Late in July, 78 Eritrean immigrants board a rubber raft in Tripoli, Libya, and set sail toward Italy. After six days, the motor quits and they quickly run out of provisions.
Some 23 days later, on August 20, they are intercepted by the Italian Guardia di Finanza about 7.5 miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa. The immigrants report having run into at least ten fishing boats during their ordeal, only one of which stopped to give them food and water.
Of the 78 aboard at the beginning of the trip, only 5 are still alive when they are found by the Guardia di Finanza. The others had died and their bodies had been thrown into the sea.
Press Release by Italian Minister of the Interior, Roberto Maroni, architect of the new "Security Package" that makes immigration a crime: "Seventy-Three Illegal Immigrants Evade Arrest."
And yes; it's satire. Maroni never issued such a press release, and I certainly wouldn't want to get in trouble for defamation of character. Assuming he has one.
ReplyDeleteWhat Maroni did do was call for an immediate investigation because he found the immigrants' story so "suspicious." Their physical condition, he said, wasn't consistent with their tale of being adrift for more than 20 days. Meaning, one supposes, that they were still alive.
Meanwhile, the Idiot Son of Satan (aka Renzo Bossi, son of the Grand Dragon of the Lega Nord, Umberto Bossi), who has flunked his high-school exit exams twice running, has invented a popular new videogame whose title might be translated as "Chuck Out the Immigrant." Players get points for shooting holes in rafts carrying immigrants or can score even higher if they manage to blow the whole lot of them to smithereens.
Italia. Bella gente.