Italian working class mobilises against racism and war
- Details
- Created: Saturday, 26 November 2022 12:56
- Written by Alexander Trome
Racist immigration policies
At the end of October, three NGO boats carrying approximately 900 migrants were stuck at sea for more than a week, demanding a safe harbour to dock on the Italian coast. The newly- installed right-wing government of Giorgia Meloni faced a dilemma: forbidding the disembarkation of the migrants had already been attempted in 2018, but backfired against the then - and current - Secretary of State Matteo Salvini; on the other hand, Meloni could not risk appearing moderate on what had been a key issue of her campaign – a harsher implementation of Italy’s existing hostility to migrants. As a result, she took the unprecedented decision to have a ‘selective disembarkation’ with only children, women and ‘vulnerable’ people allowed to get off two of the boats in the Sicilian port of Catania. The rest were initially prevented from leaving the ship, and the third vessel, the Ocean Viking, was turned away. This brutal decision accompanied the now canonical denunciation of NGO boats as ‘migrant taxis’, with the prime minister instructing them to stay away from the Italian coast and instead to transport their human cargo to the country whose flag they were flying – in this case, Norway and Germany.
