“This month’s fast is a scream for the 13-year prison sentence of Domenico Lucano, an honest man, who has revived Riace, a semi-abandoned town, welcoming refugees”. This was announced by Father Alex Zanotelli on behalf of the ‘Fasting for justice’ explaining that the next sit in front of the Palaces of power in Rome will be to protest against the sentence against the former mayor of Riace and, like every month, to ask for the stop of racist policies towards migrants.
“I was in the Locri courtroom that day of the sentence (September 28) – the Comboni missionary reminds Adnkronos – and I cried listening to the obscene sentence, which is usually reserved for murderers, mafia members, drug traffickers. This is a political trial: Lucano is condemned because he has created a model of hospitality in Riace. As his friend, Tonino Perna, says, Lucano is guilty of a ‘crime of humanity’ “.
Father Zanotelli explains that on October 6, together with the ‘Fasting for justice – it will be from 4 pm in Piazza Montecitorio, in front of the Italian Parliament, “for the Fasting of Justice in solidarity with migrants, also in the name of those who fast in homes or in monasteries. We can never forget that the fast that God welcomes is to “untie the unjust chains and bring the homeless into the house”, as the prophet Isaiah says. Our fasting is a protest against racist policies, of the EU and of Italy that ‘outsource borders’ in order not to welcome the refugees who knock on our door. This will also be the fate of half a million Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban government “.
“Europe, in fact, tries to persuade Pakistan and Iran to welcome them, for a high price, as we did with Turkey. European politicians demand that human rights be respected in Afghanistan, but they are the first to deny them when the Afghans knock on our door. This is a Europe increasingly aligned with the racist doctrine of Salvini, Meloni, Orban. But also Italy, you will find many Afghans arriving in Trieste on the ‘Balkan route’ or the ‘Salento route’. In Trieste, in defiance of all international laws, the Italian police rejects the arriving refugees and hands them over to the Slovenian police, this one to the Slovakian and the latter to Bosnia, in the Lipa concentration camp. the fate of the Afghans who will arrive in Trieste. Our fasting is an act of protest against all this, but it is also a denunciation of the treatment reserved for NGO lifesaving ships. We find it incredible that anti-Covid measures decrease more and more, except for NGO ships, which are forced to do longer quarantines. Not only are lifesaving ships forced to wait a week to disembark migrants rescued at sea “.
The Comboni missionary recalls that “not only does the EU continue to keep refugees away, but it is intensifying the repatriation of those without a residence permit. In six months Italy has spent 52,000 euros this year on the rental of nine aircraft for deport an unknown number of Egyptian citizens, employing between 650 and a thousand police officers for the operation “.