Following our article “The National Front Protests Against Italian Immigration Policy” from April 14, we have received this contribution from Fabien Benard, one of the voluntary collaborators of our publication.
We have just visited the Red Cross reception center in Ventimiglia, Italy, this Friday, April 15. 145 refugees are housed overnight in a disused fire station. The center’s manager, an Italian postal worker on leave for a “humanitarian mission,” tells us that since his arrival on March 28, he has only ever seen that number of refugees, and that the media exaggerates the situation.
At the station and downtown, at the market or in the park, we see a few dozen men, young, aged 20 to 30 years.
These refugees, calm, talk among themselves. They wait. In decent French, they tell us they left “for freedom.” That “Libyan refugees are arriving” in their country. Some do not know where to go.
One tells us he wants to go to France, another to Belgium. They wait. Again. Their first question is to ask if we are journalists. We tell them that some French people are worried because there is not enough work for everyone, and that others are feeding these fears.
The arrival of refugees at the Italian border is an issue that the Italians should not handle alone. Spreading fear by mentioning a “population surge” helps nothing. The issue is European. Reporting on the current situation is a first step. Knowing what is really happening today in Tunisia will be the next.
