The Cutro massacre was not an unforeseeable accident. It is just the latest in a very long line of tragedies that should and could have been avoided.
People leaving Turkey, Libya or Tunisia are forced to risk their lives because there are no safe and legal ways to reach European territory.
Governments have only focused their efforts on preventing departures, forcing those fleeing war, persecution and poverty to turn to traffickers: if the people who died at sea off Cutro had been able to apply for and obtain a humanitarian visa, they would not have risked their lives.
If there had been a European or Italian search and rescue programme, this terrible shipwreck could have been avoided. The responsibility of the competent authorities will be examined by the judiciary.
But those who are politically responsible, first and foremost the government, cannot turn a blind eye to reality and put the burden of a massacre on the victims, who lost 70 people who could and should have been saved.
It's time to say enough and stop the massacres.
- We call for a serious investigation to shed light on what happened.
- We call for the establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the border massacres.
- We call for the immediate implementation of a European search and rescue programme across the Mediterranean, and we urge the Italian government to ask the other member states to implement this programme.
- We call for the activation of the humanitarian visas provided for in the European Visa Regulation, allowing people fleeing war and violence to cross European borders safely and legally.
- We call for the activation of all complementary channels of access, starting with resettlement, corridors and other forms of sponsorship, and for the expansion of regular entry channels, without using these instruments to justify policies of closure and refusal delegated to non-EU governments.
- We call for a halt to all initiatives and programmes to externalise borders and for the promotion of bilateral agreements based on respect for human rights, not on the control of migratory flows.
It is time to say enough to all forms of political exploitation and to stop the massacres.
We will do this by going to the beach of Cutro on 11 March at 14.30 to express our indignation and solidarity with the victims and their families in a silent march.
The demonstration in Cutro is the first important national event in a path of initiatives and mobilisations that the networks promoting it want to organise in order to "reverse the course" of these policies.
Those who cannot come to Steccato di Cutro are invited to mobilise online by taking a photo with the white armband on their arm and posting it on social networks.
