We report the article by Don Mattia Ferrari, chaplain of Mediterranea Saving Humans, published yesterday in La Stampa

"Guys, I wish you that the Holy Spirit will put such a restlessness in you before things that are not good, that are not honest, that are not just, that are not clean, he will put such a restlessness in you that you will raise your voice whenever the body of the Lord is not recognised in the face of the brothers"

The words of the Apulian bishop always at the side of the last, indicated by Pope Francis as a 'prophet', resonate powerfully in these days, when images of inhuman violence perpetrated on migrants in Libya and Tunisia, where Italy and Europe try to push migrants back, arrive again.

On 3 July, Human Rights Watch researcher Lauren Seibert and Alarm Phone reported that after a search of a house in Sfax, Tunisia, 48 migrants were arrested and 20 of them, including six women, two pregnant and one 16-year-old, were deported by the Tunisian military to the border with Libya, without money or food.

These practices of deportation and violence perpetrated by the Tunisian authorities on migrant communities have been documented for some time. On 4 July, there were further captures and deportations and at the moment there are more than 400 people imprisoned in inhuman conditions in the militarised zone on the Tunisian-Libyan border. Some of these people are reported to have already been killed, including one of the two pregnant women deported two days ago.

According to a person on the spot, the sanitary situation is catastrophic: 'Children are forced to drink sea water,' he says.

In the meantime, Italy and Europe seek to reinforce the strategy of refoulements contracted out to Tunisia, which involve the containment of migrants in those inhuman conditions. These policies only produce more violence, as has already happened in Libya, where mafias thrive on the migrant rejections that Italy has contracted out to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard. We are responsible for that inhumanity, our conscience cannot be clear.

Instead, we should promote acceptance and, in order to guarantee the freedom to remain in the countries of origin, finally recognise the subjectivity and the protagonism of the peoples and movements of the Global South who are asking to be recognised, to write a new social and economic system all together, and thus finally to emerge from the economic colonialism of our multinationals that oppresses them. The problem, however, is that migrants, and in general all the poor, are not given the right to be subjects and protagonists: we discuss them, but not with them. So instead of courageous choices, the path of violence is chosen.

Violence against migrants is not an isolated factor, but is deeply connected to the many other forms of violence that our society perpetrates. In some cases it is physical violence, for example in the case of migrants or people deprived of the right to housing, in other cases it is what the great sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called symbolic violence, i.e. the subtle violence that is perpetrated in an attempt to impose worldviews and mental structures that prevent full emancipation and oppress for example women and LGBTQIA+ people. All this violence is the result of an authoritarian, capitalist, patriarchal and nativist system, which is introjected by all of us. The violence against migrants is the culmination of all this.

Every person with a human heart should rise up. It seems that the globalisation of indifference is becoming more and more rampant: inhumanity has been normalised. But indifference and inhumanity have not yet had the last word. There are realities, such as Mediterranea Saving Humans, which I have the honour of serving as chaplain, the entire 'civil fleet' and many other movements, which operate a true resistance of the human and have chosen to fight, with their own bodies and lives, truly taking the path of fraternity.

This is the political value that must become central in our historical era. We are at a crossroads: either we radically take on love and fraternity and make them flesh, through our bodies and our relationships, or the spiral of violence, authoritarianism, capitalism, patriarchy and racism that has been set in motion will lead us further and further towards collapse, towards a world in which we withdraw more and more into ourselves and in this way become increasingly angry and unhappy.

Fortunately there are newspapers, like La Stampa, that continue to courageously report even what is uncomfortable and try to wake us up. So it is thanks to this newspaper that I would like to wish everyone the courage to open their hearts to visceral love, to touch the wounds of humanity, to radically assume the political value of fraternity, to go out to meet people who are fighting for life and dignity, recognising in them that gift of humanity that can save us.

If we have the courage to truly love and to believe on the basis of this love that everything can change, then together we will find the way. Then we will be able to make a true exodus and reach that promised land that is the civilisation of love, a society where happiness is not an illusion projected to us by false hopes, but is the joy that gives meaning to your life when you have the courage to truly love.

If these seem like utopias, get to know these movements, such as Mediterranea, where this is already a reality.