Madness and inhumanity for foreigners detained in detention centres for repatriation
Altraeconomia – the magazine that deals with issues related to the solidarity and transformative economy – in its April 2023 issue published the chilling investigation ‘Locked up and sedated’ on the use of psychotropic drugs administered to foreigners without residence permits who, while waiting to be identified and deported, are sedated and starved.
“While they are asleep or stunned, their demands decrease: thus the people detained in the Centre for Permanence for Repatriation (CPR) do not eat, do not make a ‘mess’, are repatriated and do not demand their rights. And above all, the managing body saves money, because psychotropic drugs are cheap. Food and an ‘active’ person, on the other hand, much more. The account of Matteo, the fictitious name of an operator who worked several months in a CPR, is confirmed by unpublished data obtained by Altreconomia and which photograph a very high use of these drugs in centres throughout Italy. An “expulsion machine” where “the human being disappears and only money remains.”: (Source: https://altreconomia.it).
Photo: https://ciaconlus.org/it
“Those of us parliamentarians who were able to enter the CPRs always had the impression that the people locked up were often in a state of semi-consciousness. In these places, which are aimed at the total annihilation of human dignity, where men and women are crammed into real cages, with even the roof made of bars, as in the zoos of a few decades ago, one cannot help but notice these stunned people, under the obvious effect of substances.” This is how some parliamentarians have expressed themselves in the face of this drama full of injustice that unfolds in general indifference.
Photo: www.giustiziainsieme.it
The madness of these places is even greater if we consider that most of those people will never be deported because repatriations are really only possible if there is a bilateral agreement, and in any case it is always difficult and costly. Yet in the last Budget Law, the Italian government established the expansion, by 2025, of the network of the nine CPRs already in operation, and the new decree on immigration passed in March 2023, just after the events in Cutro, provides for simplified procedures for the construction of new facilities, with the aim of building at least one per region.
Photo:www.redattoresociale.it
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