This is the communiqué of an initiative against the business of migrants' detention made on 28 May 2007 in 3 different Italian towns. The action is within the campaign against all those who make profits on migrants' shoulders and it is the Italian contribution to the actionweek towards Rostock mobilisations.
Today in Bologna, Marghera (Ve) and Rome we have occupied the offices of Consozio Nazionale Servizi because of the contract to run the migrants' detention centre (CPT - Centri di Permanenza Temporanea) of Lampedusa has been allocated to Consozio Nazionale Servizi.
CNS belongs to Legacoop, the Italian group of Cooperatives traditionally linked to left wing Italian parties, Italian Communist Party first, then Democratici di Sinistra, later Ulivo and now Partito Democratico. Left wing Cooperatives have recently started to invest on the business of migrants' detention. Two years ago the contract to run Gradisca d'Isonzo migrants' detention centre was allocated to Cooperativa Minerva; today Cooperativa Sisifo and Cooperativa Blucoop are in charge of the CPT in Lampedusa Island with the administrative and commercial help of CNS.
After three hours of simultaneous occupation in three different Italian towns, the Manager of CNS Mr. Brenno Peterlini signed an agreement paper where he declares that CNS won't sign any future contract dealing with CPT.
Together with our German brothers and sisters of the NoLager caravan, once again we say that migrants' detention centres are shameful and shameful are all companies who run them. With the same intention we will be in Rostock at the beginning of June to contest EU border regime who keep migrants excluded from rights and repressed while the G8 depredate natural resources of Countries from the South.
In past years we took part to the International campaign targeting all those firms who make profits on migrants' shoulders such as Italian airlines ensuring deportations, food catering firms supplying CPTs, Coop Minerva itself and the catholic Confraternita Misericordiae which runs a few CPTs in our country.
After the new centre-left Government was elected, ten thousand people took part on the 3rd of March to the demonstration for the immediate closure of CPTs in Bologna saying that the only alternatives to migrants' administrative detention are a permanent regularisation of all migrants living in Italy and the closing of all these horrible ethnic prisons.
Today we say that there's no excuse for those who run these modern deportation camps: we're not interested on justifications about reduced prices or better facilities standards or restyling and refurbishment of these structures. We're disgusted by the excuses presented by Managers of these Cooperatives, whose mouths are watering while Italian Government thinks about the future of CPTs, how to call them, who should visit them, how to organise them and which kind of migrants are to be put inside them.
Governo Prodi's policy on immigration is only a make-up strategy to conceal the fact that administrative detention is useful to keep migrants' labour cheap and flexible. In this political operation, "Red" cooperatives such as Sisifo and Bluecoop are the symbol of the "human" and "gentle" face of administrative detention in Prodi's era: changing the image of Italian CPT without abolishing them.
We invite all cooperatives and companies to stop supporting the war on migrants carried out by detention and deportations!
Stop making money on migrants' exploitation and repression!
Freedom of movement for all! No one is illegal!
TPO, Bologna
Lab Esc, Rome
Cs Rivolta, Marghera
28/5/2007
Article edited by no-racism.net