Borders are not marked on a map. They are a method. A way of distinguishing between those who can and those who cannot, not always killing, often just hurting. They prevent people from passing through or mark forever those who cross them. With an explicit and terrible violence like that of the lagers, or with a patient, everyday violence like that of the selective controls on buses and in squares. Sometimes the same people in one life cross many borders, many types of these borders.

One can drown in the Mediterranean because of the barrier erected by Fortress Europe, but also in the heart of this 'continent of democracy', in a river or a ditch, as happened to Fares Shgater, Khadim Khole, Oussama Ben Rebha.

Each permanent repatriation centre is surrounded by a border, made up of walls like those of a prison. Sometimes a border can also materialise suddenly, in the fury of racists who find an enemy to attack and who, like borders, sometimes, but only sometimes, kill.

In 2018, when European governments tried to remove rescue ships from the Mediterranean, the Mare Jonio went to sea and with it the RHIBs dedicated to Abba, Abdoul Guibre, who was killed by racism in Milan in 2008. When war broke out in Ukraine and few refugees were able to cross the border, we went there with the Safe Passage mission to help them do so.

Today we can only invite everyone to be in Padua on Saturday 28 January and not to stop there. As in the central Mediterranean, our cities need the eyes of a civil fleet, the concrete practice of bodies that oppose borders, deportation, racialisation and reject the idea of clandestinity.