 109. U Hrvatskoj smo utvrdili 59 grobova migranata koji su ukopani posljednjeg desetljeća, od čega ih 45 nije identificirano. Podaci su temeljeni na različitim bazama podataka koje u pojedinačnim zemljama prikupljaju međunarodne organizacije, nevladine udruge, znanstvenici i istraživači, kao i od lokalnih vlasti te terenskim radom.

      Tim novinara je posjetio 24 groblja u Grčkoj, Italiji, Španjolskoj, Hrvatskoj, Poljskoj i Litvi, gdje je ukupno 555 grobova neidentificiranih migranata od 2014. do 2023. To su oni čija su tijela pronađena i pokopana. Međunarodni odbor Crvenog križa procjenjuje da se 87 posto onih koji nestanu na europskim južnim granicama nikad ne pronađe. Za kopnene migrantske rute nema procjena.
      Traže li migrante kao što traže turiste?

      Prosinac 2022. kad su umrla trojica mladih Afganistanaca je bio kišniji nego inače i Sava je nabujala. No ionako je velika i brza. Na tom je području samo tri dana ranije nestalo petero turskih državljana nakon što im se na Savi prevrnuo čamac. Među njima su bili dvogodišnja curica, dvanaestogodišnji dečko i njihovi roditelji. Brat nestalog oca je došao iz Njemačke u Hrvatsku kako bi saznao što se dogodilo s obitelji. Iz dokumentacije koju posjedujemo, vidljivo je da je uz pomoć turkologinje Nine Rajković pokušavao od više policijskih postaja doći do informacija u vezi nestalih. Nije ih dobio ni mjesecima kasnije. Htjeli su prijaviti nestanak, no u policiji im je rečeno da prijavu nema smisla pisati ako osobe nisu prethodno registrirane na području Hrvatske ili Bosne i Hercegovine.

      Na niz smo sličnih primjera naišli baveći se ovom temom. Mladić je došao u Hrvatsku i prijavio policiji i u Hrvatskoj i u Sloveniji da mu se brat utopio u Kupi. No njegov nestanak nije evidentiran u hrvatskoj nacionalnoj bazi nestalih osoba koja je javno dostupna. Policija brata nije kontaktirala nakon što je u narednim danima u Kupi nađeno više neidentificiranih tijela. Afganistanac je šest mjeseci čekao da se tijelo njegova brata, koji se utopio kad su zajedno pokušali prijeći Savu također u prosincu 2022., prebaci iz Hrvatske u Bosnu i Hercegovinu da ga može pokopati. Iako je potvrdio da je riječ o njegovu bratu, proces identifikacije je bio spor i kompliciran.

      Naišli smo i na primjere obitelji koje nemaju nekoga u Europi tko može doputovati i uporno tragati za informacijama, već izdaleka pokušavaju ući u trag bližnjima koji se gube na području Hrvatske i na kraju su obeshrabreno odustali. Puno je pitanja i malo jasnih odgovora na temu nestalih i umrlih migranata na tzv. Balkanskoj ruti, čiji je Hrvatska dio. Ne postoje jasni protokoli i procedure oko toga kome i kako se prijavljuje nestanak. Ne zna se traži li se nestale migrante aktivno, kao što se ljeti traži nestale turiste. Nije jasno koliko je informacija, i kojih, potrebno za identifikaciju.
      Obitelji se nemaju kome javiti

      “Kruženje informacije između institucija i pojedinih odjela mi se čini gotovo nepostojeća. U jednom slučaju mi je trebalo više od dva mjeseca i deseci telefonskih poziva i mailova upućenih na različite adrese, policijske postaje, policijske uprave, bolnice, državno odvjetništvo, samo da potaknem pokretanje identifikacije koja do danas, više od godinu dana kasnije, još nije završena”, kaže Marijana Hameršak s Instituta za etnologiju i folkloristiku u Zagrebu. Ona vodi znanstveni projekt “Europski režim iregulariziranih migracija na periferiji EU” u kojem se prikuplja znanje i podaci o nestalim i umrlim migrantima. Na kraju sve ovisi o susretljivim i posvećenim pojedincima u institucijama, kaže Hamrešak, no oni ne mogu nositi cijeli teret disfunkcionalnog sustava.

      Potrage za nestalim i pokušaji identifikacije umrlih migranata u Hrvatskoj, kao i susjednoj Bosni i Hercegovini, najčešće počivaju na trudu volontera i aktivista, koji poput Marijane tragaju za informacijama u kaotičnoj administraciji jer je obiteljima koje ne poznaju jezik taj zadatak praktički nesavladiv. Tako je Facebook grupa Dead and Missing in the Balkans postala glavno mjesto razmjene fotografija i podataka o nestalima i umrlima između obitelji i aktivista. Ne postoj internetska stranica na engleskom nadležnog Ministarstva unutarnjih poslova na koju se mogu javiti iz Afganistana ili Sirije i raspitati se za sudbinu svojih bližnjih, ostaviti podatke o njima i prijaviti nestanak.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PldA9Pa3LJc&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegram.hr%2F&

      Nema ni regionalne baze podataka o nestalim i umrlim migrantima na kojoj bi surađivale policije makar iz zemalja među kojima se bilježi najviše prelazaka – iz Bosne i Hercegovine u Hrvatsku. Povjerenica Vijeća Europe za ljudska prava Dunja Mijatović je u razgovoru s našim timom naglasila da je iznimno važno uspostaviti centraliziranu europsku bazu podataka o nestalim i umrlim migrantima. Kad bi takva baza podataka objedinjavala ante-mortem (podaci o osobi koji se prikupljaju od rodbine i poznanika, poput fizičkih karakteristika i opisa odjeće koju je nosila posljednji put, koje je predmete imala uz sebe itd.) i post-mortem (kao DNK uzorak i fotografije) podatke o umrlima, uvelike bi se povećale šanse za identifikaciju.
      Poginuti ili ostvariti san

      “Obitelji imaju pravo znati istinu o tome što se dogodilo njihovim najbližima”, kaže Mijatović. No suradnja policija susjednih zemalja u održavanju vanjske granice EU nepropusnom je učinkovita. Ranije migranti nisu tako često pokušavali prijeći Savu. Znali su da je previše opasna. Dijele informacije jedni s drugima i ne upuštaju se u prelazak takve rijeke u dječjim čamcima na napuhavanje ili u zračnicama kotača. Ako nisu sasvim očajni.

      Hrvatska policija je push-backovima i upotrebom sile – na što već godinama upozoravaju Amnesty International i Human Rights Watch – otežala prelazak drugim, manje opasnim prijelazima duž zelene granice s Bosnom i Hercegovinom. Kako nam je rekao mladi Marokanac u Bosni i Hercegovini, koji je 11 puta pokušao preći u Hrvatsku ali ga je hrvatska policija svaki put vratila: “Imaš dva izbora: poginuti ili ostvariti san.” Koliko ih je poginulo na Balkanskoj ruti u pokušaju ostvarenja sna, teško je utvrditi. Najsveobuhvatniji podaci za zemlje bivše Jugoslavije su oni koje prikupljaju istraživači projekta “Europski režim iregulariziranih migracija na periferiji EU”, i broje 346 stradalih od 2014. do 2023. u Hrvatskoj, Bosni i Hercegovini, Srbiji, Sloveniji, Sjevernoj Makedoniji i na Kosovu.

      ERIM-ova baza pojedinačno navodi svakog stradalog i sadrži onoliko podataka koliko su istraživači mogli prikupiti iz raznih izvora – medija, svjedoka stradanja, od institucija, iz aktivističkih kanala. No brojka je zasigurno bitno veća. Nestanak nekih nije ni evidentiran. Tijela mnogih nikad nisu pronađena. Stara planina između Bugarske i Srbije težak je i nedostupan teren. Tu će na preminule naići samo oni koji su istom sudbinom nagnani na taj put i neće riskirati prijavu. Ako stradaju u minskim poljima zaostalim iza ratova u Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini, od tijela im neće ostati mnogo. Najviše je pronađeno tijela utopljenih u rijekama, no nema procjena koliko utopljenih nije nikad pronađeno.
      U Hrvatskoj 45 neidentificiranih

      Hrvatsko Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova nam je dostavilo podatke o stradalim migrantima od 2015., otkad vode evidenciju, do kraja studenog 2023.: ukupno 87 stradalih migranata na području Republike Hrvatske. Ni jedno službeno tijelo u Hrvatskoj, Bosni i Hercegovini i Srbiji ne vodi evidenciju o pokopanim migrantima na tom teritoriju. No za Hrvatsku smo uspjeli doći do podataka, zahvaljujući upitima poslanima na preko 500 adresa gradova, općina i komunalnih poduzeća koja upravljaju grobljima. Prema dobivenim podacima, u Hrvatskoj se na 32 groblja nalazi 59 grobova migranata, koji su ukopani posljednjeg desetljeća, dakle od 2014. do danas. Od toga ih 45 nije identificirano.

      Neki pokopani migranti su ekshumirani i vraćeni obiteljima u zemlju porijekla, premda je to za obitelji zahtjevan i iznimno skup proces. U MUP-u navode da se od 2001. DNK uzorci uzimaju od svih neidentificiranih tijela, a obradu provodi Centar za forenzična ispitivanja, istraživanja i vještačenja Ivan Vučetić. Tražili smo od MUP-a razgovor sa stručnjacima koji rade na identifikaciji migranata, ali nam nije udovoljeno.

      Među NN grobovima u Hrvatskoj je mrtvorođena beba iz Sirije pokopana 2015. u Slavonskom Brodu. Petogodišnja djevojčica koja se utopila u Dunavu i pokopana je 2021. u Dalju. Prošlo ljeto je mladić u brdovitom predjelu na dubrovačkom području umro od iscrpljenosti. Neke je udario vlak. Mnogi su umrli od pothlađenosti. Neki umru jer im nije na vrijeme pružena pomoć. Neki ne vjeruju da im išta više može pomoći pa se ubiju.
      Nerazriješeni gubitak

      Prema zakonu, sahranjuju se najbliže mjestu stradavanja tako da su uglavnom na malim grobljima poput onog u Sičama. Često su, baš kao tamo, njihovi grobovi izdvojeni od ostatka groblja. Ponegdje je, kao u Otoku, netko od mještanki mekog srca dao sebi u zadatak da brine o NN grobu. Negdje je, kao na groblju u Prilišću, NN drveni križ iz 2019. već istrunuo.

      Iza svakog tog NN groba ostaju bližnji koji se nose s teretom neznanja što se dogodilo. Psiholozi to zovu nerazriješenim gubitkom, jer toliko dugo koliko bližnji nemaju potvrdu da su njihovi voljeni mrtvi i ne znaju gdje su im tijela, ne mogu žalovati za njima. Ako nastave sa životom, osjećaju krivnju. I tako su zamrznuti u stanju između očaja i nade. Američka psihologinja dr. Pauline Boss autorica je termina i teorije o nerazriješenom gubitku. “Znati gdje je grob bližnje osobe je jako važno jer pomaže da se oprostite”, rekla je dr. Boss u razgovoru za naš tim.

      Postoji i praktična strana te zamrznutosti: ako osoba nije proglašena mrtvom, ne može se provesti nasljeđivanje, ne može se pristupiti bankovnom računu, ne može se dobiti obiteljska mirovina, partner ili partnerica se ne mogu ponovno vjenčati, komplicira se skrbništvo nad djecom. Mnoge obitelj i u Hrvatskoj i u Bosni i Hercegovini dobro poznaju nerazriješeni gubitak; ratovi u devedesetima ostavili su tisuće nestalih. Obje zemlje imaju posebne zakone o nestalima u tim ratovima i dobro razrađene mehanizme potrage, identifikacije, pohranjivanja podataka i međusobne suradnje. No to se ne primjenjuje na migrante koji se gube i pogibaju među tisućama koji se kreću Balkanskom rutom.
      Uređeni koridor – nula mrtvih

      Hrvatska je postala važna točka ulaska u Europsku uniju nakon što je Mađarska zatvorila granice u rujnu 2015. Od tada pa do ožujka 2016. preko hrvatske dionice Balkanskog koridora – dakle, međudržavnog, organiziranog puta – prema procjenama, prošlo je oko 660.000 izbjeglica. Taj koridor im je omogućio da od Grčke pa do zapadne Europe dođu u dva ili tri dana. I dolazili su sigurno. Od tih stotina tisuća ljudi u pokretu, hrvatski MUP ne bilježi niti jednu smrt 2015. i 2016. Koridor je i uspostavljen da bi se spriječila stradavanja nakon što je veći broj izbjeglica u proljeće 2015. poginuo na željezničkoj pruzi u Makedoniji.

      No sa sklapanjem europsko-turskog sporazuma o izbjeglicama u ožujku 2016. godine, koridor je zatvoren. EU se obavezala izdašno financirati Tursku da izbjeglice drži na svom teritoriju kako ne bi dolazili u Europsku uniju. I tako je migrantima ostala pogibeljna Balkanska ruta. Mnogi njom idu. Samo u deset mjeseci 2023. hrvatska je policija evidentirala 62.452 postupanja vezano za nezakonite prelaske granice.

      I Ured pučke pravobraniteljice u Hrvatskoj i povjerenica Vijeća Europe za ljudska prava upozoravaju na isto: granične i migracijske politike utječu na povećanje rizika od nestajanja migranata. I da je potrebno da se u EU uspostave legalni i sigurni putevi migracija. No, EU očekuje od Hrvatske da štiti zajedničku vanjsku granicu. I Hrvatska to zdušno radi. Takvu praksu ministar Davor Božinović naziva “obeshrabrivanjem” migranata da uđu u Hrvatsku.
      ‘Obeshrabreni’ pod vlak

      Rezultat takve prakse je, primjerice, smrt Madine Hussiny. Šestogodišnju afganistansku djevojčicu je ubio vlak nakon što je njenu obitelj hrvatska policija “obeshrabrila” i usred noći 2017. potjerala nazad u Srbiju uz uputu da prate tračnice. Europski sud za ljudska prava u studenom 2021. je presudio da je Hrvatska odgovorna za Madininu smrt. U svjedočanstvima koja smo čuli, kao i u mnogim izvještajima nevladinih organizacija, migranti opisuju da im je hrvatska policija na granici naredila da pregaze ili preplivaju rijeku kako bi se vratili u Bosnu ili Srbiju, da se penju preko stijena, idu kroz šumu, nekad i svučeni dogola i ne znajući put jer im policija u pravilu oduzme mobitele.

      Prema podacima koje prikuplja Dansko vijeće za izbjeglice, od početka 2020. do kraja 2022. najmanje je 30.000 ljudi prisilno vraćeno iz Hrvatske u Bosnu i Hercegovinu. Među njima je bio i Afganistanac Arat Semiullah. U studenom 2022. je namjeravao prijeći Savu i ući iz Bosne u Hrvatsku. Utopio se. Imao je 20 godina. Pokopan je na pravoslavnom groblju u Banja Luci. Njegova obitelj u Afganistanu nije znala što mu se dogodilo. Dan ranije je poslao mami fotografiju na kojoj je svježe ošišan za ulazak u Europsku uniju. I onda se prestao javljati.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2nVP5AL1x0&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegram.hr%2F&

      Majka je molila nećaka Paymana Sediqija, koji živi u Njemačkoj, da ga pokuša pronaći. Payman je stupio u kontakt s aktivistom Nihadom Suljićem, koji u Bosni i Hercegovini samostalno pomaže obiteljima da doznaju što je s njihovim bližnjima. Tjednima su pokušavali doći do informacija. Payman je otputovao u Bosnu i uspio pronaći tijelo rođaka zahvaljujući susretljivosti policajke koja mu je pokazala forenzičke fotografije. Aratova mama je telefonski potvrdila da je to njezin sin.
      U Europi sahranili snove

      Na Aratovoj osmrtnici objavljenoj u Bosni i Hercegovini piše da je “hrvatska policija vatrenim oružjem potopila čamac te se on tragično utopio”. Uz pomoć muslimanske zajednice, a na želju obitelji, uspjeli su tijelo prebaciti iz Banja Luke na muslimansko groblje u Kamičanima. Htjeli su ga pokopati u Afganistanu, ali im je bilo previše skupo i birokratski komplicirano. U rujnu 2023. susreli smo se s Nihadom i Paymanom kad je Aratu postavljen velik kameni nadgrobni spomenik. Na njemu piše: “U pokušaju dolaska do Europe utopio se u rijeci Savi.”

      Payman nam je ispričao da je Arat prelazio Savu u skupini migranata. Dio njih je uspio doći do hrvatske obale, no onda je hrvatska policija pucala u gumeni čamac u kojem je bio Arat. Čamac se potopio i Arat se utopio. Tako je Paymanu ispričao preživjeli koji je prešao na hrvatsku obalu Save. Payman kaže da je Aratova obitelj u velikoj boli, ali da makar znaju gdje im je sin i da je pokopan po religijskim običajima. Paymanu je važno da na grobu piše da je Arat stradao kao migrant.

      “Svakodnevno u Europi umiru ljudi koji bježe iz zemalja u kojima im nema života. U Europi se sahranjuju njihovi snovi. Nikoga nije briga za njih, čak ni kad europski policajci pucaju na njih”, kaže Payman. Zna o kakvim snovima govori; i sam je ilegalno došao u Njemačku sa 16 godina. Kaže da je imao sreće. Nihad se zalaže da se i drugi grobovi migranata u Bosni i Hercegovini trajno obilježe. Vodi nas na groblje u Zvorniku gdje je pokopano 17 NN migranata. Kaže kako za neke od njih ima informaciju da su imali pasoš sa sobom kad su pronađeni.
      ‘Ove ljude nije ubila rijeka’

      S groblja se vidi Drina, koja dijeli Srbiju od Bosne i u kojoj mnogi izgube život pokušavajući je preći. Samo je ove godine u Drini pronađeno tridesetak tijela. Nihad kaže da imaju sreće ako ih rijeka izbaci na bosansku stranu jer se u Srbiji često ne radi ni obdukcija niti uzimaju DNK uzorci. To su nam potvrdili i aktivisti iz Srbije. U tom slučaju su i u smrti sasvim izgubljeni za svoje obitelji. Zemljani NN grobovi u Zvorniku su zarasli i nisu omeđeni, tako da ne znate gazite li po njima.

      Nihad je uspio uvjeriti Grad Zvornik da drvena obilježja zamijene crnim kamenom. Važno mu je da su pokopani dostojanstveno, ali mu je još važnije da ostanu svjedočiti. “Želja mi je da i za sto godina ovi grobovi budu spomenici srama EU. Jer, nije ove ljude ubila rijeka, nego granični režim EU”, kaže Nihad.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJkS3qHfA54&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegram.hr%2F&

      https://www.telegram.hr/preview/1905158

    • An obscure island grave: fate of deadly EU migration route’s youngest victim

      Case of #Alhassane_Bangoura in #Lanzarote highlights Europe-wide failure as authorities struggle to cope with scale of deaths

      Stretching less than a metre in length and covered in the ochre-coloured soil that dots the Canary island of Lanzarote, large stones encircle the tiny mound. There is no tombstone or plaque; nothing official to signal that this is the final resting site of the infant believed to be the youngest victim of one of the world’s deadliest migration routes.

      Instead, two bouquets of plastic daisies adorn the grave, along with a granite bowl engraved with his name, Alhassane Bangoura, hinting at the impact his story had on many across the island.

      His mother, originally from Guinea, was among three pregnant women who joined 40 others in an inflatable raft that left Morocco in early January 2020. After running out of fuel, the flimsy raft was left to the mercy of Atlantic currents for three days.

      “They were driven by desperation,” said Mamadou Sy, a municipal councillor for the Socialist party in Lanzarote. “Nobody would get into one of these vessels if they had even a little bit of hope in their own country. Nobody would do it.”

      So far this year, a record 35,410 migrants and refugees have arrived on the shores of the Canary Islands – a 135% increase over last year. More than 11,000 of them landed at the tiny island of El Hierro, home to just 9,000 people.

      The surge in those risking the perilous route has transformed the archipelago into a microcosm of the wider strain playing out across the EU as authorities struggle to deal with the bodies of those that die on their way. A Guardian investigation in collaboration with a consortium of reporters has found that refugees and migrants are being buried in unmarked graves across the EU at a scale that is unprecedented outside of war.

      In September, the mayor of Mogán, a municipality on the island of Gran Canaria, gave voice to the tensions that have at times surfaced as officials across the EU confront this issue, announcing she would no longer use her budget to cover the cost of burying refugees and migrants who are found along the shores that buttress the municipality.

      “When they die on the high seas, it is the responsibility of the state,” Onalia Bueno told reporters, in rejection of a Spanish law that requires municipalities to foot the bills for people who die within their jurisdiction and who are either unidentified or whose families cannot cover the costs.

      At the Teguise municipal cemetery on the island of Lanzarote, more than 25 unmarked graves sit among a plot containing about 60 graves in total. It was here that baby Alhassane was buried. His mother had delivered him as the rickety vessel pitched against the fierce Atlantic swells; those onboard later told media they never heard the baby cry.

      His body was cold when the vessel was rescued, an emergency services spokesperson said. He was taken to the nearest hospital but was declared dead on arrival. His body was taken to judicial authorities as is the standard practice in Spain for migrants and refugees who perish at sea or on arrival.

      Alhassane’s mother, who was unconscious when she was rescued, was later sent to Gran Canaria, about 200km (125 miles) away, where an NGO had agreed to take her into its care. But the Spanish judicial system had yet to release her son’s body – a process that can take up to eight months in Lanzarote.

      The funeral took place on 25 January. “She wasn’t able to attend the funeral,” said Laetitia Marthe, who was among those who unsuccessfully battled for Alhassane’s mother to be allowed to attend. “Basically they’re treated like numbers.”

      Instead, Marthe was among the handful of people who attended the funeral in her name.

      Judicial officials had liaised with the mother to check the baby’s name, said Eugenio Robayna Díaz, the municipal councillor responsible for cemeteries in the city of Teguise. But he did not know why the name had not made it on to the grave.

      Julie Campagne, an anthropologist based in Lanzarote, called for the baby’s grave to be marked with a plaque. “We’re witnessing the process of forgetting in real time. And this loss of memory comes with a shirking of our responsibility for what is happening.”

      Generally speaking, all over the world, there is always a small fraction of people who die and are never identified, she added. “But that is not what is happening here. This is happening for specific reasons. This is happening because of the policy decisions of our governments.”

      While Alhassane’s mother was not able to attend the funeral, what did eventually make it to his gravesite was a smooth stone, painted by her in yellow and red and brought there by those travelling from Gran Canaria shortly after the burial. Written on the stone was a message for her son.

      More than three years of rain has washed away much of what was there but Marthe copied down the message, hoping to one day add it to a formal marker of the site. “I will miss you a lot my baby,” it reads. “I love you.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/08/an-obscure-island-grave-fate-of-deadly-eu-migration-routes-youngest-vic

      #Teguise

    • Dead refugees in the Balkans: bribes to find missing relatives

      In comparison to 2015, today more asylum seekers are dying on the Balkan route. While relatives are forced to overcome state indifference to identify their loved ones, they are also forced to bribe authorities, even border guards, in the hope of finding them.

      He had hoped to find his son in a refugee camp. And after spending three weeks looking for him, he had prepared himself for the possibility of finding him in a hospital.

      But he didn’t expect to find him in the graveyard.

      When the policeman with Bulgarian insignia on his uniform showed him the picture of his son lying lifeless in the grass, he lost the ground under his feet. “I wish I could at least have been able to see Majd one last time. My mind still can’t believe that the person in this grave is my son,” says Husam Adin Bibars.

      The 56-year-old Syrian refugee, a father of four other children, had spent 22 days searching for his son from afar when he decided to spend his meager savings to travel from Denmark to Bulgaria to look for him – but it was too late.

      In Bulgaria, he learned that 27-year-old Majd’s body had been buried within just four days of its discovery. Majd had been buried as an unidentified person; there was nothing to indicate that the person buried under that pile of dirt, which Bibars later visited, was his son.

      “We hear that Europe is the land of freedom, democracy, and human rights,” says Bibars soberly. “Where are human rights if I am not able to see my son before his burial?”

      Dead without identification

      Majd had crossed from Turkey to Bulgaria with a group of about 20 other people, hoping to reunite with his parents and siblings in Europe. Once he arrived, his pregnant wife and their daughter, Hannah, would follow.

      Toward the end of September, he stopped returning calls and texts. The smuggler told Bibars that Majd had fallen ill and they needed to leave him behind. Authorities told Bibars his son died of thirst, exhaustion, and exposure.

      In recent years, with the support of EU funds and the increased involvement of the European border agency Frontex, Balkan countries have stepped up border controls, constructing fences, deploying drones and surveillance mechanisms. But this doesn’t deter asylum seekers – it causes them to take longer and more dangerous routes to avoid authorities.

      An investigation by Solomon in collaboration with investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports, the German magazine Der Spiegel and German public television ARD, the British newspaper i, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, found that the hostility people face at the borders of Europe in life continues even in death.

      We found that since the start of 2022, the lifeless bodies of 155 people presumed to be migrants have ended up in morgues close to borders along a route that includes Serbia, Bulgaria, and Bosnia.

      According to the data, for 2023 there is already a 46% increase in deaths compared to the whole of 2022.

      In the Balkans, people making the journey have to cope with harsh weather conditions, but also with pushbacks, increased brutality by border guards and smugglers, theft by border forces – even detention in secret prisons.

      For their part, the families of those who go missing or die in the region have to search for their loved ones in morgues, hospitals, and special Facebook and WhatsApp groups, and to cope with an equally arduous effort facing the indifference of the authorities.

      In Bulgaria, this investigation reveals, they often also need to pay bribes in the hope of learning more about their missing loved ones.
      The 10 key findings of the investigation:

      - In 2022, the number of people travelling irregularly through the Balkans to Western Europe reached its highest point since 2015, with Frontex recording 144,118 irregular border crossings.

      – The corresponding figure for 2023 is lower (79,609 by September), but remains a multiple of 2019 (15,127) and 2018 (5,844).

      – The Balkan route is more dangerous than ever: in the absence of a centralised relevant registration system, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants platform suggests that more people died or went missing in 2022 than in 2015.

      - According to data gathered for this investigation, at least 155 unidentified bodies ended up in six selected morgues along a section of the Balkan route that includes Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia. The majority of the bodies (92) were found this year.

      - For 2023, the number is already showing a 46% increase compared to 2022, and is exploding in some morgues.

      – Some morgues in Bulgaria (Burgas, Yambol) are having difficulty finding space for the bodies of refugees. Others in Serbia (Loznina) have no space at all.

      - This contributes to unidentified bodies being buried within days, in ‘No Name’ graves. This means that families are left without the opportunity to search for their loved ones.

      - In Bulgaria, families told us that they had to bribe staff at hospitals and morgues, but border guards too, when searching for their loved ones. Sources in the field confirm the practice, which is also recorded in an audio file in our possession.

      – In Bosnia, at least 28 people presumed to be asylum seekers have already died in the Drina River this year, compared to just five in 2022 and three in 2021.

      - Bureaucracy and lack of state interest are recorded as hampering efforts to identify dead asylum seekers.

      Dead but cause of death unknown

      What do you do when your little brother is missing, and because of your status in the country you live in, you can’t travel to look for him?

      Asmatullah Sediqi, a 29-year-old asylum seeker, was in his asylum accommodation in Warrington, UK, when his brother’s travel companions informed him that 22-year-old Rahmatullah was likely dead.

      Due to his status as an asylum seeker, the UK Home Office did not allow Asmatullah to return to Bulgaria, which he had also crossed on his journey, to look for his brother.

      When a friend was able to go on his behalf, the Bulgarian police refused to give any information. And the morgue staff asked for 300 euros to let him see some bodies, Sediqi said in this investigation.

      “In such a situation, a person should help a person,” he added. “They only know money. They are not interested in human life.”

      He managed to borrow the amount they asked for. In July 2022, 55 days after his brother’s disappearance, the Burgas hospital confirmed that one of the bodies in the morgue belonged to Rahmatullah. With another 3,000 euros borrowed, a company repatriated the remains to their parents in Afghanistan.

      But to this day, Sediqi is consumed by one thought: he doesn’t know how, he hasn’t been told why, his brother died.

      The Bulgarian authorities have not given him the results of the autopsy “because I don’t have a visa to travel there,” he says. “I’m sure that when the police found him in the forest, they must have taken some photos. It’s very painful not knowing what happened to my brother. It’s devastating.”
      “Not a single complaint”

      As part of this investigation by Solomon, Lighthouse Reports, RFE/RL, inews, ARD και Der Spiegel, several relatives told us they had also been forced to bribe workers at the Burgas hospital’s morgue to find out if their family members were among the dead.

      When we asked the hospital administration whether they were aware of such practices, Galina Mileva, head of the forensic medicine department at Burgas hospital, said that they had not received “a single report or complaint about such a case. The identification of the bodies is done only in the presence of a police officer conducting the investigation and a forensic expert.”

      The administration also replied that there is no legal provision under which employees could claim money from relatives for this procedure.

      “We appeal to these complaints to be addressed through official channels to us and to the investigating authorities. If such practices are found to exist, the workers will be held accountable,” they added.
      “Money is requested at every step of the process”

      Another relative, whose family also travelled to Bulgaria in late 2022 to search for a family member, told us that after they paid staff at the morgue 300 euros to be allowed to look at the dead bodies, they also had to pay border guards.

      It was the only way they could be taken seriously, the relative explained.

      When they asked the border guards to show them photos of people who had been found dead, the border guards said they didn’t have time, but when the family agreed to pay 20 euros for each photo shown to them, time was found.

      Georgi Voynov, a lawyer for the Bulgarian Committee Helsinki Refugee and Migrant Programme, confirmed that families of deceased persons have approached the Committee about cases in which hospitals asked for large sums of money to confirm that the bodies of their loved ones were there.

      “They complain that they are being asked for money at every step of the process,” he said.

      International organisations, including the Bulgarian Red Cross, confirmed that they had such experiences from persons they had supported, who said they had been forced to pay money to hospitals and morgues.

      A Bulgarian Red Cross official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, commented:

      “We understand that these people are very overwhelmed and have to be paid extra for all the extra work they do. But this should be done in a legal way.”

      https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/dead-refugees-in-the-balkans

      #Bulgarie #Drina #Galina_Mileva

  • #José_Vieira : « La #mémoire des résistances face à l’accaparement des terres a été peu transmise »

    Dans « #Territórios_ocupados », José Vieira revient sur l’#expropriation en #1941 des paysans portugais de leurs #terres_communales pour y planter des #forêts. Cet épisode explique les #mégafeux qui ravagent le pays et résonne avec les #luttes pour la défense des #biens_communs.

    Né au Portugal en 1957 et arrivé enfant en France à l’âge de 7 ans, José Vieira réalise depuis plus de trente ans des documentaires qui racontent une histoire populaire de l’immigration portugaise.

    Bien loin du mythe des Portugais·es qui se seraient « intégré·es » sans le moindre problème en France a contrario d’autres populations, José Vieira s’est attaché à démontrer comment l’#immigration_portugaise a été un #exode violent – voir notamment La Photo déchirée (2001) ou Souvenirs d’un futur radieux (2014) –, synonyme d’un impossible retour.

    Dans son nouveau documentaire, Territórios ocupados, diffusé sur Mediapart, José Vieira a posé sa caméra dans les #montagnes du #Caramulo, au centre du #Portugal, afin de déterrer une histoire oubliée de la #mémoire_collective rurale du pays. Celle de l’expropriation en 1941, par l’État salazariste, de milliers de paysans et de paysannes de leurs terres communales – #baldios en portugais.

    Cette #violence étatique a été opérée au nom d’un vaste #projet_industriel : planter des forêts pour développer économiquement ces #territoires_ruraux et, par le même geste, « civiliser » les villageois et villageoises des #montagnes, encore rétifs au #salariat et à l’ordre social réactionnaire de #Salazar. Un épisode qui résonne aujourd’hui avec les politiques libérales des États qui aident les intérêts privés à accaparer les biens communs.

    Mediapart : Comment avez-vous découvert cette histoire oubliée de l’expropriation des terres communales ou « baldios » au Portugal ?

    José Vieira : Complètement par hasard. J’étais en train de filmer Le pain que le diable a pétri (2012, Zeugma Films) sur les habitants des montagnes au Portugal qui sont partis après-guerre travailler dans les usines à Lisbonne.

    Je demandais à un vieux qui est resté au village, António, quelle était la définition d’un baldio – on voit cet extrait dans le documentaire, où il parle d’un lieu où tout le monde peut aller pour récolter du bois, faire pâturer ses bêtes, etc. Puis il me sort soudain : « Sauf que l’État a occupé tous les baldios, c’était juste avant que je parte au service militaire. »

    J’étais estomaqué, je voulais en savoir plus mais impossible, car dans la foulée, il m’a envoyé baladé en râlant : « De toute façon, je ne te supporte pas aujourd’hui. »

    Qu’avez-vous fait alors ?

    J’ai commencé à fouiller sur Internet et j’ai eu la chance de tomber sur une étude parue dans la revue de sociologie portugaise Análise Social, qui raconte comment dans les années 1940 l’État salazariste avait pour projet initial de boiser 500 000 hectares de biens communaux en expropriant les usagers de ces terres.

    Je devais ensuite trouver des éléments d’histoire locale, dans la Serra do Caramulo, dont je suis originaire. J’ai passé un temps fou le nez dans les archives du journal local, qui était bien sûr à l’époque entièrement dévoué au régime.

    Après la publication de l’avis à la population que les baldios seront expropriés au profit de la plantation de forêts, plus aucune mention des communaux n’apparaît dans la presse. Mais rapidement, des correspondants locaux et des éditorialistes vont s’apercevoir qu’il existe dans ce territoire un malaise, qu’Untel abandonne sa ferme faute de pâturage ou que d’autres partent en ville. En somme, que sans les baldios, les gens ne s’en sortent plus.

    Comment sont perçus les communaux par les tenants du salazarisme ?

    Les ingénieurs forestiers décrivent les paysans de ces territoires comme des « primitifs » qu’il faut « civiliser ». Ils se voient comme des missionnaires du progrès et dénoncent l’oisiveté de ces montagnards peu enclins au salariat.

    À Lisbonne, j’ai trouvé aussi une archive qui parle des baldios comme étant une source de perversion, de mœurs légères qui conduisent à des enfants illégitimes dans des coins où « les familles vivent presque sans travailler ». Un crime dans un régime où le travail est élevé au rang de valeur suprême.

    On retrouve tous ces différents motifs dans le fameux Portrait du colonisé d’Albert Memmi (1957). Car il y a de la part du régime un vrai discours de colonisateur vis-à-vis de ces régions montagneuses où l’État et la religion ont encore peu de prise sur les habitants.

    En somme, l’État salazariste veut faire entrer ces Portugais reculés dans la modernité.

    Il y a eu des résistances face à ces expropriations ?

    Les villageois vont être embauchés pour boiser les baldios. Sauf qu’après avoir semé les pins, il faut attendre vingt ans pour que la forêt pousse.

    Il y a eu alors quelques histoires d’arrachage clandestin d’arbres. Et je raconte dans le film comment une incartade avec un garde forestier a failli virer au drame à cause d’une balle perdue – je rappelle qu’on est alors sous la chape de plomb du salazarisme. D’autres habitants ont aussi tabassé deux gardes forestiers à la sortie d’un bar et leur ont piqué leurs flingues.

    Mais la mémoire de ces résistances a peu été transmise. Aujourd’hui, avec l’émigration, il ne reste plus rien de cette mémoire collective, la plupart des vieux et vieilles que j’ai filmés dans ce documentaire sont déjà morts.

    Comment justement avez-vous travaillé pour ce documentaire ?

    Quand António me raconte cette histoire d’expropriation des baldios par l’État, c’était en 2010 et je tournais un documentaire, Souvenirs d’un futur radieux. Puis lorsqu’en 2014 un premier incendie a calciné le paysage forestier, je me suis dit qu’il fallait que je m’y mette.

    J’ai travaillé doucement, pendant trois ans, sans savoir où j’allais réellement. J’ai filmé un village situé à 15 kilomètres de là où je suis né. J’ai fait le choix d’y suivre des gens qui subsistent encore en pratiquant une agriculture traditionnelle, avec des outils de travail séculaires, comme la roue celte. Ils ont les mêmes pratiques que dans les années 1940, et qui sont respectueuses de l’écosystème, de la ressource en eau, de la terre.

    Vous vous êtes aussi attaché à retracer tel un historien cet épisode de boisement à marche forcée...

    Cette utopie industrialiste date du XIXe siècle, des ingénieurs forestiers parlant déjà de vouloir récupérer ces « terres de personne ». Puis sous Salazar, dans les années 1930, il y a eu un débat intense au sein du régime entre agrairistes et industrialistes. Pour les premiers, boiser ne va pas être rentable et les baldios sont vitaux aux paysans. Pour les seconds, le pays a besoin de l’industrie du bois pour décoller économiquement, et il manque de bras dans les villes pour travailler dans les usines.

    Le pouvoir central a alors même créé un organisme étatique, la Junte de colonisation interne, qui va recenser les baldios et proposer d’installer des personnes en leur donnant à cultiver des terres communales – des colonies de repeuplement pour résumer.

    Finalement, l’industrie du bois et de la cellulose l’a emporté. La loi de boisement des baldios est votée en 1938 et c’est en novembre 1941 que ça va commencer à se mettre en place sur le terrain.

    Une enquête publique a été réalisée, où tout le monde localement s’est prononcé contre. Et comme pour les enquêtes aujourd’hui en France, ils se sont arrangés pour dire que les habitants étaient d’accord.

    Qu’en est-il aujourd’hui de ces forêts ? Subsiste-t-il encore des « baldios » ?

    Les pinèdes sont exploitées par des boîtes privées qui font travailler des prolos qui galèrent en bossant dur. Mais beaucoup de ces forêts ont brûlé ces dernière décennies, notamment lors de la grande vague d’incendies au Portugal de 2017, où des gens du village où je filmais ont failli périr.

    Les feux ont dévoilé les paysages de pierre qu’on voyait auparavant sur les photos d’archives du territoire, avant que des pins de 30 mètres de haut ne bouchent le paysage.

    Quant aux baldios restants, ils sont loués à des entreprises de cellulose qui y plantent de l’eucalyptus. D’autres servent à faire des parcs d’éoliennes. Toutes les lois promues par les différents gouvernements à travers l’histoire du Portugal vont dans le même sens : privatiser les baldios alors que ces gens ont géré pendant des siècles ces espaces de façon collective et très intelligente.

    J’ai fait ce film avec en tête les forêts au Brésil gérées par les peuples autochtones depuis des siècles, TotalEnergies en Ouganda qui déplace 100 000 personnes de leurs terres pour du pétrole ou encore Sainte-Soline, où l’État aide les intérêts privés à accaparer un autre bien commun : l’eau.

    https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/culture-et-idees/021223/jose-vieira-la-memoire-des-resistances-face-l-accaparement-des-terres-ete-

    #accaparement_de_terres #terre #terres #dictature #histoire #paysannerie #Serra_do_Caramulo #communaux #salazarisme #progrès #colonisation #colonialisme #rural #modernité #résistance #incendie #boisement #utopie_industrialiste #ingénieurs #ingénieurs_forestiers #propriété #industrie_du_bois #Junte_de_colonisation_interne #colonies_de_repeuplement #cellulose #pinèdes #feux #paysage #privatisation #eucalyptus #éoliennes #loi #foncier

  • Le naufrage réactionnaire du mouvement anti-industriel · Histoire de dix ans - Le Numéro Zéro
    https://lenumerozero.info/Le-naufrage-reactionnaire-du-mouvement-anti-industriel-Histoire-de-di

    « En temps de crise l’extrême droite a pour stratégie de tenter des rapprochements avec l’autre bord de l’échiquier politique. Nous en appelons donc à la vigilance, afin qu’aucune passerelle ne soit établie entre nos mouvements et des courants antisémites, racistes, antiféministes, nationalistes, conspirationnistes, etc., etc., et les personnes qui pourraient être complaisantes à leur égard. » [1]

    C’est par ces mots qu’il y a dix ans les animateurs des éditions #L’Échappée - Cédric Biagini, Guillaume Carnino et Patrick Marcolini - répondaient aux critiques qui leur avaient été faites quant à la présence d’un proche d’Alain Soral, Charles Robin, parmi les auteur·ices de leur recueil intitulé Radicalité, 20 penseurs vraiment critiques. Cet ‘appel à la vigilance’ sonnait alors comme une résolution sérieuse, et ferme.

    De 2008 à 2013, le groupe anti-industriel Pièces et Main d’Oeuvre (#PMO) a dirigé au sein des éditions L’Échappée la collection Négatif. Ce groupe, qui s’était fait connaître pour son opposition aux nanotechnologies, va, autour des années 2013-2014, intensifier ses prises de positions ouvertement antiféministes et transphobes. Celles-ci seront suivies de déclarations islamophobes et de collaborations régulières avec des publications proches de l’extrême-droite telles RageMag, Le Comptoir, ou Limite.

    Le développement violemment antiféministe et raciste de PMO, qui dès 2004 attaquait le « popullulationnisme » des « techno-lesbiennes » [2], devint emblématique des glissements réactionnaires potentiels du #courant_anti-industriel, qui trouvent un terrain propice dans ses tendances à l’essentialisation positive de la « Nature » et sa négation de la pluralité des rapports de domination au profit d’une seule critique, celle du « techno-totalitarisme » des « technocrates » qui menacerait une humanité indifférenciée.

    Il aurait été concevable que le courant anti-industriel (qui a émergé au cours des années 1980 avec la revue post-situationniste l’Encyclopédie des Nuisances devenue ensuite maison d’édition), dont de nombreu·ses membres se revendiquent de l’anarchisme, se distingue de ces offensives réactionnaires en leur sein et en produise une critique émancipatrice. Ni l’un ni l’autre n’est arrivé.

    PMO a continué à évoluer sans encombre au sein du mouvement anti-industriel [3]. Et PMO a essaimé. Des initiatives sont nées, se revendiquant de leur héritage réactionnaire, comme le podcast Floraisons, ainsi que les Éditions Libre et la branche française de Deep Green Resistance (DGR), toutes deux co-fondées par Nicolas Casaux et Kevin Haddock, qui revendiquent une transphobie assumée.

    • Cette brochure semble prendre pas mal acte des critiques faites sur les cartographies à la va-vite des liens entre anti-indus et réacs voire fachos, et du coup détaille immensément plus les griefs de chaque personne importante du mouvement anti-indus français, avec des citations détaillées cette fois des passages problématiques, ainsi que les liens très explicites (et non pas fantasmés) entre telle ou telle personne avec des gens ou des magazines parfaitement ouvertement fascistes ou qanoniste, etc.

      #critique_techno @pmo #PMO #Éditions_L'échappée #Cédric_Biagini #Guillaume_Carnino #Patrick_Marcolini #Charles_Robin #Olivier_Rey #Paul_Cudenec #Anselm_Jappe #Nicolas_Casaux #Nicolas_Bonnani #Éditions_La_Lenteur #Éditions_Le_monde_à_l'envers #Alexis_Escudero #Matthieu_Amiech #Jean-Claude_Michéa #Bertrand_Louard @tranbert #Paul_Kingsnorth #Laurent_Mucchielli #Raphaël_Deschamps #complotisme #antisémitisme

    • Outre ses présupposés idéologiques non explicites mais implicitement présentés comme des évidences indiscutables (px : critiquer la PMA = manif pour tous), ce qui me frappe, c’est cette méthode de #culpabilité_par_association (tel personnage douteux politiquement approuve un bouquin ou une idée, donc ceux qui l’approuvent aussi ou qui ne la dénoncent pas partagent les mêmes positions politiques). C’est un procédé de flic.

      Ce texte se termine avec cet appel :
      « Chacun•e doit faire face à ses responsabilités. »
      C’est pourtant une lettre de #dénonciation_anomyne particulièrement calomniatrice sur certains points - non signée et sans contact pour une réponse.
      Quel courage ont ces gens, quel sens des responsabilités !!!

      Mais il est a craindre que ce torchon ait un certain succès parmi les gens qui partagent les mêmes présupposés idéologiques.

      A suivre...

      Les réponses à ce texte :

      https://seenthis.net/messages/1035286

      #calomnie #sectarisme #gauchisme, etc.

    • Daniel Bernabé
      2018 – La trampa de la diversidad. Ediciones Akal. Colección A fondo. ISBN 978-84-460-4612-7.27​

      Traduction Editions l’Echappée
      2022 - Le piège identitaire : l’effacement de la question sociale

      (je note les deux titres pour les comparer)

      Avant-propos
      Par Patrick Marcolini

      L’IDENTITÉ, LA MANIÈRE dont nous nous définissons et la façon dont les autres nous regardent occupent aujourd’hui une place centrale, déterminante, dans le débat public. Pas une semaine, parfois pas un jour ne passe sans qu’un groupe social, par la voix d’activistes, ne proteste contre les « stéréotypes » qui pèsent sur lui, ne revendique son droit à la « visibilité », ou ne demande une forme ou une autre de « reconnaissance » de ses spécificités. Ce phénomène n’est pas limité à la France, et touche désormais la plupart des pays occidentaux, et même bien au-delà. Partout où il gagne en intensité, la gauche, comme le reste de la société, est sommée de prendre position sur ces questions, et prend généralement le parti de soutenir ces activistes au nom du combat contre les discriminations et pour la justice sociale.

      Toute une partie de la gauche et de l’extrême gauche s’affaire ainsi depuis des années à répandre les principes de l’écriture inclusive, à déconstruire les clichés qui pèsent sur les personnes LGBT, à soutenir l’organisation de groupes de parole non mixtes pour les « racisés », à veiller à ce que la « diversité » soit correctement représentée à la télévision, au cinéma, dans les séries ou les publi- cités et ce ne sont que quelques exemples. Mais en consacrant ses efforts à agir sur les représentations, le langage, les imaginaires, ne risque-t-elle pas de délaisser un terrain plus concret, celui de l’économie et de la conquête d’une égalité matérielle pour tous ? Autrement dit, les questions sociétales ne sont-elles pas en train de remplacer la question sociale ?

      AVANT-PROPOS Page 7

      –—
      Je vous laisse juge de la confusion portée.
      Je n’ai pas lu ce livre, j’en ferai un résumé si j’arrive à en tourner les pages.
      L’actuel résumé serait de type
      Les ennemis de mes ennemis sont mes ennemis.

    • Et je pense que ces diverses assertions (dois-je dire accusations ?) sont récurrentes, et le principe sous-tendu ne date pas d’aujourd’hui. La grande cause passe avant tout. C-a-d que toute revendication qui d’après ses détracteurs s’éloignerait de la « question sociale » tel qu’elle serait définie par les penseurs masculins blancs de la gauche est vouée au pilori. Quitte à traiter les féministes d’identitaires. Du moment que le troupier donne les cartes qu’il vient de rebattre à ses nouveaux amis réacs.

    • C’est très court et c’est du vécu.

      merci @tranbert j’ai lu ton texte sur ton site wordpress
      Je me méfie toujours de la réaction au vécu dans le sens où il nous mène plutôt du mal-vécu vexant à un conflit disproportionné ou mal dirigé. Loin de refuser de me questionner sur les nouveaux types d’investissement de l’espace politique.
      Je ne suis pas théoricienne et je ne fais pas de prosélytisme, j’essaye de m’en tenir à observer mes contemporain·es et leurs modalités de survie.

      Soyons clairs : La gauche (je ne parle même pas de celle au pouvoir) à un problème politique profond et cela ne vient ni des féministes ni des LGBT ni des anti-racistes ou des handicapés. Il faut arrêter de trouver plus petit que soi à taper.

      Ce n’est pas ex-nihilo si les luttes politiques contre les systèmes autoritaires ont perdu de l’attrait en moins de 20 ans. Mais c’est bien une perte d’énergie de contrer les nouvelles générations qui agissent évidemment différemment.

    • Ce qui manque à ce texte, c’est un hommage préalable aux auteurs du courant industriel comme ayant réussi à rendre légitime la critique sociale des technologies, ce qui n’était pas du tout le cas il y a 20 ans.

      Comme cela n’est fait à aucun moment, cela donne l’impression que les auteurs du texte sont totalement indifférents à cette question de la critique des techniques, qui constitue pourtant le cœur, comme son nom l’indique, du courant anti-industriel.

      Du coup, le résultat prend la forme d’une chasse aux sorcières vraiment détestable qui s’intéresse beaucoup plus aux personnes (que l’on cite), qu’aux idées, qui ne sont que survolées.

      Et c’est chiant. C’est confondre l’activité de discernement dans la pensée avec le besoin de s’insérer dans un milieu ou une communauté.

      Parce qu’en suivant les idées plutôt que les hommes, il serait tout à fait possible de s’intéresser aux auteurs du courant-industriel quand ils parlent de technologies, et beaucoup moins quand ils parlent d’autre chose, quand ils s’aventurent sur le terrain glissant de la « culture » avec un risque élevé de dire des conneries.

      Et sur ce terrain-là je trouve qu’il y a eu un égarement, précoce, avec des auteurs comme Christopher Lasch ou Jean-Claude Michéa ("de l’impossibilité de dépasser le capitalisme par sa gauche") comme tentative de faire un lien avec des classes populaires (la common decency de George Orwell) peut-être largement fantasmées comme étant porteuse de « bon sens », le qualificatif de « réactionnaire » souvent revendiqué, pour s’opposer à la gauche progressiste culturellement qui serait l’allié objectif du capitalisme.

      A la fin le résultat n’est pas du tout étonnant. Et ennuyeux, dans tous les sens du terme. Ennuyeux parce que le texte assez dégueulasse dans sa forme sera sans doute difficilement critiquable sur le fond. Ennuyeux parce que rien ne prouve la pertinence pour le progrès de l’humanité d’aller jouer les virtuoses de l’argumentation sur le terrain des identités culturelles ou de genre, des vaccins, du complotisme etc.

    • Un commentaire sur TW :

      sauf que ce texte ne rend aucunement compte des différences entre les courants, tout est mis dans le même sac. Le tout pour élever des digues ? beau projet

      Et je suis d’accord avec la toute première phrase de @deun : des gens qui sont doucement technocritiques en 2023 pataugeraient toujours dans leur techno-béatitude sans les enquêtes détaillées de PMO sur les nanos, sur la technopolice (avant que la quadrature et d’autres utilisent ces termes), sur l’ensemble de la chaine horrible des téléphones mobiles des mines en amont jusqu’aux décharges en aval, et ça 15 à 20 ans au moins avant que ce soit repris (trop tard, une fois que tout est en place). Beaucoup de journalistes ou militants écolo n’ont souvent fait que reprendre les enquêtes de PMO après coup sans trop le dire… Et on peut parfaitement admettre ça tout en les critiquant vertement pour leur égo et leur ironie permanente anti-féministe ces dernières années (et ya largement de quoi citer des saloperies contrairement à ce que dit Creuse Citron https://seenthis.net/messages/1017186)

    • https://comptoir.org/2021/11/16/renaud-garcia-le-militantisme-woke-ne-cherche-pas-a-convaincre-mais-a-rege

      Pour Renaud Garcia dans cet interview l’ennemi principal ce sont les « technologistes » face aux « naturiens ».

      ça simplifie grandement l’analyse de la société, mais ça pose pas mal de problèmes :

      – On se lance dans des batailles un peu vaines contre des gens proches de nous politiquement (à moins de penser que les gens qui luttent contre les discriminations sont forcément infréquentables par ceux qui critiquent les technologies ?), mais qui défendent ou utilisent des outils high tech.
      Ça donne donne des normes de bienséance pour se faire accepter de certains milieux militants, des idéologies qui fonctionnent comme critère d’appartenance d’abord, plutôt que comme base pour rendre intelligible le monde social. Le milieu anti-industriel est-il plus accueillant que les milieux dénoncés par Garcia dans cet interview et n’a-t-il pas lui aussi ses propres codes pour se faire accepter ?

      – La référence à la nature est très souvent problématique quand on fait partie d’un catégorie structurellement dominée. Par exemple une bonne partie du courant féministe a du faire la critique des assignations à des rôles sexués en expliquant qu’elles étaient des constructions sociales qui s’appuyaient sur l’évidence biologique qu’il existe naturellement des femmes et des hommes.

      – Est-ce qu’il existe dans la société un camp unifié défendant le déferlement technologique et revendiquant son existence ?
      Si jamais ce n’est pas le cas, alors le militant anti-tech va devoir passer son temps à essayer de classer les gens en fonction de ce qu’ils disent ou font des technologies... dont l’usage est pourtant rendu obligatoire, comme ils le dénoncent eux-mêmes.

      – Est-ce qu’un groupe social (mettons les ingénieurs et leurs soutiens) entraîne le reste de la société à suivre passivement ce déferlement technologique ?
      Si jamais ce n’est pas le cas, que le phénomène est plus complexe, alors on court le risque de passer à côté d’autres facteurs qui expliquent qu’ils soit aussi compliqué de résister aux technologies.
      Par exemple, comment ne pas voir que les innovateurs de la silicon valley ne sont pas seulement des ingénieurs mais aussi des businessmen qui ont su inventer le modèle économique rendant possible le déferlement de leur technologies ?

      – Que faire des gens qui participent à ce déferlement bien plus passivement, en recevant un salaire par exemple mais en y effectuant des micro-tâches s’insérant dans le grand tout du système technicien ? Les culpabiliser ? Les enjoindre à déserter ?
      On en arrive alors à des considérations sur l’individu qui a le courage de résister et celui ne l’a pas, comme dans cet extrait d’une interview de PMO :

      Les gens qui vous demandent « comment résister » ont rarement envie de le faire ; et concluent souvent d’un air navré que, non, ils ne peuvent ou ne veulent pas faire ce que vous suggérez. En fait, on devrait retourner la question et leur demander, » Et vous ? Que faites-vous ? Qu’êtes-vous prêt à faire personnellement, par vous-même, pour résister, à part faire partie du collectif machin et même d’un tas de collectifs machins ? »

      https://comptoir.org/2021/10/26/pieces-et-main-doeuvre-la-cybernetique-affaiblit-notre-autonomie-de-pensee

      – Finalement on relativise le problème de la montée en puissance de l’extrême-droite, comme le fait Garcia dans cet interview, du fait qu’on trouve à droite des conservateurs dont le conservatisme déborde parfois un peu le champ culturel pour s’intéresser aux technologies d’une façon critique - quoique pour eux c’est une question secondaire et qu’ils pourront facilement changer d’avis sur cette question.

    • @deun @rastapopoulos
      Oulala ! Le niveau monte, le niveau monte : « Cé sui ki di ki yé ».
      Ça sent le naufrage de la pensée biberonnée aux post-modernes.

      Dans sa version initiale comme dans cette préface, Le désert de la critique n’est finalement qu’une tentative, effectuée du fond de ma tranchée, pour révéler ce clivage principal entre technologistes et naturiens. Et faire tomber, par là même, ce mur de stupidité qui nous encercle, et réduit chaque jour un peu plus la pensée à des réflexes conditionnés.

    • lol @tranbert c’est très clairement toi qui vient répondre des ironies fielleuses sans aucun argument suite à une liste de remarques pas spécialement débiles, et ensuite c’est toi qui te plaint du niveau maternelle, c’est un peu l’hopital qui se fiche de la charité non ? :p

      On dirait qu’en fait n’importe quelle critique ne te sied, quelque soit d’où qu’elle vienne… Dès qu’il y a une critique tu réponds par une ironie et un air de « non mais c’est bon on a raison, on nous la fait pas ». Et après ça se plaint à la Garcia qu’il n’y a pas/plus de « critique » ? Mais qui pourrait avoir envie de critiquer et de débattre de quoi que ce soit, vu que ça ne sert à rien dans ces conditions ? (et à quelles conditions plausibles et honnêtes ce serait possible ?)

      Bref faut en avoir du courage après 20 ans d’engueulades ironiques post-situ « je-t’excommunie-avant-que-tu-m’excommunies », pour avoir encore envie de passer du temps à critiquer avec des arguments… (et pourtant yen a qui sont toujours là… on doit être maso :p)

    • Comme c’est Noël, je vais faire un peu de pédagogie.

      Lorsqu’on pose la question :

      Que faire des gens qui ...

      Historiquement il y a eu deux réponses :
      On les envoie en camp de rééducation (solution de gauche),
      On les envoie en camp d’extermination (solution de droite).
      (dans les fait c’était souvent la même chose...)
      Mais qui est ce « on » ?
      C’est la domination !!!

      Historiquement toujours ceux qui ont posé la question « Que faire des pauvres ? » (ceux qui ne sont pas comme nous des rentiers qui vivons confortablement du travail des autres) sont à l’origine du complexe idéologique qui donnera naissance au capitalisme industriel.

      https://sniadecki.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/townsend-1786-1788

      Autrement dit, ceux qui posent ce genre de questions ( @deun ) et ceux qui ne voient pas où est le problème à réfléchir depuis cette position ( @rastapopoulos ) se sont tellement identifiés au point de vue propre à la domination qu’ils ne sont plus capables de comprendre une action politique fondée sur la liberté et l’autonomie des « gens ».

      L’enseignement historique du XXe siècle est (devrait être) que l’ on ne peut pas combattre l’aliénation sous des formes elle-mêmes aliénées , c’est-à-dire en reproduisant les structures hiérarchiques et leur point de vue surplombant.

      Bref, vous avez une conception véritablement réactionnaire de l’émancipation.

      Car ce que vous voulez ce n’est pas l’émancipation. Ceux qui demandent Que faire des gens attendent encore qu’un sauveur, un prince charmant et éclairé, un homme ou une femme providentielle, le père ou la mère Noël (soyons inclusif !) viennent leur dire quoi faire de leur vie et de celle des autres.

      En ce qui me concerne (mais sur ce point je crois pouvoir parler au nom des technocritiques), je n’ai pas pour ambition de devenir Ministre du démantèlement de l’industrie dans un gouvernement décroissant.

      Nous n’allons rien faire des gens qui ... Nous allons poursuivre notre analyse du monde tel qu’il ne va pas et la faire connaître en dépit des calomnies et des imbéciles qui les propagent à travers leurs questions stupides. Les « gens » s’empareront de ces idées ou pas, ils tenterons ou pas d’agir en conséquence.

      Notre critique de la technologie n’a pas pour but de tracer une ligne de démarcation entre « amis » et « ennemis » au sein de ceux qui sont dominés ( @touti ), contrairement à celleux qui nous jettent leurs anathèmes à la figure et n’ont rien de plus pressé que d’excommunier les mécréants et les hérétiques à leur ligne idéologique.

      Notre critique de la technologie est ... une critique de la technologie et de ses conséquences mortifères et aliénantes qui devrait amener chacun en conscience à se poser des questions sur la manière dont il vit et participe à la destruction des conditions de cette vie sur Terre.

      Certains ne veulent pas se poser ces questions. Tant pis pour eux.

      D’autres préfèrent nous calomnier parce qu’ils veulent que personne ne se pose ces questions. Car eux, ils savent quoi faire des gens qui ...

      Et puis il y a ceux qui ont tout oublié ...

      Joyeux Noël !

    • @tranbert répondre avec autant de mépris tient du comique. Ton texte est un prêche de curé où tu donnes à ton « nous » la vérité vraie à inculquer à ceux qui ont des questions stupides. J’ai une question stupide : d’où viens-tu, quel âge as-tu ?

      Cela nous divertira de la question sur l’essentialisme naturiste déversé par certains technocritiques, qui permet leur forte accointance avec l’xdroite et leurs conservateurs de traditions.

      Dommage que tu souhaites rester aveugle à cette problématique de départ (technocritique et conservatisme) dans laquelle les technocritiques se sont vautrés à force de mépris.

    • Je tiens à redire que je n’apprécie aucunement cette brochure Le naufrage... Des personnes qui se reconnaissent dans la critique anti-industrielle ne portent aucunement des positions conservatrices sur le plan culturel. Elles n’ont pas forcément lu les textes cités qui posent problème, mais elles en lu d’autres. Cette étiquette "anti-industrielle" est bien pratique pour mettre tous les auteurs dans le mêmes sacs. Cependant chaque auteur parle en son nom et non pas au nom de tous les anti-industriels.

      Reste que les jeunes générations, très sensibilisées aux questions des discriminations, ne vont pas aller lire les textes de ce courant qui pourraient les intéresser, à cause de certaines prises de positions contraire à leur préoccupation première, qui est pourtant légitime.

      Par exemple PMO dans "Ceci n’est pas une femme" :

      (...) le capitalisme technologique, qu’on le nomme société du Spectacle, société de consommation, société post-industrielle, post-moderne, est tout, sauf raciste, sexiste,
      xénophobe, homophobe, etc. C’est au contraire une condition de sa prospérité que d’être aussi inclusif, ouvert, égalitaire que possible envers les identités de genre, de sexe, d’ethnie, de religion.

      En dehors du fait que ça ne tient pas la route factuellement (oui l’intérêt du capitalisme est bien de vendre, mais une condition de sa prospérité est bien de maintenir les divisions sociales et non les abolir), il y a là bien une prise de position politique de qui tient à se couper de toute alliance avec les gens qui luttent contre des discriminations diverses. Le texte est d’une grande violence, méprisant et souvent alambiqué (ainsi le passage tenant à faire passer la nouvelle droite pour technophile pour mieux assumer le conservatisme social du texte. Il faudrait donc comprendre que PMO n’est pas d’extrême-droite parce que certains de leurs théoriciens ne sont pas à tout moment technocritiques. Absurde. Juste, l’extrême-droite s’en fout, de ce débat.).

      Peut-être que d’autres auteurs du courant anti-industriels se sont positionnés là-dessus, je ne sais pas.

      Pour moi il est clair que simplement critiquer les technologies sans en analyser la dynamique globale capitaliste et marchande fait qu’on va chercher les ressorts de cette dynamique dans des choix, choix qui seraient faits par certaines catégories de la population qui y ont intérêts (la classe technologique).
      Il suffirait alors de s’extraire du champ d’influence culturel de cette classe technologique, pour lui opposer d’autres valeurs. Une forme de culture matérielle plus sobre, à rechercher dans le passé par exemple, qui malheureusement est difficilement détachable de formes sociales elles-mêmes antérieures, que l’on va finir par idéaliser pour cette raison qu’elles étaient liées à un état antérieur du développement technologique.

      Creuse citron dans "A propos de PMO et de la « question trans »" - un texte ne critiquant finalement pas vraiment le "Ceci n’est pas une femme de PMO" - écrit à propos des luttes trans :

      A les croire il n’y a rien d’autre dans leur lutte ; et effectivement on chercherait en vain sur leur site un texte d’analyse générale ou programmatique un tant soit peu conséquent, qui permettrait au moins d’avoir des positions claires à discuter.

      ... sans voir que le même constat peut être fait des texte anti-industriels. Comment leur reprocher plus qu’aux personnes trans luttant pour se faire accepter ? C’est justement cette attention (compréhensible et légitime pour moi) quant à cette fuite en avant technologique qui peut en devenir obsédante, et même malheureusement en faire une question identitaire au sens d’existentiel.
      C’est pourquoi à mon sens tous les milieux militants sont très rapidement problématiques. Leurs causes sont justes tant qu’elles permettent encore de se décentrer et d’écouter le souci des autres.

    • Notre critique de la technologie n’a pas pour but de tracer une ligne de démarcation entre « amis » et « ennemis » au sein de ceux qui sont dominés ( @touti ), (...)

      Effectivement c’était le sens de ma question « que faire des gens...? ». Que faire, dans une critique anti-industrielle se bornant à chercher des ennemis (la classe technologique de Garcia, les technocrates de PMO etc), des gens qui utilisent ou développent des technologies, qui ne le font pas par choix ou selon une idéologie technophile ?
      Comment tu peux assumer que le texte de PMO « Ceci n’est pas une femme » ne cherche pas à se faire des ennemis parmi les personnes dominées ? A moins que tu ne penses que les trans et les femmes ne sont pas des catégories dominées (comme le stipule PMO - cf. la citation plus haut) ?

  • Un anno di osservazione sul CPR di Via Corelli, Milano

    Il report-denuncia di Naga e Rete Mai più Lager - No ai CPR

    «Al di là di quella porta. Un anno di osservazione dal buco della serratura del Centro di Permanenza per il Rimpatrio di Milano» è il titolo del report 1 realizzato dall’associazione Naga e della Rete Mai Più Lager – No ai CPR (di qui in avanti “Rete”).

    Il risultato di un monitoraggio multi livello 2 durato un anno che tuttavia, lascia l’impressione di aver giusto sbirciato “dal buco della serratura” di quel CPR.

    La diversità di fonti e metodi riflette infatti la difficoltà che si riscontra quando si vuole rompere il muro di oscurità che avvolge via Corelli e tutti gli altri centri d’Italia. La maggior parte delle informazioni raccolte sono infatti il frutto delle segnalazioni arrivate al centralino telefonico “SOS CPR Naga” o alle pagine social di Naga e Rete dai cellulari personali dei trattenuti.

    Un monitoraggio che solleva l’angosciante interrogativo su quanto accade negli altri Centri di permanenza per i rimpatri (CPR) d’Italia.

    Il CPR di Milano infatti è l’unico, insieme a quello di Gradisca d’Isonzo, in cui, grazie a una sentenza sul ricorso ASGI del 20213, i trattenuti possono detenere i propri telefoni cellulari. Questa possibilità, a garanzia del diritto alla libera corrispondenza di fatto negata negli altri CPR, ha plausibilmente l’effetto di limitare gli abusi da parte di forze dell’”ordine” e operatorə del centro, consapevoli inoltre della presenza di associazioni e reti di solidali ben radicate sul territorio.

    Se le atrocità osservate a Milano sono il frutto di un relativo contegno che le autorità si impongono in Via Corelli, qual è invece la realtà quotidiana degli altri CPR, esclusi da un accorto e costante monitoraggio? Il titolo infatti rende perfettamente idea di quanto è nascosto agli occhi quando si cerca di osservare la totalità di una stanza dal piccolo spiraglio della serratura.
    “Accedere al CPR: una lunga storia”

    Naga accede regolarmente alle carceri ordinarie, mentre nei Centri di permanenza per i rimpatri la Prefettura nega l’autorizzazione in modo quasi sistematico e spesso senza neanche fornire una motivazione dettagliata. Eppure la possibilità di accesso è formalmente prevista dalla Direttiva Lamorgese e spesso viene fatta valere solo in seguito a un ricorso al Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale. Non prima, dunque, di spendere tempo, energie e risorse per fare ricorso contro il diniego.

    “La battaglia per visitare il CPR è durata oltre un anno, ha visto impegnati due avvocati e una decina tra attiviste e attivisti. Istanze, memorie, accessi agli atti, un’ordinanza e una sentenza” 4. Tutta questa fatica per due ore di sopralluogo all’interno del centro, in cui la delegazione è stata accompagnata – o, per meglio dire, scortata – lungo tutto il tragitto.
    Gli accessi civici agli atti e i dati quantitativi del report

    Un intero capitolo del dossier è dedicato a dettagliare le richieste di accesso civico generalizzato agli atti 5 che hanno spesso ottenuto dinieghi, risposte glissate, parziali, contraddittorie 6, a volte nessuna risposta affatto. Dalle risposte ottenute il rapporto riesce a ricostruire qualche dato quantitativo.

    In un anno sono state deportate da via Corelli verso il paese d’origine 7 238 persone, ovvero il 44% dei trattenuti (dove la media nazionale si attesta tra il 49 e il 50%).

    “L’82% dei rimpatriati proviene dal nord Africa. Del resto, il 65% dei trattenimenti ha riguardato persone provenienti da Egitto, Marocco e Tunisia. I dati della Prefettura confermano che sono soprattutto tunisini a popolare il CPR.” (Naga, 2023, p.137)

    In assenza di dati ufficiali sui motivi di rilascio diversi dalla deportazione nel paese di origine, Naga e Rete riportano a tal proposito i dati in loro possesso. Dei 24 casi di rilasci ottenuti grazie all’assistenza legale Naga, la maggior parte erano motivati dalle condizioni di salute dei trattenuti.

    Secondo l’ATS (Agenzia di Tutela della Salute), dal 1°marzo 2022 al 28 marzo 2023 sono stati emessi 203 codici STP. (Naga, 2023, p.167).

    A tutti i trattenuti però dovrebbe essere assegnato un codice STP (Straniero Temporaneamente Presente) al momento dell’ingresso. Considerando che il numero di trattenuti per lo stesso periodo è di 544, lo scarto è di ben 341 codici. Sul perché a questi individui non sia stato assegnato alcun codice STP non è dato avere spiegazione.

    Sul numero di trattenuti sottoposti a Trattamento Sanitario Obbligatorio (TSO), l’ATS non ha fornito alcuna risposta. La Prefettura sostiene di non avere tale informazione e, anche avendola, non la comunicherebbe in quanto relativa a dati “sensibilissimi”. Invece il Comune di Milano, che sotto la firma del suo Sindaco Giuseppe Sala dispone i TSO, ha riferito che nel periodo di riferimento dell’istanza ci sono stati due TSO sullo stesso cittadino. Risulta poi che questi trattamenti si riferiscono a due distinti periodi di trattenimento in CPR: questo significa, ancora una volta, che nonostante i gravi problemi psichiatrici è stato dichiarato idoneo al trattenimento ed è finito poi per subire un ulteriore TSO.
    La visita d’idoneità

    Una visita medica deve accertare l’idoneità alla vita in comunità ristretta entro le 48h dall’ingresso della persona in un CPR. Secondo la normativa, la visita d’idoneità deve svolgersi all’esterno del Centro e dev’essere obiettiva. Secondo le raccomandazioni del Garante nazionale dei diritti delle persone private della libertà personale (di qui in avanti abbreviato “Garante Nazionale”), per essere obiettiva la visita dev’essere svolta da medici del Servizio Sanitario Pubblico in una struttura pubblica.

    Invece, sin dalla sua apertura e con l’eccezione di una sola breve parentesi, le visite di idoneità per l’ingresso nel CPR di Via Corelli sono state svolte sempre dagli stessi due medici. Non si tratta di dipendenti dell’ASL, ma di medici in libera professione vincitori di concorsi che sembrano istituiti ad-hoc per affidare loro le visite d’idoneità. Inoltre, nel primo anno di apertura del centro, questi due medici lavoravano anche privatamente per l’ente gestore dell’epoca, la R.T.I. Luna S.c.s. – Versoprobo S.c.s. (oggi a gestire il Centro di Via Corelli è Martinina S.r.l.) in evidente conflitto d’interesse.

    Alcuni trattenuti riferiscono di non essere mai stati visitati al di fuori del centro o di aver svolto la visita in Questura. Tutti ad ogni modo sono stati visitati in presenza di agenti di polizia e le visite consistono nella compilazione di un modulo a crocette, nella somministrazione di un test COVID, nella dichiarazione di assenza di sintomi da Tubercolosi, ma senza disponibilità di strumenti diagnostici né la previsione di esami di approfondimento. Dunque si è idonei solo se si è ritenuti approssimativamente e a vista d’occhio “sani”.

    “Nel periodo tra maggio 2022 e marzo 2023 sono pervenute al centralino SOS CPR del Naga diverse segnalazioni di problematiche sanitarie che potrebbero porre qualche dubbio sulle idoneità rilasciate. Ricordiamo almeno 4 casi di trattenuti affetti da epilessia, 8 con gravi problemi psichiatrici e psicologici, diverse decine di persone che praticavano autolesionismo, 9 portatori di malattie croniche, gravi o comunque difficilmente compatibili con le modalità di trattenimento (sempre che queste si possano considerare compatibili con qualsiasi essere umano)” – Naga, 2023 (p. 84)
    “Il battesimo d’ingresso”

    Una volta all’interno del CPR, i trattenuti sono sottoposti a una seconda “visita”, quella di presa in carico 8. I neo arrivati vengono portati in infermeria, denudati integralmente di fronte a medici e, anche qui, ad agenti di polizia e obbligati a fare flessioni per espellere eventuali oggetti nascosti nell’ano.

    “Un trattamento umiliante dalla dubbia utilità pratica, stigmatizzato in infinite occasioni dai tribunali perché riservato, per legge, ai soggetti più pericolosi solo in caso di estrema necessità. Questo trattamento viene risparmiato solo ai soggetti provenienti direttamente dal carcere, quindi “puliti” in ragione della loro provenienza. A volte neanche a loro.” – Naga, 2023 (p.26)

    Al termine di questa visita viene refertata una scheda medica di ingresso, senza data e con la sezione “anamnesi” quasi sempre barrata. Nessun accertamento dettagliato sulla salute psichica dei trattenuti, seppur previsto dall’offerta tecnica con la quale Martinina S.r.l. vince l’appalto.

    Finita questa umiliante prassi di sottomissione, i trattenuti vengono spogliati anche della loro stessa umanità e identità personale. Viene loro consegnato un cartellino identificativo con un codice numerico progressivo (arrivato il 28 luglio 2023 al numero 1566) che di lì in avanti sostituirà il loro nome nelle interazioni con il personale all’interno del centro.

    Uno spettro agghiacciante dei metodi nazisti, in cui la deumanizzazione degli internati era funzionale al loro soggiogamento e all’annientamento di ogni guizzo di resistenza attiva alle ingiustizie e violenze subite.
    La vita nei blocchi: squallore e “zombizzazione”

    Secondo il monitoraggio di Naga e Rete, nel CPR di Via Corelli risultano agibili solo due moduli abitativi – spesso definiti “blocchi” dai trattenuti – ciascuno per 28 persone.

    “Per ogni trattenuto il gestore percepisce, come da appalto, un compenso di 40,16 euro al giorno. A loro disposizione un “kit di ingresso” (per il quale il gestore percepisce un compenso a parte) miserrimo e un cambio di vestiti (biancheria intima compresa) già usati da altri, che nella maggioranza dei casi vengono rifiutati.” – Naga, 2023 (p. 26)

    Le squallide condizioni di vita all’interno dei CPR sono ormai largamente documentate. Le pagine social della Rete pubblicano quasi quotidianamente foto e video inviati dai trattenuti raffiguranti locali non idonei, sporcizia, degrado, sangue, violenze e sofferenza diffusa.

    Uno scenario post-apocalittico all’interno del quale gli avvocati e le avvocate Naga raccontano di una veloce degenerazione psicofisica dei loro clienti, che colloquio dopo colloquio, vedono progressivamente diventare come zombie.

    “Giovani sani e forti si trasformano in poche settimane in zombie scoloriti e disorientati dagli psicofarmaci, drogati di e per disperazione, o più semplicemente per mantenere l’ordine all’interno del centro senza alcun dispendio di forze, energie e personale: sedandoli” – Naga, 2023 (p.28)
    Mai più distante dalla realtà: il capitolato d’appalto di Martinina S.r.l. tra servizi non erogati e protocolli falsi

    Nel CPR di Milano, come negli altri CPR d’Italia, i trattenuti non hanno la possibilità di svolgere alcuna attività ricreativa. Eppure Martinina S.r.l. avrebbe ottenuto in gestione via Corelli – con un appalto di 1,2 milioni di euro! – sulla base delle “proposte migliorative” dell’offerta tecnica.

    Il rapporto di Naga e Rete documenta dettagliatamente come quanto formalmente previsto dal capitolato non corrisponde a un servizio effettivo e/o di qualità 9. Ma ancor più grave è quanto emerso dalla recente inchiesta di Luca Rondi e Lorenzo Figoni per Altraeconomia: «Inchiesta sul gestore del Cpr di Milano: tra falsi protocolli e servizi non erogati».

    Interpellando le associazioni e Ong iscritte negli accordi che Martinina S.r.l. ha presentato in gara d’appalto hanno scoperto che questi protocolli d’intesa sono falsi. Altri ancora sono siglati con soggetti che non risultano da nessuna parte online, di cui di fatto non è possibile verificare la veridicità. Un accordo è addirittura firmato dal solo ente gestore, Martinina S.r.l. Tra questi le società che dovrebbero provvedere alla realizzazioni di attività ricreative e migliorative del tempo trascorso dai trattenuti all’interno del Centro.

    i trattenuti nei CPR non hanno nemmeno la possibilità di tenersi carta e penna. La giustificazione? La prima perché infiammabile e la seconda perché passibile di uso improprio. Il divieto di circolazione di carta tra i detenuti però inficia gravemente anche sul loro diritto all’informazione legale e di reclamo diretto al Garante Nazionale.

    Secondo l’offerta tecnica, Martinina S.r.l. fornisce consulenti legali interni che dovrebbero consegnare una “carta dei diritti dei trattenuti”, che però non può circolare nel CPR perché, appunto, di carta. Senza carta e penna é inoltre inverosimile che i trattenuti possano scrivere reclami diretti al Garante Nazionale. In occasione dell’accesso fisico la delegazione Naga ha potuto constatare inoltre che il vademecum che dovrebbe informarli sulle modalità di invio riporta informazioni errate: istruiscono per l’invio di reclami al Garante territoriale, che a Milano manca. Esiste un Garante Comunale che tuttavia non segue il CPR di Via Corelli per mancanze di risorse e personale e che consiglia di riferirsi alla Procura della Repubblica o al Garante Nazionale, per cui le modalità d’invio, tuttavia, richiedono procedure differenti. A queste mancanze cercano di sopperire Naga e Rete mandando costanti segnalazioni al Garante. Nel rapporto forniscono qualche dato sulle segnalazioni inviate.

    “Quale difesa?”

    Ai trattenuti viene sistematicamente limitato il diritto alla difesa. La nomina di unə avvocatə di fiducia è condizionata alle risorse economiche disponibili: quando sono scarse o ormai esaurite, non resta che l’avvocatə di ufficio. I detenuti dovrebbero poterne scegliere unə da una lista fornita dall’ente gestore. Questa, in quanto cartacea, non può circolare all’interno del CPR e quindi di fatto l’assegnazione avviene in maniera casuale. Anche quando un detenuto è assistito da unə avvocatə di fiducia, questə viene convocatə in ore serali, tarde o non viene convocatə affatto.

    Lə rappresentante legale spesso non conosce il caso, non ha avuto accesso al fascicolo, non ha nemmeno mai visto o parlato con il trattenuto. Se d’ufficio, poi, il suo incarico si limita a una singola udienza. Le udienze durano in media 6 minuti e sono svolte online: oltre alla pessima connessione internet, l’avvocatə deve decidere se presenziare di fronte al giudice o collegarsi online con la persona assistita, con ulteriori gravi implicazioni sulla qualità della difesa.

    L’impedimento al diritto di difesa viene esercitato anche in occasione dei colloqui individuali. A differenza del carcere ordinario, nei CPR questi avvengono alla presenza degli agenti di polizia. Il rapporto riporta un episodio particolarmente grave del 3 agosto 2023, in cui all’avv. Simona Stefanelli e all’interprete di fiducia che l’accompagnava, é stato inizialmente negato negato l’accesso al CPR, nonostante regolare nomina di incarico per diversi assistiti. È stato poi concesso alla sola avvocata di parlare con un solo assistito e per 30 minuti, dopodiché è stata fatta uscire sul pretesto che ci sarebbero stati altri appuntamenti per i quali doveva essere lasciata libera la stanza. Il direttore avrebbe inoltre sequestrato alcuni documenti dell’assistito impedendole di fatto di preparare un’adeguata difesa.
    L’interprete

    Fino a giugno 2022 l’interprete di fiducia poteva accedere al CPR, previa comunicazione del nominativo all’ente gestore, come anche presenziare alle udienze presso il Giudice di pace. Ora invece serve l’autorizzazione della Prefettura, che oppone dinieghi ostinati e strumentali anche in presenza di professionistə competenti e qualificatə.

    All’interprete che accompagnava l’avv. Stefanelli è stato opposto un diniego perché non aveva presentato documentazione atta a dimostrare la sua qualifica di mediatrice culturale. Quando questa è stata presentata, le si è opposto che la qualifica di per sé non fosse sufficiente, ma doveva dimostrare di svolgere “ordinariamente attività come traduttrice o mediatrice culturale a supporto di studi legali, o comunque in contesti peculiari come quello dei CPR” 10. Nel diniego si aggiungeva inoltre che l’interprete di fiducia risultava superfluo data la presenza di personale di mediazione professionista garantita dall’ente gestore.

    Non solo dal rapporto emerge come l’unico mediatore “professionista” di Martinina S.r.l. mai incontrato abbia candidamente ammesso di essere un autodidatta. In base ai protocolli presentati in gara d’appalto sarebbe Ala Milano Onlus a fornire servizi di mediazione linguistico-culturale nel CPR di Milano. Peccato che il suo presidente, intervistato da Luca Rondi e Lorenzo Figoni nell’ambito della già citata inchiesta su Altraeconomia, dichiara di non aver mai siglato quell’accordo.
    Il diritto alla salute e gli “scheletri nell’armadio”

    Il grosso del dossier riguarda i dati medici e parla di un vero e proprio ostruzionismo da parte di Prefettura ed ente gestore, vinto ancora una volta soltanto in sede di ricorso. L’ostruzionismo viene esercitato su voluti fraintendimenti tra le “cartelle cliniche” e i “diari clinici” dei trattenuti.

    Quando lə avvocatə chiede per iscritto “le cartelle cliniche” dell’assistito, l’ente gestore invia le cartelle cliniche refertate da ospedali qualora si siano verificati dei ricoveri, ma non quello che loro chiamano il “diario clinico”. Quest’ultimo è un fascicolo che l’ente gestore dovrebbe aggiornare lungo tutto il periodo di trattenimento, tra l’altro avvalendosi di un software gestionale online che comunicherebbe alla prefettura ogni aggiornamento su base quotidiana. Questo diario non viene rilasciato, come ricostruisce dettagliatamente il rapporto, neanche quando esplicitamente ordinato da sentenza del giudice su ricorso.

    Non è chiaro poi se questo software gestionale esista davvero: la documentazione ottenuta risulta scritta a mano, spesso in maniera illeggibile; inoltre anche il “registro degli eventi critici”, che da offerta tecnica dovrebbero essere registrati e comunicati informaticamente, è un quaderno da cartoleria ad anelli, “dal quale possono essere agilmente strappati fogli scomodi, non numerati né tanto meno vidimati” – Naga, 2023 (p.147)

    Quando si è riusciti ad ottenere la documentazione sanitaria di alcuni trattenuti sono emersi dei veri e propri “scheletri nell’armadio”. Ne è un esempio la storia di J.M., dettagliata nel rapporto.

    Lamentando gravi mal di testa, J.M. viene visitato in ospedale perché non era disponibile un medico nel centro; il suo referto medico viene sequestrato al rientro nel centro e il suo compagno di stanza chiama il centralino del Naga perché lo vede fortemente turbato. Lə attivistə di Naga e Rete riescono a risalire all’Ospedale dov’era stato ricoverato e scoprono che una TAC aveva rilevato una neoplasia cerebrale. Viene invece dimesso con diagnosi di crisi da verosimile astinenza da cocaina e riportato nel CPR come se nulla fosse. Il legale fa allora richiesta ufficiale della sua cartella clinica e soltanto allora J.M. viene rilasciato dal centro: più precisamente, viene abbandonato in mezzo alla strada, nonostante non fosse nemmeno in grado di camminare, e senza ricevere la sua cartella clinica.
    La non-assistenza psico-sociale in Via Corelli

    L’offerta tecnica di Martinina S.r.l prevede personale e locali adibiti ai colloqui psicologici, che però si svolgono in presenza degli agenti di polizia, in totale violazione della privacy necessaria. Nell’accesso fisico alla struttura, la delegazione Naga ha constatato che a tale servizio sarebbero incaricate due persone, di cui una si è presentata come coordinatrice del servizio. Interrogata su tecniche e modalità impiegate nel suo lavoro dimostrava gravi mancanze e ammetteva di non affiancarsi di personale di mediazione linguistico-culturale.

    Il suo nome é stato poi nominato da svariati trattenuti, che però la identificavano come l’operatrice che si occupa dei cartellini identificativi con il numero progressivo. Lə avvocatə che collaborano con Naga riportano inoltre che sarebbe sempre lei a rispondere alle email di nomina di legali di fiducia. Mansioni che non sembrano c’entrare nulla con l’incarico di psicologa.

    In assenza di un supporto psicologico adeguato la prassi è una diffusa somministrazione di psicofarmaci a fini sedativi 11, così che le condizioni psicofisiche dei trattenuti deteriorano progressivamente e velocemente. Uno non-luogo di abbandono e brutalizzazione costante.
    La storia di H.B.

    Nessuna legge vieta un ulteriore periodo di detenzione, rendendone i “termini massimi” stabiliti per legge meno effettivi. Dalle testimonianze delle persone che si sono rivolte al centralino “SOS CPR Naga”, è evidente poi che il trattenimento viene imposto e reiterato anche quando la deportazione non è attuabile, in completa violazione del Testo Unico Immigrazione 12. Inoltre, spesso vengono trasferite da un CPR a un altro in ottica punitiva e strumentale.

    Tutte queste dimensioni discriminanti possono verificarsi per una stessa persona con effetti devastanti, come esemplificato nella storia di H.B., dettagliata nel report di Naga e Rete.

    H.B. non è registrato all’anagrafe del paese di origine e dunque, poiché quest’ultimo non lo riconosce come proprio cittadino, non è deportabile. Per questo stesso motivo era stato rilasciato dal suo primo trattenimento nel CPT di Bologna, salvo poi venir messo dentro a Via Corelli a Milano. Da qui, salito sul tetto in atto di protesta contro la convocazione di un avvocato sconosciuto per la sua udienza 13, viene trasferito per punizione al CPR di Ponte Galeria a Roma, ma solo dopo due episodi di violenza da parte di almeno 6 agenti di polizia, che gli causano una ferita aperta in testa, perdite di sangue e siero da orecchie e bocca, vista offuscata e torsione del braccio.

    Perché a Ponte Galeria? Per recidere i suoi rapporti e contatti con lə attivistə di Milano, non potendo nel CPR di Roma tenere il suo cellulare personale. Invece lə avvocatə NAGA hanno continuato a seguirlo, e l’hanno poi fatto rilasciare da Ponte Galeria, proprio perché le gravi lesioni inflittegli in Via Corelli lo rendevano evidentemente inidoneo al trattenimento in CPR 14.

    Anche nel caso di H.B. il rilascio ha equivalso a un abbandono in mezzo alla strada. Lə attivistə NAGA perdono le sue tracce per un certo periodo e lo ritrovano nuovamente rinchiuso, questa volta al CPR di Gradisca d’Isonzo. Non sapendo che fare, era tornato a Bologna dove si era presentato in Questura per domandare protezione internazionale in ragione della sua apolidia. Qui non solo gli viene negato l’accesso alla domanda 15, ma nuovamente lo rinchiudono nel Centro nonostante l’ingessatura al braccio per la quale doveva risultare inidoneo. Nuovamente lə avvocatə NAGA ottengono il suo rilascio, questa volta sulla base del comprovato tentativo di domandare la protezione internazionale e presentano una denuncia per tortura, lesioni, omissione di soccorso e falso nei confronti di agenti, direttore e medico del CPR di Milano e Roma, di cui seguiamo con ansia gli esiti.
    Pratiche di deportazione, morti di Stato e morti invisibili

    Sulla base delle testimonianze di ex-trattenuti deportati e dell’ultima relazione del Garante Nazionale 16, le modalità di esecuzione delle deportazioni implicano regolarmente l’uso della violenza e dell’inganno.

    Le forze di polizia fanno irruzione nella stanza di notte, mentre tutti dormono; immobilizzano e prelevano di forza il deportando, se serve lo sedano contro la sua volontà o a sua insaputa. In alternativa usano la “trappola dell’infermeria” 17, la bugia del trasferimento in un altro centro, o ancora si fa loro credere che verranno portati dal console a cui in ultimo spetta la decisione, quando invece tutto è ormai definitivo.

    Lo stesso Garante Nazionale evidenzia gli abusi della forza da parte degli agenti, in media tre per ogni deportato: a prescindere dall’eventuale resistenza opposta dai deportandi, questi vengono immobilizzati con fascette di velcro o altri dispositivi “con modalità considerate eccezionali anche nell’ambito del regime penitenziario con il rischio di incidere fortemente sulla dignità delle persone straniere” (…) “In talune occasioni i monitor hanno constatato che i dispositivi non sono stati levati nemmeno per consentire la consumazione del pasto e durante la fruizione dei servizi igienici” 18.

    Di questo sistema di violenza e razzismo istituzionale, amministrativa e fisica le persone ci muoiono: nascosti negli impenetrabili CPR o lontano dagli occhi e dai confini territoriali.

    Naga ha domandato al Dipartimento di Pubblica Sicurezza, che fa capo al Ministero dell’Interno, quante morti fossero avventue nei CPR d’Italia negli ultimi 5 anni: sono 14, età media di 33 anni.

    Vittime immolate in nome del culto dei confini, del razzismo, del profitto senza scrupoli che riduce le persone in corpi senza storia e senza identità, solo numeri.

    Numeri a cui Naga cerca di dare un nome, che qui riportiamo per rispetto della loro dignità, confidando che ci legge non ce ne vorrà se anche il resoconto del rapporto risulta molto lungo.

    • Donna – 46 anni – Ucraina – CPR di Ponte Galeria (Roma) il 13 novembre 2018. Di lei il Naga e la Rete Mai più Lager – No ai CPR non sanno nulla, nemmeno il suo nome.

    • Harry – 20 anni – Nigeria – CPR di Brindisi Restinco – 2 giugno 2019

    • Hossain Faisal – 31 anni – Bangladesh – CPR di Torino – 8 luglio 2019

    • Ayman Mekni – 33 anni – Tunisia – CPR di Pian del Lago – Caltanissetta – 12 gennaio 2020

    • Vakthange Enukidze – 39 anni – Georgia – CPR di Gradisca d’Isonzo – gennaio 2020

    • Orgest Turia – 29 anni – Albania – CPR di Gradisca d’Isonzo – 14 luglio 2020

    • Moussa Balde – 23 anni – Nuova Guinea – CPR di Torino – maggio 2021

    • Wissem Abdel Latif – 26 anni – Tunisia – CPR di Ponte Galeria – 28 novembre 2021

    • Ezzedine Anani – 41 anni – Marocco – CPR di Gradisca di Isonzo – 6 dicembre 2021

    • Uomo: – 36 anni – Nigeria – CPR di Brindisi Restinco – 4 agosto 2022.

    • Uomo – 34 anni – Bangladesh – CPR di Ponte Galeria – 22 agosto 2022.

    • Arshad Jahangir – 28 anni – Pakistan- CPR di Gradisca d’Isonzo – 31 agosto 2022

    • Uomo – 44 anni – Nigeria – CPR di Palazzo San Gervasio – 7 ottobre 2022.

    • Nome non trapelato – 38 anni – Marocco – CPR di Brindisi Restinco – 19 dicembre 2022 (Naga, 2023, pp.175-176)

    Di questi 14 morti di stato, 5 rimangono senza nome. Morti invisibili, o meglio invisibilizzate. Le loro morti come anche le loro vite: costrette, negate, taciute. Così nella depredazione dell’Occidente a danno dei paesi resi a basso reddito, ma in realtà di estremo valore estrattivo e umano; così nel Mar Mediterraneo, ormai stabilmente rotta migratoria più mortale sul pianeta; così anche sul territorio italiano, nei campi di sfruttamento, nelle carceri, nei CPR. E di quanti morti ancora non è dato sapere, una volta che queste persone vengono espulse e allontanate dagli occhi e dalla nostra coscienza.

    Vite di cui Naga, come le altre realtà sul territorio italiano, cercano di ricostruire l’identità, per rispetto, per dignità, ma anche per offrire un’occasione a eventuali familiari delle vittime di reclamare giustizia – se davvero così può essere chiamata – sistematicamente violata nel sistema CPR d’Italia.

    https://www.meltingpot.org/2023/11/un-anno-di-osservazione-sul-cpr-di-via-corelli-milano

    #détention_administrative #rétention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Italie #CPR #décès #morts #mourir_en_rétention #via_Corelli #Milan #rapport

    • Firme false e assistenza inesistente per i reclusi: la Procura indaga sul Cpr di Milano

      Il primo dicembre la Guardia di Finanza ha perquisito la struttura per acquisire documentazione. Il reato ipotizzato per l’ente gestore #Martinina è frode in atto pubblico. Un’inchiesta di Altreconomia aveva svelato le “false promesse” della società alla prefettura di Milano

      Servizi di mediazione e assistenza sanitaria “gravemente deficitari”, ausilio psicologico e psichiatrico “largamente insufficiente” e poi cibo “spesso maleodorante, avariato e scaduto”, mancanza di medicinali e informativa legale. Sono queste le basi su cui la Procura di Milano ha dato mandato alla Guardia di Finanza per l’ispezione dei locali del Cpr di via Corelli del primo dicembre. I reati ipotizzati per i rappresentanti della Martinina Srl, la società che si è aggiudicata l’appalto da 1,2 milioni di euro per la gestione del centro nell’ottobre 2022, sarebbero frode nelle pubbliche forniture e turbata libertà degli incanti. Le prime informazioni confermerebbero quanto emerso dalle inchieste di Altreconomia sulle presunte “false promesse” della società alla prefettura e sull’abuso di psicofarmaci.

      Sono due, infatti, i profili al vaglio degli inquirenti. Da un lato c’è la turbativa d’asta legata ai servizi promessi da Martina Srl e mai realizzati. Alessandro Forlenza, gestore del centro e Consiglia Caruso, amministratrice unica della società, avrebbero commesso “frode nell’esecuzione del contratto di appalto” ponendo in essere “espedienti maliziosi e ingannevoli idonei a far apparire l’esecuzione del contratto conforme agli obblighi assunti”. Da un lato quindi i servizi, come detto, “gravemente deficitari” riguardanti mediazione culturale e assistenza sanitaria e informativa legale e poi, in sede di aggiudicazione dell’appalto pubblicato dalla prefettura di Milano, la presenza di protocolli falsi siglati da Consiglia Caruso, all’epoca rappresentante legale della società, con organizzazioni della società civile (ignare) per migliorare l’offerta tecnica al fine di vincere la gara.

      “In concorso con persone non identificate mediante la presentazione documentazione contraffatta e apocrifa turbava la gara d’appalto”, si legge nel decreto con cui il pubblico ministero ha chiesto la possibilità di ispezionare il Corelli. I protocolli, come raccontato anche su Altreconomia, sarebbero dieci in totale. Addirittura due riguarderebbero contratti d’acquisto per distributori di tabacchi e snack. “Servizi mai resi”, sempre secondo l’accusa. Protocolli forniti ovviamente in sede di gara ed esaminati dalla Commissione giudicatrice della prefettura, la quale, nella decisione di assegnare l’appalto alla società domiciliata in provincia di Salerno, sottolineava l’importanza del “valore delle proposte migliorative dell’offerta tecnica”.

      C’è poi il capitolo sanitario. Nell’inchiesta “Rinchiusi e sedati” avevamo dato conto di un acquisto spropositato di psicofarmaci destinati al Cpr di Milano. Il pubblico ministero scrive di “visite di idoneità alla vita in comunità ristretta assolutamente carenti” con ospiti trattenuti affetti da “epatite, gravi patologie psichiatriche, tossicodipendenti, persone con tumori al cervello” a cui si aggiungono servizi di ausilio psichiatrico e psicologico “largamente insufficienti” con colloqui svolti senza i mediatori culturali. “Con le persone trattenute si capiva sulla base del feeling”, avrebbe spiegato la psicologa del centro. Sono state acquisite “copie delle cartelle cliniche e della documentazione sanitaria (attuali e passati)”.

      Martinina Srl ha attualmente altre due sedi attive: una a Palazzo San Gervasio, a Potenza, dove è arrivata seconda nella gara di assegnazione della nuova gestione del Cpr precedentemente dalla Engel, vinto da Officine Solidali nel marzo 2023, un’altra a Taranto, per la gestione del Cas Mondelli che accoglie minori stranieri non accompagnati. L’ultimo bilancio disponibile è del 31 dicembre 2021 con importi ridottissimi: appena 2.327 euro di utili “portati a nuovo”. A quella data ancora non era attivo il Cpr di via Corelli. C’è un terzo soggetto, però, nella “sfera Martinina” con ben altri risultati: si tratta della Engel Family Srl nata nell’ottobre 2020 con in “dotazione” 250mila euro derivanti da Engel Srl. Paola Cianciulli è nuovamente amministratrice e socia unica della società che si occupa di “locazione immobiliare di beni propri o in leasing” che al 31 dicembre 2021 (l’ultimo disponibile) conta un valore della produzione complessivo di poco superiore a 372mila euro.

      Anche l’avvicendamento delle società gestite dall’imprenditore Alessandro Forlenza è rilevante. Lui, nel 2012 fonda la Engel Italia Srl, ex gestore del “Corelli” di Milano e del Cpr di Palazzo San Gervasio a Potenza: oggi quella società non esiste più perché il 20 ottobre 2023 è stata definitivamente “inglobata” nella Martinina Srl, a cui inizialmente era stato ceduto il ramo d’azienda che si occupava della detenzione amministrativa. La società è formalmente in mano a Paola Cianciulli, moglie di Forlenza, che è attualmente l’amministratrice unica dopo l’uscita di scena di Consiglia Caruso (la firmataria di tutti i protocolli d’intesa sopra citati), che il 31 agosto 2023 ha ceduto i mille euro di capitale sociale. A lei restano intestate due società con sede a Milano: l’Edil Coranimo Srl, che si occupa di costruzioni, e dal febbraio 2023 l’Allupo Srl che ha sede proprio in via Corelli, nel numero civico successivo al Centro per il rimpatrio. Una dinamica che desta interesse: l’oggetto sociale della Allupo Srl è molto diversificato e oltre alla ristorazione in diverse forme (da asporto o somministrazione diretta) è inclusa anche la possibilità di “gestione di case di riposo per anziani, case famiglia per minori, Cas, Sprar, Cara e Cpr”. Forse nel tentativo di togliere di mezzo il nome di Martinina per altri eventuali bandi.

      In questo quadro c’è poi il problematico ruolo giocato dalla prefettura. In una nota rilanciata da diverse agenzie di stampa, l’ufficio territoriale del Viminale ha fatto sapere che “aveva già avviato un procedimento amministrativo per la contestazione di condotte ritenute contrarie agli obblighi contrattuali a seguito di alcune criticità gestionali emerse nei mesi scorsi” che si sarebbe concluso con “l’irrogazione della massima sanzione prevista”. Non è chiaro a quando risalgano queste contestazioni. Ma ci sono alcuni elementi noti. Secondo i dati consultati da Altreconomia il primo settembre 2023, tre mesi fa, quando l’indagine della Procura era presumibilmente già in corso, la stessa prefettura ha bonificato a Martinina 80mila euro come rimborso per la gestione della struttura di marzo 2023, una cifra in linea con quelle riconosciute per i mesi precedenti per un totale di quasi un milione di euro dall’inizio del contratto (943mila euro).

      Il 10 novembre poi, quattro giorni prima dell’uscita della nostra inchiesta su Martinina, la prefettura ha pubblicato tutta la documentazione relativa al contratto aggiudicato da Engel nel 2021, sempre per la gestione del Cpr, da cui emerge che già in quell’offerta alcuni dei protocolli d’intesa sono siglati con le stesse realtà che dichiarano di non aver mai avuto rapporti né con l’ente gestore né con il Cpr. Un eccesso di trasparenza -mai vista quando si tratta di Cpr (per ottenere l’attuale contratto d’appalto è stato necessario un ricorso al Tar da parte dell’associazione Naga)- che nei fatti si è tradotto in un’autodenuncia. “La prefettura ha provveduto a informare ‘immediatamente’ gli uffici della locale Procura sugli esiti della propria attività, ‘trasmettendole’ anche la relativa documentazione e fornendo la propria massima collaborazione”, hanno spiegato da corso Monforte.

      Dai verbali delle ispezioni prefettizie consultati da Altreconomia, però, non emergerebbe una verifica dettagliata di quanto avviene nella struttura. In uno di questi, per esempio, alla domanda “La fornitura degli effetti letterecci avviene regolarmente e secondo le tempistiche e modalità previste dallo Schema di Capitolato vigente?”, il funzionario della prefettura barra “Sì”. Ma nella nota integrativa sottostante, riportata in calce al verbale, si legge che “ai 25 trattenuti non viene richiesto di firmare la consegna/ritiro degli effetti letterecci”. Risultano perciò incomprensibili le basi su cui viene affermata l’effettiva consegna di questi oggetti. La condizione dei reclusi e l’assistenza inesistenti dell’ente gestore non sono certo una notizia di attualità, così come i protocolli falsi, chiusi nei cassetti della prefettura da più di un anno.

      https://altreconomia.it/firme-false-e-assistenza-inesistente-per-i-reclusi-la-procura-indaga-su
      #fraude #Alessandro_Forlenza #Consiglia_Caruso #Engel_Family #Engel #Paola_Cianciulli #Alessandro_Forlenza #Engel_Italia #business #Edil_Coranimo #Allupo

    • Il CPR di via Corelli a Milano sotto indagine della Procura

      Indagati gli amministratori di Martinina srl, Consiglia Caruso e Alessandro Forlenza

      La gestione del CPR di via Corelli è ufficialmente sotto inchiesta della Procura di Milano, che venerdì 1 dicembre ha disposto un’ispezione a sorpresa nel centro da parte degli agenti della Guardia di Finanza. Perquisita la documentazione dell’ente gestore all’interno della struttura e acquisite immagini e video delle condizioni del centro.

      Locali sporchi, “bagni in condizioni vergognose”, cibo “maleodorante, avariato, scaduto”. I servizi, pur previsti dal capitolato d’appalto con i quali la società si è aggiudicata ben 4,4 milioni di euro, risultano carenti o del tutto assenti. Mancate cure e visite specialistiche necessarie ai trattenuti “per il rifiuto del gestore di pagare”. Gli stessi dipendenti del centro hanno segnalato agli inquirenti mancati pagamenti del Tfr, dello stipendio e pagamenti tardivi. Visite di idoneità sommarie che hanno dichiarato idonei anche individui “affetti da epilessia, epatite, tumore al cervello, patologie psichiatriche, tossicodipendenti”. Assistenza psicologica inadeguata, assenza di informativa legale ai trattenuti, nessuna attività ricreativa né luoghi di culto.

      È quanto osservato dagli inquirenti e contenuto nel decreto di ispezione della Procura, che ipotizza i reati di frode nelle pubbliche forniture e turbativa d’asta. Tra gli indagati, oltre alla società stessa, Consiglia Caruso, firmataria di tutti i protocolli d’intesa scoperti falsi nell’inchiesta pubblicata da Altraeconomia 1, e il figlio, Alessandro Forlenza, gestore della struttura di via Corelli.

      Una “gestione familiare” (l’attuale amministratrice di via Corelli 28 è infatti Paola Cianciulli, moglie di Forlenza) già al centro delle denunce di giornalisti e associazioni presenti sul territorio, che adesso trovano seguito nelle verifiche della Procura.

      Quanto riportato dalla Procura descrive infatti lo stesso quadro dettagliato nel report-denuncia recentemente pubblicato dall’associazione Naga in collaborazione con la Rete Mai più lager – No ai CPR 2, che ha dedicato ampio spazio alle incongruenze tra capitolato d’appalto e servizi erogati, nonché alle grave mancanze del presidio sanitario. Contestualmente, tra la documentazione perquisita dagli inquirenti nel centro figurerebbero anche le cartelle cliniche dei trattenuti, che di fatto vengono sequestrate dall’ente gestore che rifiuta sistematicamente di consegnarle ai diretti interessati o ai loro rappresentanti legali.

      L’inchiesta della Procura sembra dunque una buona notizia, che ripaga almeno in parte gli sforzi, le energie e delle risorse impegnate in inchieste, impervie azioni di monitoraggio e denuncia. Che accende la speranza che responsabilità e colpe vengano finalmente stabilite e sanzionate, arginando l’impunità dilagante in cui si muovono gli enti gestori con beneplacito delle Prefetture.

      Come espresso dall’avvocato ASGI, Nicola Datena ai giornalisti di Altraeconomia, “Il monitoraggio da parte della società civile si conferma essere uno strumento fondamentale. Se quanto emerso verrà confermato nelle sedi opportune viene da chiedersi chi controlla i controllori”.

      La Prefettura di Milano, preso atto dell’ispezione nel centro da parte della Procura, ha tempestivamente emesso un comunicato per chiarire che “aveva avviato a carico dell’ente gestore un procedimento amministrativo per la contestazione di talune condotte ritenute contrarie agli obblighi contrattuali”. Un tentativo di migliorare la propria posizione di fronte alle gravi irregolarità sulle quali non ha vegliato o ha soprasseduto. Irregolarità che poi si osservano da parte della Prefettura stessa, che, tra le altre, non ha ancora formalizzato alcuna proroga dell’incarico di gestione di Martinina s.r.l., nonostante l’appalto sia formalmente scaduto il 31 di ottobre.

      “Come Rete Mai più Lager – No ai CPR teniamo a ricordare che la situazione di Corelli non è isolata, e che questo tipo di controlli andrebbe fatto a tappeto in tutti i centri che purtroppo sono ancora aperti in Italia. Ma soprattutto, teniamo a ricordare che le responsabilità vanno ricercate a tutti i livelli. E quindi non solo nei disservizi causati dagli inadempimenti dei gestori, ma anche nelle Prefetture che selezionano i candidati vittoriosi dei bandi e dovrebbero monitorarne l’attività, come anche in chi, sapendo e vedendo, tace”, scrive la Rete in un comunicato pubblicato sulle sue pagine social 3.

      Quanto emerge dalle inchieste su via Corelli non può essere ridotto a un semplice caso di malagestione e oltre alle responsabilità penali vanno messe in luce anche quelle politiche. Perché non si tratta solo di illeciti amministrativi nelle gare d’appalto, ma di gravissime e sistematiche violazioni di diritti fondamentali e della dignità delle persone.

      Quanto emerge sulla gestione del CPR di Milano non riflette un caso isolato. É un esempio di quanto accade in tutti i luoghi di detenzione amministrativa in Italia, che oggi si vogliono rafforzare e ampliare sul territorio. In tutti i CPR d’Italia le persone si ammalano, si aggravano, soffrono, si intossicano, subiscono abusi e violenze indicibili. Nei CPR d’Italia le persone muoiono. Morti di Stato e morti invisibilizzate che rimangono senza giustizia.

      I CPR vanno chiusi non perché gestiti male, ma perché sono illegittime istituzioni totali che investono risorse pubbliche nella produzione di marginalizzazione, violenza e oppressione; perché sono incarnazione di una pericolosa sospensione di principi fondamentali, che mette a rischio diritti e libertà di tuttə; perché sono massima espressione di un razzismo istituzionale e di una necropolitica che si accanisce sulle persone straniere razzializzate, martoriandone corpo, spirito e dignità.
      Un sistema di violenza razziale inaccettabile, che va superato e che chiama in causa la responsabilità politica, sociale e storica dell’intera comunità.

      https://www.meltingpot.org/2023/12/il-cpr-di-via-corelli-a-milano-sotto-indagine-della-procura

    • Milano: la vergogna del Cpr di via Corelli. Niente cure e cibo scaduto

      L’ispezione della Guardia di finanza al cpr di via Corelli a Milano nell’ambito dell’indagine per frode in pubblica fornitura. Sotto accusa la società salernitana La Martinina srl che gestisce il centro per conto della Prefettura di Milano e del ministero dell’Interno. L’inchiesta della Procura di Milano parte anche dalle segnalazioni dell’ex senatore De Falco che fece due ispezioni: «Il gestore del centro ha tutto l’interesse a trattenere il maggior numero di persone perché è pagato per quello. Se nessuno controlla può succedere qualsiasi cosa, e infatti succede»

      Ora si accende anche il faro della Procura sul Cpr di via Corelli a Milano. A far scattare l’indagine dei magistrati hanno contribuito le innumerevoli denunce pubbliche fatte in questi anni da attivisti antirazzisti, giornalisti e alcuni politici.

      Nelle carte infatti c’è tutto il corollario di cose dette in questi anni da coloro che si sono occupati dei centri di permanenza per il rimpatrio: trattamenti disumani, cibo scadente, abuso di farmaci, impossibilità di comunicare con l’esterno, assistenza sanitaria negata. I Cpr sono questo e ora su quello di Milano c’è anche la parola dei magistrati.

      NELL’INCHIESTA VIENE citata la visita effettuata dall’associazione Naga e dalla rete Mai Più Lager-No ai Cpr il 2 marzo 2023 e l’ispezione del 29 maggio 2022 dell’ex senatore del M5S Gregorio de Falco.

      L’indagine è dei pm Giovanna Cavalleri e Paolo Storari che ieri mattina hanno mandato i militari della Guardia di finanza a perquisire il centro. L’ipotesi di reato è frode in pubbliche forniture e turbativa d’asta nei confronti degli amministratore della società La Martinina srl che gestisce il Cpr per conto della Prefettura di Milano e del ministero dell’Interno. A ottobre 2022 la società aveva vinto la gara d’appalto da 4,4 milioni di euro per gestire il centro per un anno dopo alcuni passaggi societari sui cui i magistrati vogliono fare chiarezza.

      A settembre 2021 il bando era stato vinto dalla Engel Italia di Salerno, il 10 ottobre 2022 era passato alla Martinina di Pontecagnano, sempre con sede a Salerno. A novembre 2022 la Engel Italia finiva in concordato e si fondeva nella Martinina srl. Le quote delle due società fanno capo alla stessa persona, Paola Cianciulli, moglie del gestore del Cpr milanese Alessandro Forlenza, figlio dell’amministratrice della Martinina srl Consiglia Caruso.

      Dall’indagine emerge che la società vincitrice del bando aveva promesso di tutto per aggiudicarsi l’appalto: dal cibo biologico ai mediatori culturali, dall’assistenza sanitaria di qualità alle attività religiose, sociali e ricreative. E invece nulla di tutto ciò è stato fatto. Nell’assenza di controlli e di occhi indipendenti, in quei luoghi di segregazione può avvenire di tutto. E avviene.

      Da oggi però sappiamo che, almeno qui a Milano, le denunce pubbliche fatte da attivisti, associazioni e da quei pochi parlamentari che ispezionano i centri non sono cadute nel vuoto.

      SCRIVONO I PM che «il presidio sanitario con medici e infermieri era assolutamente inadeguato», mancavano medicinali e visite di idoneità alla vita nel centro per chi aveva «epilessia, epatite, tumore al cervello» e altre gravi patologie. Il supporto psicologico e psichiatrico era «largamente insufficiente e fornito da personale che non conosceva la lingua» degli immigrati trattenuti. Le camere erano «sporche», i bagni «in condizioni vergognose», il cibo «maleodorante, avariato e scaduto».

      La Martinina srl avrebbe anche prodotto documenti «contraffatti». Dagli esponenti della maggioranza di governo, che vorrebbe moltiplicare e esternalizzare oltre i confini nazionali i Cpr, non sono arrivati commenti.

      SI DIRÀ CHE QUESTI gestori di via Corelli sono delle mele marce e si proverà a difendere l’indifendibile. Dal centrosinistra in tanti hanno chiesto la chiusura del centro o la riconversione in struttura d’accoglienza, dal Pd, all’Alleanza Verdi Sinistra, a Rifondazione Comunista, al Patto Civico lombardo.

      «Da tempo chiedo la chiusura del Cpr di via Corelli, come peraltro ha fatto mesi fa il consiglio comunale di Milano» ha commentato il responsabile nazionale del Pd per le politiche migratorie Pierfrancesco Majorino.

      Quando era assessore al welfare a Milano Majorino era riuscito a convincere l’allora governo a convertire il Cpr in centro d’accoglienza. Per gli attivisti e le associazioni che si oppongono ai Cpr il problema è politico e riguarda tutte le strutture aperte in Italia.

      Dice Riccardo Tromba del Naga: «Ci aspettiamo che i magistrati abbiano trovato quello che denunciamo da tempo, in quel centro non c’era nulla di quanto promesso dal gestore. Noi ci opponiamo da sempre al trattenimento dei migranti, dal 1998 quando li istituì un governo di centrosinistra».

      Per la rete Mai Più Lager-No ai Cpr «la situazione di Corelli non è isolata, questo tipo di controlli andrebbero fatti a tappeto in tutti i centri che purtroppo sono ancora aperti in Italia. Le responsabilità vanno ricercate a tutti i livelli, quindi non solo nei disservizi causati dagli inadempimenti dei gestori, ma anche nelle prefetture che selezionano i candidati vittoriosi dei bandi e dovrebbero monitorarne l’attività, come anche in chi, sapendo e vedendo, tace».

      RESPINGE LE ACCUSE la Prefettura di Milano: «Nei mesi scorsi erano emerse criticità gestionali, era quindi stato avviato a carico dell’ente gestore un procedimento amministrativo ed era stata informata la Procura».

      De Falco: «Nel cpr vidi il degrado, colpa della gestione privata e dello Stato che nasconde»

      Gregorio De Falco, quando è stato senatore del M5S nel Cpr di via Corelli ha fatto due ispezioni. L’inchiesta della Procura di Milano parte anche dalle sue segnalazioni, cos’ha pensato questa mattina?

      Finalmente. Perché fin dall’esito della prima ispezione, quella del 5-6 giugno 2021, avendo fatto un esposto alla Procura della Repubblica mi aspettavo che qualcosa succedesse. Poi c’è stata la seconda ispezione, quella del 29 maggio 2022. Era chiara la condizione di assoluto abbandono nella quale vivevano e vivono tutt’ora le persone trattenute all’interno e mi aspettavo che qualcuno avviasse indagini. Oggi quindi dico: finalmente la giustizia si muove.

      Qual era l’obbiettivo delle sue ispezioni?

      Era quello di verificare le condizioni di vita dei trattenuti e quindi se lo Stato, attraverso le sue funzioni amministrative come la Prefettura, esercitasse il trattenimento con criteri minimi di dignità e umanità. Quello che abbiamo visto è stata invece una condizione diffusa di degrado. Le persone vengono trattenute in modo brutale perché senza aver commesso reati sono costrette a stare in un centro equivalente al carcere, ma a differenza dei carcerati a loro non è concesso il diritto di difesa, non possono fare nulla. Spesso le visite mediche sono fatte da operatori pagati dalle società di gestione, non va bene. Il gestore del centro ha tutto l’interesse a trattenere il maggior numero di persone perché è pagato per quello. Se nessuno controlla può succedere qualsiasi cosa, e infatti succede. Dal cibo avariato, all’abuso di farmaci, all’impedimento a comunicare con l’esterno. E lo Stato tiene nascosto tutto ciò.

      Il controllo del lavoro delle società che vincono gli appalti di gestione dei Cpr spetterebbe al ministero dell’Interno e alle prefetture. Avviene?

      Guardi, in quegli anni ho fatto interrogazioni parlamentari all’allora ministra dell’Interno Luciana Lamorgese e le risposte che ho avuto sono sempre state sconfortanti. Una volta avevo chiesto di entrare nel Cpr di Roma insieme a una mia collaboratrice. All’epoca il prefetto di Roma era Matteo Piantedosi. Bene, mi fu negato il permesso perché Piantedosi aveva fatto fare delle indagini sulla mia collaboratrice e non risultava essere la mia assistente legislativa parlamentare. Ma io avevo chiesto proprio a lei di accompagnarmi perché era una persona che parlava l’arabo e si occupava di immigrazione. E invece no, Piantedosi impiegò il suo tempo per fare indagini sulla mia collaboratrice e negarmi l’ingresso al Cpr.

      Oggi Piantedosi è ministro dell’Interno di un governo che i Cpr li vuole moltiplicare, persino fuori dai confini nazionali…

      Moltiplicare ed esternalizzare. Con l’idea di costruire Cpr fuori dal territorio nazionale vogliono evitare che i parlamentari possano esercitare la loro funzione di controllo su queste strutture. È gravissimo, ma penso che il piano del governo sia fallimentare perché ancora c’è una Costituzione che anche loro devono rispettare. Il livello di civiltà non può tornare indietro.

      https://www.osservatoriorepressione.info/milano-la-vergogna-del-cpr-via-corelli-niente-cure-cibo-sc

    • Condizioni disumane nel Cpr di Milano ma la Prefettura rinnova il contratto a Martinina

      La Procura di Milano ha chiesto il sequestro preventivo d’urgenza della struttura per il concreto rischio che i gravissimi reati ipotizzati continuino. L’ha fatto anche perché l’attuale gestore si era visto prolungare di un altro anno l’incarico dalla prefettura. Alle violazioni dei diritti umani si affianca l’opacità dell’impianto amministrativo

      “Era un vero e proprio lager, neanche i cani sono trattati così nei canili: gli psicofarmaci vengono dati come fossero caramelle, in alti dosaggi, con uno smodato uso di Rivotril. I medici erano razzisti: ‘meglio che muori, torna al tuo Paese’, dicevano. La pulizia? Erano posti pieni di piccioni, nutriti dagli stessi trattenuti e, com’è noto, i piccioni portano malattie. Vi era spazzatura ovunque, le stanze erano lorde, piene di mozziconi, le lenzuola erano sporche, fatte di tessuto non tessuto e non venivano ovviamente cambiate tutti i giorni. Durante l’estate poteva capitare che il sapone, pur presente, non veniva dato ai trattenuti per cui di fatto le docce non venivano fatte”.

      Questo era ed è il Cpr di via Corelli a Milano nelle parole di un lavoratore di Martinina Srl, società che gestisce la struttura dall’ottobre 2022 grazie a “promesse” false di servizi forniti ai reclusi, come anticipato nell’inchiesta di Altreconomia. Non è una dichiarazione isolata: leggere le 164 pagine con cui i sostituti procuratori Giovanna Cavalleri e Paolo Storari, il 13 dicembre 2023, hanno argomentato la richiesta di sequestro preventivo d’urgenza del ramo d’azienda che gestisce il centro, permette di ricostruire nel dettaglio l’orrore del “Corelli”. Sono gli stessi magistrati a scrivere che i reclusi “sono ridotti in condizioni che non pare esagerato definire disumane”.

      “Secondo te questi animali meritano una visita medica? Devono tornare alla giungla”. Lo avrebbe detto un medico del centro rivolgendosi a un operatore che accompagnava in ambulatorio un recluso. Il diritto alla salute sarebbe stato calpestato su più fronti. Per la necessità del gestore di risparmiare, Abdul, nome di fantasia, “non ha potuto effettuare una gastroscopia perché il gestore non pagava il ticket”; Amin, invece, pur avendo il piede fratturato non sarebbe stato visitato “per il rifiuto del gestore di pagare”.

      C’è poi, come abbiamo già raccontato, l’abuso di psicofarmaci. “Al centro ho visto dare quantità da 75 milligrammi a 300 milligrammi per tre volte al giorno di Lyrica, c’era una persona che assumeva circa 300 milligrammi di Lyrica per tre volte al giorno, cioè quasi un grammo, dose sostanzialmente fuori dosaggio”, racconta un’operatrice. “Vi era un uso smodato di Rivotril -racconta un’altra- Alcune volte venivano somministrati ad alcuni pazienti 100 gocce, io sono arrivata a diluire la boccetta con l’acqua per evitare effetti collaterali negativi”. “L’unico modo per gestire le criticità sanitarie era o lo psicofarmaco o la chiamata al 118”, ha dichiarato agli inquirenti Nicola Cocco, medico esperto di detenzione amministrativa.

      Nel centro c’erano persone che non avrebbero potuto esserci: gli inquirenti hanno ricostruito che le visite di idoneità alla comunità ristretta sono “assolutamente carenti”. Lo dimostrano la presenza all’interno del Centro di “ospiti affetti da epilessia, epatite, tumore al cervello, gravi patologie psichiatriche, tossicodipendenti” e, al momento della visita del primo dicembre, la presenza di una persona “cui sarebbe stata asportata la milza nel 2018”. “Vi erano numerosi malati psichiatrici all’interno”, racconta un’altra operatrice.

      Persone che vivevano in luoghi sudici. “Gli ambienti erano sporchi, c’erano anche dei topi all’interno delle diverse aree: le pulizie venivano svolte molto superficialmente, tanto che molti ospiti hanno avuto delle malattie epidermiche dovute alle scarse condizioni igieniche -racconta un dipendente-. Ci sono stati anche episodi di scabbia su più ospiti. Agli ospiti non è stato mai consegnato il kit per l’igiene personale, né saponi, né le lenzuola, dovevano arrangiarsi con quello che trovavano all’interno”. Ancora. “Gli ospiti vestivano sempre con la stessa tuta per l’intera giornata, sia di notte sia di giorno. Una volta a settimana avveniva il lavaggio della tuta e se qualcuno non aveva la possibilità di un cambio, restava seminudo fino a quando non venivano riconsegnata la tuta pulita”.

      E poi il cibo avariato: “Poiché erano avanzate delle vaschette di pasta, erano state offerte a noi dipendenti -si legge in una delle dichiarazioni rilasciate agli inquirenti-. A me sembrava pasta con il gorgonzola, in quanto aveva un odore rancido, poi mi sono accorta invece che era pasta con le zucchine andata a male. Ho cercato di evitare che venisse mangiata dai trattenuti, ma non sono arrivata in tempo, 40 persone hanno avuto un’intossicazione alimentare. Quasi tutti i giorni il cibo era scaduto o avariato”.

      Questo è il quadro, questo è il Cpr di via Corelli. L’Associazione per gli studi giuridici sull’immigrazione (Asgi) ha pubblicato la scorsa settimana un dettagliato report sulle lacune nella gestione del Cpr, evidenziando anche l’immobilismo della prefettura di Milano. “Dai verbali trasmessi all’Asgi a seguito di accesso civico generalizzato riguardante i verbali delle visite di controllo effettuate dalla prefettura non emerge tuttavia alcuna verifica sul rispetto dei diritti fondamentali delle persone trattenute nel Cpr, né alcun rilievo da parte dell’amministrazione riguardo della corretta erogazione dei servizi previsti in offerta tecnica”, scrive l’associazione a margine del report. Un paradosso, a cui se ne aggiunge un altro.

      La richiesta dei Pm di sequestrare la struttura arrivata a sorpresa il 13 dicembre 2023 nasce da un motivo ben preciso. Il 17 novembre 2023 la società Martinina, gestita da Alessandro Forlenza (amministratore di fatto), accusato di frode insieme alla madre Consiglia Caruso (fino al 31 agosto amministratrice unica sostituita poi dalla moglie di Forlenza, Paola Cianciulli), si è vista rinnovare il contratto siglato con la prefettura di Milano per la gestione della struttura per un altro anno. La firma di Caruso sul rinnovo è del primo dicembre, il pomeriggio di quando la Gdf ha fatto l’accesso in struttura. Il “nuovo” contratto, pubblicato sul sito della Prefettura, ricalca quello precedente. Non si menziona nessuno dei problemi di gestione da parte di Martinina.

      Un paradosso. Anche perché, dall’ufficio territoriale del Viminale, in seguito alla perquisizione della Guardia di Finanza al centro del primo dicembre, avevano fatto sapere di aver “già avviato un procedimento amministrativo per la contestazione di condotte ritenute contrarie agli obblighi contrattuali a seguito di alcune criticità gestionali emerse nei mesi scorsi” che si sarebbe concluso con “l’irrogazione della massima sanzione prevista”. Ma il contratto è stato rinnovato, come detto, come se tutto fosse normale.

      A quali criticità potrebbe riferirsi la Prefettura? “Il verbale dell’ispezione del 18 aprile 2023 -si legge però nel report di Asgi- non viene trasmesso sostenendo di non volere compromettere le verifiche tutt’ora in corso, essendo in corso istruttoria in merito alle spese sostenute per il personale”. Una presunta “massima sanzione” quindi che potrebbe essere riferita a questo specifico punto. Anche perché il 13 novembre il contratto è stato rinnovato. Ecco perché i procuratori Storari e Cavalleri hanno sequestrato la struttura. “Gli elementi testimoniano una situazione di frode non soltanto a oggi in atto ma destinata a proseguire nel prossimo futuro -scrivono- tale situazione di illegalità non potrà prevedibilmente che protrarsi almeno per un ulteriore intero anno”.

      C’è poi un’altra stranezza: dopo che l’Asgi ha inviato il report all’Autorità nazionale anticorruzione, il 10 novembre 2023 la prefettura ha pubblicato il contratto del precedente appalto di gestione del Cpr (all’epoca la società gestita di fatto da Forlenza era la Engel Italia). Le associazioni Dianova, BeFree, l’organizzazione “Musica e Teatro” vengono citate tra i firmatari dei protocolli di intesa presentati anche nell’offerta tecnica di Engel Srl formulata il 26 maggio 2021 per l’aggiudicazione del bando precedente a quello in essere.

      La richiesta della Procura è quella, come detto, del sequestro del ramo d’azienda che gestisce la struttura “senza però determinare la cessazione del Cpr, con l’immissione in possesso di un amministratore”. I magistrati non stanno quindi chiedendo la chiusura del Centro -almeno per ora- ma non è chiaro che cosa succederà e come verrà gestita la struttura. Nel frattempo, venerdì 15 dicembre, si è svolta l’udienza di fronte al giudice per le indagini preliminari per decidere se Martinina potrà in futuro partecipare a bandi pubblici.

      Al di là dell’esito giudiziario della vicenda, si ha un’altra prova dell’orrore di quello che succede nel Corelli, come denunciano da anni diverse associazioni, dalla rete Mai più lager – No ai Cpr al Naga. E non solo. “Emerge il fallimento del sistema Cpr, incluso il caso di Milano -spiega Giulia Vicini, avvocata Asgi-. Si tratta di un fallimento che non riguarda solo le ormai croniche e documentate violazioni dei diritti fondamentali e l’inefficienza, ma anche l’opacità dell’impianto burocratico-amministrativo che concede in appalto la vita delle persone a società private”. “Si entra come persona -ha raccontato un’operatrice agli inquirenti-. Poi viene assegnato un tesserino di riconoscimento con un numero, e a quel punto si diventa numeri e si esce da zombie imbottiti di psicofarmaci”.

      https://altreconomia.it/la-disumanita-nel-cpr-di-milano-e-la-prefettura-rinnova-il-contratto-a-

    • Freddo, cibo scadente e nuovi ingressi. Al Cpr di Milano nulla è cambiato

      Da fine dicembre il centro di via Corelli è gestito da un amministratore giudiziario dopo l’inchiesta della Procura sui mancati servizi erogati dalla Martinina Srl. Un mese dopo manca un direttore e la condizione dei reclusi resta precaria. I nuovi ingressi, inoltre, non si fermano. Un appello chiede ai sanitari coinvolti di prendere posizione

      Riscaldamento rotto, mancanza di coperte, lenzuola di carta velina, cibo ancora scadente: il Cpr di Milano sembra essere lo stesso di sempre a un mese dalla nomina dell’amministratore giudiziario subentrato alla Martinina Srl, l’ente gestore sotto indagine della Procura per aver “promesso” servizi non erogati. “Ho constatato in prima persona che la società resta di fatto ancora alla guida della struttura -spiega Paolo Romano, consigliere regionale del Partito democratico che ha fatto visita al ‘Corelli’ il 17 gennaio- nonostante le accuse relative alla scarsa qualità del cibo, alla mancanza dei servizi psicologici e delle visite mediche. L’unica soluzione a questo punto è la chiusura”.

      Secondo diverse testimonianze raccolte da Altreconomia la situazione sarebbe ancora peggiore di prima. Gli stessi funzionari di polizia non saprebbero a chi rivolgersi quando ci sono problematiche nella struttura anche perché, fino al 17 gennaio, non era ancora stato nominato un direttore. I dipendenti operativi nella struttura sarebbero invece gli stessi. Inoltre, Martinina Srl non avrebbe liquidità per garantire i servizi basilari per le persone ristrette.

      Questa situazione non fermerebbe però i nuovi ingressi: anche perché, per le “regole di appalto”, al di sotto di un certo numero di ospiti, la gestione del centro è in perdita. Un settore della struttura rimane chiuso e di conseguenza la capienza massima è ridotta: una gestione che non vada in perdita taglierà là dove è possibile farlo. “L’affidamento del Cpr al ribasso a soggetti privati fa sì che si perdano anche i pochi servizi che dovrebbero essere garantiti e si aggravino così le violazioni dei diritti umani”, riprende il consigliere Romano.

      Il 29 dicembre 2023 la prefettura di Milano vista “l’assoluta urgenza ed ineluttabilità dell’intervento connesso alle esigenza di sicurezza ed igiene del Centro di accoglienza” ha affidato alla Sfhera Srl, azienda di Milano, lavori per più di 30mila euro destinati a “servizi di manutenzione ordinaria e obbligatoria della centrale termica, degli impianti di raffrescamento e dei presidi antincendio” per garantire “l’efficienza della struttura”. Un’urgenza tale che i lavori vengono affidati “anche nelle more dell’accreditamento dei fondi”. Ma le persone sarebbero ancora al freddo.

      Nel frattempo, l’azienda guidata dall’imprenditore Alessandro Forlenza ha fatto ricorso a inizio gennaio 2024 contro la decisione del Giudice per le indagini preliminari di metà dicembre 2023 di commissariare il Cpr, dandolo in gestione al commercialista Giovanni Falconieri e impedire così alla “sua” Martinina Srl di partecipare a bandi pubblici per un anno. Un provvedimento che si è reso necessario perché, nonostante le indagini e le gravi accuse rivolte alla “gestione” del centro, l’azienda si era vista rinnovare di un anno il contratto da parte della prefettura di Milano il 17 novembre 2023. A quel punto i pubblici ministeri titolari dell’indagine, Paolo Storari e Giovanna Cavalleri, avevano chiesto il sequestro preventivo d’urgenza, poi accolto dal gip Livio Cristofano, perché “gli elementi testimoniano una situazione di frode non soltanto a oggi in atto ma destinata a proseguire nel prossimo futuro -scrivevano- tale situazione di illegalità non potrà prevedibilmente che protrarsi almeno per un ulteriore intero anno”.

      Tra il 2021 e il 2022 in cinque mesi la spesa in psicofarmaci è superiore al 60% del totale, di cui oltre la metà ha riguardato il Rivotril (196 scatole)

      Il Cpr nelle parole delle persone sentite dalla Procura di Milano è stato descritto come “un vero e proprio lager” in cui “gli psicofarmaci vengono dati “come fossero caramelle, in alti dosaggi, con uno smodato uso di Rivotril”, come già documentato da Altreconomia nell’aprile 2023. E proprio il tema della salute resta un elemento centrale. Anche per questo motivo, a metà gennaio 2024 la Società italiana di medicina delle migrazioni (Simm), “Mai più lager – No ai Cpr” e l’Associazione per gli studi giuridici sull’Immigrazione (Asgi) hanno rivolto a tutto il personale sanitario un appello per una “presa di coscienza sulle condizioni e sui rischi per la salute delle persone migranti sottoposte a detenzione amministrativa”. Soprattutto per quanto riguarda la valutazione dell’idoneità a fare ingresso nel centro: un “compito” che spetterebbe ai medici del Servizio sanitario nazionale, con diversi profili problematici.

      Da un lato, si chiede ai medici “di attestare in pochi minuti lo stato di salute di persone di cui non conoscono la vita né il percorso migratorio, per l’invio in luoghi che non conoscono, in cui la salute è gestita da enti privati e che molteplici fonti attendibili hanno ormai certificato essere patogeni e rischiosi per la salute delle persone che vi vengono detenute”. Ma non solo. Entra in gioco anche il rispetto del codice di deontologia medica rispetto su diversi profili, tra cui l’obbligo per il medico di “protezione del soggetto vulnerabile” quando ritiene che l’ambiente in cui vive non sia idoneo a proteggere la sua salute, dignità e qualità di vita “come di fatto si può configurare il contesto dei Cpr”.

      “I Cpr rinchiudono senza diritti e senza motivazioni persone che non hanno commesso un reato con il solo risultato di togliere loro dignità e renderle vere e proprie bombe sociali. E l’attuale situazione di Milano è insostenibile” – Paolo Romano

      “Secondo te questi animali meritano una visita medica? Devono tornare alla giungla”. Lo avrebbe detto un medico del Cpr di Milano rivolgendosi a un operatore che accompagnava in ambulatorio un recluso. Il diritto alla salute sarebbe stato calpestato su più fronti. Per la necessità del gestore di risparmiare -sempre secondo le ricostruzioni delle persone sentite dalla Procura di Milano- un recluso “non ha potuto effettuare una gastroscopia perché il gestore non pagava il ticket”; un altro, invece, pur avendo il piede fratturato non sarebbe stato visitato “per il rifiuto del gestore di pagare”. Un contesto da tenere conto nel momento in cui si dà l’idoneità alla persona per far ingresso nel Cpr.

      Nel caso di Milano, come denunciato dalla rete “Mai più lager – No ai Cpr” a inizio gennaio di quest’anno, le visite sarebbero svolte da due medici che nel 2021 “comparivano non solo a libro paga di Ats ma anche operanti in questura e soprattutto collaboratori a partita Iva del gestore del Cpr”. Un altro cortocircuito. E con delibera del 29 dicembre 2023, denuncia sempre la rete di attivisti e attiviste, l’Ats di Milano ha nuovamente incaricato i due dottori fino a febbraio con un compenso di 30 euro all’ora. “Se redatta come superficiale nulla osta potrebbe essere contestata e il medico che l’ha firmato coinvolto in sede giudiziaria”, scrivono le organizzazioni nell’appello rivolto agli operatori sanitari. “In coscienza e con cognizione di causa -sottolineano- tenendo presenti i principi fondamentali dell’ordinamento e della deontologia professionale medica, nessuno può essere considerato idoneo ad esservi rinchiuso”. Invece al “Corelli” di Milano si continua ad entrare. Come se niente fosse.

      Il 29 dicembre 2023 la Prefettura di Milano ha saldato un pagamento di 170mila euro alla Martinina Srl che comprende anche un “acconto per l’amministratore giudiziario”. Non è però specificato a quanti e quali mesi di gestione si riferiscono e quindi è impossibile, ricostruire a quanto ammonta la “massima sanzione” che l’ufficio milanese del Viminale, a inizio dicembre, ha dichiarato di aver applicato per la “malagestione” del Cpr. “Va chiuso, lo ribadisco -conclude il consigliere Romano-. I Cpr rinchiudono senza diritti e senza motivazioni persone che non hanno commesso un reato con il solo risultato di togliere loro dignità e renderle vere e proprie bombe sociali. E l’attuale situazione di Milano è insostenibile”.

      https://altreconomia.it/freddo-cibo-scadente-e-nuovi-ingressi-al-cpr-di-milano-nulla-e-cambiato

    • Milano: Ancora violenze poliziesche nel cpr di via Corelli

      Ancora violenze di polizia contro i migranti reclusi nel Cpr di via Corelli, il centro permanenza e rimpatri finito sotto sequestro dopo un’inchiesta della procura di Milano che aveva certificato le condizioni disumane dei migranti all’interno. Nella serata di sabato una protesta contro le condizioni di reclusione, che nonostante il commissariamento avviato dopo l’azione della Procura non sono migliorate, ha preso vita nel cortile del centro, dove due persone si sono spogliate.

      Una volta rientrate nelle stanze è giunta la rappresaglia da parte di alcuni agenti della guardia di finanza che in assetto antisommossa, hanno punito a suon di manganellate i due migranti protagonisti della protesta che sono poi stati portati in infermeria: “uno con una gamba visibilmente rotta e l’altro, il più giovane, quasi esanime , in braccio”, afferma pubblicando un video la rete “Mai più lager – No ai Cpr” (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1114485583309953). I due sono stati anche denunciati per resistenza a pubblico ufficiale.

      https://www.osservatoriorepressione.info/milano-ancora-violenze-poliziesche-nel-cpr-via-corelli

  • 🟥 Alexandra Skotchilenko, une artiste russe détenue pour avoir critiqué la guerre en Ukraine - Amnesty International France

    Parce qu’elle a critiqué la guerre en Ukraine, Alexandra Skotchilenko se retrouve en prison en Russie. Accusée d’avoir diffusé de fausses informations sur l’armée russe, elle a été condamnée à sept ans de prison par un tribunal de Saint-Petersbourg le 16 novembre 2023 (...)

    #Russie #répression #antiguerre #AlexandraSkotchilenko #solidarité

    https://www.amnesty.fr/personnes/alexandra-skotchilenko-russie

  • Inchiesta sul gestore del #Cpr di Milano: tra falsi protocolli e servizi non erogati

    Altreconomia ha potuto visionare l’offerta tecnica presentata dalla società Martinina Srl alla prefettura di Milano per aggiudicarsi l’appalto da oltre 1,2 milioni di euro per la gestione della struttura in #via_Corelli: alcuni degli accordi stretti con associazioni e Ong “esterne” per migliorare la vita dei trattenuti non sarebbero autentici

    Lenzuola non distribuite, raro utilizzo dei mediatori culturali, tutela legale inesistente, assistenza sanitaria carente. Ma soprattutto falsi protocolli d’intesa “siglati” per svolgere servizi e attività all’interno del Centro di permanenza per il rimpatrio (Cpr) di via Corelli a Milano.

    Altreconomia ha potuto visionare l’offerta tecnica presentata dalla società Martinina Srl alla prefettura di Milano per aggiudicarsi l’appalto da oltre 1,2 milioni di euro per la gestione della struttura: oltre alla discordanza tra quanto scritto nei documenti e la realtà nella struttura di reclusione, alcuni degli accordi stretti con associazioni e Ong “esterne” per migliorare la vita dei trattenuti sarebbero falsi.

    Altri invece sarebbero stati siglati con soggetti di cui non è stato possibile trovare alcuna traccia online. “Viene da chiedersi in che cosa consista il controllo effettuato dalla prefettura, essendo risultata evidente l’assenza di servizi all’interno del centro oltre che palesi le incongruenze negli atti e nei documenti versati nella gara di appalto”, osserva l’avvocato Nicola Datena dell’Associazione per gli studi giuridici sull’immigrazione (Asgi), che ha visionato la documentazione insieme a chi scrive.

    Alcuni snodi temporali. Martinina Srl nell’ottobre 2022 si è aggiudicata l’appalto per un anno (scadenza il 31 ottobre 2023, rinnovabile di un anno in assenza di nuove gare pubbliche) indetto dalla prefettura di Milano presentando un’offerta in cui garantiva, tra le altre cose, la collaborazione con diverse associazioni e società profit, finalizzata ad assicurare l’erogazione di “servizi” da integrare nella gestione del Cpr.

    L’offerta tecnica consiste nella documentazione da presentare in sede di gara d’appalto che descrive come l’impresa intende eseguire il lavoro per l’ente che richiede la prestazione, ovvero il piano di lavoro, le fasi e le risorse impiegate, la durata e le ore di lavoro previste, eventuali migliorie richieste o proposte

    Protocolli forniti in sede di gara ed esaminati dalla Commissione giudicatrice, la quale, nella decisione di assegnare l’appalto alla società domiciliata in provincia di Salerno, sottolinea l’importanza del “valore delle proposte migliorative dell’offerta tecnica”. Un “dettaglio” sfugge però ai funzionari della prefettura: almeno otto sarebbero falsi. Eccoli.

    Secondo la documentazione contrattuale, il Vis (Volontariato internazionale per lo sviluppo), una delle più importanti organizzazioni del Terzo settore del nostro Paese, avrebbe firmato un protocollo con Martinina l’8 agosto 2022 volto alla formazione del personale del Cpr. Il nome del responsabile legale non corrisponde però ad alcun referente dell’organizzazione: “Ribadiamo l’assoluta estraneità del Vis e l’assenza di qualsiasi tipo di contatto o accordo, passato e presente, relativo alla gestione del Cpr di via Corelli. E ci tengo a precisare che come Ong salesiana abbiamo una visione della migrazione fondata sui diritti umani, distante dall’approccio applicato nei Cpr, con cui in ogni caso le nostre policy ci impedirebbero di collaborare”, spiega ad Altreconomia Michela Vallarino, presidente del Vis.

    Sono 59 invece le pagine dell’accordo tra Martinina e la cooperativa sociale BeFree, uno dei più importanti enti antitratta italiani con sede a Roma, per la realizzazione del progetto “Inter/rotte” per l’assistenza per vittime di tratta e violenza. “Non avremmo mai potuto firmare un simile protocollo -spiega Francesca De Masi (qui la sua presa di posizione integrale)- perché siamo fortemente critiche nei confronti della stessa esistenza dei Cpr”. Il presunto protocollo è talmente grossolano che il nome del legale rappresentante è sbagliato e di conseguenza anche il codice fiscale generato.

    Ala Milano Onlus secondo l’accordo dovrebbe invece garantire “prestazioni di natura di mediazione linguistica/culturale”. Il presidente, contattato da Altreconomia, dichiara però di non aver mai siglato quel protocollo. Così come Don Stefano Venturini, l’allora parroco della comunità pastorale delle parrocchie di San Martino in Lambrate e SS Nome di Maria, che si sarebbe impegnato, secondo le carte consultate, “a orientare, aiutare gli ospiti prestando attenzione specifica a quanto le persone esprimono”. “Ho incontrato una volta chi gestisce la struttura ma non ho mai siglato un protocollo”, spiega Venturini ad Altreconomia, aggiungendo, tra l’altro, come sia di competenza della curia diocesana un eventuale accordo formale. Nell’offerta inviata alla prefettura, Martinina ha allegato il decreto di nomina di Venturini emesso dall’arcivescovo Mario Enrico Delpini. “Non so come abbiano fatto ad averlo”, spiega ancora l’interessato.

    L’accordo con la società sportiva Scarioni 1925 risulta stipulato il 24 agosto 2022 dall’ex presidente, che però è morto nel febbraio 2020: un post sulla pagina Facebook della società stessa, datato 31 marzo 2020, porge le condoglianze alla famiglia per la sua scomparsa. Il Centro islamico di Milano e Lombardia avrebbe siglato un accordo con Martinina per garantire il sostegno spirituale all’interno del centro. “La carta intestata è di un centro di Roma, la firma del protocollo di un centro di Cologno Monzese -spiega il presidente Ali Abu Shwaima-. Noi non abbiamo mai visto quel protocollo”. L’associazione Dianova Onlus garantirebbe assistenza per i trattenuti con tossicodipendenza: la prefettura sembra non essersi accorta però che il protocollo risulta firmato nell’agosto 2022 solo da Martinina Srl. “Non ho mai sentito questa società -spiega il presidente Pierangelo Buzzo, a cui è intestato l’accordo- e tra l’altro dal febbraio 2021 siamo cooperativa sociale, non più associazione. Il protocollo è falso”.

    Diverso è il caso della Associazione di Volontariato “Il Paniere Alimentare”, dell’Organizzazione “Musica e Teatro” e dell’Associazione “Fiore di Donna”, dei quali non solo non è stato possibile riscontrare alcun riferimento online, ma di cui i codici fiscali inseriti nei protocolli risultano inesistenti, così come gli indirizzi mail di riferimento. La “Bondon grocery” dovrebbe riconoscere “agli ospiti del Cas e agli operatori della Martinina Srl che acquistano per conto delle persone trattenute nel Cpr uno sconto del 5% sulla spesa effettuata”: il protocollo firmato nell’agosto 2022 reca in intestazione la denominazione della società, che ha però cessato l’attività il primo luglio 2021.

    Dianova, BeFree, l’Organizzazione “Musica e Teatro” vengono citati tra i protocolli di intesa presentati anche nell’offerta tecnica presentata da Engel Srl il 26 maggio 2021 per l’aggiudicazione del bando precedente a quello in essere. La prefettura di Milano ha pubblicato i documenti integrali -contratto siglato dalla società e offerta tecnica- il 10 novembre 2023.

    Tornando ai protocolli siglati da Martinina Srl, questi danno uno spaccato della vita nel centro che appare molto distante della realtà. Attività ludico-ricreative, per “impegnare le giornate degli ospiti e rendere più piacevole il trascorrere del tempo”, cineforum, laboratori di teatro, musicali, sport. Addirittura “campagne di prevenzione della salute”. Ma niente di tutto questo si sarebbe mai verificato nella struttura. Sia per i numerosi report prodotti nel tempo da diversi soggetti, dall’Asgi al Garante dei diritti delle persone private della libertà personale, fino agli stessi verbali delle visite di monitoraggio redatti proprio dalla prefettura.

    Così l’accesso ai servizi di mediazione linguistica-culturale, previsto nell’offerta, non si riscontra affatto nella realtà: in questo caso è l’Asgi, durante una delle visite d’accesso, a non incontrare alcun mediatore e dal Naga, che ha recentemente pubblicato un dettagliato report sulla situazione all’interno del centro. Oppure l’orientamento legale, anche questo assicurato sulla carta da Martinina Srl, addirittura con la “diffusione di materiale informativo tradotto nelle principali lingue parlate dagli stranieri presenti nel centro” ma che non trova riscontri. È il Garante, questa volta, a scrivere nel febbraio 2023 che l’informativa cartacea “non viene consegnata alle persone trattenute”. Problematico anche l’accesso ai servizi sanitari: nell’offerta tecnica si assicura “al ricorrere delle esigenze la somministrazione di farmaci e altre spese mediche” ma al di fuori degli psicofarmaci -che, come raccontato da Altreconomia nell’inchiesta “Rinchiusi e sedati”, su cinque mesi di spesa rappresentano il 60% degli acquisti in farmaci- sempre il Garante scrive che “l’assistenza sanitaria in caso di bisogno si limita alla distribuzione della tachipirina”. E c’è uno scarso accesso alle visite specialistiche. Emergono poi acquisti di distributori di tabacchi non presenti nel centro, colloqui con lo psicologo non documentati, addirittura la fornitura di “cestini da viaggio” in caso di trasferimenti da un Cpr all’altro, discrepanze anche relative alla qualità del cibo distribuito.

    All’impatto sulla vita delle persone se ne aggiunge uno di natura economica. Secondo dati inediti consultati Altreconomia, infatti, la prefettura di Milano avrebbe già versato a Martinina Srl oltre 943mila euro per la gestione della struttura di via Corelli. Ed è rilevante anche l’avvicendamento delle società gestite dall’imprenditore Alessandro Forlenza. Lui, nel 2012 fonda la Engel Italia Srl, ex gestore del “Corelli” di Milano e del Cpr di Palazzo San Gervasio a Potenza: oggi quella società non esiste più perché il 20 ottobre 2023 è stata definitivamente “inglobata” nella Martinina Srl, a cui inizialmente era stato ceduto il ramo d’azienda che si occupava della detenzione amministrativa. La società è formalmente in mano a Paola Cianciulli, moglie di Forlenza, che è attualmente l’amministratrice unica dopo l’uscita di scena di Consiglia Caruso (la firmataria di tutti i protocolli d’intesa sopra citati), che il 31 agosto 2023 ha ceduto i mille euro di capitale sociale. A lei restano intestate due società con sede a Milano: l’Edil Coranimo Srl, che si occupa di costruzioni, e dal febbraio 2023 l’Allupo Srl che ha sede proprio in via Corelli, nel numero civico successivo al Centro per il rimpatrio. Una dinamica che desta interesse: l’oggetto sociale della Allupo Srl è molto diversificato e oltre alla ristorazione in diverse forme (da asporto o somministrazione diretta) è inclusa anche la possibilità di “gestione di case di riposo per anziani, case famiglia per minori, Cas, Sprar, Cara e Cpr”.

    La Martinina Srl ha altre due sedi attive: una a Palazzo San Gervasio, a Potenza, dove è arrivata seconda nella gara di assegnazione della nuova gestione del Cpr precedentemente dalla Engel, vinto da Officine Solidali nel marzo 2023, un’altra a Taranto, per la gestione del Cas Mondelli che accoglie minori stranieri non accompagnati. L’ultimo bilancio disponibile è del 31 dicembre 2021 con importi ridottissimi: appena 2.327 euro di utili “portati a nuovo”. A quella data ancora non era attivo il Cpr di via Corelli. C’è un terzo soggetto, però, nella “sfera Martinina” con ben altri risultati: si tratta della Engel Family Srl nata nell’ottobre 2020 con in “dotazione” 250mila euro derivanti da Engel Srl. Paola Cianciulli è nuovamente amministratrice e socia unica della società che si occupa di “locazione immobiliare di beni propri o in leasing” che al 31 dicembre 2021 (l’ultimo disponibile) conta un valore della produzione complessivo di poco superiore a 372mila euro.

    Ai milioni di euro per la gestione se ne aggiungono altri (ne hanno parlato anche ActionAid e l’Università degli studi di Bari nel recente dettagliato rapporto “Trattenuti. Una radiografia del sistema detentivo per stranieri”) se si prende in considerazione, documenti ottenuti da Altreconomia alla mano, anche l’esborso dovuto alla costante manutenzione che si rende necessaria anche a causa delle ricorrenti proteste dei trattenuti. Da inizio 2020 al marzo 2023 in totale sono stati spesi più di 3,3 milioni di euro di cui il 58% è stato impiegato per lavori di adeguamento della struttura, manutenzione o interventi di ripristino dei luoghi danneggiati. Anche perché, spesso, le strutture già in partenza sono spesso fatiscenti: il 15 settembre 2021 Invitalia, l’Agenzia nazionale di proprietà del ministero dell’Economia (già attiva nel campo delle migrazioni sul “fronte libico”), ha pubblicato un bando da 11,3 milioni di euro su mandato del Dipartimento per le libertà civili e l’immigrazione, in seno al ministero dell’Interno, proprio per la manutenzione straordinaria dei Centri di permanenza per il rimpatrio di tutta Italia. Ad aggiudicarsi i lavori del Cpr di Milano in via Corelli -di cui abbiamo inserito le foto inserite nel progetto di ristrutturazione- è stata la Tek Infrastructure, società con sede a Palermo da 1,6 milioni di euro di fatturato nel 2021, con un ribasso del 20%. Ma tra i pagamenti effettuati dalla prefettura fino al marzo 2023 a fare da “padrona” sulle manutenzioni è la Masteri Srl -non è possibile escludere perciò un subappalto- con quasi 620mila euro ricevuti in tre anni.

    Fiumi di denaro pubblico che richiederebbero controlli estremamente approfonditi. Dai verbali delle ispezioni prefettizie, però, non emerge una verifica dettagliata di quanto avviene nella struttura. In uno dei verbali, infatti, alla domanda “La fornitura degli effetti letterecci avviene regolarmente e secondo le tempistiche e modalità previste dallo Schema di Capitolato vigente?”, il funzionario della prefettura barra “Sì”. Ma nella nota integrativa sottostante, riportata in calce al verbale, si legge che “ai 25 trattenuti non viene richiesto di firmare la consegna/ritiro degli effetti letterecci”. Risultano perciò incomprensibili le basi su cui viene affermata l’effettiva consegna di questi oggetti.

    Assente qualsiasi considerazione sul rispetto dei diritti fondamentali e sulla corretta esecuzione dei servizi presenti nell’offerta tecnica. “Il monitoraggio da parte della società civile si conferma essere uno strumento fondamentale. Se quanto emerso verrà confermato nelle sedi opportune viene da chiedersi chi controlla i controllori”, conclude l’avvocato Datena. Intanto, le claudicanti promesse di Martinina Srl hanno potuto circolare a piede libero, a differenza dei reclusi. Con il rischio che alla sofferenza si sia aggiunta la beffa del racconto di una quotidianità inesistente.

    https://altreconomia.it/inchiesta-sul-gestore-del-cpr-di-milano-tra-falsi-protocolli-e-servizi-
    #détention_administrative #rétention #Italie #Milan #privatisation #Martinina #via_corelli #business #Volontariato_internazionale_per_lo_sviluppo (#Vis) #BeFree #Inter/rotte #Ala_Milano #società_sportiva_Scarioni_1925 #Centro_islamico_di_Milano_e_Lombardia #Dianova #Il_Paniere_Alimentare #Musica_e_Teatro #Fiore_di_donna #Bondon_grocery #Engel #Alessandro_Forlenza #Paola_Cianciulli #Consiglia_Caruso #Edil_Coranimo #Allupo #Tek_Infrastructure #Masteri

  • « Plus haute #ZAD d’Europe » : faut-il encore aménager les #glaciers alpins ?

    Du 8 au 10 novembre, la France accueille le #One_Planet#Polar_Summit, premier sommet international consacré aux glaciers et aux pôles, pour appeler à une mobilisation exceptionnelle et concertée de la communauté internationale. Dans les #Alpes, les projets d’aménagements des glaciers à des fins touristiques ou sportives sont pourtant toujours en cours malgré leur disparition annoncée. C’est le cas par exemple dans le massif des Écrins (#Hautes-Alpes), sur le glacier de la #Girose où il est prévu d’implanter depuis 2017 le troisième tronçon du téléphérique de la #Grave.

    Du 7 au 13 octobre dernier, les #Soulèvements_de_la_Terre (#SLT) ont occupé le chantier afin d’en bloquer les travaux préparatoires. Ce nouvel aménagement a pour objectif de prolonger les deux tronçons existant, qui permettent depuis 1978 d’accéder au #col_des_Ruillans à 3 221 mètres et ainsi rallier à terme le #Dôme_de_La_Lauze à 3559 mètres. Porté par la #Société_d’aménagement_touristique_de_la_Grave (#SATG) et la municipalité, ce projet est estimé à 12 millions d’euros, investissement dont le bien fondé divise les habitants de #La_Grave depuis cinq ans.

    En jeu derrière ces désaccords, la direction à donner à la transition touristique face au changement climatique : renforcement ou bifurcation du modèle socio-économique existant en montagne ?

    Une #occupation surprise du glacier

    Partis du village de La Grave à 1 400 mètres dans la nuit du 6 au 7 octobre, une quinzaine de militants des SLT ont gravi 2 000 mètres de dénivelé avec des sacs à dos de 15 à 20 kg. Au terme de 12 heures d’ascension, ils ont atteint le haut d’un rognon rocheux émergeant du glacier de la Girose où doit être implanté un pylône du nouveau téléphérique. Ils y ont installé leur camp de base dans l’après-midi, avant d’annoncer sur les réseaux sociaux la création de « la plus haute zone à défendre (ZAD) d’Europe ».

    [Plus de 85 000 lecteurs font confiance aux newsletters de The Conversation pour mieux comprendre les grands enjeux du monde. Abonnez-vous aujourd’hui]

    Par cette mobilisation surprise, les SLT ont montré qu’ils pouvaient être présents sur des terrains où ils ne sont pas forcément attendus et que pour cela :

    - ils disposent de ressources logistiques permettant d’envisager une mobilisation de type occupationnelle de plusieurs jours à 3 400 mètres d’altitude

    - ils maîtrisent les techniques d’alpinisme et l’engagement physique qu’implique la haute montagne.

    Sur le glacier de la Girose, les conditions de vie imposées par le milieu n’ont en effet rien à voir avec celles des autres ZAD en France, y compris celles de La Clusaz (en novembre 2021 et octobre 2022), premières du type en montagne, dans le bois de la Colombière à 1 400 mètres d’altitude. Au cours de la semaine d’occupation, les températures étaient toutefois clémentes, oscillant entre -7° à 10 °C, du fait d’un automne anormalement chaud.
    Une communication bien rodée

    Très rapidement, cette occupation du glacier a donné un coup de projecteur national sur ce projet controversé d’aménagement local. Dès son annonce publique, les articles se sont succédés dans les médias nationaux à partir des éléments de communication (photographies, vidéos, communiqués de presse, live sur les réseaux sociaux) fournis par les SLT depuis le glacier de la Girose. Les militants présents disposaient en effet des compétences et du matériel nécessaires pour produire des contenus professionnels à 3400 mètres. Ils ont ainsi accordé une attention particulière à la mise en scène médiatique et à sa dimension esthétique.

    Bien qu’inédite par sa forme ainsi que les lieux et les moyens mobilisés, cette mobilisation s’inscrit dans une grammaire politique partagée faisant référence au bien commun ainsi qu’aux imaginaires et narratifs habituels des SLT, qu’elle actualise à partir de cette expérience en haute montagne. Elle est visible dans les stratégies de communication mobilisées : les références à la ZAD, à la stratégie du désarmement, l’apparition masquée des militants, les slogans tels que la « lutte des glaces », « nous sommes les glaciers qui se défendent » et « ça presse mais la SATArde ». Une fois déployée, cette grammaire de la mobilisation est aisément reconnaissable par les publics, qu’ils y soient favorables ou non.
    Une plante protégée sur le chantier

    Cette occupation du glacier a été imaginée dans l’urgence en quelques jours par les SLT pour répondre au début des travaux préliminaires entrepris par la SATG quelques jours auparavant. Son objectif était de stopper ces derniers suite à la décision du tribunal administratif de Marseille de rejeter, le 5 octobre, un référé liberté demandant leurs interruptions d’urgence. Déposé le 20 septembre par les associations locales et environnementales, ce dernier visait notamment à protéger l’androsace du Dauphiné présente sur le rognon rocheux.

    Cette plante protégée, dont la découverte formelle ne remonte qu’à 2021, a été identifiée le 11 juillet sur les lieux par deux scientifiques du Laboratoire d’écologie alpine (CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes et Université Savoie Mont Blanc) et certifiée par l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB). Leur rapport d’expertise écologique a été rendu public et remis aux autorités administratives le 18 juillet : il montre qu’il existe plusieurs spécimens de l’androsace du Dauphiné dans un rayon de moins de 50 mètres autour du projet d’implantation du pylône. Or, elle ne figure pas dans l’étude d’impact et le bureau d’étude qui l’a réalisée affirme l’avoir cherchée sans la trouver.

    Deux jours après le début de l’occupation, la SATG a demandé à la préfecture des Hautes-Alpes l’évacuation du campement des SLT afin de pouvoir reprendre au plus vite les travaux. Le 10 octobre, la gendarmerie s’est rendue sur le glacier pour notifier aux militants qu’un arrêté municipal interdisant le bivouac jusqu’au printemps avait été pris. Et que le campement était illégal, et donc passible de poursuites civiles et pénales.

    En réponse, un nouveau recours « référé-suspension » en justice a été déposé le lendemain par les associations locales et environnementales pour stopper les travaux… à nouveau rejeté le 30 octobre par le tribunal administratif de Marseille. Cette décision s’appuie sur l’avis de la Direction régionale de l’environnement, de l’aménagement et du logement (DREAL) et du préfet des Hautes-Alpes qui estiment que le risque d’atteinte à l’androsace du Dauphiné n’était pas suffisamment caractérisé. MW et LGA envisagent désormais de former un recours en cassation devant le Conseil d’État.

    Entre-temps, les SLT ont décidé de redescendre dans la vallée dès le 13 octobre, leur présence n’étant plus nécessaire pour empêcher le déroulement des travaux, puisque les conditions météorologiques rendent désormais leur reprise impossible avant le printemps 2024.

    https://twitter.com/lessoulevements/status/1712817279556084122

    Bien qu’illégale, cette occupation « à durée déterminée » du glacier pourrait permettre à la justice d’aboutir à un jugement de fond sur l’ensemble des points contestés par les associations locales et environnementales. En ce sens, cette occupation a permis de faire « gagner du temps » à Mountain Wilderness (MW) et à La Grave Autrement (LGA) engagées depuis cinq ans contre le projet. Leurs actions menées depuis le 3 avril dernier, date du permis de construire accordée par la mairie de la Grave à la SATG, n’ont jusqu’alors pas été en mesure d’empêcher le début des travaux… alors même que leurs recours juridiques sur le fond ne vont être étudiés par la justice que l’année prochaine et que les travaux auraient pu avoir lieu en amont.

    Cette mobilisation des SLT a aussi contraint les promoteurs du projet à sortir du silence et à prendre position publiquement. Ils ont ainsi dénoncé « quatorze hurluberlus qui ne font rien de leur vie et entravent ceux qui travaillent », ce à quoi la presse montagne a répondu « les glaciers disent merci aux hurluberlus ».
    Sanctuarisation et manque de « cohérence »

    En Europe, cette mobilisation des SLT en haute montagne est inédite dans l’histoire des contestations socio-environnementales du tourisme, et plus largement dans celles des mouvements sociaux. Cela lui confère une forte dimension symbolique, en même temps que le devenir des glaciers est lui-même devenu un symbole du changement climatique et que leur artificialisation à des fins touristiques ou sportives suscite de plus en plus de critiques dans les Alpes. Dernier exemple en date, le creusement d’une piste de ski dans un glacier suisse à l’aide de pelles mécaniques afin de permettre la tenue d’une épreuve de la coupe du monde de ski.

    Une telle situation où un engin de travaux publics brise de la glace pour l’aplanir et rendre possible la pratique du ski alpin a déjà été observée à la Grave en septembre 2020. L’objectif était alors de faire fonctionner le vieux téléski du glacier de la Girose, que le troisième tronçon du téléphérique entend remplacer à terme… sauf que l’objectif de ce dernier est d’accroître le nombre de skieurs alpins sur un glacier qui subit de plein fouet le réchauffement climatique, ce qui impliquera ensuite la mise en place d’une sécurisation des crevasses à l’aide de pelleteuses. Dans ce contexte, la question que pose la mobilisation des SLT peut donc se reformuler ainsi : ne faut-il pas désormais laisser le glacier de la Girose libre de tout moyen de transport pour en faire un avant-poste de la transition touristique pour expérimenter une nouvelle approche de la montagne ?

    Cette question résonne avec la position du gouvernement français au One Planet Summit sur la nécessaire sanctuarisation des écosystèmes que représentent les glaciers… dont le projet d’aménagement du glacier de la Girose représente « quelques accrocs à la cohérence », reconnaît Christophe Béchu, ministre de la Transition écologique, du fait d’un dossier complexe.
    Un dialogue à rouvrir pour avancer

    Au lendemain de la fin de l’occupation du glacier par les SLT, le 14 octobre, une manifestation a été organisée à l’initiative des Enseignes de La Meije (association des commerçants de la Grave) pour défendre l’aménagement du troisième tronçon du téléphérique. Pour eux, comme pour la SATG et la municipalité, l’existence de la station est en péril sans celui-ci, ce que conteste LGA dans son analyse des retombées économiques sur le territoire. Le bureau des guides de la Grave est lui aussi divisé sur le sujet. Le débat ne se résume donc pas à une opposition entre les amoureux du glacier, là-haut, et ceux du business, en bas ; entre ceux qui vivent sur le territoire à l’année et les autres qui n’y sont que quelques jours par an ; entre des « hurluberlus qui ne font rien de leur vie » et ceux qui travaillent, etc.

    Comme partout en montagne, le débat à la Grave est plus complexe qu’il n’y paraît et appelle à rouvrir le dialogue si l’on prend au sérieux l’inévitable bifurcation du modèle de développement montagnard face aux effets du changement climatique. Considérer qu’il n’y a pas aujourd’hui deux montagnes irréconciliables n’implique pas d’être d’accord sur tout avec tout le monde en amont. Les désaccords peuvent être féconds pour imaginer le devenir du territoire sans que l’artificialisation du glacier soit l’unique solution pour vivre et habiter à La Grave.

    Si les travaux du troisième tronçon du #téléphérique étaient amenés à reprendre au printemps prochain, les SLT ont d’ores et déjà annoncé qu’ils reviendront occuper le glacier de la Girose.

    https://theconversation.com/plus-haute-zad-deurope-faut-il-encore-amenager-les-glaciers-alpins-
    #tourisme #aménagement_du_territoire #résistance

    • Écologie : dans un village des Hautes-Alpes, le #téléphérique de la discorde

      À La Grave, dans les Hautes-Alpes, des habitants se mobilisent contre la construction d’un téléphérique, vu comme un levier de #tourisme_de_masse. Éleveurs, mais aussi artisan ou guide de haute montagne, ils défendent un mode de vie alternatif et adapté à la crise climatique.

      Comme tous les matins d’hiver, Agathe Margheriti descend à ski, avec précaution, le sentier enneigé et pentu qui sépare sa maison de la route. Son sac à dos est chargé d’une précieuse cargaison : les œufs de ses 200 poules, qu’elle vend au porte-à-porte, une fois par semaine, aux habitant·es de la vallée de la Romanche. Chaque jour, elle descend la ponte du jour et la stocke dans des boîtes isothermes dans sa camionnette qui stationne en bord de route, au pied du chemin.

      Il y a six ans, cette jeune femme a fait un choix de vie radical. Avec son compagnon Aurélien Routens, un ancien snowboardeur professionnel, elle a acheté un hameau en ruine, le #Puy_Golèfre, dans le village de La Grave (Hautes-Alpes). « Pour 140 000 euros, c’est tout ce que nous avons trouvé à la portée de nos moyens. Il n’y a ni eau ni électricité, et il faut 20 minutes pour monter à pied depuis la route, mais regardez cette vue ! », montre Agathe, rayonnante.

      La petite maison de pierre retapée par le couple, orientée plein sud, chauffée au bois et dotée d’énergie solaire, offre un panorama époustouflant sur la face nord de la Meije, la plus impressionnante montagne des Alpes françaises, toute de glace et de roche, qui culmine à 3 983 mètres.

      Son sommet occupe une place à part dans l’histoire de l’alpinisme : il n’a été atteint qu’en 1877, un siècle après le mont Blanc. L’autre originalité du lieu, à laquelle Agathe et Aurélien tiennent tant, c’est que La Grave est le seul village d’Europe à être doté d’un téléphérique dont la gare d’arrivée, à 3 200 mètres d’altitude, débouche sur un domaine skiable sauvage. Ni piste damée ni canon à neige, mais des vallons de neige vierge aux pentes vertigineuses, paradis des snowboardeurs freeride qui font leurs traces dans la poudreuse.

      Ce paradis, Agathe et Aurélien veulent le préserver à tout prix. Avec une poignée d’amis du village, ils luttent depuis trois ans contre un projet qu’ils jugent aussi inutile qu’anachronique : la construction d’un troisième tronçon de téléphérique par son exploitant, le groupe #SATA, qui permettrait de monter jusqu’au #dôme_de_la_Lauze, à 3 559 mètres. Ce nouvel équipement, d’un coût de 14 millions d’euros (dont 4 millions d’argent public), permettrait de skier sur le #glacier de la #Girose, actuellement doté d’un #téléski vieillissant, dont l’accès est devenu problématique en raison du réchauffement climatique.

      Un téléphérique sur un glacier, alors que les Alpes se réchauffent deux fois plus vite que le reste de la planète et que les scientifiques alertent sur la disparition de la moitié des glaciers de montagne d’ici à 2100 ?

      Pour tenter d’empêcher la réalisation de ce projet fou, des habitant·es de la Grave, constitué·es dans le collectif #La_Grave_autrement, luttent sur deux fronts : judiciaire et médiatique. Deux recours ont été déposés devant le tribunal administratif pour contrer le projet de la SATA, un groupe qui exploite aussi les domaines skiables de l’Alpe d’Huez et des Deux-Alpes, emploie 800 personnes et réalise un chiffre d’affaires de 80 millions d’euros. Les jugements au fond n’interviendront pas avant le printemps 2024… Trop tard, peut-être, pour empêcher le démarrage des travaux.

      Alors, parallèlement, des militant·es se sont activé·es sur le terrain : en octobre, l’association #Mountain_Wilderness a déployé une banderole sur le glacier, puis #Les_Soulèvements_de_la_Terre ont symboliquement planté leurs tentes sur le rognon rocheux situé au milieu du glacier, sur lequel doit être édifié le pylône du téléphérique et où des botanistes ont découvert une plante rare et protégée, l’#androsace_du_Dauphiné.

      Enfin, en novembre, des habitant·es de La Grave, accompagné·es de la glaciologue Heidi Sevestre, ont symboliquement apporté un gros morceau de glace de la Girose à Paris, le jour de l’ouverture du One Planet-Polar Summit, et interpellé le gouvernement sur l’urgence de protéger les glaciers.

      Depuis, la neige est tombée en abondance sur la Meije et dans la vallée. À La Grave et dans le village voisin de Villar d’Arène, les opposant·es au projet prouvent, dans leur vie quotidienne, qu’une #alternative au tout-ski est possible et que la vallée peut se réinventer sans porter atteinte à ce milieu montagnard si menacé.

      Thierry Favre, porte-parole de La Grave autrement, vit dans une ancienne bergerie, au cœur du hameau des Hières, à 1 800 mètres d’altitude, qu’il a achetée il y a trente ans, après être tombé amoureux du site pour la qualité de sa neige et la verticalité de ses pentes. Après avoir travaillé dans l’industrie de la soierie à Lyon et à Florence, il a fondé ici sa propre entreprise de création d’étoffes, #Legend’Enhaut, qui fabrique des tissus haut de gamme pour des décorateurs. « Nous sommes bien situés, sur un grand axe de circulation entre Grenoble et Briançon. Nous avons l’immense chance de ne pas avoir vu notre cadre de vie massacré par les ensembles immobiliers qui défigurent les grandes stations de ski des Alpes. Mais il faut être vigilants. La Grave compte déjà 75 % de #résidences_secondaires. Et le projet de nouveau téléphérique s’accompagnera inévitablement de la construction d’une résidence de tourisme. Il y a urgence à proposer un autre modèle pour l’avenir. »

      À 60 ans, Thierry Favre s’applique à lui-même ce souci de sobriété dans son activité professionnelle. « Mon entreprise marchait bien mais j’ai volontairement mis le pied sur le frein. Je n’ai conservé que deux salariés et deux collaborateurs extérieurs, pour préserver ma qualité de vie et garder du temps pour militer. »

      À deux kilomètres de là, à la ferme de Molières, Céline Gaillard partage la même philosophie. Après avoir travaillé à l’office du tourisme de Serre-Chevalier et à celui de La Grave, cette mère de deux enfants s’est reconvertie dans l’élevage de chèvres. Elle et son mari Martin, moniteur de ski trois mois par an, exploitent un troupeau de 50 chèvres et fabriquent des fromages qu’ils vendent sur place. Pendant les six mois d’hiver, les bêtes vivent dans une vaste chèvrerie, où elles ont de l’espace pour bouger, et en été, elles paissent sur les alpages voisins. « Je ne veux pas en avoir plus de cinquante, par souci du bien-être animal. Nous pourrions produire plus de fromages, car la demande est forte. Mais le travail saisonnier de Martin nous apporte un complément de revenus qui nous suffit. »

      Avec les œufs de ses poules, Agathe fait le même constat : « Je pourrais en vendre dix fois plus. L’an dernier, nous avons planté de l’ail et des framboisiers : nous avons tout vendu très vite. Ce serait bien que d’autres éleveurs s’installent. Si nous avions une production locale plus fournie, nous pourrions ouvrir une épicerie coopérative au village. »

      Contrairement à Agathe qui milite dans le collectif La Grave autrement, Céline, la chevrière, ne s’oppose pas ouvertement au nouveau téléphérique. Mais elle n’est « pas d’accord pour se taire » : « Nous n’avons pas pu avoir un vrai débat sur le projet. Il faudrait un moratoire, le temps d’échanger avec la population. Je ne comprends pas cette volonté d’exploiter la montagne jusqu’à son dernier souffle. »

      Céline et Martin Gaillard ne sont pas seuls à pratiquer l’élevage autrement dans le village. Au hameau des #Cours, à #Villar_d’Arène, un autre jeune couple, originaire de l’ouest de la France, s’est installé en 2019. Sylvain et Julie Protière, parents d’un enfant de 4 ans, ont repris la ferme du Lautaret, dans laquelle ils élèvent 35 vaches d’Herens, une race alpine particulièrement adaptée à la rudesse du climat montagnard.

      Alors que la plupart des fermiers traditionnels de La Grave et de Villar d’Arène élèvent des génisses qu’ils revendent à l’âge de 3 ans et n’exploitent donc pas le lait, Sylvain et Julie traient leurs vaches et fabriquent le fromage à la ferme. Cela leur procure un meilleur revenu et leur permet de fournir en fromage les consommatrices et consommateurs locaux. « Nous vendons toute notre production aux restaurants, refuges et gîtes dans un rayon de 5 kilomètres, et nous n’en avons pas assez pour satisfaire la demande », témoigne Sylvain.

      À mesure que le combat des opposants et opposantes au nouveau téléphérique se médiatise et se radicalise, les tensions s’avivent au sein de la communauté villageoise. Les partisans du téléphérique accusent les opposants de vouloir la mort de l’économie de la vallée. Selon eux, sans le troisième tronçon, le téléphérique actuel n’est plus viable.

      Aucun·e des opposant·es que Mediapart a rencontré·es, pourtant, ne souhaite l’arrêt des remontées mécaniques. Benjamin Ribeyre, guide de haute montagne et cofondateur du collectif La Grave autrement, pense au contraire que l’actuel téléphérique pourrait servir de base à un développement touristique tourné vers la transition écologique. « L’actuelle plateforme d’arrivée, à 3 200 mètres, permet un accès facile au glacier de la Girose. C’est unique en France, bien mieux que la gare du Montenvers de Chamonix, d’où l’on ne voit de la mer de glace que des moraines grises. Ici, grâce au téléphérique, nous pourrions proposer des sorties d’éducation au climat, en particulier pour les enfants des écoles. Le réchauffement climatique bouleverse notre activité de guides de haute montagne. Nous devons d’urgence nous réinventer ! »

      Niels Martin, cofondateur de La Grave autrement, conteste, pour sa part, les calculs économiques des promoteurs du projet. Père de deux jeunes enfants, il partage sa vie entre La Grave et la Savoie, où il travaille dans une institution de la montagne. « Ce troisième tronçon n’est pas indispensable à la survie du téléphérique. Le fait que La Grave soit restée à l’écart des grands aménagements du plan neige des années 1970 doit devenir son principal attrait. » Au nom du collectif, Niels vient d’envoyer une lettre au préfet coordonnateur du massif des Alpes dans laquelle il propose que le village devienne en 2024 un site pilote des États généraux de la transition du tourisme en montagne, où se concoctent des solutions d’avenir pour faire face au réchauffement climatique dans les Alpes. Les Soulèvements de la Terre, eux, n’ont pas dit leur dernier mot. Dès la fonte des neiges, ils ont promis de remonter sur le glacier de la Girose.

      https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/ecologie/251223/ecologie-dans-un-village-des-hautes-alpes-le-telepherique-de-la-discorde

    • #Guillaume_Gontard : Glacier de la #Girose - La #Grave :

      J’ai interrogé le ministre @Ecologie_Gouv sur l’avenir du glacier de la #Girose dans les #Alpes.
      Ce lieu unique est menacé par un projet de prolongation d’un téléphérique permettant de skier sur un glacier dont les jours sont comptés.

      https://twitter.com/GuillaumGontard/status/1740306452957348349

  • Alexandre Mairet (1880-1947)
    https://www.partage-noir.fr/alexandre-mairet-1880-1947


    ❝Né le 23 avril 1880 à La Tour-de-Peilz (canton de Vaud, Suisse), mort le 9 février 1947 à Genève. Peintre, graveur, illustrateur de périodiques anarchistes et communistes. #Alexandre_Mairet , #Louis_Bertoni
    #Archives_Autonomies #Le_Maitron_des_anarchistes #Alexandre_Mairet_
    https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article154186