We welcome the initiative of the Municipality of Lampedusa and Linosa to lead the islands on a 'path to peace', a visionary process for humanity that also invites and involves all civil actors in maritime rescue.
We acknowledge Lampedusa as an 'island of salvation', as a natural landing place for thousands of men, women and children who cross the sea, who migrate or flee from inhuman conditions. But we must distinguish and separate two important issues: saving people does not mean keeping them in camps or 'hot spots'. As we are seeing with the arrival of refugees from Ukraine, it is a possible political choice to allow people to move freely throughout Europe, where they have relatives and friends or other contacts who will welcome them and allow them to live as best they can. Instead, we see how terrible the opposite situation can be, on Greek islands like Lesbos or Samos, where people on the move are blocked or even detained in huge camps for months or years, and where a permanent crisis situation is politically and artificially created. The 'hotspot' system - with the transformation of border islands into militarised emergency zones - can never be acceptable. And in Lampedusa it should be overcome by the proposed 'path to peace'.
As a concrete step in this direction, we support the Mayor's request to replace the "quarantine ships" with a rapid and permanent system for transferring people who have arrived in Lampedusa to the mainland. The Italian government has extended the use of the 'quarantine ships' until 30 April next year. These ships have never had a valid public health rationale to combat the pandemic. Rather, they have been used as "floating hotspots". They have promoted discriminatory treatment, including in relation to Covid, of migrants rescued at sea or arriving on Italian shores after long and dangerous crossings. The mayor's proposal to replace them with ferries to facilitate the rapid transfer of people to Sicily and avoid the recurrence of permanent emergencies on the island is essential to combine the right to rescue with the right to rapid relocation and dignified reception, even in large numbers.
We need a welcoming Lampedusa and not a militarised island with closed camps. We need and demand a peaceful landing and transit point in the middle of the central Mediterranean. We therefore call on all human rights organisations and migrants' rights associations to support the demonstration on 28 April and to amplify with real and digital sirens the start of the "Path for Peace" by the Municipality of Lampedusa and Linosa and its Mayor.
