Britannia Radio

Lampedusa: After the Fire

10:54 | Posted by Cheradenine Zakalwe

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Muslims show their appreciation for Europe's hospitality.

Telegraph story about it:

The devastating fire, which started when the migrants allegedly set fire to their bed mattresses, reduced much of the controversial centre to a smoking ruin.

It dealt a heavy blow to Italy's ability to deal with a continuing flood of refugees from North Africa in the wake of the popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt and the civil war in Libya.

More than 48,000 have reached the shores of southern Italy since the start of the year.

Many of the 1,200 migrants held in the centre fled when three fires broke out late on Tuesday.

As police stationed on the island rounded them up, the fires blazed out of control and destroyed three buildings in the complex.

The fires were allegedly lit deliberately by Tunisians protesting against their imminent return home, having been ruled to be economic migrants rather than bona fide asylum seekers.

Bernardino De Rubeis, the outspoken mayor of the island, said he had been warning the government in Rome for days that tensions among the migrants were increasing to breaking point.

"In the past few days I raised the alarm more than once. Enough is now enough," he said, calling for Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, to call an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the crisis.

He said islanders were fed up with having to host so many migrants. "We're in a war, and the people will react. There are people here who want to go out into the streets armed with clubs."

The mayor demanded that Italian navy ships be sent to the island "immediately" in order to transfer the migrants to camps in Sicily and the mainland.

He said police and paramilitary Carabinieri officers should have responded to the arson much more forcefully.

"We can't understand why police and Carabinieri go in hard against fans in football fans – their own compatriots – while on Lampedusa it's completely different. We need a strong hand on the island too. People are tired of all this, they want to get back to living in peace."

The UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, has said that the rate of transferrals from the island needs to be speeded up in order to avoid overcrowding in the centre.

The agency is concerned about where future arrivals from North Africa will be accommodated. An envoy for the European Union in Tripoli said it will be a long time before war-torn Libya is able to control its borders.

This is the second time in just over two years that the reception centre has been torched. A large fire in February 2009 caused serious structural damage.

Labels: illegal immigrants, immigrant riots, Lampedusa, Tunisian immigrants