A #Lampedusa non nascevano bambini da più di mezzo secolo. Nel 2021 è nata Maria e le hanno dedicato un parco giochi, dove però i bimbi arrivati come lei via mare non possono giocare. Vietato per loro uscire dall’hotspot. Una storia di diritti negati a persone innocenti.
▻https://twitter.com/SeaWatchItaly/status/1787832638901825906
#toponymie #toponymie_migrante #noms_de_rue #migrations #Lampedusa
Si battezza Maria, la prima nata a Lampedusa dopo 51 anni
E’ nata il 31 luglio 2021 a Lampedusa dove i suoi genitori, della Costa d’Avorio, sono giunti con un barcone partito dall’Africa.
Ora Maria è tornata, dopo due anni e mezzo sull’isola dove oggi verrà battezzata durante la messa serale, nella parrocchia di San Gerlando. La bambina e i suoi genitori sono arrivati a Lampedusa da Cassaro, comune di poco più di 700 abitanti in provincia di Siracusa, dove sono ospiti della rete Sai (sistema accoglienza integrazione) gestita dalla cooperativa Passwork.
La famiglia è stata accolta dal sindaco delle Pelagie Filippo Mannino che ha voluto la cittadinanza onoraria, deliberata dal Consiglio comunale, per la piccola. Il riconoscimento è stato conferito, mentre in via Roma è stato intitolato a Maria il parco giochi realizzato con i fondi Fami del ministero dell’Interno.
Mannino, accogliendo ieri la bimba e i genitori, ha chiesto se fossero cattolici e se era possibile un incontro con la comunità dei fedeli di Lampedusa. I genitori di Maria si sono detti disponibili all’incontro e hanno anche manifestato l’intenzione di battezzare la piccola proprio nella sua isola. Stamani è stato contattato il parroco che ha dato il via libera e che ha già trovato la tutina bianca da far indossare a Maria.
La bimba è stata la prima a nascere, dopo 51 anni, a Lampedusa, dove le donne non partoriscono per mancanza di una struttura sanitarie adeguata. Maria è nata nell’ambulatorio del punto territoriale d’emergenza (Pte). Rita, ivoriana di 38 anni, già madre di due figli rimasti in Costa d’Avorio, faceva parte di un gruppo di migranti salvato e sbarcato nell’isola. La donna, giunta alla fine della gestazione, è stata portata in via precauzionale al poliambulatorio. Al Pte la ha iniziato il travaglio e non essendo stato possibile trasferirla in elisoccorso i sanitari hanno deciso di farla partorire lì.
Ad assisterla e supportarla oltre ai medici in servizio è stata Maria Raimondo, infermiera di Corleone in servizio all’ambulatorio di Lampedusa: i genitori hanno deciso di dare il nome della donna alla figlia.
La cittadinanza onoraria e l’intitolazione del parco - partecipa anche per il dipartimento Libertà civili e immigrazione il vice prefetto Carmen Cosentino - sono state decise in quanto Maria è un simbolo di speranza. Nelle motivazioni è scritto: «Maria è il simbolo di chi c’è l’ha fatta ma soprattutto di chi non ce l’ha fatta, di chi nutre la speranza di raggiungere un posto migliore dove mettere radici, dove vivere nella piena libertà e legalità, dove il diritto all’infanzia è una priorità. Ed è per questo che la nostra comunità è in dovere e in diritto di riconoscerle la cittadinanza onoraria, un riconoscimento alla vita, alla solidarietà, al rispetto e tutela dei diritti umani e di tutti i bambini che come Maria sono nati a Lampedusa».
▻https://www.ansa.it/sicilia/notizie/2024/05/04/maria-prima-nata-a-lampedusa-dopo-51-anni-si-battezza_1403e10e-4d73-46a1-a322-a
L’#urbicide : nouvelle dimension de la #guerre
Le mot n’apparaît pas dans le dictionnaire. Il n’est pas non plus mentionné par le droit international. Pourtant, le terme est de plus en plus mobilisé pour parler de la guerre à #Gaza ou en #Ukraine. L’urbicide, littéralement le #meurtre_des_villes, est une nouvelle dimension de la guerre.
L’urbicide, littéralement le meurtre des villes, c’est l’#annihilation d’une ville pour détruire un #symbole. #Gaza, #Marioupol, #Alep, #Hiroshima, #Dresde ou #Guernica, chaque guerre à sa “#ville_martyre” qui la résume, qui synthétise son horreur.
Et si le mot vient d’un roman de science-fiction des années 60, s’il a pris son sens contemporain avec la #guerre_de_Yougoslavie, j’y reviendrai, les exemples antiques sont peut-être ceux qui nous renseignent le mieux sur la nature et le sens profond de l’urbicide : faire disparaître l’ennemi.
Deux exemples, l’un grec, l’autre romain. En Grèce, Isocrate raconte comment Thèbe souhaite “rendre invisible” la ville de #Platée. Platée très connue alors pour sa victoire retentissante contre l’empire perse. Comment il s’agissait pour Thèbes de procéder à l’#effacement de la cité, et donc de son #existence_politique : Personne ne devait se souvenir de son passé.
Autre exemple, Romain celui-ci, plus marquant peut être : c’est #Carthage. L’histoire est bien connue. Rome décide de raser Carthage au sol, et la légende raconte que le sol de la ville est stérilisé avec du sel et labouré afin que plus rien n’y repousse. La ville n’est pas l’objet de la guerre, mais bien le moyen d’annihiler symboliquement son adversaire. Un espace où mettre en scène sa victoire à venir et la négation de son ennemi ;
D’ailleurs cette #mise_en_spectacle est au cœur des bombardements de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, à Guernica, à Dresde, à Hiroshima, c’est avant tout la #puissance_militaire qui est mise en avant dans la #destruction de la ville. Elle devient le #paysage, le théâtre de la guerre.
▻https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/a-la-source/l-urbicide-une-nouvelle-dimension-de-la-guerre-5470618
#disparition #destruction #destruction_totale #urban_matters
#podcast #audio
Bulgaria : Road to Schengen. Part One : the EU’s external border.
On the 31st of March, Bulgaria - alongside Romania - joined Schengen as a partial member by air & sea. The inclusion of land crossings for full accession of these countries was blocked by an Austrian veto over concerns(1) that it would lead to an increase in people wanting to claim asylum in the EU.
What is significant about Bulgaria becoming a Schengen member is that, what has been seen in the lead up, and what we will see following accession, is a new precedent of aggressively fortified borders set for the EU’s external Schengen borders. Which in turn may shape EU wide standards for border management.
The EU’s external border between Bulgaria and Turkey has become infamous for a myriad of human rights violations and violence towards people who are forced to cross this border ‘illegally’. People continually face the violence of these crossings due to the lack of safe and legal routes allowing people to fulfill their right to seek asylum in Europe.
In 2022 it was along this border that live ammunition(2) was first used against people seeking asylum in the EU. Shot by the Bulgarian authorities. In the same year it was reported(3) that people were illegally detained for up to 3 days in a cage-like structure attached to the police station in the border town of Sredets. It was also known that vehicles belonging to the European border force Frontex - who are responsible for border management and supposedly upholding fundamental rights - were present in the vicinity of the cages holding detained people.
The EU’s illegal border management strategy of pushbacks are also well documented and commonplace along this border. Testimonies of pushbacks in this region are frequent and often violent. Within the past year Collective Aid has collected numerous testimonies from survivors of these actions of the state who describe(4) being stripped down to their underwear, beaten with batons and the butts of guns, robbed, and set on by dogs. Violence is clearly the systematic deterrence strategy of the EU.
Similar violence occurs and is documented along Bulgaria’s northern border with Serbia. During an assessment of the camps in Sofia in March, outside of the Voenna Rampa facility, our team spoke to an Afghan man who, 6 months prior, was beaten so badly during a pushback that his leg was broken. Half a year later he was still using a crutch and was supported by his friends. Due to the ordeal, he had decided to try and claim asylum in Bulgaria instead of risking another border crossing.
Despite the widespread and well documented violations of European and international law by an EU member state, at the beginning of March Bulgaria was rewarded(5) with its share of an 85 million Euro fund within a ‘cooperation framework on border and migration management’. The money within this framework specifically comes under the Border Management and Visa Instrument (BMVI) 2021 – 2027, designed to ‘enhance national capabilities at the EU external borders’. Within the instrument Bulgaria is able to apply for additional funding to extend or upgrade technology along its borders. This includes purchasing, developing, or upgrading equipment such as movement detection and thermo-vision cameras and vehicles with thermo-vision capabilities. It is the use of this border tech which enables and facilitates the illegal and violent practices which are well documented in Bulgaria.
Close to the town of Dragoman along the northern border with Serbia, we came across an example of the kind of technology which used a controlled mounted camera that tracked the movement of our team. This piece of equipment was also purchased by the EU, and is used to track movement at the internal border.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bb60214f4755a2662bea695/d94a6eae-19d1-42b1-bdae-33b239fdedd6/tower+small.jpg 
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bb60214f4755a2662bea695/614c5b50-1cff-4f80-a437-2cc48ae1f6f8/sign+small.jpg The cooperation framework also outlines(6) a roadmap where Frontex will increase its support of policing at Bulgaria’s border with Turkey. In late February, in the run up to Bulgaria becoming a Schengen member, on a visit to the border with Turkey, Hans Leijtens - Frontex’s executive director - announced(7) an additional 500 - 600 additional Frontex personnel would be sent to the border. Tripling the numbers already operational there.
Meanwhile Frontex - who have been known(8) to conceal evidence of human rights violations - are again under scrutiny(9) for their lack of accountability in regards to the upholding of fundamental rights. Two days prior to the announcement of additional Frontex staff an investigation(10) by BIRN produced a report from a Frontex whistleblower further highlighting the common kinds of violence and rights violations which occur during pushbacks at this border. As well as the fact that Frontex officers were intentionally kept away from ‘hot spots’ where pushbacks are most frequent. The investigation underlines Frontex’s inability to address, or be held accountable for, human rights violations that occur on the EU’s external borders.
The awarded money is the next step following a ‘successful’ pilot project for fast-track asylum and returns procedures which was started in March of the previous year. The project was implemented in the Pastrogor camp some 13km from the Turkish border which mostly houses people from the Maghreb region of northwest Africa. A 6 month project report(11) boasts a 60% rejection rate from around 2000 applicants. In line with the EU’s new migration pact, the project has a focus on returns whereby an amendment to national legislation has been prepared to allow a return decision to be made and delivered at the same time as an asylum rejection. As well as the launch of a voluntary return programme supported by the 2021-2027 Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF). Through which cash incentives for voluntary returns will be increased across the board. These cash incentives are essentially an EU funded gaslighting project, questioning the decisions of people to leave their home countries based on their own survival and safety.
Our team visited the former prison of the Pastrogor camp in March. Which at the time held only 16 people - some 5% of its 320 capacity.
The implementation of this pilot project and the fortification of the border with Turkey have been deemed a success by the EU commision(12) who have praised both as indicators of Bulgaria’s readiness to join the Schengen area.
Unsurprisingly, what we learn from Bulgaria’s accession to becoming a Schengen member is that the EU is not only deliberately ignoring Bulgaria’s dire human rights history in migration and border management. But, alongside the political and economic strengthening brought with Schengen accession, they are actively rewarding the results of such rights violations with exceptional funding that can sustain the state’s human rights infringements. All while the presence of Frontex validates the impunity enjoyed by Bulgaria’s violent border forces who show no respect for human rights law. In early April the European Commision gave a positive report(13) on the results from EU funding which support this border rife with fundamental rights abuses. In a hollow statement Bulgaria’s chief of border police stated: “we are showing zero tolerance to the violation of fundamental rights”.
What the changes in border management strategies at the EU’s external border to Turkey- in light of Bulgaria’s entry to the Schengen - mean in reality is that people who are still forced to make the crossing do so at greater risk to themselves as they are forced deeper into both the hands of smuggling networks and into the dangerous Strandzha national park.
The Strandzha national park straddles the Bulgarian-Turkish border. It is in this densely forested and mountainous area of land where people are known to often make the border crossing by foot. A treacherous journey often taking many days, and also known to have taken many lives - lighthouse reports identified 82 bodies of people on the move that have passed through three morgues in Bulgaria. Many of whom will have died on the Strandzha crossing.
It is reported(14) that morgues in the towns of Burgas and Yambol - on the outskirts of the Strandzha national park - are having difficulty finding space due to the amount of deaths occurring in this area. So much so that a public prosecutor from Yambol explained this as the reason why people are being buried without identification in nameless graves, sometimes after only 4 days of storage. It is also reported that families who tried to find and identify the bodies of their deceased loved ones were forced to pay cash bribes to the Burgas morgue in order to do so.
Through networks with families in home countries, NGOs based nearby make efforts to alert authorities and to respond to distress calls from people in danger within the Strandzha national park. However, the Bulgarian state makes these attempts nearly impossible through heavy militarisation and the associated criminalisation of being active in the area. It is the same militarisation that is supported with money from the EU’s ‘cooperation framework’. Due to these limitations even the bodies that make it to morgues in Bulgaria are likely to be only a percentage of the total death toll that is effectively sponsored by the EU.
Local NGO Mission Wings stated(15) that in 2022 they received at most 12 distress calls, whereas in 2023 the NGO stopped counting at 70. This gives a clear correlation between increased funding to the fortification of the EU’s external border and the amount of lives put in danger.
People are also forced to rely more on smuggling networks. Thus making the cost of seeking asylum greater, and the routes more hidden. When routes become more hidden and reliant on smuggling networks, it limits the interaction between people on the move and NGOs. In turn, testimonies of state violence and illegal practices cannot be collected and violations occur unchallenged. Smuggling networks rely on the use of vehicles, often driving packed cars, vans, and lorries at high speed through the country. Injuries and fatalities of people on the move from car crashes and suffocating are not infrequent in Bulgaria. Sadly, tragic incidents(16) like the deaths of 18 innocent people from Afghanistan in the back of an abandoned truck in February last year are likely only to increase.
▻https://www.collectiveaidngo.org/blog/2024/5/3/bulgaria-road-to-schengen-part-one-the-eus-external-border
#Bulgarie #frontières #Schengen #migrations #frontières_extérieures #asile #réfugiés #Balkans #route_des_Balkans #violence #Turquie #Sredets #encampement #Frontex #droits_humains #Serbie #Sofia #Voenna_Rampa #Border_Management_and_Visa_Instrument (#BMVI) #aide_financière #technologie #Dragoman #Pastrogor #camps_de_réfugiés #renvois #expulsions #retour_volontaire #Asylum_Migration_and_Integration_Fund (#AMIF) #Strandzha #Strandzha_national_park #forêt #montagne #Burgas #Yambol #mourir_aux_frontières #décès #morts_aux_frontières #identification #tombes #criminalisation_de_la_solidarité #morgue
–-
ajouté à ce fil de discussion :
Europe’s Nameless Dead
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/1029609
Pourquoi une cartographie sur le #génocide des #Tsiganes ?
Le travail a été lancé avant tout pour répondre à la difficulté de trouver un document cartographique satisfaisant dans les manuels scolaires. Les manuels parcourus (mais je n’ai pas observé toutes les éditions) consacrent peu de temps à la singularité du génocide des Tsiganes.
Un dépôt de ce travail sur cette plateforme me semble utile pour les enseignants et les élèves qui l’utilisent, en espérant que le document soit utile.
▻https://www.cartolycee.net/spip.php?article272
ArcelorMittal : un délinquant environnemental au service des JO 2024
▻https://disclose.ngo/fr/article/arcelormittal-un-delinquant-environnemental-au-service-des-jo-2024
Pollutions illégales, pillage de l’eau potable, déforestation… en France et à l’étranger, la méthode du géant de l’acier ArcelorMittal, partenaire des Jeux olympiques de Paris, s’apparente à celle d’un délinquant environnemental multirécidiviste, révèlent des documents obtenus par Disclose et un récent rapport d’une coalition d’ONG. Lire l’article
Le città visibili
Dove inizia il cambiamento del Paese.
Nelle città di tutto il mondo stanno cambiando gli abitanti, i loro desideri e le loro priorità: la casa, lo spazio pubblico, il modello di sostenibilità ambientale, il modo di lavorare.
In Europa, come negli Stati Uniti, esiste una visione più o meno condivisa del modo in cui rendere le città più sostenibili, più giuste, più belle.
Ed è una visione che si confronta con tante difficoltà, con le abitudini e i conservatorismi non solo della politica e dell’impresa, ma anche dei singoli cittadini: rompere gli equilibri è faticoso.
Pierfrancesco Maran, assessore del Comune di Milano alla Mobilità, all’Urbanistica e ora alla Casa, racconta la sua esperienza sul campo in queste pagine che affrontano le sfide e i nodi della trasformazione di una metropoli moderna, tra nuova identità e riscoperta delle tradizioni, all’insegna dell’innovazione nella progettazione del verde, dell’edilizia, della qualità dell’aria, del turismo e dei grandi eventi, della valorizzazione delle periferie e dell’economia della conoscenza.
Una riflessione concreta di grande attualità sull’oggi e sul domani dei luoghi del cambiamento attraverso cui passa il futuro del Paese.
Le parole di Francesco Costa
«Come sono le città oggi e come diventeranno domani. Chi sono le persone che le abitano, come stanno cambiando le loro vite e i loro lavori. Pierfrancesco Maran, uno dei protagonisti della trasformazione di Milano degli ultimi anni, racconta difficoltà, opportunità, contraddizioni che vivono le aree urbane in questo periodo di grandi scossoni sociali, con lo spirito di chi cerca sempre soluzioni nuove. Una guida al presente delle città per essere pronti al prossimo futuro.»
La necessità di comprendere i bisogni di chi abita le città
«Siamo così saturi di immagini e notizie da far fatica a distinguere quelle importanti, a prenderci il giusto tempo per riflettere e analizzare, a volte siamo addirittura socialmente obbligati a esplicitare una nostra opinione su fatti complessi, prima ancora di averla completamente formata. Negli ultimi mesi, anche grazie a questo libro, ho potuto dedicare tempo per riflettere, per comprendere i bisogni di chi abita le città, per ragionare sulle opportunità di domani, studiare qual è lo spirito del tempo degli abitanti della città, nativi e nuovi arrivati.»
Il futuro delle città
«Nelle città di tutto il mondo stanno cambiando gli abitanti, i loro desideri e le loro priorità: la casa, lo spazio pubblico, il modello di sostenibilità ambientale, il modo di lavorare. In Europa, come negli Stati Uniti, esiste una visione più o meno condivisa del modo in cui rendere le città più sostenibili, più giuste, più belle. Ed è una visione che si confronta con tante difficoltà, con le abitudini e i conservatorismi non solo della politica e dell’impresa, ma anche dei singoli cittadini: rompere gli equilibri è faticoso.»
▻https://www.solferinolibri.it/libri/le-citta-visibili
#livre #villes #urban_matter #changement #soutenabilité #Pierfrancesco_Maran
« Avant, il fallait que la cliente ait les deux yeux au beurre noir pour un contrôle judiciaire »
▻https://lesjours.fr/obsessions/violences-conjugales/ep4-evolution-magistrats-avocats
Avocats et magistrats en témoignent, l’appréhension des violences conjugales dans les tribunaux a connu une révolution en quinze ans.
« Découvrez BrusselsFit, la plus grande salle de sport de Bruxelles » 😍
I vantaggi socioeconomici dell’agroecologia
Un nuovo studio ne mostra gli effetti positivi per ambiente, redditi degli agricoltori e territori marginali. Altro che “non ci sono alternative ai pesticidi”.
Negli ultimi mesi, i tentativi fatti dalla Commissione europea per rendere l’agricoltura un po’ più sostenibile sono finiti sotto attacco. Le misure per mettere in pratica le strategie “Farm to fork” e “Biodiversità 2030” sono state messe sotto scacco dalle proteste dei trattori che si sono svolte in tutta Europa e dalle richieste dei sindacati agricoli, che hanno trovato nuovo slancio per mantenere lo status quo. Tali esigenze saranno all’attenzione della politica in grado di influenzare, da destra, le elezioni europee dell’8 e 9 giugno.
Per demolire il Green Deal dell’Unione europea si sono usati diversi argomenti, tra cui quello secondo cui non è possibile fare agricoltura senza pesticidi o input chimici di sintesi. Se si vuole essere produttivi e sfamare il mondo l’unica strada è quella battuta negli ultimi settant’anni. E la risposta alla crisi del settore agricolo viene indicata proprio nell’aumentare l’intensificazione e favorire i processi di modernizzazione.
Nasce in questo humus culturale la proposta dell’Agricoltura 4.0, in cui digitale, robotica e genetica sono sempre più integrati in un mondo che lascia sempre meno autonomia agli agricoltori e a noi cittadini.
Ma siamo sicuri che non ci sia nulla all’orizzonte a parte il business as usual? Per fortuna c’è una scienza che ci racconta una strada alternativa alla monocoltura industriale e sostiene la capacità di trasformare l’agricoltura rendendola più sostenibile dal punto di vista ambientale, sociale, tecnico produttivo ed economico
Va in questa direzione lo studio “The socio-economic performance of agroecology. A review”, pubblicato a marzo 2024 dalla rivista Agronomy for sustainable development. Gli autori hanno analizzato circa 13mila articoli scientifici per arrivare a dimostrare, dati alla mano, la validità delle tecniche agroecologiche. Finalmente esiste un’evidenza scientifica e documentata che c’è un’alternativa al modello produttivista, che viene già praticata ma viene ignorata dalle politiche o dai cosiddetti portatori di interesse (ma quali interessi? E di chi?)
L’articolo indaga l’impatto socio-economico dell’agroecologia trovando in letteratura il 51% di riscontri positivi, a fronte di un 30% di negativi e dei restanti con conclusioni non rilevanti. Inoltre, vengono studiate una serie di pratiche, come l’agroforestazione e le consociazioni, mettendo in evidenza il loro impatto economico positivo sulle aziende.
Se dal lato agronomico, quindi, è evidente la validità di questa pratica, il punto dolente emerge dall’impatto sul lavoro: il cambiamento di modello agricolo richiede più manodopera e una maggiore capacità da parte degli agricoltori di interagire con il proprio ambiente di riferimento (fisico, sociale ed economico).
Insomma, dobbiamo riconsiderare il ruolo della forza lavoro in agricoltura e rivedere il dogma delle scienze economiche secondo cui un Paese con un alto numero di occupati in agricoltura è sottosviluppato. Per farlo è necessario mettere in atto politiche attive che favoriscano l’intensificazione della manodopera invece che dei capitali o degli investimenti.
D’altronde riportare persone nelle campagne, e di conseguenza nelle nostre zone collinari o montuose, aiuterebbe a contrastare quel fenomeno di spopolamento che sta desertificando le aree rurali italiane. Insomma, l’agroecologia avrebbe un impatto benefico sull’ambiente, sui redditi degli agricoltori, ma anche a livello sociale creando opportunità economiche in territori marginali. Aumentare le capacità degli agricoltori, invece, comporta rivedere i modelli di ricerca e assistenza tecnica, mandando in pensione, finalmente, l’abusato concetto di trasferimento tecnologico. Questi sarebbero i punti da mettere nell’agenda della prossima Commissione europea.
▻https://altreconomia.it/i-vantaggi-socioeconomici-dellagroecologia
#agroécologie #agriculture_biologique #agriculture #impact_social #impact_économique #économie
The socio-economic performance of agroecology. A review
Agroecology is identified as an important solution to increase the sustainability of agricultural and food systems. Despite the increasing number of publications assessing the socio-economic outcomes of agroecology, very few studies have consolidated the scattered results obtained on various case studies. This paper provides new insights by consolidating evidence on the varied socio-economic effects of agroecology across a large number of cases at a global level. To this purpose, we used a rapid review methodology, screening more than 13,000 publications to retrieve evidence on the socio-economic outcomes of the implementation of agroecological practices. The results of the review indicate that (1) agroecological practices are associated more often with positive socio-economic outcomes across the broad range of evaluated metrics (51% positive, 30% negative, 10% neutral, and 9% inconclusive outcomes); (2) the socio-economic metrics associated with financial capital represent the vast majority of evaluated metrics (83% of total) and are affected positively in a large share of cases (53%), due to favourable outcomes on income, revenues, productivity and efficiency; (3) human capital metrics (16%) are associated with a larger number of negative outcomes (46% versus 38% positive), due to higher labour requirements and costs that are however partly compensated by an overall greater number of positive outcomes on labour productivity (55%); and (4) the results vary depending on the agroecological practice assessed; e.g. for agroforestry, we identify 53% positive outcomes while for cropping system diversification 35%. These results indicate an overall favourable potential for farms to benefit from a positive socio-economic performance with the use of agroecological practices. Yet, the magnitude, temporal aspects, and success factors related to these outcomes, as well as the trade-offs between them, and the system-level effects of an agroecological transition are to be further assessed, since they can have an important influence on the performance of individual farms.
▻https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-024-00945-9
Connaître les morts de la Méditerranée
Depuis dix ans, près de 30 000 personnes sont mortes ou ont disparu en tentant de franchir la Méditerranée. Qui sont-elles ? Comment les identifier ? Des anthropologues et des activistes tentent de répondre.
Lorsqu’ils sont vivants, les autorités s’empressent de vouloir les identifier, collecter notamment leurs empreintes digitales afin de les tracer et les empêcher de tenter de nouvelles fois de franchir les frontières. Lorsqu’ils sont morts, en revanche, ces mêmes autorités, ou d’autres, se fichent totalement de savoir qui ils ou elles sont. Ils et elles ce sont les exilé.es qui au péril de leur vie traversent la Méditerranée. Anthropologues, Carolina Kobelinsky et Filippo Furri ont cherché à connaître ces morts de la Méditerranée. Ils sont cette semaine les invités de La Suite dans les Idées. Et seront rejoint en seconde partie, depuis la Suisse, par l’écrivain Timba Bemba.
▻https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/la-suite-dans-les-idees/connaitre-les-morts-de-la-mediterranee-1580262
#mourir_aux_frontières #décès #identification #morts_aux_frontières #Méditerranée #migrations #réfugiés #carolina_kobelinsky #filippo_furri
#podcast #audio #Timba_Bema
Les bateaux sombrent-ils en silence ?
Tous les jours, en Méditerranée, des milliers de rêves sombrent dans le #naufrage des bateaux qui les transportent. Leurs cris désespérés ne troublent pas la quiétude du ciel. Rarement, ils atteignent le seuil absolu de l’audition humaine.
▻http://editionsstellamaris.blogspot.com/2019/01/les-bateaux-sombrent-ils-en-silence.html
#poésie #poème
L’#amiante, l’histoire sans fin
Toujours produite et vendue, la fibre cancérigène continue de faire des ravages. Cette enquête souligne l’impossible défi du #désamiantage et dénonce les scandales des multinationales prédatrices ou le cynisme de certains pays. Accablant.
« Nous vous proposons ce matériau pour les murs de votre maison. Conçu pour durer toute une vie. Comme votre toit en amiante, comme le revêtement de votre sol. Une vie sans souci. » Certes, l’époque n’est plus aux publicités vantant les qualités d’un minerai censé convenir aux rêves de perfection domestique des Trente Glorieuses : l’amiante est en effet interdite en France depuis 1997 et dans toute l’Union européenne depuis 2005. Mais ceux qui pensent que son impact mortifère sur la santé mondiale appartient au passé se trompent lourdement. L’OMS estime qu’elle provoque encore la mort de plus de 100 000 personnes chaque année à travers le monde, cancers et #maladies_pulmonaires ne se déclarant souvent que plusieurs décennies après l’exposition. Flexible, résistante, formidable isolant et bon marché, l’amiante est utilisée en masse depuis la seconde partie du XXe siècle lorsque pouvoirs publics ou secteur privé en inondent le marché du textile puis du bâtiment, malgré une nocivité attestée par des études scientifiques dès les années 1930. De cet aveuglement volontaire résulte un défi colossal : en Europe, par exemple, il faudra cent ans et plusieurs milliards d’euros pour se débarrasser de la fibre cancérigène, sans parler des dégâts causés par la #contamination des déchets répandus dans la nature.
Les métastases du profit
Loin de se contenter de consigner les errements du passé, ce documentaire radiographie aussi notre époque : les symptômes d’une course au profit sont plus prégnants que jamais et les scandales se multiplient comme les métastases d’un capitalisme sans scrupule. L’amiante, elle, gagne de nouveaux marchés. En #Russie, la plus grande mine du monde permet d’en exporter 600 000 tonnes chaque année, tout en niant l’idée de maladie professionnelle pour ses ouvriers... mais pas pour ses cadres. Au #Bangladesh, des « petites mains » démantèlent cargos et supertankers européens farcis d’amiante sans information sur les dangers qu’elles courent. En Amérique latine, la colère gronde contre certaines entreprises européennes, comme le groupe franco-belgo-suisse #Eternit, qui continuent d’exporter un produit pourtant interdit sur le Vieux Continent. Recueillant la parole d’experts, de scientifiques, de militants ou de personnes malades, cette investigation aux séquences chocs, expose une vérité sidérante : malgré les morts, la science et les évidences, la fibre tueuse a encore de beaux jours devant elle.
►https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/096315-000-A/l-amiante-l-histoire-sans-fin
#amiante #documentaire #film_documentaire #santé #cancer
signalé par @vanderling en 2022 : ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/974040
Global producer responsibility for plastic pollution
Brand names can be used to hold plastic companies accountable for their items found polluting the environment. We used data from a 5-year (2018–2022) worldwide (84 countries) program to identify brands found on plastic items in the environment through 1576 audit events. We found that 50% of items were unbranded, calling for mandated producer reporting. The top five brands globally were The #Coca-Cola Company (11%), #PepsiCo (5%), #Nestlé (3%), #Danone (3%), and #Altria (2%), accounting for 24% of the total branded count, and 56 companies accounted for more than 50%. There was a clear and strong log-log linear relationship production (%) = pollution (%) between companies’ annual production of plastic and their branded plastic pollution, with food and beverage companies being disproportionately large polluters. Phasing out single-use and short-lived plastic products by the largest polluters would greatly reduce global plastic pollution.
▻https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj8275
#responsabilité #plastique #multinationales
via @freakonometrics
Campi di lavoro e lavoro nei campi
Dall’agosto 1940 e fino alla fine del 1945 vennero internati, in numerosi campi sparsi sull’insieme del territorio ticinese, mediamente circa un migliaio di soldati stranieri, i quali rappresentarono una categoria specifica dell’insieme dei profughi accolti durante la Seconda guerra mondiale. Si trattò in gran parte di soldati polacchi, ma nei campi allestiti in Ticino risiedettero per periodi di tempo variabili pure francesi, italiani, tedeschi, austriaci, sovietici, indiani e vietnamiti, nonché un contingente di combattenti provenienti dal continente africano. Chi erano questi uomini? A quale regime furono sottoposti e perché? Dove sorsero i campi in cui furono confinati? Come trascorrevano le loro giornate? Quali furono i rapporti con la popolazione locale? Quale memoria della loro presenza si è sedimentata in Ticino? Attingendo a fonti archivistiche sinora poco sfruttate, il volume analizza e approfondisce il tema dell’internamento militare sul piano regionale, facendolo costantemente dialogare in senso verticale con quello nazionale. La pluralità degli approcci adottati e dei punti di vista considerati ha consentito di fare emergere alcune specificità ticinesi e, in altri casi, di fare luce su aspetti finora poco studiati dell’internamento militare nel suo insieme. Colmando una lacuna storiografica e fornendo un quadro esaustivo delle coordinate geografiche e temporali dell’internamento militare, il libro si presta a fungere da strumento imprescindibile per chiunque voglia affrontare la tematica della presenza di internati militari in Ticino ed eventualmente approfondirla sul piano locale.
#livre
#camps_de_travail #Tessin #Suisse #histoire #réfugiés_ukrainiens #réfugiés_polonais #Pologne #deuxième_guerre_mondiale #seconde_guerre_mondiale #WWII #mémoire
Polish Army in Insubrica region: the case study of Polish internees in Losone
During the German campaign in the West, in June 1940, 2nd Polish Infantry Division under command of Bronisław Prugar-Ketling (1891-1948) was sent to the French region of Belfort to support 8th French army. After being cut off from supply, approximately 12,000 to 13,000 Polish soldiers of this Infantry Division, crossed the Swiss border on 19-20 June 1940, south of Ajoie, avoiding thus the German capture.
The soldiers were interned in Switzerland according to the Hague Convention. After a failed attempt to concentrate all Pole servicemen in only one camp in Büren an der Aare, Polish soldiers were dispersed throughout Switzerland. From 1941, barrack camps were set up in all Switzerland, where these Poles soldiers were interned until December 1945. In the Insubrica region, many Polish soldiers were gathered and managed in Losone, nearby Locarno and Ascona.
These interned Poles soldiers made mainly group-wise work assignments for the Swiss national defence works, related to the national infrastructure like constructions of roads and bridges, drainage of swamps as well as general works in the agriculture. A total of 450 kilometers in paths, bridges and canals were built alone in Ticino by these servicemen. At present, monuments and commemorative plaques commemorate the involuntary stay of these Polish soldiers people throughout the Ticino region. After the war, around 500 Poles were able to settle down in Switzerland, obtaining the Swiss citizenship.
In addition to building and paving roads between Arcegno and Golino in the Canton Ticino, the Polish army soldiers, interned in the Losone camp during 1941-1945, worked hard to reclaim approximately 100 hectares of the land in the municipality of Losone between “Saleggi” and “Gerre”. This hard work reshaped radically the landscape of the region in the mid of the 1940s.
Thanks to the intervention of Polish soldiers, a large amount of uncultivated agricultural areas in Ticino could be developed and, later, transformed in tourist and industrial zones.
A hard work of Polish prisoners allowed a creation of a very important agricultural zone in Losone that persisted for many years until a construction of the famous 18 holes Golf place (shown in the centre of the map that can be seen above).
Further in the North, in the 1980’s, an important industrial settlement called “Zandone” was created (on the left side of the above shown map). The Polish work allowed to erect a large camping in Melezza and the “Scuderia delle cavalli delle Gerre” in the area of Zandone. Between Arcegno and Golino, Polish soldiers managed to pave a road, that is named today “strada dei polacchi” (in English: Polish road).
Polish soldiers were interned also in other parts of Switzerland and left unmistakable traces of their hard work. There are several so-called Polenweg‘s, which are roads that were built by Polish soldiers during the Second World War in Switzerland.
▻https://insubricahistorica.ch/blog/2018/04/16/polish-army-in-insubrica-region-case-of-losone
#Losone
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Gli internati polacchi nel Locarnese e Valle Maggia
Avevamo già scritto nell’aprile 2018 su Insubrica Historica un breve contributo sugli internati polacchi nella regione Insubrica. Durante dei lavori di ricerca per un imminente pubblicazione di Insubrica Historica sul Locarnese, abbiamo ritrovato ulteriori dettagli, che valgono la pena di essere condivisi.
La presenza degli internati polacchi in Ticino e soprattutto nel Locarnese è legata soprattutto alla caserma di Losone posta nella località Piana di Arbigo, la quale ospitò ben oltre la fine del conflitto un ingente numero di soldati polacchi, circa un migliaio. Da questa caserma vennero impiegati per diversi lavori di bonifica. La loro presenza viene ricordata nel Locarnese per la Strada dei Polacchi da Arcegno a Golino, o ancora ad Orselina per la cappella della Madonna di “Ostra Brama”.
Vi erano però diversi altri campi di lavoro distribuiti nella regione, i quali ospitavano anche loro soldati polacchi. In particolare grazie ad un recente articolo di Fabio Cheda Gli internati polacchi a Maggia, vi sono alcuni dettagli di questi campi nella Valle Maggia.
I campi erano distribuiti nella maniera seguente: ai Ronchini di Aurigeno (15-30 militi), a Bignasco (10-15 militi), a Cevio (40-50 militi), a Linescio (30-35 militi), presso l’edificio “Cortao di Bonitt” a Maggia (30-35 militi), al Piano di Peccia (fino a 15 militi) e a San Carlo (100-200 militi). Nella sola Valle Maggia vi era circa il 15% (n=200) del totale dei soldati polacchi internati in Svizzera (n=12’000) durante la guerra. La maggior parte di loro erano entrati in Svizzera nella regione del Giura Francese, duranta la disfatta dell’esercito francese nell’estate del 1940.
L’ubicazione di alcuni di questi campi e località di lavoro come a Lodano, lascia dedurre che l’impiego di questi soldati non era confinato al solo settore agricolo ma soprattutto anche nel disboscamento delle superfici forestali della Valle.
«Questi baldi giovanotti facevano girare spesso la testa alle ragazze e alle mogli locali, tenendo in considerazione che gran parte degli uomini del paese erano impegnati nel servizio militare. È appurato che i Polacchi abbiano lasciato il segno: una donna si presentò un giorno ai capi responsabili mostrando il ventre gonfio…» (Fabio Cheda, A tu per tu, Dicembre 2020)
Sempre secondo Fabio Cheda, il rapporto dei soldati polacchi con la popolazione era esemplare. Molto positivo, soprattutto con le signorine della Valle, tanto che vennero celebrati anche dei matrimoni.
Non tutti i soldati polacchi ebbero la pazienza di restare fino alla fine del conflitto, oppure di ritornare in Pologna. Ve ne sono alcuni che riuscirono anche a fuggire da questi campi di lavoro prima e dopo il conflitto, i quali pur essendo controllati da soldati dell’esercito Elvetico, non sottostavano a rigida disciplina, come invece si ebbe in altri campi soprattutto della Svizzera tedesca.
▻https://insubricahistorica.ch/blog/2021/09/30/gli-internati-polacchi-nel-locarnese-e-valle-maggia
#internement #internés
Internati polacchi in Svizzera tra guerra, lavoro e sentimento
Un’analisi storica sulla presenza degli internati militari polacchi in Svizzera durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale vuole essere un momento prezioso per una riflessione su noi stessi e sulla nostra terra elvetica: terra di transito in cui i nostri orizzonti hanno potuto incontrarsi, per pochi anni, con un popolo straordinario, che nel dolore, nella perdita e nella sofferenza del conflitto ha saputo dare, oltre che il suo sudore del lavoro - fondamentale per il nostro Paese - durante l’internamento, un esempio unico di dignità, di comunanza e di fratellanza.
Al di là della politica e delle vicissitudini belliche, gli uomini hanno saputo ritrovarsi, anche soltanto per un istante.
▻https://www.editore.ch/shopvm/varia/internati-polacchi-in-svizzera-tra-guerra-lavoro-e-sentimento-detail.html
Acquitté, Mimmo Lucano rêve de propager le modèle d’accueil de son village à travers l’Europe
Lourdement condamné en septembre 2021 pour « association de malfaiteurs aux fins d’immigration irrégulière », l’ancien maire calabrais Mimmo Lucano a été presque totalement blanchi par la justice le 12 avril. Il salue une « #victoire_morale » et se présente aux élections municipales et européennes qui se tiendront en juin.
L’ancienL’ancien maire de Riace garde le sourire, malgré le véritable « périple judiciaire » qu’il a dû traverser ces dernières années. Domenico Lucano, que tout le monde surnomme « Mimmo », insiste : sa propre personne ne compte pas. Il regrette surtout que l’image de Riace, petite commune de Calabre où il vit, et dont il a été le maire entre 2004 et 2018, ait été entachée par les accusations dont il a fait l’objet.
À travers son acquittement récent, et quasi total, il estime que l’accueil de l’autre est enfin reconnu « comme une solution et une renaissance », notamment pour les terres désertées par la population. « C’est avant tout une victoire morale », souligne-t-il. Ce modèle vertueux d’accueil et de solidarité, ce « Village global » qu’il a contribué à développer au fil des ans, Mimmo Lucano aimerait le voir élargi à toute l’Europe, à l’heure où celle-ci tend plutôt à se barricader.
Pour tenter d’y parvenir, il a choisi de se présenter aux prochaines élections municipales, à Riace, qui se tiendront en même temps que les élections européennes, pour lesquelles il est également candidat sur une liste d’alliance entre les Verts et la gauche italienne. « Ce qu’on voudrait, c’est une nouvelle Europe qui deviendrait le salut du monde. Pas celle des barbelés, dont les politiques ont provoqué la mort de dizaines de milliers de personnes », dit-il. Entretien.
Mediapart : Vous sortez d’un sacré feuilleton judiciaire…
Domenico Lucano : Oui. Un périple judiciaire. C’est mon histoire, mais c’est surtout celle d’une petite communauté, celle de Riace. Un petit bout de la périphérie européenne, avec sa mer Méditerranée, une sorte d’autoroute des pays arabes vers l’Europe. Mais c’est aussi la mer de la tragédie du monde. La Méditerranée a malheureusement changé de couleur, passant du bleu, du vert, au rouge, la couleur du sang. Le sang de beaucoup d’hommes et de femmes qui ne sont pas arrivés au bout de leur chemin. La mer est devenue un piège à leur tentative de bonheur. Elle a pris la couleur de la mort. Au cœur de l’histoire de Riace, il y a surtout un combat, devenu très médiatique, pour l’accueil de l’autre et pour un idéal politique différent.
Beaucoup de réfugiés afghans fuyant les talibans sont arrivés en Calabre. Je pense aussi à cette tragique nuit d’hiver, le 26 février 2023, durant laquelle les secours ne sont pas venus. Le ministère de l’intérieur a organisé l’arrivée de la douane plutôt que celle des gardes-côtes, qui avaient pourtant les moyens de les sauver. Quatre-vingt-quatorze personnes ont perdu la vie, après avoir passé cinq jours en mer, dont beaucoup d’enfants. En 2022, l’actuel ministre de l’intérieur a utilisé ces mots terribles s’agissant des migrants : il s’agit de « charges résiduelles ». Le gouvernement italien fêtait l’anniversaire de Salvini pendant que les familles pleuraient leurs morts. C’est sans doute le moment le plus déplorable. Il ne sert à rien d’être parmi les grandes puissances mondiales ou de surveiller sa croissance économique quand on est capables d’un tel cynisme face à la vie humaine. La droite a montré son vrai visage.
La droite et l’extrême droite ?
Je crois qu’il n’y a pas de différence en Italie. « Extrême » est un adjectif, mais la droite est le lieu commun de la déshumanisation. On a vu différentes tentatives du ministère de l’intérieur pour empêcher les migrants de débarquer en Italie. Le paradoxe, c’est de constater qu’un gouvernement indigne, qui s’illustre par son inhumanité, grimpe dans les sondages. Faire face à ce gouvernement en Italie, en usant d’une parole libre, ne provoque en retour que des coups de matraque. C’est du jamais-vu. Il y a une dérive de la droite en Italie.
Ce contexte politique vous a aussi valu une lourde condamnation en 2021 – 13 ans de prison et 500 000 euros d’amende, pour « association de malfaiteurs aux fins d’immigration irrégulière ». Comment l’avez-vous vécue ?
Le 4 octobre 2018, à l’aube, j’ai vu des voitures arriver chez moi pour m’arrêter. Cela a marqué le début d’une histoire hallucinante, qui a duré presque sept ans. Quand j’ai été condamné en première instance le 30 septembre 2021, le sentiment qu’il s’agissait d’un procès politique s’est vite propagé en Italie. On m’a contraint à m’éloigner de Riace durant onze mois, alors que j’avais donné ma vie pour cette terre. Il y a eu une manifestation d’ampleur à Rome, un ex-sénateur a lancé une collecte de fonds destinée à régler l’amende dont je faisais l’objet.
La collecte a rencontré un succès fou. Mais je lui ai dit que je n’en voulais pas. Je voulais simplement continuer d’accueillir les réfugiés à Riace, et on a construit le « Village global », avec une crèche pour 12 enfants immigrés et plein d’activités. On a tout fait pour continuer de faire exister ce monde-là. J’ai donc vécu cette condamnation avec sérénité, parce que j’ai pu profiter de la solidarité de la population italienne et du reste du monde, qui se raccrochait à la seule perspective de la fraternité.
Je suis conscient que le fait qu’un petit village de Calabre puisse devenir un exemple pour l’accueil des personnes exilées a beaucoup gêné. Le modèle « Riace » a fait peur au système néolibéral. Mais l’ennemi n’est pas l’étranger ou celui qui lui vient en aide : ce n’est autre que cette nouvelle vague de fascisme qu’il y a en Europe et dans le monde, qui ne cherche qu’à fermer les frontières et à créer des forteresses. Je regrette d’avoir vu après tant d’années de propagande une forme d’égoïsme s’installer dans l’esprit des gens, tel un consensus politique.
Comment vous sentez-vous aujourd’hui, après cette réhabilitation par la justice ?
Je vais bien. Deux de mes enfants sont à Rome, le troisième habite avec mon épouse, et je suis seul à Riace. La plupart de mes proches ont vécu l’acquittement comme une libération. Au niveau local, il y a eu une solidarité immédiate, y compris de la part de personnes qui ne partageaient pas ma vision politique. Mais le plus merveilleux dans cette fin de feuilleton, ce n’est pas l’acquittement en soi, ce sont les motivations des juges. Ces derniers ont attendu 90 jours pour les rendre publiques et signifier au reste de monde qu’on ne touchera pas au message politique pour lequel je me suis battu.
Ils ont rétabli la vérité et confirmé que je n’avais pas pensé à profiter une seconde du système d’accueil que j’avais mis en place à Riace, ni que j’avais pu m’enrichir par ce biais. Ce n’est donc pas un acquittement technique ou juridique. C’est un acquittement moral. Et pour la première fois dans l’histoire des migrations, l’immigration en Italie peut enfin être regardée sous une lumière totalement opposée à celle proposée par certains politiciens. L’accueil de l’autre est enfin reconnu comme une solution et une renaissance. C’est avant tout une victoire morale, et cela vaut plus que tout.
Vous avez fait le choix de revenir en politique, en vous présentant aux municipales à Riace mais aussi aux européennes, sur la liste des Verts et de l’Alliance de gauche (Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra) – élections qui se tiendront toutes deux les 8 et 9 juin prochains. Est-ce que votre acquittement a joué dans votre décision ?
Non, car je n’ai jamais perdu ce désir d’engagement politique. La politique, pour moi, se résume à l’espoir, et je n’ai jamais été fatigué à l’idée de continuer d’espérer. Dès le départ, le Village global a été conçu comme un laboratoire politique au niveau local. Cela a d’ailleurs été l’opportunité de multiples réunions, prises de décision collectives et autres activités communes. C’est dans cette démarche que nous avons donc voulu réunir la gauche au-delà du Parti démocrate (Partito Democratico), dont Elly Schlein est la secrétaire.
Ça n’a pas été facile. Les responsables du parti n’en ont pas tenu compte, alors on a trouvé une coalition a gauche du Parti démocrate. Les Verts et l’Alliance de gauche italienne m’ont demandé si je voulais participer aux européennes. Et avec tous les camarades de Riace, on a dit oui. C’était une envie partagée, parce que les positions qu’ils défendent contre la guerre, en faveur de l’accueil des exilés ou encore pour une loi pour le salaire minimum en Italie correspondaient à mes choix politiques. Un jour, j’aimerais qu’il y ait un panneau « Village de l’accueil » un peu partout dans les communes d’Europe !
Mais force est de constater que l’on observe plutôt une politique de rejet en Europe…
À Riace, on a réussi à l’échelle d’une toute petite réalité. Un village de quatre cents habitants est désormais connu pour sa politique d’accueil. À l’échelle européenne, nous ne serons peut-être plus là pour observer ce changement de paradigme. Mais je suis persuadé que d’une petite chose peut naître une grande chose. Je suis heureux que figure sur notre liste la candidate Ilaria Salis, arrêtée par Viktor Orbán en Hongrie pour son engagement contre le fascisme. Nous avons une histoire similaire, elle se bat pour le respect des droits humains. Lorsque j’ai vu les images d’elle à la télévision, la montrant menottée, j’ai été fier de la savoir à mes côtés dans cette aventure au niveau européen.
Le pacte migratoire européen a été adopté dans la douleur il y a peu. Êtes-vous inquiet de voir cette politique de repli concrétisée à l’échelle européenne à travers ces textes ?
Ce pacte est absurde. Je n’en partage pas les objectifs, évidemment. On voit partout des tentatives d’affaiblir le droit d’asile, y compris en Italie, ou de créer des sortes de voies de déportation vers des pays tiers comme l’Albanie, où le respect des droits humains n’est pas garanti. C’est triste quand on voit ce qu’on a été capables de faire à notre petite échelle. Je pense que la droite souffre d’un syndrome de la peur de l’être humain. C’est ce qu’on observe en Italie mais aussi en Europe. Ce qu’on voudrait, c’est une nouvelle Europe qui deviendrait le salut du monde. Pas celle des barbelés, dont les politiques ont provoqué la mort de dizaines de milliers de personnes.
Pourquoi vous présenter à deux élections, à deux échelles différentes ?
C’est une question redoutable (rires). Je ne veux pas devenir un bureaucrate. Je mettrai la même conviction à l’échelle européenne et je ne ferai de concession à personne : les profits de la politique ne m’intéressent pas. Et j’ajouterai que paradoxalement, je suis d’accord avec la manière dont Matteo Salvini m’a défini un jour, lorsqu’une personne lui a demandé ce qu’il pensait de moi. Il a répondu : « Il vaut zéro. » Ça me convient assez bien, je considère que je ne suis personne. Ce qui est sûr, c’est que j’ai à cœur de poursuivre mon engagement au niveau local et européen. En Italie, la loi permet d’être à la fois maire et député européen.
Alors, bien sûr, les possibilités sont multiples : je peux être élu maire de Riace, être élu député européen ou les deux, ou pas élu du tout. Je continuerai dans tous les cas à développer le modèle Riace, et j’aimerais élargir ce modèle d’accueil à d’autres communes en Italie, et à d’autres États en Europe, un modèle en faveur de l’accueil qui permet aussi de contrer le déclin démographique. Et pour aller plus loin, j’aimerais également créer une collectivité de communes qui partagerait une monnaie unique, pour nous permettre de sortir de ce néolibéralisme, qui détruit notre économie et notre démocratie, tout en valorisant le travail fourni au sein de la communauté.
►https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/040524/acquitte-mimmo-lucano-reve-de-propager-le-modele-d-accueil-de-son-village-
#Riace #Mimmo_Lucano #Domenico_Lucano #accueil #réfugiés #migrations #Italie #Calabre #justice #acquittement #entretien #interview #solidarité #criminalisation_de_la_solidarité #villes-refuge #périple_judiciaire #condamnation #réhabilitation #libération #acquittement_moral #engagement_politique
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Ce fil de discussion est la suite de celui-ci :
11 octobre 2023, verdict en cour d’appel pour le #procès contre #Mimmo_Lucano, ancien maire de #Riace
►https://seenthis.net/messages/1020950
signalé par @olaf ici :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/1052451
ping @_kg_
Turning walls into bridges — the transformative power of ‘unruly’ migration
When we allow ourselves to consider struggles over the Mediterranean border as resistance, a clearer picture of border abolition emerges.
In 2015, when visiting a school occupied by refugee protestors in Berlin, activist and philosopher Angela Davis remarked: “The refugee movement is the movement of the 21st century.” In 2022, Davis returned to the city and spoke at a square that protestors had occupied a decade earlier. Standing before a jubilant crowd, Davis pointed back to the comment she had made seven years earlier, noting: “I was attempting to argue then, as I try to do today, that the refugee movement encapsulates our planet’s struggle for a better future.”
Davis’ remarks are and remain important. While certainly overstating the unified character of the refugee movement, she offered a provocation, inviting us to reflect on the political significance and transformative power of contemporary struggles over human movement. In public discourse, such significance and power are commonly downplayed or ignored, if not erased.
People on the move, for lack of a better term, are often considered victims of circumstance, who, abused and exploited, dwell in the margins of society. Portrayed as desperate and passive, their struggles to move — and often to stay — are rendered unpolitical. Such victimization is key in denuding them of political agency and meaning. As the political theorist Sandro Mezzadra once wrote: “The world of victims exists outside of politics.”
“At stake in every politics of border control is an attempt to control the borders of the political.” With this witty phrase, political theorists Angela Mitropoulos and Brett Neilson ask us to pay attention to the borders of the political and the ways in which political subjects are made and unmade. The placing of “migrantized” subjects outside the realm of the political is a bordering practice. The space of recognition seems occupied by other actors — political parties, unions, social movements.
To counteract that, Mitropoulos and Neilson propose to complicate common distinctions made between migrant movements and social movements. Instead of considering migrant movements simply “in a kinetic sense” — or as passages from one place to another — and instead of understanding social movements merely in a political and representational sense, they ask us to situate both somewhere in-between “’movement as politics’ and ‘movement as motion.’”
In the book I wrote a few years back on contemporary struggles around migration, I tried to do that. By placing the notions of “migration” and “resistance” in close proximity to one another, I was not meaning to suggest that all and any migratory acts should be considered acts of political resistance — that would be naïve and misguided. Rather, the intention was to open up a perspective, a way of seeing.
If we allowed ourselves to consider “unauthorized” forms of human movement as political — and even as some of the most important transformative practices of our time — what do we learn about the planetary regulation of human life and movement? What can we find out about forms of global injustice and the role of borders in maintaining and reinforcing these? What do we learn about political resistance itself?
As this all may sound a bit abstract, it could be helpful to look at a particular example: In the European context, the Mediterranean border has become one of the central spaces where struggles over unauthorized migration play out. For decades, the European Union and its member states have experimented with ways to militarize this border to prevent boat arrivals.
European politicians have justified deterrence measures not only by portraying people who seek to cross as all kinds of security threats, but also by considering them victims of unscrupulous smuggling gangs. In doing so, they have promoted the illusion that border “protection” could go hand-in-hand with the protection of people on the move – à la: “If you poor souls don’t move in the first place, and stay away from Europe, you don’t get exploited by smugglers and drown in the sea.”
Now, what happens if we push back against this dominant narrative and consider cross-Mediterranean movements in the register of political resistance?
For one, we see that people who board overcrowded boats are more than what Europe’s paternalistic stories turn them into. As political subjects, they engage in transgressive acts of escape that require courage, organization, knowledge, skill and solidarity among groups on the move. Through disobedient movements, they become harraga, an Arabic term describing those who “burn borders” and navigate themselves into European territory. As Amade M’charek writes:
“Harraga [is] an activity that burns state-rules: rules that stipulate that this border can only be crossed in this way and not in another; or that papers are only legal in this way and not in another. … what people engaged in harraga do is mess up boundaries.”
When we allow ourselves to consider struggles over the Mediterranean border in the register of resistance, we can also see how novel practices of solidarity have emerged. Needing to adapt to freedom of movement struggles in dangerous border zones, civil society and activist groups had to invent ways to become present in spaces often deemed not merely outside of sovereign space but even outside the realm of politics as such.
Actors like Alarm Phone (which assists people on boats in distress through an activist hotline), the civil fleet (which carries out rescue operations), or civil airplanes (which monitor the sea from above) have entered the contested space of the Mediterranean. The solidarities that have formed en route have proven important not merely for transgressive maritime movements but also for documenting horrendous forms of border violence that had previously gone unseen.
Over the past decade, the Mediterranean border has been opened up for interrogation through struggles over movement. We now have a much better understanding of the violent regulation of migration, and what Martina Tazzioli and Nicholas De Genova have called a “confinement continuum” that people on the move are confronted with: “being targeted, exploited, kidnapped, blackmailed, abused, raped, tortured and sometimes killed.”
The harrowing border violence that has led to tens of thousands of deaths at sea is a response to disobedient movements. The Mediterranean has not only become a deathscape — due to the adverse biophysical forces at work there (the rough sea, the strong winds) — but a space of suffering due to transnational and transcontinental coalitions of border enforcers that “protect” borders, not people.
When we take a step back and consider Mediterranean migration as resistance, we can see even more. While we see how borders violently try to keep particularly racialized populations in particular places, we also get a sense of the transformative power of “unruly” migration. Over the past decade, and despite border militarization, more than 2.5 million people have subverted the Mediterranean obstacle. We can consider these transgressive movements as what I called them elsewhere: forms of “practical border abolitionism.”
People who have moved have claimed a presence in Europe, and this presence will not be eradicated. Nonetheless, in times when calls for border closure, the end to asylum, and mass deportations become increasingly mainstream — and go hand-in-hand with a normalization of violence targeting people on the move — there is a desperate need for broad coalitions of resistance. In order to collectively resist ethno-nationalist fantasies and the incredibly violent, racialized and divisive work that borders do all around our world, we need to breach the sovereign and national scripts that delimit who count as political subjects and who do not.
“Walls turned sideways are bridges,” Angela Davis once wrote. When we consider unauthorized migration in the register of resistance, we suddenly see the ones who keep turning walls into bridges: people on the move themselves.
▻https://wagingnonviolence.org/rs/2024/05/turning-walls-into-bridges-the-transformative-power-of-unruly-mig
#liberté_de_mouvement #ouverture_des_frontières #murs #ponts #Maurice_Stierl #résistance #mouvement #migrations
Mai 2024
~22 people stranded on an islet in the #Evros river, by #Kastanies !
The group say there are children and people who need urgent medical care. They report some of them have been pushed back to #Türkiye before and fear it happening again. @Hellenicpolice: assist them now!
#limbe #zone_frontalière #île #Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #fleuve_Evros #Turquie #Grèce #Thrace #îlots
#nudité
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ajouté à la métaliste sur #métaliste sur des #réfugiés abandonnés sur des #îlots dans la région de l’#Evros, #frontière_terrestre entre la #Grèce et la #Turquie :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/953343
Avec le #Liban, l’UE compte de nouveau sur un #pays_tiers pour contrôler les migrations
Un nouvel #accord a été conclu entre l’Union européenne et le Liban cette semaine, à hauteur d’un milliard d’euros. Ce dernier vise, sous couvert d’aider à maintenir la sécurité et la stabilité du pays, à freiner les départs d’exilés syriens en direction de l’Europe.
La tournée continue. L’Union européenne vient de signer un nouveau « deal », cette fois avec le Liban, pour qu’un pays tiers gère le contrôle de ses frontières. Après l’Égypte et la Tunisie, c’est désormais à un Liban en crise de tenter de maîtriser les départs des exilés présents sur son sol, qui pourraient aspirer à rejoindre l’Europe pour une vie meilleure.
Cette aide d’un milliard d’euros, annoncée à l’occasion d’une visite de la présidente de la commission européenne Ursula von der Leyen et du président chypriote Níkos Christodoulídis à Beyrouth le 2 mai, devrait s’étaler jusqu’en 2027 et « permettra de soutenir la population au Liban et de contribuer à sa sécurité et sa stabilité », a argué Ursula von der Leyen.
Entre les lignes, le spectre migratoire n’est jamais bien loin : cette enveloppe doit certes permettre de soutenir « les plus vulnérables », à l’heure où le Liban traverse une crise socio-économique majeure, mais aussi et surtout « les réfugiés, les personnes déplacées à l’intérieur du pays et les communautés d’accueil », tout en renforçant le soutien aux forces armées libanaises « dans la lutte contre la #traite et le #trafic_d’êtres_humains ».
Autrement dit les #passeurs, qui permettent aux Syriennes et Syriens de faire la traversée vers l’île de Chypre, où le nombre d’arrivées par la mer a bondi ces dernières années ; et où, tout récemment, le gouvernement a annoncé vouloir suspendre les demandes d’asile pour les Syrien·nes sur l’île, en violation du droit international et en particulier de la Convention de Genève relative aux réfugiés.
C’était d’ailleurs l’objet d’une première rencontre entre le président chypriote et le premier ministre libanais, Najib Mikati, organisée le 8 avril dernier à Beyrouth. Le premier ministre libanais avait alors assuré que « l’armée et les forces de sécurité libanaises faisaient de leur mieux pour mettre fin à l’immigration illégale ».
L’entrevue avait abouti sur l’idée d’une coopération entre les deux pays, avec une « aide substantielle de la commission européenne », comme l’avait souligné le porte-parole du gouvernement chypriote à l’issue de la rencontre.
Des contours flous
Plus surprenant, le Conseil européen a également « réaffirmé la nécessité de créer les conditions d’un #retour_sûr, volontaire et digne des réfugiés syriens, telles que définies par le Haut-Commissariat aux réfugiés », peut-on lire dans un communiqué de la commission européenne en date du 2 mai.
La #Syrie n’est pourtant pas considérée comme un #pays_sûr, comme le font remarquer différents observateurs : en septembre 2021, l’ONG Amnesty International avait même pointé dans un rapport les nombreuses violences – torture, viols, détention arbitraire – dont les réfugiés de retour en Syrie peuvent faire l’objet.
Dans tous les cas, soulève Wadih Al-Asmar, président du réseau EuroMed Droits, « 250 millions d’euros sont prévus pour l’#armée_libanaise, qui participe à renvoyer des Syriens chez eux malgré les dangers qu’ils encourent en Syrie ». L’argent européen va donc « permettre des violations des droits de l’homme », regrette-t-il, expliquant que plusieurs cas ont déjà été documentés par ses équipes dernièrement.
L’homme s’interroge par ailleurs sur cette enveloppe financière tombée de nulle part : fait-elle partie des fonds alloués par l’UE au Liban de façon régulière depuis 2011 ? S’agit-il d’une somme allouée de façon exceptionnelle ?
Il souligne les « contours très flous » de cet accord, conclu avec le premier ministre libanais alors que celui-ci n’a pas l’habilitation de signer des accords internationaux, pour lequel aucun texte n’a encore visiblement été rédigé. « Aucun texte n’a été présenté au parlement libanais ou au parlement européen. C’est avant tout un grand effet d’annonce », estime celui qui est aussi président du centre libanais des droits humains à Beyrouth.
Un coup de com’ « très problématique sur le plan des #droits_humains » : il pourrait provoquer une « pression supplémentaire sur les réfugiés syriens » présents au Liban, et participe au narratif faisant des Syriens les responsables de tous les maux que peut connaître le pays. « Il y a pourtant une classe politique corrompue qui a volé l’argent des Libanais, mais au lieu de poursuivre en justice les responsables de tout ça, on met tout sur le dos des réfugiés syriens », déplore Wadih Al-Asmar.
Dans l’esprit du pacte migratoire européen
L’effet d’annonce derrière ce nouvel accord vise aussi à conforter Chypre dans ses prises de position plus ou moins explicites contre les réfugiés syriens qui tentent de rejoindre l’île par la mer.
Depuis quelques mois, Chypre « viole le droit européen » en refusant le débarquement de ces réfugiés. « Ursula von der Leyen donne donc une couverture politique au président chypriote en concluant cet accord », estime Wadih Al-Asmar.
L’eurodéputé Damien Carême abonde : « On a l’impression que c’est pour calmer Chypre, qui ne veut plus accueillir de réfugiés syriens et va jusqu’à les refouler. On note d’ailleurs le mutisme de la Commission européenne sur ces agissements. »
Ce nouvel accord s’inscrit, relève l’eurodéputé, dans la droite ligne du pacte migratoire européen, adopté le 10 avril dernier par le Parlement européen. « Il s’agit d’externaliser la gestion des frontières et de renvoyer le plus de personnes possible », explicite l’écologiste, qui a très vite marqué son désaccord avec ce pacte.
Après la Mauritanie, la Tunisie, l’Égypte ou encore la Libye, « l’UE s’enferme dans des solutions qui ont déjà montré toute leur inefficacité ». Signer des accords avec des pays tiers dits « sûrs » est désormais devenu une « obsession », tacle l’eurodéputé, qui prend soin de relativiser la notion de pays « sûr ».
« On ne sait pas bien ce qu’il y a derrière cette notion, puisque la Tunisie est par exemple considérée comme un pays sûr, et la Libye aussi, malgré tout ce qu’il s’y passe. » Impossible de ne pas relever les incohérences s’agissant du cas précis de la Syrie, où la commission européenne encourage le retour volontaire des réfugiés syriens, tout en considérant que le pays n’est pas « sûr ». « C’est dramatique et très inquiétant », alerte celui qui pointe là un « cynisme maximal ».
Massivement présents sur le territoire libanais (un million et demi de réfugiés, soit près de 30 % de la population), mais victimes de discours populistes allant jusqu’à la théorie raciste du « grand remplacement », rejetés par Chypre et soumise à des marchandages financiers orchestrés par l’UE, prête à débourser un milliard d’euros pour ne pas les voir débarquer sur son sol… voilà le « marché de dupes » auxquels sont soumis les réfugiés syriens, dénonce Wadih Al-Asmar, qui résume la visite d’Ursula von der Leyen à un « échec ».
Cette dernière veut « transformer le Liban en poste frontière avancé de l’UE », comme d’autres pays par le passé. Mais selon lui, le nombre de traversées par la mer vers Chypre ne baissera pas, et le business des passeurs, que l’accord UE-Liban est censé mettre à mal, continuera de fleurir de son côté, avec l’assentiment de la population libanaise, « contente de voir qu’ils font partir les réfugiés syriens ».
Au final, conclut-il, « l’UE ne fait pas baisser la pression sur les réfugiés syriens, n’apporte pas de garanties réelles pour améliorer leur condition au Liban, et offre une image dégradée de l’Europe qui ne cherche qu’à contenir les migrations dans un pays tiers ».
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/030524/avec-le-liban-l-ue-compte-de-nouveau-sur-un-pays-tiers-pour-controler-les-
#externalisation #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #aide_financières #réfugiés_syriens #renvois #expulsions #retour_volontaire #retour_digne #pays-tiers_sûrs
ping @_kg_
EU unveils €1-billion aid package for Lebanon in bid to curb refugee flows
The European Union will provide €1 billion in financial aid to Lebanon over three years to prop up the country’s economy and help prevent a surge in refugees leaving for Europe.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the move on Thursday morning following a meeting with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.
The financial envelope, made up entirely of grants and to be dispersed by 2027, will help Lebanon strengthen basic services such as education, social protection and health, and spur economic reforms in the crisis-stricken country, von der Leyen said.
But some three quarters of the cash - a total of €736 million - will be specifically dedicated to helping Lebanon grapple with the challenges it faces in welcoming Syrian refugees.
“We understand the challenges that Lebanon faces with hosting Syrian refugees and other displaced persons. It is vital to ensure the well-being of host communities and Syrian refugees,” von der Leyen said.
The Commission chief also vowed to “look at how to make the EU’s assistance more effective,” including facilitating a “more structured approach to voluntary returns” of displaced Syrians in cooperation with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
It comes after EU leaders backed deeper engagement with Beirut last month to help safeguard it from the repercussions of the conflict in the Middle East, and after Cyprus raised the alarm over a sharp peak in the number of Syrian refugees arriving from Lebanon.
It also follows a string of agreements signed over the last year between Brussels and African countries in a bid to stem migration into Europe.
A deepening economic crisis and fragile government make Lebanon particularly vulnerable to the instability gripping the region in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
The country is home to some 210,000 Palestinian and 1.5 million Syrian refugees, prompting fears regional instability could unleash a wave of migrants towards Europe via the island of Cyprus.
Cash to stem refugee flows
In early April, Cyprus announced it would temporarily halt the processing of asylum applications due to a surge in arrivals of Syrian refugees transiting through Lebanon and attempting to reach the island, which lies just 260 km off the Lebanese coast in the Mediterranean Sea.
Over 1,000 people arrived in Cyprus by boats from Lebanon during the first two weeks of April, leaving refugee and reception centres on the island overloaded.
“The problems seen on the Cypriot border is only one example of what could happen if this problem is not addressed,” Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati acknowledged on Thursday, thanking Cyprus’ President Christodoulides for brokering the agreement.
Hailing the announcement as “historic”, Christodoulides said that the financial envelope would address a situation that is “not sustainable” for either Lebanon, Cyprus or the European Union.
“While we commend the Lebanese government for hosting a large number of Syrian refugees for more than 12 years, we are also fully cognisant of the enormous pressure that this creates to your economy and to your society,” Christodoulides said.
He backed von der Leyen’s proposal of intensifying work with partners such as UNHCR on voluntary returns, where refugees who want to return to their home countries - even if the UN agency considers it unsafe for them - are supported to do so.
Christodoulides also went further by calling for the status of some regions of Syria to be “re-examined” as safe areas to facilitate the return of migrants and refugees, a proposal he tabled at last month’s summit meeting of EU leaders.
Syria, which has been under the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad for more than two decades, has been designated an unsafe country since the civil war erupted in 2011. But refugee host countries such as Turkey and Lebanon have been pushing for the mass return of Syrian refugees to the country.
A European Commission spokesperson confirmed that the EU has followed the lead of the UNHCR in their approach to safe zones in Syria, and that Brussels is “embarking now on discussions to see how to approach this issue in the upcoming period.”
Von der Leyen also floated a working arrangement between Lebanon and the EU’s border agency, Frontex, “particularly on information exchange and situational awareness.” The agency currently has such arrangements in place with 19 partner countries.
Security of Lebanon ’at stake’
Both Christodoulides and von der Leyen also acknowledged the threat posed by the war between Israel and Hamas to Lebanon’s security.
The Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah is present in the country and has continuously exchanged fire across Lebanon’s southern border with Israel since the outbreak of the war last October.
Hezbollah also took part in Tehran’s unprecedented aerial attack on Israel last month.
“We are deeply concerned about the volatile situation in South Lebanon. What is at stake is the security of both Lebanon and Israel. The two cannot be disassociated,” von der Leyen said.
Von der Leyen asked for a UN resolution calling on Israel to withdraw its troops from the Blue Line, the border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel, to be respected.
▻https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/05/02/eu-unveils-1-billion-aid-package-for-lebanon-in-bid-to-curb-refugee-flows
#Abou_Nader: Lebanese people reject European aid as a bribe to contain refugees
#Fouad_Abou_Nader announced that Lebanese people have significant doubts regarding the EU’s financial package for Lebanon, estimated at a value of one billion euros over four years.
He said: “If it is a veiled bribe intended to task the government with containing Syrian refugees and keeping them in Lebanon, then this assistance is to be returned to the givers with thanks.”
He added: “The assistance that Lebanon was expecting from Europe is the regular repatriation of refugees to their country by giving them direct incentives in Syria. They can start by repatriating about 200,000 refugees who freely move between Lebanon and their country and have participated in the recent elections, which means there are no problems between them and the regime.”
He asked: “Lebanese people were promised the transfer of Syrian prisoners to their country to complete their sentences there, so where is this promise now?”
▻https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/lebanon-news/770041/abou-nader-lebanese-people-reject-european-aid-as-a-bribe-to-contain-r/en
Milan la ville forgée par le #socialwashing - #greenwashing au profit des riches
Le livre super efficace de Lucia Tozzi raconte la dernière grande #transformation de Milan au bénéfice des profits de la #spéculation financière-immobilière à travers un bombardement de communication du sociawashing mixé avec le greenwashing, donc la #gentification aux dépenses des moins fortunés contraints à migrer ailleurs ou expulsés. Un cas exemplaire de contrerévolution néolibérale pervasive.
Ceux qui visitent Milan aujourd’hui ne pourront jamais imaginer que jusqu’au début des année 1970 cette ville était la capitale du mouvement ouvrier, avec des grèves et manifs de cent-cinquante mille travailleurs, étudiants et habitants, la plus importante ville industrielle, commerciale et des groupes financiers d’Italie. Depuis la ville n’a pas arrêté de perdre des centaines de milliers d’habitants (aujourd’hui 1.371.850 résidents dont environ 40% qui y sont nés). Et le turnover de ses résidants augmente de plus en plus : de 1971 à 2022 on a eu presque deux millions de nouveaux inscrits à l’état civil et deux millions d’effacés (émigré ailleurs). De 2001 à la fin de 2021 on a eu 40.520 décès plus des naissances. Un turnover que selon Lucia Tozzi arrange bien le « modèle » de ville que les administrateurs et les acteurs dominants poursuivent : une ville de gens qui n’ont pas de racines, qui n’ont pas de mémoire du territoire, qui sont prêtes à être phagocytés par les discours dominant merci au bombardement de la communication pervasive.
Jusqu’au début des année 2000 Milan était une ville plutôt triste et en déclin. Comme raconte Lucia Tozzi c’est avec l’Expo de 2005 que tout est bouleversé par la stratégie des grands groupes financiers-immobiliers qui misent sur une communication hyper pervasive et efficace mélangeant le discours de la pseudo-conversion verte (le greenwashing à la mode un peu partout dans le monde) et le discours pseudo-social (socialwashing) qui fait croire dans des projets qui en réalité ne font que donner aux privés de plus en plus du patrimoine public ; c’est notamment le cas de ce qu’on appelle le social housing, c.à.d. la privatisation déguisé des logements HLM et ILM ou leur insertion dans le marché des locations et ventes aux prix … de marché qui maintenant à Milan est en voie de s’approcher de celui de Paris.
La littérature mainstream des intellos et académiciens bien aimés par les acteurs dominants (par exemple Patrick Le Galès) ne rend pas compte de ce processus et au contraire exalte les changements e cours comme une fabuleuse « renaissance » bien gouvernée. Ainsi, Lucia Tozzi n’arrête pas de décrypter cette littérature qui concerne aussi les experts des plusieurs Fondations derrière lesquelles on trouve les groupes financiers-immobilières transnationaux. De fait Milan devient la capitale ou province du capitalisme néo-libéral globalisée. Une ville à la merci de la spéculation du Real Estate, des économies souterraines, la ville la plus polluée d’Europe (comme le montrent les images satellitaires européennes ainsi que l’état des cours d’eaux, des terrains et de l’agriculture des environs, l’énorme quantité d’élevages industriels et aussi les données sur la mortalité). Une réalité effrontément coupée en deux notamment entre la très longue queue de pauvres qui quotidiennement attendent d’avoir un petit sachet d’aliments devant la porte du Pane quotidiano, les familles des périphéries (qui maintenant la langue socialwashing appelle quartier en voie de requalification), la ville des riders et des dizaines de milliers de navetteurs, des étudiants non-résidents qui n’arrivent pas à avoir un lits vue les prix hallucinants, et, de l’autre coté la ville des dizaines de nouveaux tours des grandes firmes et groupes financiers avec autour leurs squares aux bistros et boutiques de luxe. Les acteurs dominants de la ville avec le plein soutien de l’administration (de “gauche”) n’arrêtent pas de construire des logements hyper chers (pas moins de mille euros à chambre et récemment en très forte augmentation).
Selon le site UE l’Italie est première en UE pour la TVA non collectée (évadée) et la province de Milan (ainsi que toute la Lombardie) est la région avec le plus haut montant d’évasion fiscale et des contributions sociales. 25% des contribuables ont un revenu annuel inférieur à 10 mille euros, 11% ceux avec un revenu entre 10 mille et 15 mille et 26% ceux entre 15 mille et 26 mille ; donc 62% des contribuables n’atteignent pas un revenus annuel de plus de 26 mille euros, alors que 7% dépassent 75 mille euros. Bref, le revenu annuel du quinzième plus riche de la population atteigne 105 mille euros et plus, tandis que le quart le plus pauvre ne dispose que de 4.521 euros.
Cette situation est en rapide évolution dans le sens quel les moins fortunés sont contraints à émigrer vers les banlieues les plus pauvres. Par ailleurs les contribuables avec les plus hauts revenus sont souvent les fraudeurs du fisc, toujours bien épaulés par des experts dans ce domaine ainsi que dans celui des paradis fiscaux. Remarquons qu’en Italie presque toujours les forces de police et une partie de la magistrature sont complices des illégalismes des acteurs dominants ; cela depuis Berlusconi et l’ex-gauche qui a gouverné en alternance aux droites. Et maintenant, ce n’est pas un hasard que l’actuel gouvernement fasciste ne fait qu’adopter des décrets et lois en faveur de l’évasion fiscale et des contributions sociales, bref des économies souterraines et donc des illégalismes des dominants. Par ailleurs on constate un très fort turnover de la plupart des activités économiques, (surtout bistros, boutiques d’alimentation ou de pacotilles etc., petits restos etc.).
Mais comme raconte Lucia Tozzi les critiques et contestations de la dérive néolibérale de la ville sont très limitées, marginalisées, obscurées tout d’abord parce que la grande majorité des habitants est prisonnière d’une double piège : celle de la communication très phagocytante/pervasive et celle des réseaux. Il y a un chape de propagande et censure diffusées merci au chantage : “On est toujours sur le bord de l’abime, mais la seule voie du salut est communiquer tous ensemble qu’ici tout va bien ! Que Milan est une exception, un modèle positif, vertueux ! Lors de l’explosion de la pandémie qui a frappé Milan plus que toutes les autres villes italiennes, le maire (de “gauche”) avait lancé le slogan : #milanononsiferma (Milan ne s’arrête pas !) et encore après les fortes critiques reçues il a déclaré : “En ville le retour à la normalité sera dans une paire de mois”. Bref l’idée est que si on collabore tous ensemble on va convaincre le monde que c’est vrai et on va gagner. Quant aux réseaux c’est l’effet de la prolifération énorme des projets et des appels d’offre pour toutes sortes de projets et n’importe quoi. Cela contraigne à se mettre en réseau et à se plier aux règles et cages de ces appels qui inévitablement conduisent à faire et dire ce qui veulent les donneurs des financements.
La narration dominante dit : « le public n’a pas d’argent et il est nul, le privé fait mieux et rapidement ». La marche dévastatrice de la privatisation a commencé dans le secteur de la santé par œuvre de la région aux mains de la droite la plus ignoble (Comunione e Liberazione, la holding-secte de cathos de droite dont l’alors président de la région était un fidèle adepte -il fut ensuit condamné pour corruption … mais pas pour tous les délits commis pendant presque quinze ans de pouvoir). Depuis la privatisation a grimpé sans arrêt jusqu’au point que progressivement la Mairie a confié aux privés presque tout le patrimoine immobilier (piscines, parcs, squares, places publiques, jardins, écoles, bibliothèques, logements etc. etc.). La justification passée comme indiscutable a été que tout ce patrimoine était délabré, dans un état qui rendait impossible son utilisation et la Mairie n’avait pas l’argent pour les travaux nécessaires à la restauration. Dès lors toute la ville est devenue une suite de zones exclusives maitrisées par les propriétaire de fait des espaces « publics » … interdits à ceux qui par les faciès ou l’allure conformes à des quartiers de riches consommateurs ; chaque espace de ce genre est hyper surveillé par des polices privées, vidéosurveillance à gogo etc.
Un autre fait emblématique est que la participation aux élections communales a chuté à environ 40%, ce qui permet de gouverner avec à peine 20-22% des ayants droit de vote (c’est aussi le cas de presque toutes les villes italiennes). C’est le triomphe de la post-politique et de la dépolitisation généralisée. Un processus qui convient bien à tous les partis car ainsi ils ont moins de clientèle à cultiver ou acheter. En plus comme le remarque Lucia Tozzi il est éclatant noter que la plus forte abstention concerne les banlieues (comme en France) parce que leurs habitants sont depuis longtemps abandonnés par tous : ils ne correspondent pas à aucun profil convenant pour une ville qui mise sur les consommateurs aisés ou en mesure de dépenser assez pour un after hours, pour la soirées dans les dehors ou les innombrables boites où on mange, on écoute de la musique (souvent horrible) ou quelques jeunes rappeurs… alors il est évident que les moins fortunés des banlieues ne méritent que d’être chassé le plus loin possible de la ville qui doit être réservée surtout sinon uniquement à des résidents aisés et bien réceptifs de la communication des acteurs dominants.
Bien au-delà de ses spécificités, Milan est une réalité tout à fait similaire à celle que presque toutes les villes aspirent à imiter. L’autrice cite nombre d’exemples, de la New York de Bloomberg à Londres, Paris, Vienne, Berlin, Barcelone etc. et une vaste littérature. Il apparait alors que Milan Mais est sans doute un cas extrême dans une Italie qui maintenant est aux mains d’une coalition de droite qui gouverne avec 27% des ayants droit de vote (le fascisme "démocratique" au pouvoir). Mais comme signale Lucia Tozzi, il est possible contraster cette dérive réactionnaire suivant l’exemple de ville comme Berlin où le mouvement des habitants a réussi à obliger la mairie à investir dans un très grand parc vraiment public totalement en dehors de toutes les visées des entrepreneurs-spéculateurs privés.
Ce livre mérite d’être publié en français.
▻https://blogs.mediapart.fr/salvatore-palidda/blog/030524/milan-la-ville-forgee-par-le-socialwashing-greenwashing-au-profit-de
L’invenzione di Milano. Culto della comunicazione e politiche urbane
Solo dieci anni fa Milano era vista come una città produttiva, elegante, ma grigia. Poi, con l’#Expo2015, ha assunto l’immagine di una metropoli splendente e attrattiva. Il passaggio però non è la conseguenza di una trasformazione oggettiva ma, all’opposto, è la metamorfosi fisica a essere effetto di una campagna di marketing senza precedenti, il cui successo è stato ottenuto spostando le risorse materiali e intellettuali destinate alla produzione di cultura, ricerca, servizi di welfare verso la produzione dell’immagine di una metropoli globale del lusso. L’aspetto più perturbante dell’intero processo è il ruolo giocato dalla finanza, impegnata in una doppia missione: concentrazione della ricchezza attraverso la privatizzazione della città pubblica, dei suoi spazi e delle sue istituzioni sociali e culturali; cattura o neutralizzazione delle forze che potrebbero produrre attrito nel sistema e lotta alle disuguaglianze.
▻http://www.cronopio.it/edizioni/2023/03/linvenzione-di-milano-culto-della-comunicazione-e-politiche-urbane
#livre #urban_matter #image #communication #marketing #finance #finaciarisation #privatisation #inégalités
Naufragio del 2013 a Lampedusa, identificata dopo 11 anni una delle vittime
La salma di #Weldu_Romel, identificata col codice «AM 16», è stata tumulata nel cimitero di Caltagirone
Sono serviti 11 anni, ma adesso il migrante «Am16» - vittima della strage del 3 ottobre 2013 - ha un nome e cognome. Il ventisettenne eritreo, Weldu Romel, morto assieme ad altri 367 migranti, riposa nel cimitero di Caltagirone. E il 6 maggio sulla sua lapide, finalmente, ci sarà un nome. Lo hanno reso noto dl Comitato 3 ottobre, spiegando che l’identificazione è stata possibile «grazie al prezioso lavoro dell’istituto Labanof dell’università di Milano e al commissario straordinario per le persone scomparse».
La salma di Weldu Romel, identificata col codice «Am 16», è stata tumulata, nell’ottobre 2013, nel cimitero di Caltagirone.
Alla cerimonia per la posa della lapide con incisi il suo nome e cognome, che si terrà lunedì alle 10.30, parteciperanno, tra gli altri, il prefetto di Catania, Maria Carmela Librizzi, l’imam di Catania, Kheit Abdelhafid, monsignor Salvatore De Pasquale, vicario
generale della Diocesi di Caltagirone, Tareke Brhane, presidente del Comitato 3 ottobre, Angela Ascanio, referente progetto Sai
di Caltagirone e Vito Fiorino, nominato «Giusto» per aver salvato 47 persone mentre si consumava la tragedia.
«La nostra battaglia è per dare un nome e una degna sepoltura alle vittime dei naufragi - sottolinea Tareke Brhane - negare, infatti, questo diritto è contro ogni principio di umanità. Ogni persona ha diritto a una degna sepoltura così come i familiari hanno diritto di avere un luogo in cui ricordare e piangere i propri cari. Siamo felici che oggi, finalmente, a Weldu sia stata ridata un’identità. Speriamo di poterlo fare ancora per le centinaia di vittime senza nome che ancora oggi sono sepolte nei tanti cimiteri del nostro Paese».
▻https://www.agrigentonotizie.it/cronaca/naufragio-lampedusa-2013-identificata-vittima-dopo-11-anni-maggio-2
#3_octobre_2023 #identification #migrations #mourir_aux_frontières #morts_aux_frontières #11_ans_après... #naufrage #Lampedusa
Histoire de la cartographie du XXe siècle : Visionscarto publie ce matin la version française d’un remarquable opus de Gilles Palsky publié initialement en anglais, qui explore l’œuvre de deux cartographes radicaux avant l’heure, Frank Horrabin, socialiste britannique, et Alexander Radó, communiste hongrois.
Des cartes pour dénoncer l’impérialisme
▻https://www.visionscarto.net/es-cartes-pour-denoncer-l-imperialisme
par Gilles Palsky, Professeur de géographie
université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
« Horrabin et Radó envisageaient les cartes comme des outils permettant de dénoncer et de combattre l’impérialisme bourgeois. Ils présentaient leurs travaux comme des projets nouveaux, différents des atlas ordinaires, qu’ils voulaient ancrés dans l’actualité et offrant des approches dynamiques. »
https://www.visionscarto.net/local/cache-vignettes/L1024xH775/Fig_5-97e9bd53-4a79b-82a14.jpg?1714216259 
https://www.visionscarto.net/local/cache-vignettes/L1024xH751/Fig-7-2eed0f17-9748a-ecf21.jpg?1714216259 
https://www.visionscarto.net/local/cache-vignettes/L1024xH663/palsky-8-a6aadee8-baa4e-1543c.jpg?1714627152 
https://www.visionscarto.net/local/cache-vignettes/L348xH500/palsky-1-453140d3-28b06-c0c4f.jpg?1714593183 
https://www.visionscarto.net/local/cache-vignettes/L822xH611/palsky-9-d8a63103-998b0-827f2.jpg?1714629813 #cartographie_radicale #précurseurs #rado #horrabin #histoire_de_la_cartographie
Belgique: La Chambre adopte la loi «Frontex»
La Chambre a adopté jeudi en séance plénière un projet de loi permettant à du personnel de l’agence européenne Frontex d’effectuer des contrôles aux frontières belges et d’escorter des #retours_forcés d’étrangers.
Porté par la ministre de l’Intérieur #Annelies_Verlinden (CD&V), ce projet de loi donnera l’occasion à ces agents d’effectuer ces contrôles frontaliers dans les #aéroports, les #ports, la #gare de #Bruxelles-Midi ainsi que dans son terminal #Eurostar, soit aux #frontières_extérieures de l’espace Schengen.
Le texte a été adapté à la suite de l’avis du Conseil d’État. Ainsi, l’intervention de Frontex ne pourra avoir lieu qu’en présence et sous l’autorité de policiers belges. Le nombre d’agents Frontex actifs sur le territoire belge sera limité à cent. Ces actions seront aussi menées sous le contrôle du Comité P. Dans la majorité, Ecolo-Groen, le PS, mais aussi la ministre ont rappelé ces balises lors de la discussion générale.
Le texte a été largement critiqué par plusieurs organisations ces derniers jours, dont le Ciré (Coordination et Initiatives pour Réfugiés et Étrangers).
Annelies Verlinden a déploré une « désinformation qui n’aide pas au débat équilibré qu’on a connu en commission », tout en disant « comprendre » les inquiétudes exprimées.
Il a été adopté par la majorité, moins les abstentions de Simon Moutquin (Ecolo), Khalil Aouasti (PS) et Hervé Rigot (PS). Le PTB, DéFI ainsi que Vanessa Matz (Les Engagés) ont pour leur part voté contre.
▻https://www.rtl.be/actu/belgique/politique/la-chambre-adopte-la-loi-frontex/2024-05-03/article/665018
#Belgique #loi_Frontex #Frontex #contrôles_migratoires #frontières #migrations #réfugiés
🚨InfoMigrants à Sfax, Tunisie🚨
1/Des milliers de migrants chassés hors de villes tunisiennes survivent dans la région de Sfax, sans aide, dans des champs d’oliviers, loin de tout.
Ils se regroupent dans des dizaines de camps (appelés km18, km25 ou encore km30)
2/🎙️« On a faim, chaque jour que Dieu fait, la police est là, on n’a pas d’eau, on n’arrive pas à manger », explique Aziz un burkinabé qui vit au km19 depuis un an ⬇️
3/ 🗣️Les explications et le contexte de la situation par notre journaliste @C_Oberti
sur place. « La situation s’envenime depuis des mois »
4/ Pour comprendre un peu mieux où on est ⬇️ voici en rouge, la zone où se constituent la majorité des campements de migrants, dans des champs d’oliviers.
Ils seraient environ 20 000, selon une source sécuritaire tunisiennes rencontrée par InfoMigrants
5/Les conditions de vie de ces milliers d’Ivoiriens, Guineens, Gambiens, Sierra-Leonais, Nigerians… sont dramatiques. Ils manquent de tout. Les abris sont des draps tenus par des bâtons. L’eau potable manque.
La peur d’être arrêtés par les policiers est omniprésente.
6/ Aziz, le burkinabé, rappelle qu’aucune ONG ne vient dans la zone.
Trouver de l’eau potable, du bois pour se chauffer, de la nourriture pour les enfants est un combat
7/ et forcément les tensions sont de plus en plus fortes avec la population locale.
Les précisions de notre journaliste ⬇️
8/Cette tunisienne, non loin d’El Amra, se plaint de vols.
Les migrants ne lui volent pas ses moutons, reconnaît-elle, mais prennent son bois 🪵(pour allumer des feux et cuisiner).
« Ils détruisent tout ».
9/ 🎙️réponse d’un exilé gambien aux accusations de vol.
« Je ne suis pas un voleur mais parfois je ne mange pas, je ne bois pas d’eau… Alors oui, je vole parfois, mais pour survivre, je ne suis pas un criminel »
10/ En représailles, et pour calmer la colère des habitants, la Garde nationale tunisienne envoie actuellement des soldats pour détruire les campements dans la zone.
Nous en avions parlé dans ce papier
▻https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/56683/en-tunisie-les-migrants-terrifies-face-aux-dernieres-interventions-de-
11/L’écrasante majorité des migrants de Sfax ne veulent pas rester en Tunisie mais rejoindre les côtés européennes via l’île italienne de Lampedusa (à 200 km environ).
Problème : les garde-côtes tunisiens arrêtent les embarcations au large de Sfax qui tentent la traversée 🌊
▻https://twitter.com/InfoMigrants_fr/status/1786035010325066118
#Tunisie #Sfax #violence #encampement #migrations #réfugiés #violences_policières #El_Amra #destruction
En lien avec la #toponymie_migrante :
Ils se regroupent dans des dizaines de camps (appelés km18, km25 ou encore km30)
More than 50,000 unaccompanied child migrants went missing in Europe : Survey
Highest number in Italy with nearly 23,000, notes Lost in Europe project
More than 50,000 unaccompanied child migrants went missing after arriving in Europe, a survey by a European journalism project revealed Tuesday.
“Italy has the highest number of registered missing unaccompanied minors, with 22,899, followed by Austria (20,077), Belgium (2,241), Germany (2,005), and Switzerland (1,226),” according to the Lost in Europe project, which gathered data from 13 European countries from 2021 - 2023.
It said the number of missing children may be even higher because data is often unreliable and incomplete, and many European countries do not collect data on missing unaccompanied minors.
“These shocking findings underscore the seriousness of the issue, with thousands of children missing and their whereabouts unknown,” it said.
Aagje Ieven, head of Missing Children Europe, said, “The increased number of reports on missing unaccompanied minors serves as a sharp reminder of the giant iceberg that looms beneath the surface.”
▻https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/more-than-50-000-unaccompanied-child-migrants-went-missing-in-europe-survey/3206605
#disparitions #MNA #mineurs_non_accompagnés #enfants #enfance #migrations #asile #réfugiés #Italie #Autriche #Belgique #Allemagne #Suisse
–-
A mettre en lien avec les statistiques et chiffres des « enfants réfugiés disparus en Europe » —> l’exemple d’Ancona montre les raisons des départs de #MNA des centres d’accueil en Italie :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/714320
London protesters block transfer of asylum seekers to #Bibby_Stockholm
Dozens of demonstrators in #Peckham surround coach, preventing it from taking people to barge in Dorset.
Hundreds of protesters have blocked an attempt to collect asylum seekers from a London hotel and take them to the Bibby Stockholm barge.
Arrests were made as police waded into the crowd blocking the road near a Best Western hotel in Peckham. It was not until 3pm, seven hours after it turned up, that the coach sent for the asylum seekers was able to leave the area – without asylum seekers onboard – and a number of police vans carrying protesters who had been detained were also able to leave.
The home secretary, James Cleverly, condemned the protesters and said they “will not … deter us from doing what is right for the British public”. But the scenes illustrated the challenges the government may yet face when it comes to carrying out deportations to Rwanda.
It emerged on Thursday that the Home Office was abandoning plans to move asylum seekers in Margate to the Bibby Stockholm in the wake of protests there.
Meanwhile, Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s outgoing first minister, denounced the Home Office’s “inhumane” and “cruel” detention raids on asylum seekers and urged the UK government to scrap the policy.
At least eight asylum seekers living at the Best Western were told a week ago that they would be collected on Thursday morning and relocated to the Bibby Stockholm, moored at Portland in Dorset. The coach was expected to collect other passengers along the way, but it was blocked in when it was surrounded by protesters after pulling in at a bus stop at about 8am.
At least one person received medical attention when they were knocked to the ground after police moved in at about 12.30pm.
The people due to be removed were said to include teenagers attending colleges in the area. A number of men staying at the hotel said they feared the conditions that would await them on the Bibby Stockholm, where an Albanian man named Leonard Farruku died last year in a suspected suicide.
One said: “We are also concerned this is happening at the same time as the government’s Rwanda plans have gone through. But it’s encouraging to see this sort of support.”
The Metropolitan police’s deputy assistant commissioner, Ade Adelekan, said officers engaged with protesters at the scene and warned them they could be arrested.
In Edinburgh, Yousaf told MSPs during first minister’s questions: “I deplore the inhumane Home Office enforcement action that we have seen. Detaining people to forcibly remove them to Rwanda is cruel, and punishes some of the most vulnerable in our society.”
Yousaf was asked by the SNP MSP Karen Adams about the Guardian’s report on Sunday that the Home Office was to start detaining asylum seekers for forced deportation to Rwanda.
He said: “At times like this, we all have an obligation to just step back. Actually think about what’s going on here, in a country, the UK, where those who flee persecution, war or extreme poverty, come to our shores.”
Figures released on Thursday undermined Rishi Sunak’s claims that his Rwanda plan was working by putting off asylum seekers from trying to reach the UK. They showed that 711 people arrived by boat on Wednesday, more than half of the number who crossed during the whole of May last year, and a record for a single day since September.
One of the coordinators of the protest in Peckham, Kojo Kyerewaa, of Black Lives Matter, said: “Our friends who are at a Home Office hotel got notification that they were going to be taken to the Bibby Stockholm today.”
He said they were given a week’s notice and that “because of the bonds and relationships they’ve got in the community, we were made aware of that and organised a discreet action … so that they would not be abducted and taken away”.
Kyerewaa said the protest was inspired by a similar one in Margate last week, where a coach was prevented from taking 22 asylum seekers to the barge.
“We know that the residents don’t want to leave and we know that the Bibby Stockholm is a dangerous place to put anyone. It’s unsanitary and one person has taken their own life being there and there’s been multiple attempts of suicide by people told that they’re going to the Bibby Stockholm,” he said.
The action is believed to be the first of its kind in London since 2022, when protesters gathered for hours to block a van transporting a man arrested for immigration offences.
Some of those organising the action were from Black Lives Matter and the Southwark and Lambeth Anti-Raids network, while others were understood to be friends in the community, including those who taught the asylum seekers English at college.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This behaviour is intimidatory and aggressive. As part of our commitment to significantly reducing the use of hotels, asylum seekers are being moved into alternative accommodation to reduce costs on the taxpayer.
“We have returned 150 hotels to local communities and we work closely with accommodation providers to manage the exit process in a way which limits the impact on local authorities and asylum seekers.”
▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/02/london-protesters-block-coach-peckham-asylum-seekers-bibby-stockholm
#résistance #UK #Angleterre
via @karine4
–—
ajouté à la métaliste sur le Bibby Stockholm :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/1016683
Deadly human smuggling through Mexico thrives in ‘perfect cycle of impunity’
A new collaboration from ICIJ and media partners in Latin America, Europe and the United States documents nearly 19,000 migrants’ journeys to the U.S. border under dangerous conditions.
Six days before Rafelín Martínez Castillo was sent flying from a trailer truck transporting him and 168 other migrants across Mexico, he was sanding wood in his cousin’s modest workshop in the Dominican Republic. The 31-year-old craftsman, his brother and cousin were working tirelessly to fulfill a large order of pilones, the popular mortar and pestle sets sold in souvenir stores and on roadsides in the Caribbean nation.
“When I touched his hands the day we said goodbye, they were full of calluses and cuts from all the hours he spent sanding wood,” Martínez Castillo’s mother, Kenia Castillo, recalled during an interview in April 2023 at her house in Boqueron, a small, hilly region in the southern province of Azua. “I pleaded with him not to leave. I said we could get by eating rice and eggs if we had to. But he told me that just making pilones, we would never have anything.”
The family used money from their pilones sales to pay part of the $26,000 to smugglers who had agreed to get Martínez Castillo to the United States. The trip would take him on a plane to Panama, then Guatemala, and from there he would cross the border into Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state.
In recent years, tens of thousands of Dominicans have followed similar routes to reach the U.S. in an exodus that has become so ubiquitous it has turned into a popular culture reference, with the phrase “la vuelta es México” (“Mexico is the way”) showing up in rap and merengue songs and comedy sketches on national television. Generally, Dominicans have been flying to South and Central American countries with relaxed or no visa requirements. In 2022 and 2023, more than 3,000 people per month left the island on such flights, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. The travel becomes much harder from there as they then make their way across several countries to arrive in Mexico; from Mexico they walk to the U.S.
Martínez Castillo’s journey was supposed to culminate with him crossing into the United States. Instead, 25 days after leaving home, he returned in a casket.
On Dec. 9, 2021, the 18-wheeler that had Martínez Castillo and his fellow migrants packed in like commodities overturned while speeding on a Chiapas highway. Fifty-six people died and 113 were wounded. The images of the bodies scattered across the highway surrounded by horrified onlookers spread around the globe.
Following the trail of this and similar accidents involving migrants and trucks, a cross-border team of journalists found that the illegal use of these cargo vehicles to move migrants across Mexico has increased in the past several years as cartels have taken over the smuggling business, which has historically been controlled by a loose network of smugglers called coyotes or polleros. All of this has unfolded as the Mexican government, pressured by the United States, has toughened its policies to limit the record number of people crossing its territory in recent years, pushing migrants to find dangerous and often deadly ways to travel. As they make use of the cargo industry, which is supposed to be tightly regulated by government agencies, organized crime groups seem to operate with impunity. Today, the smuggling business is estimated to generate billions of dollars a year for the cartels.
It also “has an enormous logistics apparatus and, of course, all the necessary complicities behind it,” said Tonatiuh Guillén López, who was appointed Mexico’s immigration chief in December 2018 and resigned six months later over disagreement with the shifting immigration policies of president Andres Manuel López Obrador. “Otherwise, how do … dozens of trucks travel undetected through the country?”
Neither Mexico’s National Institute of Migration, its attorney general, the Secretariat of Defense, the National Guard and the National Chamber of Cargo Transportation, which represents the trucking industry, would comment or consent to interviews for this story.
The team of reporters interviewed survivors, experts, migrants’ rights advocates and current and former Mexican officials, and reviewed thousands of pages of documents for this story. The reporters also created a database listing more than 170 trucks that carried migrants and were inspected, detained, involved in accidents or abandoned from 2018 to 2023. Due to the varying quality of the information, and because Mexican authorities have tracked cases only since 2022, after the Chiapas accident, the data reveals only a tiny portion of this human smuggling. But what it does show is that nearly 19,000 people — including more than 3,200 minors — were traveling in the trucks the reporters identified.
The data also shows that at least 111 migrants traveling in trailers through Mexico in those six years died because of exposure to heat or lack of oxygen, or as a result of traffic accidents. On March 7, 2019, a trailer carrying about 80 migrants drove off the road and overturned in Chiapas, causing the deaths of 23 people, among them a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old. Three years later, 64 people were rescued from a trailer abandoned on the side of the road in the northern state of Coahuila. They had been traveling without water or ventilation and endured temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit inside the trailer, authorities said. Fourteen people were hospitalized, and a Nicaraguan woman died and had a stillbirth.
On Sept. 28, 2023, two migrants died and 27 were injured after the driver of a truck carrying 52 people lost control and the truck overturned on a highway in Mezcalapa, Chiapas. Three days later, nine Cuban women and a girl died and 17 other Cubans were injured after the truck carrying them crashed on a highway about 100 miles from the Guatemalan border.
Given the volume of people passing through Mexico — U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that more than 4.8 million foreign nationals were encountered at the southern border in the last two years alone — the number of migrants in trucks is undoubtedly higher than the reporters’ data analysis shows, according to experts and advocates for migrants’ rights.
Guillén, the former immigration chief, said that while many migrants are misled by smugglers about the mode of transportation, others do understand the dangers of being locked for hours in a rolling steel container.
“The situation of displaced people is so grave that they take all these risks,” Guillén said. He has a phrase to describe the despair and lack of options faced by migrants in Mexico and around the world. He calls it “the magnitude of hopelessness.”
A ‘humane’ immigration policy?
Large numbers of Central Americans have been passing through Mexico to reach the U.S. since at least the 1980s, fleeing civil wars or attracted by American companies’ demand for cheap labor. That migration continued in the late 1990s, when thousands left their countries after the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Other waves followed, driven by economic crises, climate change, violence and political upheaval. Around 2010 a new trend emerged: Thousands of Asian and African migrants arrived in the south of Mexico after traversing the Americas en route to the U.S.
To contain the flow, the U.S. and Mexico have beefed up the presence of law enforcement at their borders. With funding from the U.S., Mexico increased deportations, sending hundreds of thousands of people back to their countries and even deporting more than the United States has in particular years.
Mexico became what experts call “a vertical border,” explained Gretchen Kuhner, director of the Institute for Women in Migration, a nonprofit advocacy group. This means that immigration inspections aren’t happening only at entry points at borders, airports and seaports, Kuhner said. Instead, stops and searches can happen anywhere. Soldiers and immigration agents began stopping people in parks and other public areas as far back as nearly 10 years ago, boarding buses and pulling over vehicles to catch undocumented migrants. (In 2022 the Mexican Supreme Court declared this practice unconstitutional after three Indigenous siblings who were racially profiled sued, but that hasn’t stopped the practice.)
“This way of doing immigration control is, from our perspective, one of the factors that pushes people to travel in a clandestine way and what allows organized crime groups that traffic people to flourish,” Kuhner said, because they offer a way to dodge the random stops and searches.
Poor migrants who can’t pay smugglers or hire fixers to bribe authorities for expedited documents to move legally across Mexico have traditionally attempted the journey walking or hitchhiking. Many more risk injury or death by climbing atop the moving freight train nicknamed “The Beast” and the “Death Train,” part of a railway network that runs the length of Mexico. Seeking safety in numbers, thousands of people a year travel together on foot for hundreds of miles in so-called migrant caravans. Others, like Martínez Castillo, the Dominican woodworker, and the nearly 19,000 identified in the data analysis, end up crammed in the trailer trucks.
For a brief period at the beginning of his presidency in 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a center-left liberal, followed his campaign promises to forge a more “humane” immigration policy than the one he had inherited. His administration granted thousands of humanitarian visas to allow migrants safe passage or work visas to stay in Mexico. During that period, a caravan was able to cross the country largely unimpeded. But he soon reversed course under pressure from the Trump administration that threatened to increase tariffs on Mexican imports.
In the summer of 2019, López Obrador deployed nearly 21,000 agents from the National Guard, a security force he created, to Mexico’s borders with Guatemala and the U.S. to contain migrants. Later, Mexico also largely stopped issuing safe-passage documents to migrants. Notably, the government prohibited transportation companies from selling bus tickets to anyone who couldn’t show a valid immigration document allowing them to be in the country. Advocates point to that policy — which prevents people from traveling in a safer way — as one of the chief reasons that pushed migrants to seek dangerous alternatives to traverse Mexico. In October, a Mexican federal court declared the practice of asking for immigration documents illegal and discriminatory.
‘Children, babies and entire families’
In Mexico — an export-oriented economy that has overtaken China as the United States’ top supplier — cargo trucks play a key role in keeping businesses running. The number of cargo trucks traveling annually on Mexican roads surpassed 600,000 in 2021.
A reporter from En un 2×3 Tamaulipas who contributed to this story spent more than six weeks approaching companies and individuals who work in the trucking industry in the hopes of finding drivers who had carried migrants in trucks. Only one driver agreed to talk – on the condition that his identity be protected out of fear of retribution. The man, who has driven trucks loaded with migrants, said that drivers don’t necessarily seek out this kind of work. Instead, they are recruited at freight stations by those who work for cartels. Refusing the job can mean death, he said.
“They arrive and tell you: ‘I need you to take this trip for me,’” he said. “Everything is already arranged.”
He said migrants who manage to reach Mexico City, in the center of the country, from the south are approached at bus terminals by coyotes who offer them safe transportation to the U.S.-Mexico border. Migrants who find a way to get to Michoacan, a few hours west of Mexico City, pay to board the trailer trucks. From there, they are driven hundreds of miles to towns near the border with Texas, such as Reynosa or Matamoros.
The driver, who has been transporting produce from Michoacan to other parts of the country since 2013, said he has driven up to 100 people at a time in trailers, in trips that last 15 hours — carrying “children, babies and entire families.” Drivers are prohibited from stopping along the way to check on migrants’ conditions, he said.
In 2022, he said, he was approached by a man who told him that he was going to drive a group of Central American migrants to northern Mexico. He was going to be paid for it, but he also understood it wasn’t an offer he could turn down. “They threaten your family,” the driver said. “I can’t even imagine how big their reach is, but when they come and offer you the gig they tell you, ‘Look, if you refuse or if you betray me, we know that your family lives in such and such area.’”
He said he’s given a phone to receive instructions during the trip. He is stopped at checkpoints by either the Army or the National Guard. He’s usually instructed to explain to the soldiers that he is carrying people. Then he is supposed to hand over the phone. “They communicate with each other, arrange their transactions, and that’s it,” the driver said. “Then [the soldiers] tell you, ‘You can go through.’”
The Mexican Secretariat of Defense also declined to comment on the testimony of the driver, claiming it has no jurisdiction in immigration matters. Drivers may be offered between $4,800 and $6,000 (80,000 to 100,000 Mexican pesos) for each trip or “package delivered,” the driver said, but they usually get less than half the payment in the end. “It is not negotiable,” he said.
However harrowing it is to be recruited to drive migrants in a truck, the experience can’t begin to compare to what it’s like being a passenger. In January 2019, Yanira Chávez traveled for four days inside a trailer truck with her young son and daughter and about 170 others.
Four days into the new year, Chávez, now 36, and her children left their small town in northern Honduras. She had paid the first $5,000 to a local coyote who for $10,000 promised to take them to the United States, where Chávez’s husband was waiting for them. The coyote told them that once in Mexico, they were going to travel to the northern region by plane and instructed them to buy “luggage with wheels” to appear as tourists, not migrants.
Chávez and her children traveled by bus from Honduras to northern Guatemala, and from there they crossed a river by boat into Mexico. “I’m a little bit closer to you,” she texted her husband at that point.
In Mexico, Chávez soon realized they would not be catching any plane. The smugglers took away her phone and the phones of the migrants she was traveling with, threw away their suitcases and forced them to get inside a huge trailer, she said. Chávez and others initially refused to get in. “But at that point, it no longer depends on whether you want to or not,” said Chávez. “You have to do it because if you don’t, the threat is that they will hand you over to the cartel.”
Inside the truck the heat was stifling, Chávez recalled. Men were sitting lined up one behind the other in the center. Women squatted against the walls, holding the children between their legs. Soon after the truck started moving, a boy, about 2 years old, began crying. “Either you keep him quiet or I keep him quiet,” one of the armed coyotes riding inside the trailer told the child’s mother, according to Chávez.
There were plastic buckets at each end of the trailer in which to urinate. The stench flooded the space, she said. “People were fainting.”
The migrants were taken out of the trailer three times during the 900 miles from Villahermosa to Reynosa, she said, in the state of Tamaulipas, near Texas. One of those times, Chávez said, they walked through the backwoods for several hours until nightfall to evade a police checkpoint.
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur19QsWddlg
The ordeal didn’t end once the trailer truck dropped them off. In Reynosa, Chávez and her children were held hostage, first in a motel and then in a house for more than a week, until her husband managed to wire a total of $14,000 in small transactions to have them released, she said. Kidnappings are commonplace for migrants in Mexico when smugglers know they have relatives in the U.S. awaiting them.
Nearly a month after she left Honduras, Chávez and her children crossed the Rio Grande and surrendered to the U.S. Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas, where they asked for asylum. Chávez says the case was recently closed, adding uncertainty to the family’s future, but for now they’re living a quiet life in Long Island, N.Y., where she works for a wood molding company. The bitter memories and guilt about what the children had to go through overwhelm her sometimes. It’s particularly hard, she said, when a trailer truck approaches her workplace to deliver materials.
‘A perfect cycle of impunity’
Neither the victims of the smuggling business nor their surviving relatives often see justice, the reporting shows. From 2016 to 2023 there have been only 35 convictions for human trafficking in Mexican district courts, according to information obtained through a public records request to the Mexican Justice Department. Reporters compared the information from the Justice Department with the database created for this story. The analysis showed that some of the Mexican states where trucks smuggling migrants are most frequently detected — and where the most deaths are recorded annually — also have the fewest investigations into human trafficking open. In the state of Veracruz, the nation’s Attorney General’s Office only opened three cases from 2016 to October 2023, while there are no such open cases in either Chiapas or Nuevo León.
Experts and human rights advocates say that in a country like Mexico, which often ranks poorly in reports about corruption, crimes against migrants are bound to go unpunished. “It is a perfect cycle of impunity,” said Mónica Oehler, a researcher in Mexico for Amnesty International.
She said migrants rarely report crimes out of fear of being deported. They also risk retribution from smugglers. “It doesn’t even cross their mind when you ask them: ‘Have you reported this?’” Oehler said.
For Kenia Castillo, the Dominican mother who lost her son in the December 2021 Chiapas accident, filing a crime report at the time was hardly foremost on her mind. “Our main worry was bringing his body home,” she said.
Rafelín Martínez Castillo left a 4-year-old daughter whom Castillo is now raising and trying to legally adopt. There is also a mountain of debt from loans taken to pay for her son’s efforts to get to the U.S. As she grapples with those pressing realities, Castillo said, “Sometimes I think about how so many people have gone before and after him, and they made it.” She shrugged her shoulders, resigned to her son’s fate.
The accident could have been a turning point in curtailing migrant smuggling but has instead become yet another tragic example of systemic failures. During a press conference the day after the accident, Mexico’s then-Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, along with officials from the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and the United States, announced the creation of a Grupo de Acción Inmediata, or Immediate Action Group, to investigate what happened to Martínez Castillo and his fellow travelers. The officials blamed the accident on “international human trafficking networks” and vowed to stop them. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would present the “actions, progress and results” of the group’s work in a public report.
Reporters found that the group met only once in January 2022 after its inaugural session the month before, and the report promised by the ministry has never been released. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mexico did not respond to requests for comments about the Immediate Action Group’s work. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t answer specific questions about the group, but a spokesperson wrote in an email that Homeland Security Investigations works with Mexico’s Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit to combat human smuggling and prosecute individuals involved in criminal activity “often resulting in disruptions of criminal enterprises.”
Although arrests for the Chiapas accident were made in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, reporters have yet to find any evidence that, nearly 2½ years later, anyone, in any country, has been convicted.
▻https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/04/deadly-human-smuggling-through-mexico-thrives-in-perfect-cycle-of-impunity
#impunité #mourir_aux_frontières #morts_aux_frontières #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #camions #cargo_truck #République_dominicaine #Chiapas #contrôles_frontaliers #The_Beast #The_Death_Train #train
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