The death of a 23-year-old boy from Guinea in the repatriation detention center (CPR) in Corso Brunelleschi in Turin raises serious questions about the living conditions inside Italian detention centers. It is the sixth death in a CPR since 2019 and is particularly scandalous because Balde had been the victim of a violent beating just a few weeks earlier in Ventimiglia.
The boy, accused of stealing a phone, was attacked by three Italians at the exit of a supermarket with plastic pipes and bars. The assault was filmed by a passerby with a smartphone. The woman shouted: “They’re killing him, they’re killing him.” The video made it possible to identify the attackers and charge them with injuries. Balde was admitted to the Bordighera hospital but once discharged, instead of being treated, he was transferred to the Turin CPR and placed in solitary confinement.
In fact, the boy had an expired residence permit and an expulsion decree. According to the network of No CPR activists, Balde was not provided with adequate care. The boy’s lawyer, Gianluca Vitale, said that his last reflections were one of dismay: “I can’t stay locked up here anymore: how long is it to get me out? Why was I locked up? ”He said. Two days later he took his own life by tying a sheet around his neck.
The sixth death in a CPR
The face and story of Musa Balde tells them in a video shot in 2017 by Sanremonews in one of the reception facilities in Imperia that took care of him after his arrival in Italy from Libya in 2016. He told of having escaped from a difficult situation in his country and said he wanted to study and wanted to find a job. He was a supporter of Roma and in Italy he had taken his eighth grade license.
But his suicide is only the tip of the iceberg of a prison system that has suffered from severe structural problems since its creation in 1998.
The national guarantor for the rights of persons detained or deprived of personal liberty Mauro Palma has published a report in which he announces the conditions of the detention centers for repatriation in Italy after one year of visits (2019-2020). In the report, the guarantor highlighted the uselessness and inadequacy of these centers: first of all, less than 50 percent of the people held in the CPR were actually repatriated over the last year, in the face of considerable suffering recorded by those who is deprived of personal liberty without having committed any crime.
“In practice, administrative detention mainly assumes the traits of a mechanism of social marginality, confinement and temporary removal from the gaze of the community of people that the authorities do not intend to include, but who at the same time are not even able to remove”, underlines the report. The supervisor also highlighted how the structural problems concerning the old structures have not been resolved over the years.
Between June 2019 and December 2020, five other migrants died while serving an administrative detention measure. Serious deficiencies have been found in the centers: the privacy of migrants is not respected, the bathrooms for example are not equipped with doors, the police are present during medical examinations, the possibility of receiving writing materials, furnishing elements, is not guaranteed. the spaces dedicated to physical activity or shared spaces are closed or not functioning, the health facilities are not functioning or are not in acceptable conditions, the heating does not work, the telephones are seized. During the pandemic, the conditions of the centers have even worsened, also because repatriation flights have been suspended and therefore for those who were inside the centers, detention has become even more senseless.
“To protect the health of migrants and local communities, last May the United Nations asked the international community to suspend forced returns. Nonetheless, the Italian authorities continued to lock foreign citizens in prison-like structures designed to detain and deport migrants in situations of irregularity. Isolated from society and in precarious physical and mental conditions, foreign citizens who find themselves imprisoned in the CPR do not have the protections reserved for prisoners of the prison system. Riots, self-harm and assaults are frequent and the transparency of the private individuals who manage the structures is poor ”, denounces the investigation into the Italian CPR of the information site Frontierenews.
The suicide of Musa Balde is not an unexpected event, explains the lawyer of the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (Asgi) Massimo Veglio, who has been dealing with conditions within the Turin CPR for years. “Deaths in these centers are frequent, and the conditions inside the CPR of Corso Brunelleschi have deteriorated over the last year, not only because of the pandemic”. The characteristics of the structure are particularly inhospitable and the Turin prosecutor often resorts to the isolation of guests.
“The Turin CPR is in fact the only one in Italy with a specific sector for insulation: there are twelve cells, we call them ‘chicken coops'”, explains the lawyer. Bare rooms, essential furniture leaded to the ground, no windows, a courtyard of a few square meters, surrounded by railings and closed above by a canopy. Natural light is poor, the view is limited.
“People remain in this place without a legal status, unlike in prison. The administration of the CPR therefore is not required to write a formal provision explaining the adoption of isolation, there is no obligation to indicate the duration of the provision, which can therefore be arbitrarily extended. Furthermore, the person does not have the right to object, for example by proposing an appeal. Therefore, the management of the methods of isolation is left to the arbitrariness of the administration of the CPR ”, explains Veglio.
In 2019, a death had already occurred in the Turin CPR: even in that case it was a person who presumably had mental illness, who had been kept in isolation for five months. “In isolation, there is no right even to ask for the hour of air, which is allowed in prison, there is no possibility of using the telephone, all the telephones are seized inside the center”, he continues Veglio.
“In fact, it is a maximum security prison without the inmates having committed any crime”, continues the lawyer, who is organizing a protest on June 4 in front of the Turin prefecture.
At the moment, around 100 people are locked up in the city detention center and are guaranteed scarce medical assistance: there is only one doctor for six hours a day. “However, it seems that this question does not interest anyone and that it is acceptable that someone who has not committed crimes is imprisoned in such a structure without having the right to communicate with the outside world“, he concludes. “At this moment what happens inside the CPR is completely invisible”.
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