It’s midday and anyone inside the CPR on Corso Brunelleschi can see huge clouds of smoke rising in the sky. Three mattresses and some blankets piled up near the Area Blu door are burning. What triggered the anger was the attitude of the guards at the centre as they refused to take an eighteen-year-old boy to hospital after he broke his wrist while playing football. Soon the fire is extinguished with hydrants and the cops are quick to take out of the Area, through the door blackened by fire, the person allegedly responsible for the arson: a couple of prisoners are beaten and several others are put in solitary confinement.
A few hours later, in the dead of the night between Wednesday and Thursday, huge numbers of soldiers, finance police and cops storm several areas in order to seize 13 Tunisians, some just arrived in Italy by sea and transferred to Turin from Palermo. In the centre foreground there is already a van waiting for them ready to take them to an airport – probably Malpensa – where a flight to Tunisia is scheduled early in the morning.
The deportation machine seems to be working steadily; again on Wednesday a young man on hunger strike for ten days because he was denied the possibility to see his wife and daughter was deported from Malpensa. Another young man was sent back to Tunisia a few days ago, this time from via Genoa; a few weeks ago he had tried to protest and attract the attention of the workers in the Centre by cutting himself. As he was sedated without him knowing, he woke up in the city of Genoa.
Deportations are likely to become even more massive, given the treaties being forged in Brussels these days: Italy is bound to become Europe’s main migrants’ receiving centre and it will therefore have to increase the number of deportations, the time of detention and the capacity of the centres. While waiting for more Centres to be opened, places to lock up those who don’t have regular documents will be found in Corso Brunelleschi, given the constant coming and going of vehicles engaged in the redevelopment of the Area Rossa in recent days.
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Translated by act for freedom now!
