Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: Da oggi i profughi dal Kosovo sono "immigrati illegali"

Dal Guardian di oggi
-----------------
Italy bars the refugee route for fleeing Kosovan
Gypsies
Philip Willan in Rome Thursday July 22, 1999
Italy is to begin treating all those who enter the
country without visas from the former Yugoslavia as
illegal immigrants rather than Balkans refugees after
2,000 Gypsies arrived at Italian ports this month -
1,200 of them this week alone.
Tuesday's decision means that Balkans refugees will
be returned to their country of origin if they do not
have the appropriate papers.
"It's a recognition of the fact that we can no longer
apply the terms of the humanitarian protection decree
which was in force during the war," Daniela Pugliese,
a spokeswoman for the interior ministry, said
yesterday.
But the ruling has raised protests from humanitarian
groups who say that the Gypsies are fleeing Kosovo
because of attacks by returning ethnic Albanians who
have accused them of collaborating in Serb ethnic
cleansing.
On Monday, more than 700 gypsies arrived in the
southern port of Brindisi from Bar, in Montenegro, in
an ancient fishing boat.  They were followed by
another 500 on Tuesday.
The government now plans to class all such arrivals
as illegal immigrants and will, where possible,
return them to their country of origin in the vessels
in which they arrive.  Others will be held in
temporary detention centres and then returned in
accordance with a readmission agreement with
Yugoslavia.
Massimo D'Alema, the Italian prime minister,
yesterday defended the decision "The war is over now
and we can't accept any more," he told a popular
television talk show.
"Today there is an international contingent that has
the task of protecting all the minorities that live
in Kosovo."
"If I recognise someone's status as a refugee I am
legitimising the possibility that a minority can be
driven out of a country where there is an
international contingent present.  And that would be
a mistake."
Officials from the Italian foreign and interior
ministries are expected to fly to Montenegro on
Saturday to discuss how to halt the refugee tide.
Ms Pugliese said the Italian government did not
accept that the Romany fugitives were a special case
or that their lives would be at risk in their country
of origin.
Humanitarian agencies yesterday condemned the new
policy as "illegitimate, inapplicable and a bluff".
"To send people back without even allowing them to
apply for political asylum would be criminal, also
because those arriving at the moment are victims of
the vendettas which have been unleashed by the ending
of the war," said Elena Benvenuto of the Italian
Solidarity League.  "There is the suspicion that the
government has got tougher because of the arrival of
the Romany people, who are less welcome than other
immigrants."
There have been tensions between Italians and the
country's Gypsy community, some of whom are refugees
from the Bosnian war.  The Gypsies are often confined
to squalid camps on the fringes of cities and are
perceived by many Italians as people who live by
begging and stealing.
Loretta Caponi, the president of Italy's forum of
foreign communities, said a decision of such
importance should not have been taken at a
ministerial summit but only following a full debate
in parliament.
"It's just a tactic by the interior ministry to test
the waters, to see what the effect would be of a real
toughening of the approach to immigrants," she said.
"In any case the emergency is not over yet.  You
can't put someone who arrives from Kosovo on the same
level as someone who has come from Morocco."
Other commentators complained that the government was
not doing enough to stem the flow of immigrants.
"We are now under siege by the Romany people, who are
arriving on our coasts in thousands every day," said
Salvatore Distaso, president of the regional council
of Puglia.  "Fleeing from war is one thing, this
intolerable phenomenon, is another."
GT

 wrote:
Torrieri vaffanculo.

Pienamente giusto.
Scappano per propria scelta e non per una reale minaccia alla loro vita.
In Kosovo vi e' la presenza dell'ONU e della Nato. L'UCK sta venendo
smilitarizzata e rispetta appieno gli accordi presi.
Non c'e' niente per poter considerari i Rom che entrano illegalmente in
italia come qualcosa in piu' di "immigrati illegali".
Altrimenti tutti o quasi gli immigrati potrebbero addurre "motivazioni
umanitarie" per la "fuga" dai loro paesi.
-Stefano

 -Stefano
-- 
To reply by email remove "xxxx" from the start of my email address
---------------------------------------------------------
G. Torrieri, Particle physics group, Univ. of Birmingham
Work: 0121-414-47-01   Home:0121-415-43-73
Homepage:   
http://www.ep.ph.bham.ac.uk/user/torrieri
---------------------------------------------------------
"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way"
  -Juan Ramon Jiminiz

 dopo un attacco all'accampamento dove abitava.
Addirittura! :)
Deve essere una foto tridimensionale per vedere che scappava dopo un
attacco all'accampamento dove abitava :) ;)
-Stefano


	Stefano, leggo i tuoi messaggi da un mese, e ti comunico
	che li trovo pietosi. Lo so che non te ne frega nulla, 
	mi limito solo a dirtelo, poi vedi un po' tu. I difetti 
	principali sono:
		1) Non capisci quello che ti si dice.
		2) Non rispondi nulla di interessante.
		3) Le tue battute fanno piangere.
		4) Scrivi in un inglese raccapricciante.
	Ciao,   Carlo

Immigrazione
CHE ERRORE L'EMERGENZA "FINITA"
di Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo
Associazione studi giuridici sull'immigrazione (Asgi)
La decisione del governo di considerare i profughi che provengono dall'area
balcanica non piu' meritevoli di protezione temporanea, e trattarli quindi
alla stessa stregua dei "clandestini", e' un gravissimo errore di
valutazione rispetto alla situazione reale che si e' determinata dopo la
fine dei bombardamenti Nato e contrasta con consolidati principi della
Costituzione e del diritto internazionale.
Attraverso un comunicato stampa - e non con una direttiva o un decreto,
come doveroso - il governo ha annunciato la fine dello stato di emergenza
dichiarato con decreto del 26 marzo 1999. Come conferma anche l'Acnur,
invece, in Kosovo sequestri, incendi di case e violenze sono all'ordine del
giorno. Si e' cosi' determinato un clima di confusione che di fatto scarica
di responsabilita' il governo e rimette alle singole questure la decisione
effettiva circa l'accoglienza o il respingimento dei profughi - con una
situazione gravissima dato l'atteggiamento generalmente sfavorevole nei
confronti dei Rom.
All'interno del centro di accoglienza di Comiso - dove dal 21 giugno
svolgiamo attivita' di informazione e di consulenza legale - la decisione
del governo e' giunta insieme alla fine del controesodo (con ponte aereo)
dei profughi verso il Kosovo. Ormai all'interno della base restano poche
centinaia di profughi e a fronte delle promesse mancate del governo (casa,
mobilita', sussidi, ricongiungimenti) fatte in tempo di guerra per
agevolare l'evacuazione dei campi macedoni, quasi duemila (oltre un terzo
di quanti erano arrivati) hanno lasciato con mezzi propri la base, in
qualche caso per tentare l'espatrio irregolare verso altri paesi.
La fine dello stato di emergenza adottata frettolosamente dal governo
chiude l'accesso ai sussidi previsti dal Dpcm del 12 maggio scorso per i
profughi che si sono trasferiti in altre parti del nostro territorio e
rende definitivamente impossibili i ricongiungimenti familiari legali,
anche nel caso di coniuge e figli: cio' spiega l'alta percentuale di
profughi che di fatto sono forzati ad accettare il rimpatrio da Comiso, in
alcuni casi con l'intento di rientrare in Italia (possibilita' ormai
preclusa, per vie legali, dalla recente decisione governativa). E in
effetti l'Italia non ha offerto ai profughi alcuna prospettiva dignitosa,
tra normative imprecise e lacunose e prassi amministrative improntate alla
massima discrezionalita', se non all'arbitrio.
Dopo aver perduto oltre due mesi per emanare un decreto che riconoscesse il
diritto alla protezione temporanea dei profughi mentre erano in corso i
bombardamenti, adesso la (supposta) revoca dello stato di emergenza,
assimilando i "nuovi" profughi ai clandestini, contrasta con il divieto di
"refoulement" (respingimento) sancito dall'art. 33 della Convenzione di
Ginevra: e' infatti evidente il rischio che vengano respinte in frontiera,
senza aver accesso alla procedura di asilo, persone come Rom, disertori
serbi o anche kosovari albanesi comunque esposti al rischio di persecuzioni
individuali, in assenza di una autorita' statale capace di garantire a
tutti le liberta' ed i diritti fondamentali.
Oltre alla normativa sull'asilo (risalente alla legge Martelli del '90)
rimane comunque in vigore - per quanti al governo, nelle questure e nelle
prefetture lo avessero dimenticato - l'art. 5 comma 6 del Testo unico
sull'immigrazione, approvato appena lo scorso anno. In base ad esso
(ripreso anche dalla legge di ratifica degli accordi di Schengen) in caso
di rifiuto nel rilascio del permesso di soggiorno e anche nel caso di
ingressi irregolari, possono essere rilasciati appositi permessi di
soggiorno qualora sussistano "seri motivi, in particolare di carattere
umanitario o risultanti da obblighi costituzionali o internazionali dello
stato italiano". E la nostra Costituzione prevede il diritto di asilo (art.
10.3) con una portata ben piu' ampia di quanto previsto dalla Convenzione
di Ginevra del 1951, con una norma che la Corte di Cassazione, decidendo
nel 1997 a sezioni unite, ha dichiarato immediatamente precettiva.
Vogliamo in definitiva affermare che l'applicazione (e la minima
conoscenza) della normativa gia' in vigore potrebbe forse orientare le
scelte governative e le prassi operative degli uffici periferici verso
soluzioni piu' rispettose della dignita' di chi rischia la vita e ha
perduto tutto.
Riconoscere la possibilita' piu' ampia di rilasciare permessi per motivi
umanitari a quanti giungono in questi giorni dall'area balcanica potrebbe
costituire un serio argine rispetto alla condizione di clandestinita'
dilagante che il governo afferma di combattere ma nei fatti incentiva,
bloccando i canali di accesso legale e riducendo i profughi di guerra alla
condizione di irregolari.

                                Red Cross Reports Economic Devastation
                             HUMANITARIAN DISASTER IN YUGOSLAVIA
                                    by Mike Head and Michael Conachy
                                          World Socialist Web Site
                                                July 22, 1999
In the wake of the U.S.-NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the people of
Serbia are confronting a "dramatically awful" humanitarian crisis - far
bigger than that in Kosovo - according to a senior Red Cross official.
People have no jobs, often no water and electricity, and face a
desperate situation in the coming winter.
Speaking after returning from a visit to the war-torn Balkans, Jim
Carlton, the secretary-general of the Austalian Red Cross, said NATO's
air war had devastated the basic industry and economy of Yugoslavia,
creating widespread unemployment. The suffering added to an already
serious refugee situation, with more than 500,000 people previously
driven out of other parts of the Balkans.
Carlton traveled last month to Belgrade and several cities that were
targeted by NATO , including Novi Sad and Nis. He also visited Kosovo
and refugee camps in Albania.
"The destruction in Novi Sad was phenomenal," he told the World
Socialist Web Site. "I saw the bridges that had been torn up, the oil
refinery that was reduced to scrap and the hospitals and the schools
where bombs went astray.
"It was eerie. The oil refinery must have been hit by at least 100
sorties.
It was just blackened and twisted metal - there was nothing left
standing. After the first weeks of the bombing, NATO shifted to
economic targets. Most sources of employment have been wiped out - that
is the main problem now.
"The humanitarian assistance that the Red Cross can get into Serbia is
miniscule compared to the need. Economic reconstruction is needed.
"After some years of economic sanctions, the economy was already in a
parlous state. Now it is kaput. Many places have no electricity and no
water. Many roads are affected. It took us three hours to drive from
Belgrade to Novi Sad - a trip that normally takes an hour - because of
diversions.
"They face a massive rebuilding task and in the meantime they face high
levels of unemployment, which will make it difficult for people to
cope."
Carlton left little doubt that the NATO bombing of refineries,
factories and other workplaces was calculated. He decribed the missile
attacks as "incredibly accurate."
He gave one example - the defense building in Belgrade opposite the Red
Cross office. Several missiles had struck it. The exterior had been
left intact but inside was only a blackened shell.
In addition to the economic damage, Yugoslavia was attempting to cope
with half a million refugees from elsewhere in the Balkans.The worst
affected victims were the Serbs who had fled the Krajina, now part of
Croatia, in 1995. Carlton visited what is called a "collective center"
for them in Novi Sad.
"About 60 Krajina refugees were housed under pitiful conditions in a
village hall. They were sleeping in bunk beds with no privacy. There
was a little toilet block out the back in the mud, with two loos and a
shower block. The cooking facilities were hopelessly inadequate. It
reminded me of a visit to Cambodian refugees on the Thai border in
1979.
"Their physical conditions and psychological state were profoundly
distressing, and their fate was impossible to imagine in the difficult
economic plight of the country.
Their relief allocation from the Yugoslav government was just one
deuschemark per person a day - that is about 90 cents Australian."
Carlton and the International Red Cross are concerned that the Western
media will continue to ignore the fate of the Serbian people and
refugees for political reasons.
He provided the WSWS with a copy of an article he had written for the
Melbourne Age on the situation in Serbia, a contribution that the
newspaper chose not to publish.
Part of the article read as follows: "On Monday I visited Novi Sad, the
most prosperous city of Serbia. It is a handsome city, with strong
Hungarian influences on its culture, and containing a sizeable
Hungarian minority. Australia will have seen television images of the
destruction of the three bridges across the Danube at Novi Sad, and the
burning of its oil refinery. They will also have seen pictures of the
destruction of a school and two apartment buildings by a missile that
went astray. Miraculously no one was killed in the incident.
"I saw all these sites. With the loss of the bridges, not only
transport but also water supplies were cut off for one third of the
city. I saw the uncovered ferries crowded with up to 100 people
huddling together in the rain crossing the swift-flowing and broad
expanse of the Danube, and another 100 waiting in the rain on either
side. I wondered what their plight would be in the freezing Serbian
winter.
"It is estimated that at least a quarter of Yogoslavia's electricty
supplies will be out for the winter, in a country that relies heavily
on electricity for domestic heating. Electricity shortages and the
destruction of a substantial proportion of the oil refining capacity,
together with other industrial plant, have already expanded the number
of unemployed, with little hope of early recovery.
"These observations apply not only to Novi Sad, but to the whole of
Serbia, and to a great extent the smaller component of the Federal
Republic, Montenegro. In the eyes of a humanitarian organization like
the Red Cross, the victims of these appalling circumstances are mostly
ordinary people hoping to go about their lives in peace and security,
and with virtually no direct influence over the political process."
Carlton cannot be accused of being pro-Serbian, let alone left-wing. He
is a former senior official of Australia's ruling Liberal Party and
served as a shadow minister before the election of the current Howard
government. His comments reflect the anxieties of the International Red
Cross, which is appealing for funds to address the emergency
situation.
Red Cross officials remained in Yugoslavia throughout the NATO bombing,
despite fears for their security following the arrests of two
Australian CARE workers on charges of spying.
Among the Red Cross field workers are nurses, logisticians, refugee
camp managers and water and sanitation engineers. Their presence showed
that aid work continued during the war, notwithstanding CARE's claims
that the arrests had made it impossible for such work to be
maintained.
Other agencies, most notably the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), have expressed alarm about the human catastrophe in Serbia.
The UNHCR estimates that some 100,000 Serbian and Roma (Gypsy) refugees
have fled Kosovo and sought safety in Serbia and Montenegro since the
end of NATO's 77-day bombing campaign. They are in "urgent need of
assistance," according to an UNHCR media release. "If emergency aid is
not immediately provided to these people, 40 to 50 per cent of whom are
children under 16 years of age, UNHCR believes their situation could
turn desperate when winter comes."
It estimates that there are 530,000 refugees previously expelled from
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 40,000 of whom are still living in
overcrowded and dilapidated collective centers.
The UNHCR suggests that Serbian authorities are putting considerable
pressure on refugees to return to Kosovo, citing Serbian press reports
that school directors have been instructed not to enrol Kosovar pupils
and that the Kosovar refugees are being denied pensions and fuel
rations.
At the same time, according to UNHCR staff, the situation facing
non-Albanian minorities remaining in Kosovo is "becoming critical."
Homes are being burned on a daily basis, entire Serb and Roma
communities have been forced to seek evacuation and protection from
NATO occupying troops, and up to 10,000 Serbian refugees from Pristina
are sheltering in the Strpce area.
While most Western media reports focus on the return of Albanian
refugees to Kosovo and on accounts of alleged mass graves and Serbian
war crimes, little coverage is being given to the plight of NATO's war
victims in the remainder of the country. This censorship is designed to
justify NATO's two-month onslaught and to suggest that the Serbian
people simple deserve whatever treatment is meted out to them.
Yet the conclusion is inescapable: under the pretext of averting a
humanitarian disaster, the U.S.-NATO bombardment has created one.
Indeed, it has exacerbated an immense tragedy that already existed
because of the earlier conflicts triggered by the major powers in
Croatia and Bosnia.
UN environment team assesses inhumanitarian impact of NATO bombing
Agence France Presse
UN environment team assesses sites damaged in NATO bombing BELGRADE,
July 20 (AFP) - A UN expert team started assessing the impact of NATO
bombardments on the environment by visiting an industrial complex north
of here, severely damaged during the campaign, Beta news agency
reported Tuesday.
The 17-member joint team of the United Nations Environment Programmeand
of the UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) Balkans Task Forceis
led by Pekka Haavisto, a former Finnish environment minister, the
agency said.
The experts visited the Pancevo refinery and chemical plant, just north
of Belgrade, which were damaged in 11 weeks of NATO air strikes, and
met with Yugoslav Ministry for environment and Health care officials,
it added.
The team, which arrived in Belgrade on Monday, met with Yugoslav
Minister for Development, Science and Environment Jagos Zelenovic, and
with representatives of non-government ecological groups, the agency
said.
During their 10-day stay in Yugoslavia, the team split in two groups,
with one assessing the consequences of NATO's air campaign mostly in
the northern part of the country, while the other would head south,
visiting other places.
The visit follows an earlier UN interagency mission to the region, led
by the agency's top humanitarian coordinator Sergio Vieira de Mello,
who spent 10 days in Serbia in May to assess the humanitarian impact of
the bombing.
The expert team which includes "specialists in toxic and air pollution,
biologists and other scientists, is to make a credible assessment of
the impact of the conflict," the agency quoted its spokesman Robert
Bisset as saying.
Fuel refineries, fertiliser and chemical plants and petrochemical units
and petrol tanks were targetted during the 11-week-long NATO campaign,
launched on March 24.
The agency quoted unofficial sources as saying that every sample of
water, earth and air from the areas close to the potentially dangerous
objects would be analysed three times -- on the spot, later abroad and
in the Yugoslav institutions.
Bisset told the agency that more UN expert teams would arrive by early
August, while their final report could be expected by September, and
submitted to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Later teams were to assess the environmental impacts of the conflict on
the Danube river, on protected areas and watersheds, as well as the
longer-term impacts to human health from weapons used in the conflict,
the agency quoted Bisset as saying.