As of: 07/10/2022 4:36 p.m
The overcrowded and littered migrant camp on the Italian Mediterranean island of Lampedusa is being cleared and is to be cleaned. The conditions in the reception center have been met with fierce criticism – including from the UN.
The Italian authorities have started to evacuate the Lampedusa refugee camp. In the morning, a naval ship brought 600 migrants from the small Mediterranean island between Tunisia and southern Italy to Porto Empedocle in Sicily. The ship then turned around to pick up and take away another 600 people.
The Interior Ministry of Rome had reacted to the latest reports and developments on Lampedusa with a corresponding instruction. A ship belonging to the financial police was also requested for the transport.
Overcrowded
At the end of last week, a good 1,800 people were counted in the refugee hotspot – although there is actually only room for around 350 people in the camp. Because many new refugees from North Africa are expected in Lampedusa in the new week, the camp should be emptied and cleaned as soon as possible.
By Tuesday at the latest, all people should be distributed to other camps in Italy, announced the prefect of Agrigento in Sicily, to whose province the island of Lampedusa belongs, according to the Ansa news agency.
There would be space for around 350 – last week a good 1800 people were counted in the camp.
Image: AFP
“Shame of Lampedusa”
Reports about the conditions in the reception center had caused outrage. Lampedusa’s ex-mayor Giusi Nicolini posted pictures and a video of the camp on Facebook. You can see people lying on old foam mattresses, some of them outdoors, overflowing rubbish bins and mountains of rubbish in the aisles. Among the people are pregnant women and children. “The pictures could be from Libya. But no, that’s Italy,” wrote Nicolini.
Flavio Di Giacomo from the Mediterranean Office of the UN Organization for Migration (IOM) tweeted about a “shame on Lampedusa”. On Sunday, he added that the problem was not the number of people arriving, but a poor distribution system. The Ministry of the Interior in Rome registered more than 30,000 people arriving by boat this year on Italian coasts – including Lampedusa – by the weekend.