Updates on the struggles in the Identification and Expulsion Centers (CIE) for migrants in Italy
Info on the impressive struggles for the destruction of detention centres in Italy, from Hurriya
After the riots that destroyed the Bari Palese and Crotone centers, last February/March, in Italy only 4 CIE are now working (there were originally 13). These four are also partially damaged, meaning that their imprisonment capacity is reduced. Here we summarise the situation at these remaining centres.
Torino - CIE in Corso Brunelleschi (run by cooperative Acuarinto and Gepsa, a french company that manages prisons)
This center, designed to detain 200 people, currently has only 44 available places due to revolts that happened between February and April this year. In fact, with these riots, most of the areas have been totally or partially destroyed by the fire and rage of those who were imprisoned.
In the following months, while the renovation of the damaged areas began, there was an incessant effort to scare the detainees still living in the center, inventing stories about the repression after the recent riots. For example, there was a rumour about heavy sentences against the rebels, while there has been no judgment against them yet. This trick somehow calmed people down and there were no more revolts capable of destroying the building.
In the meantime, insubordination, strikes and escapes (attempted or successful) go on in the CIE. Consequently, the repressive measures have increased and, always more often, the most rebellious inmates are divided and isolated, to punish and use them as a warning to others.
For some time, the so called “Ospedaletto” (an infirmary) is used as an isolation section, from which the access to the exercise yard and open-air is prevented; sometimes the phone is confiscated for long periods. To prevent escapes, medical and bureaucratic procedures - conducted out of the center - take place with people handcuffed.
In the CIE there are continuous comings and expulsions and it seems clear that deportations to Tunisia happen on Wednesdays and Saturdays, by a ship from the Genoa port, to avoid any attempts to resist as these are much more frequent on planes. A few days ago, however, during the deportation of two Tunisians, the commander refused to make the journey with them due to their poor health (they cut themselves badly). The next day, one of them was taken away from the center, tied with the scotch tape, and until today we don’t know if he was arrested or deported.
The latest news goes back to a couple of days ago: during the umpteenth police search, a migrant - isolated in the Ospedaletto - set fire to his cell, and it seems he was beaten by the chief inspector. Following this search, police found some lighters and seized them.
Brindisi - CIE in Restinco (run by cooperative Auxilium)
This detention center has been open since october 2015: in the previous years it was closed after revolts, escapes and stone-throwing. The fortification and expansion of surveillance are not enough to contain the rage of the detainees: since the early days, inmates protested with beatings, shouts, throwing of rubbish, hunger strikes and escapes.
In the last month, we got numerous testimonies of violence and abuse from the inside: it seems those who protest because of the humiliating conditions of detention are grabbed by the police, carried to a courtyard far from the other inmates and then beaten by a group of policemen.
On August 8th, during a solidarity gathering outside the CIE, many migrants communicated the awful conditions in which they are forced to live. The windows of the cells border the meadow where comrades outside usually gather, allowing for direct verbal communication. Then the prisoners, by then in revolt, set fire to bedding and mattresses in two sections, shouting “Freedom!”.
Two dormitories of section A and one in section B are unusable because of the fire, and the migrants are crammed into some halls and a courtyard, where they are also forced to sleep with no mattress or bedding, someone on the floor, others on the canteen table. The day after the uprising, a 22 year-old inmate was arrested and transferred to prison, accused of having caused the damage.
From two days the inmates started a hunger strike and a group of comrades went back in front of the walls to support the protests.
We know that migrants caught in the raids in Ventimiglia, were carried and then detained in this center.
Roma - CIE in Ponte Galeria (run by Acuarinto and Gepsa)
After the revolt that destroyed the entire male section in December 2015, in the roman CIE only the female section is still running. This center is the only one in Italy which detains women awaiting deportation.
There are currently 50 women detained in the female section. Meanwhile, there is a tender to renovate the men’s section - whose work would be a major fortification of the center to build small sections, more guarded, with the impossibility of contact between inmates.
Flights of mass deportation to Nigeria, coordinated by Frontex, start from this CIE. Rome is in fact the last leg of the charter flights to Lagos. One Thursday a month, from early morning, many police officers led by some units of Frontex, collaborate on the expulsion of dozens of people. In the days before the deportations, people just landed in Italy and Nigerian men detained in other CIE are moved to Rome, while continuous raids in the streets throughout Italy aim to fill the flight. For this reason the female section usually encloses about 40 women, or even up to 120/130 people in the days before the deportation. In addition to provoking strong tensions due to overcrowding, this situation creates deep divisions between those who come for a few days to the center and those who are detained for long periods.
In recent months, we know of collective resistance during the mass deportations, and of individual protests, due to poor prison conditions and the inability to receive health care, especially for gynecological examinations.
Caltanissetta - CIE in Pian del Lago (run by Auxilium)
There aren’t frequent updates from this center but, through some migrants transferred from other closed CIE or after raids in Ventimiglia, we can stay in touch with detainees.
In this center there are frequent deportations to Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, especially of people just landed or coming from prisons , but there are also collective resistance and escapes.
Despite the beatings reported by some prisoners, to avoid deportation there is frequent resistance on the roofs, sometimes resulting in clashes with police.
As happens in other centers, even here people refuse the food because - besides being of poor quality - it is full of psychiatric drugs.
Despite these short updates from the identification and expulsion centers, the situation in identification centers called Hotspots remains unclear: they were inaugurated with hypocritical rhetoric on migrants’ reception, but they are just another big part of the deportation machine. For example, 70% of the migrants “hosted” in the centers have their asylum requests rejected, which returns them to a condition of irregularity and increases their likelihood of being detained in a CIE. All these centers are kinds of prison, and this is clear to those who are imprisoned. On May 17, in Lampedusa, migrants rose up against detention and their future deportation: a wing, one of the 3 in total of the hotspot, was destroyed by the flames and declared unusable; 150 people were moved from Lampedusa to Sicily and 7 inmates were arrested on charges of having caused the fire.