A report on Italy’s state-run broadcaster RAI has sparked an outcry over the conditions migrants and asylum seekers are allegedly enduring in one of the country’s reception centres.
The report showed cellphone video, apparently recorded by a Syrian refugee, showing migrants being ordered to take their clothes off to be sprayed down with disinfectant to prevent scabies.
The man, identified only as Khalid, said refugees are treated like “animals” at the reception centre on Lampedusa island – the same island that became a focal point for migrant issues when a boat carrying migrants sank off the coast in October.
Italian parliamentarian Laura Boldrini has called the video “degrading.”
Boldrini, a former spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, said the treatment of the migrants was “unworthy of a civilized country” and compared the images to a “concentration camp.”
An EU official says Italy could lose some of the 30 million euros ($44 million CAD) in aid that it receives from the bloc to handle asylum seekers and illegal immigrants because of last week’s mistreatment of migrants.
Michele Cercone, a spokesman for EU commissioner Cecilia Malstrom, told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday that all migrants must be properly cared for, including the many who illegally arrive by boat to islands such as Lampedusa in southern Italy.
“This way of welcoming people is a disgrace as far as Lampedusa is concerned. Italy must be ashamed of itself. This must change,” she said in a television interview. “This is not what we expected two months after the boat sank, that sparked so many tears, commitments and promises.”
The world’s eyes were on Lampedusa when a boat carrying nearly 500 migrants caught fire and sank in the early hours of Oct. 3. There were 366 people, mostly from Eritrea, who died in the accident.
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The disaster prompted widespread calls for improvements to how governments handle asylum seekers, particularly for those fleeing conflict, and a crackdown on human smuggling.
Barbara Molinario, a UNHCR spokesperson in Rome, said the manner in which the treatment for scabies was carried out in the video is “completely unacceptable.” But, she said it happened because of the much bigger problem that the facility is unable to cope with the amount of people coming to it.
Molinario said the facility is only meant to serve as a reception facility and migrants and asylum seekers are supposed to be transferred to other facilities on Italy’s mainland or in Sicily after 48 hours.
While at the reception centre, they receive information about their rights and medical care. “The treatment of scabies is a common practice within the centre because, unfortunately… people coming to Lampedusa are departing from Libya,” she said.
” The conditions in Libya, prior to their getting on the boat, are really terrible. They’re kept in these large rooms with hundreds of people together, without ever getting a chance to wash.”
Making matters in Lampedusa worse is the overcrowding problem. The facility was built to house 850 people at a time. But the facility was not rebuilt after being damaged by fire in 2011 and now only has the capacity to host about 250 people.
“This means that the reception conditions drop quite drastically, in the sense that migrants not only don’t get a bed, but they are sleeping outside in winter, in the rain,” she said. “This includes families with children.”
Molinario said asylum seekers and migrants use Italy as a transit country and it has become the main route of entry into Europe for those fleeing conflict. “We’re not just talking about regular migratory routes or just economic migrants,” she said.
“It’s necessary to stress the fact that this is the route for asylum seekers,” she said. “They’re seeing war and persecution. They have no choice but to come without documents. They have no choice but to get on that boat. They don’t have the luxury of … coming in by regular means with regular migratory laws.”
She said the responsibility for the conditions at the Lampedusa reception centre does fall on Italian authorities, but it is an international problem.
READ MORE: EU announces 30 million to help refugees in Italy
While countries such as Germany have more refugees living within their borders — Germany hosts 10 times as many as Italy — Italy is also tasked with patrolling the Mediterranean, carrying out search and rescue efforts.
“It’s very different than just receiving them. It’s a massive effort with massive costs,” she said.
While there has been an increased marine presence since the Lampedusa disaster in October — which wasn’t the only deadly migrant boat accident that month — Molinario said the same attention has not been put into ensuring the reception centre is capable of handling the arrivals.
*With files from The Associated Press
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