A tiny corner of a tiny island, the remote place which captured the attention of all of Europe in a few days has a dirt floor, prefabricated buildings, the shade of a few pine trees and a gray metal gate. Behind, surrounded by police, soldiers and humanitarian workers, dozens of young men with damaged clothes and exhausted faces wait, seated on the ground, in parallel rows.
They will soon be transported further on the road to exile. With five-digit numbers and barcodes hanging around their necks or held in their hands, they are part of the tens of thousands of people, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, who have set foot in Lampedusa since Monday September 11, joining the Europe thanks to a few days of good weather on the 150 kilometers of sea which separate the island from the Tunisian coasts.
The reception center managed by the Italian Red Cross or “hotspot” of Lampedusa, from which they are among the last to wait to be evacuated, was overwhelmed on Wednesday by these massive arrivals. The site was designed to house 600 people but its agents had to do the impossible to assist ten times that number in very tense conditions.
The resulting images of chaos bounced across European screens until opening, from Rome to Berlin via Brussels and Paris, a continental political sequence on the migration issue. Sunday morning, it led to the arrival in Lampedusa of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the Italian Council, Giorgia Meloni. By visiting the reception center and meeting its officials, the two leaders were able to breathe the same air as some of the migrants who populate their speeches.
A ten-point plan
At the island’s airport, where masses of tourists continue to flock to take advantage of the summer which stretches in the far south of Europe, Ursula von der Leyen, who was accompanied by the Commissioner for internal affairs, Ylva Johansson, then wanted to mark a break after this new crisis occurring after months of tensions on the island.
With its 7,000 inhabitants, Lampedusa has been one of the gateways to Europe for three decades. This year, the island has once again become the stage taken by the majority of migrants from the African continent as a result of the intensification of flows on the Tunisian route. More than 128,600 Migrants have arrived in Italy since 1er January, almost two times more than the previous year at the same period.
You have 68.71% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.