http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8419469/Squalor-and-d espair-on-Lampedusa.html
Squalor and despair on Lampedusa Crouching over tiny fires and hunched beneath makeshift plastic shelters, they are the start of what threatens to become a huge exodus of desperate migrants fleeing the turmoil sweeping across North Africa. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8421442/Italy-ships-m ore-than-2000-migrants-off-island.html Link to this video <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8421442/Italy-ships- more-than-2000-migrants-off-island.html> By Nick Squires <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/nick-squires/> , Lampedusa 8:00PM BST 31 Mar 2011 More than 6,000 mostly Tunisian <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tunisia/> migrants have invaded the Italian outpost of Lampedusa in recent days, transforming the idyllic Mediterranean island into a rubbish-strewn refugee camp. "England, France, Belgium, Switzerland I don't care where I go as long as I can find work and earn money. I need to help my family because they don't have enough to eat," said Saber Khadraoui, 29, from Tunisia, as he bit into a bread roll. "I'll do anything I've worked as a painter, a plumber and a gardener." He is one of an estimated 18,000 Tunisians who have reached the sun-baked island since president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled from power by a popular revolt in mid-January. Around 2,000 Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalians have also arrived from Libya the first since the revolt against Col Muammar Gaddafi erupted last month presaging what the Italian government fears could be an exodus of "Biblical proportions" should the regime collapse. Lampedusa's inhabitants, who live closer to Africa than Italy, say the island is at breaking point. The sole refugee centre can only accommodate 850 people. Thousands of migrants have been left to fend for themselves as best they can. "It's very cold at night and we have to wear all our clothes," said Jifani Becem, 22, a farmer, who like all the migrants paid around 1,000 euros to people smugglers to bring him from the Tunisian coast to Lampedusa. "We have no money and no cigarettes. We just want to get to France to find work." Some of the young men have been sleeping for days in dilapidated gun emplacements dating from the Second World War, while others live beneath ragged tarpaulins strung between palm trees and upturned fishing boats. Ragged shelters made of plastic sheeting, crates and bits of driftwood dot a scrub-covered cliff overlooking the island's picturesque port. Hundreds of men wander aimlessly through Lampedusa's only town, dressed in hooded sweatshirts, grubby jeans and beaten up sandals. The smell of urine and faeces wafts over the hillside as seagulls search for scraps of uneaten food. "We call it the hill of shame," said Antonio Geudellari, 55, a local businessman. "It's a scandal why has the Italian government taken so long to act? This catastrophe has been going on for months. It's a disaster for the island. "Normally this is a quiet, easy-going little place but we've had to start locking our doors and taking the keys out of our cars." More than 2,200 of the migrants were evacuated from Lampedusa yesterday (thurs) in ferries commandeered by the Italian government, after Silvio Berlusconi visited the island on Wednesday and promised to empty the island of foreigners within two days. Many migrants are heading for hastily-built camps in Sicily and on the mainland but most plan to escape the centres at the earliest opportunity and make for northern Europe. Hundreds of Tunisians waited patiently in the island's small harbour, sitting outside dive shops and a dock where normally fishermen mend their nets and unload their catches of squid, calamari and tuna. Even once they have gone, Lampedusa is braced for many more arrivals. "As quick as they take them off the island, new boats arrive another 500 people turned up last night," said Francesco, a 32-year-old fisherman, who declined to give his full name. "We're afraid for our wives because we have to go to sea all day and they are left alone. Why should this tiny island have to shoulder the burden for the whole of Italy? It's not right." Lampedusa's 5,500 inhabitants were, until yesterday's evacuation, outnumbered by their unwelcome guests and their patience has run out. They have seen their island turned into a military garrison. The wall of a kiosk on the harbour front has been daubed with large blue letters: "Enough! The island is full up." An anonymous poem, posted on the walls of cafés, laments the fact that a "tourist paradise" has become a "hell for migrants dreaming of a better life ... the shame of Europe". Carmello Scozzari, 50, a local tour guide, said: "For the most part they have behaved well. "They may be poor but they are educated many of them speak two or three languages. They deserve better than this." Abed El Kamel, 25, from the Tunisian town of Sidi Bou Zid, said: "Europe keeps talking about liberty and dignity and removing the regimes in Libya and Tunisia, but where is the liberty here? We are living like animals." A thousand angry Tunisians staged a march through the middle of Lampedusas sole town, protesting at the length of time they have been kept on the island. Many feared that the ferries anchored off the island were to be used to repatriate them, but Italian officials managed to calm a potentially explosive situation by assuring them that instead they would be taken to refugee camps in Italy. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8419469/Squalor-and- despair-on-Lampedusa.html> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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