Italy: Tunisian migrants remain detained on ships

Saturday 1 October, 2011

Several hundreds of migrants continue to be detained on board two ships in the harbour of Palermo and Porto Empedocle.

The Italian government removed last week all the 1300 migrants who were in Lampedusa and placed more than 600 of them on three ships, while the others were repatriated. The returns were enforced following clashes with the police and residents on Lampedusa and afire in the detention centre on the island last week. During the week, some of the migrants were removed from the ships and relocated to reception centres or repatriated to Tunisia, but most of them are still being detained on board.

Doctors without borders expressed concerns for the conditions in which the migrants are placed and requested access to the ships in order to verify the health conditions on board. Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo, Asylum Law Professor at the Faculty of Law of Palermo, questioned whether there is any legal authority to detain migrants on board ships, and called for the respect of the procedures to return irregular migrants. He highlighted that migrants were denied access to any legal defence and the right to communication by taking all their mobile phones.

In the meantime, Lampedusa has been declared by the Italian government an unsafe port and newly intercepted or rescued migrants are no longer being brought to Lampedusa, but instead to Sicily. As a result, Lampedusa has not hosted any migrants since last week.