The route that arrives in Calabria – Annalisa Camilli

This article was published on November 6, 2021 on page 12 of number 1 of the Essential. You can subscribe here.

He thought of earning his living as a skipper in the Mediterranean, accompanying tourists on a cruise. Instead, he was arrested as soon as he arrived in Italy for aiding and abetting illegal immigration, after having ferried 24 Syrian and Afghan migrants into the country aboard a ten-meter sailboat which left from Çeşme, Turkey. Vasily (invented name to protect his identity), 49, is originally from Dnieper, Ukraine. He served two years and four months in prison in Italy and is one of 438 Ukrainians arrested since 2014 in Greece and Italy for illegally transporting migrants, according to the European external border control agency Frontex.

I meet Vasily in Palermo and he tells me that he ended up being a smuggler between Turkey and Italy without realizing it. “I left Ukraine in 2014 because I received two calls from the government to go to the front and fight against Russia. I didn’t want to die in the war: at the time I was a photographer and skipper in the Crimea, so with a friend who had a sailboat we left Sevastopol, headed for Turkey. We were looking for work and we were contacted by three Ukrainians who, together with two Turks, told us that they had jobs to offer us: small boat trips in the Mediterranean for tourists ”.

Only when he arrived in Turkey did Vasily discover that he had to transport undocumented migrants: “They told us they would pay us 500 euros per person and that we risked being expelled from the country at the most.” But once they arrived in Italy, the Ukrainian sailor and the captain of the boat, who was also the owner, were arrested and charged with aiding illegal immigration, a crime for which penalties of up to five years are foreseen. 15 thousand euro fine.

“It was a nightmare, we found ourselves in prison, without understanding the language, without even knowing exactly what we were accused of. We also never saw the money they promised us ”, says Vasili, who once released from prison moved to Sicily, where he works as a receptionist and as a skipper, especially in the summer season. Before being involved, the sailor was unaware of the lucrative human trafficking that has brought thousands of migrants aboard sailboats or yachts that dock on Greek and Italian coasts in recent years.

A business run by an international criminal network made up of Ukrainians and Turks that attracts, often even with deception, Ukrainian sailors to lead sailing boats: they are safer than rubber boats and less conspicuous than fishing boats, therefore they manage to reach their destination without too many problems. But even though hundreds of smugglers have been arrested in Turkey, Greece and Italy, the European authorities have not identified those responsible for the criminal organization, which brings Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Palestinian and increasingly Afghan migrants to Europe fleeing the regime. of the Taliban.

The last sailing boat left from Turkey with 75 people on board arrived in Calabria on November 4th, despite adverse weather conditions. The boat ran aground in front of the Canella beach, in the Crotone area, with a force four sea and high waves. Rescuers had to enter the water and make a human chain to rescue the passengers, because the boat had tilted and was in danger of capsizing. “The route that connects Turkey to Calabria is ancient,” explains Vittorio Zito, mayor of Roccella Jonica, a town of 6,500 inhabitants in the province of Reggio Calabria, which in the last year has seen landings tripled compared to the same period in 2020. “Arrivals in Calabria represent 15 percent of the 2021 total,” says the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“The number of people arriving by sea in Italy is well below the peaks recorded between 2014 and 2017,” writes the UN agency. However, between August and October there was a gradual increase in arrivals, which could indicate “a new upward trend”.

In a corner of the Porto delle Grazie, the tourist dock of the Calabrian town, you can see all the sailing boats, fishing boats and even a tugboat, seized by the authorities in recent months. “Erzurum” is written in black on the red tugboat that bears the name of a small town in Turkey. The remains of the crossing remain in the hold of the boats and on the deck: life jackets, leftover food, snacks, sandwiches, bottles of water, shoes, blankets.

“During the summer season, the sailing boats led by Ukrainian sailors go unnoticed, because they are similar to the dozens of boats stationed in front of our coasts. They arrive at their destination without attracting too much attention, with people hidden in the hold. This year 3,500 migrants arrived in Roccella, last year 1,080, in 2019 there were 470 ”, continues the mayor. Of the 53,275 migrants who arrived in Italy in 2021, 7,900 landed in Calabria, along an old route from Turkey that has reactivated in recent years. “There is a saying according to which if you go straight from Izmir you will arrive at Roccella Jonica. Even today we call migrants in our part ‘the Kurds’, because the first to arrive were the Kurds fleeing political persecution in the nineties ”, recalls the mayor of the town on the Ionian coast.

But the real problem for Zito is not so much the increase in arrivals, but the dismantling of the rescue and first reception system in Italy, which began in 2017. From 2013 to 2017, he says, the financial police and the coast guard rescued offshore these boats then transferred the migrants on larger rescue ships, then took them to ports equipped for disembarkation, with the coordination of the interior ministry.

“Since the discussion on immigration has become ideological, we have begun to struggle as local administrators. We were faced with management problems, without there being clarity on the procedures and available funds. We had to take on enormous responsibilities for the good of the people, ”she continues. Also according to UNHCR, the real problem is the reception system: “The progressive and constant increase in arrivals by sea in Calabria has put a strain on the local reception system, in particular as regards unaccompanied minors and more people with specific needs in general “.

The health emergency due to the covid-19 pandemic has made reception procedures even more complicated, providing for a fifteen-day quarantine even for migrants who are negative for the swab carried out on arrival. “Here in Roccella we had the first landing in Italy in the covid era in the summer of 2020, there was no protest even if there were positives among the migrants”, he says.

For the mayor, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when, on 20 October, about seventy migrants who arrived in port spent the night on the quay, in the open, because there were no places available to carry out the procedures for the first reception. “We couldn’t even offer portable toilets or toilets, and this is serious,” Zito complains. “It is important to give an idea of ​​discontinuity to these people who often come from countries at war or governed by dictatorial regimes. Leaving them in port, in the open, without bathrooms, is not a treatment for a civilized country ”, he continues.

The emergency health procedure provides that quarantine for adults takes place in covid hotels or on board quarantine vessels, private ferries chartered by the Ministry of the Interior starting from spring 2020 and managed by the Red Cross. But there are no quarantine ships in Calabria and places in covid hotels are limited.

“We found ourselves in the paradox that the Afghans who arrived by airlift in Italy in August were sent to the covid hotels in Calabria to do the quarantine, while the Afghans who arrived here by sea did not know where to send them”, says Zito . Some were transferred by bus to Sicily, to be boarded on quarantine ships. After the mayor’s complaint, at the beginning of November the interior ministry had a tensile structure built in the port of Roccella Jonica that can accommodate up to 150 people for a maximum of ten hours. The minors who arrived in the Calabrian village were temporarily placed in a guesthouse owned by the parish and Caritas: they are 37.

“It is an emergency situation, but it is not sustainable for long, there are no common areas to eat, we have set up cots,” says Maria Paola Sorace, operator of the Pathos cooperative in Caulonia. “If there were to be a landing at this time with many minors, we would not be able to deal with it. The first reception centers are collapsing and there is a need to prepare new structures ”. Mostly Egyptian boys between the ages of 12 and 17 arrive who travel alone, they left from Turkey or Tobruk, a Libyan city on the border with Egypt.

The Turkish route is much more expensive than the Libyan or the Tunisian one, from which most of the migrants arriving in Italy come from. Crossing the Mediterranean from Turkey can cost anywhere from four thousand to ten thousand dollars, but it is safer than other routes. “A first-class trip, compared to those of rafts or fishing boats”, explain the reception operators.

The migrants are herded into clandestine collection centers in Istanbul, then transferred by car or minibus to the cities along the coast, where they embark. Among them are more and more Afghans such as Khalil, 17, originally from Ghazni, of Hazara ethnicity, who fled Afghanistan in early August, on the days when the Taliban seized power in the country.

“For me there was no future, my community is persecuted, my brothers are already in Europe and I decided to leave too”, says the boy, while eating a plate of pasta with the vegetables that the volunteers gave him just brought. “I don’t want a beautiful life, I want a safe life,” he continues. He paid the traffickers a thousand dollars to reach Turkey from Afghanistan and paid another nine thousand to make the crossing by boat.

“My father has a small grocery store, he sold everything he had to get me to leave.” He made most of the journey from Afghanistan to Turkey on foot, risking being arrested by the Iranian, Turkish or Greek border guards. Dozens of testimonies collected by international and non-governmental organizations denounce beatings, ill-treatment, sexual abuse and theft carried out by border police on the route connecting Afghanistan to Greece.

Zebiullah, 15, a friend of Khalil’s, has the wounds of the beatings on his legs, to which is added a serious scabies infection that the volunteers are trying to cure. “We survived all this, now we just want to work and send money home,” says Khalil, who as soon as he arrived in Italy wanted to call his parents to warn them that he was still alive. He can’t think of his mother, of his voice. He is about to speak, but then falls silent. After a pause he resumes: “They were worried about my life, but I hope to be able to pay them back soon. Maybe one day they will be able to join me ”.

This article was published on November 6, 2021 on page 12 of number 1 of the Essential. You can subscribe here.