Italy: first refugees from Libya arrive
31 March 2011

Rome, 28 March 2010 – Early on Sunday morning, a boat carrying 190 refugees, mostly Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis, arrived on the island of Lampedusa. This is the first arrival of refugees fleeing Libya. Other boats have been seen by fishermen and the coastguard.

Many of the refugees are women and children. One of the Ethiopian women gave birth while at sea and was taken by helicopter to an emergency room in Lampedusa. Another pregnant woman on the boat is believed to have had a miscarriage.

According to official sources, the refugees will be transferred almost immediately to reception centres for asylum seekers in Sicily. The refugees, according to Save the Children, said that they were imprisoned and detained for years in Libya, where they were allegedly subjected to violence of all kinds, including sexual violence against women and stabbings and bone fractures for men.

Lampedusa

The number of Tunisian migrants on the tiny island now exceeds the local population and is estimated at more than 6,200 Even though some 1,350 have been transferred elsewhere in Italy, more than 2,000 people have arrived in the last 48 hours.

Since January, following the ousting of dictator Ben Ali, – the first in a series of revolutions which have spread throughout the Arab world, more than 18,500 Tunisians have arrived in Lampedusa.

Despite calls from a number of NGOs, including the Jesuit Refugee Service, the EU has yet to activate the humanitarian emergency mechanism for the situation in Lampedusa. This would relocate the new arrivals to other EU countries and would halt the transfer of migrants to Italy from other member states as foreseen by the Dublin Regulation.

According to NGOs on the ground, the situation on the island is dramatic – with poor sanitary conditions and more than 2,000 migrants sleeping on the hills. They have urged the authorities to speed up the transfers to other parts of Italy.