Neither here nor elsewhere: The march against administrative detention center in Castelvolturno
On Saturday 24th October, the squares of Italy’s metropolises were once again filled with thousands of young and very young people who, despite the new government measures and widespread police violence, were able to defy the blackmail of fear and take to the streets to protest against the high cost of living and war, and, more generally, against their systemic condition of exploitation and exclusion.
At the same time, in a small town in the Campania region, just 40 kilometres from Naples, a demonstration took place that was unprecedented in the history of anti-racist movements and the struggles against the administrative detention of migrants, which began in 1998 when the so-called CPTs (then known as ‘temporary detention centres’) were first introduced into law by the immigration law known as the ‘Turco-Napolitano’ Act. In Castel Volturno, in fact – the very place where the Meloni government has indicated it wishes to build one of the six new CPRs (‘centres for repatriation’, as they are now called) planned across various regions – as many as twenty thousand people took to the streets to shout ‘NO CPR’, ‘neither here nor anywhere else’, and to demand the closure of the existing ones.
Castel Volturno, together with the entire Domitian coast, plays an important role in the history of immigration in Italy: in this area, in Villa Literno, in August 1989, with the murder of Jerry Essan Maslo, a South African political refugee, the whole country was made aware of the reality of racism, illegal labour recruitment in agriculture, and the exploitation of many migrant workers in the fields – people who had been invisible until then.
Twenty years later, in 2008, in Castel Volturno itself, the Camorra (neapolitan version of the mafia), in order to assert its criminal control over the territory, massacred seven people with machine-gun fire, including Kwame Antwi Julius Francis, Affun Yeboa Eric, Christopher Adams from Ghana, El Hadji Ababa and Samuel Kwako from Togo, and Jeemes Alex from Liberia. The horror of that massacre sparked a full-blown uprising in the streets and, for the first time, some partial measures were adopted to protect the rights of farm labourers working in the region.
In short, to speak of Castel Volturno is to retrace an entire history of violence and exploitation, but also of the struggles and resistance of migrant people, which continues to this day. And the names of all those who, over the years, have lost their lives at sea or in ‘ethnic prisons’ – the variously named administrative detention centres – were chanted and remembered throughout Saturday’s demonstration.
What was striking about the demonstration was the high turnout of migrant women and men from across the Campania region, but also – and above all – of those young people, hastily labelled as ‘second-generation’, who know the migrant background through their parents’ lives and the daily discrimination they have endured and fought against. Often in neapolitan dialect their voices, including those of Refugees in Libya, took centre stage on the day.
Alongside them, the long march was characterised by an extraordinary cross-section of participants – the very same groups that have shaped its course over the last three months: alongside Scouts, parishes and Catholic associations, no fewer than seven bishops from Campania marched, led by the Cardinal Archbishop of Naples, Don Mimmo Battaglia, who spoke in no uncertain terms: “I call on the government to stop. Today we say no to the CPRs; we say no to a system that treats detention as a response to people’s vulnerability and administrative status.”
The presence of local institutions was significant too, including many Municipal mayors and councillors and, above all, the Regional Government with its president and the councillor for welfare, who have already put bureaucratic measures in place to effectively try to block the construction of the CPR, defying the national government’s directives. Also present were MPs from opposition parties, as well as confederal and independent trade unions.
But above all, there was a large turnout from associations, social centres and civil society movements – from Libera to Arci, from Emergency to Mediterranea – in a march where the banner reading ‘care is not a crime’ stood out, carried by healthcare workers who have been criminalised in recent months precisely for certifying people’s medical ‘unsuitability’ for detention in the CPRs.
In short: in the midst of a ‘lively’ autumn for Italian and European society, we are also witnessing – unprecedented in its scale and political significance – the surprise emergence of a mobilisation for freedom of movement and the freedom of people tout court, with a strong anti-racist impetus and a new, cross-cutting convergence of different actors, cultures and approaches in an alliance dictated by the ‘necessary actions’ required to counter an inhumane and authoritarian drift. But the election campaign is drawing near, and the Meloni government and Minister Piantedosi need fuel to stoke their propaganda at people’s expense.
They are in a hurry to open detention centres, to lock people up and deport them, to inflict further suffering and death on migrants – in Libya as well as at sea, in cities as well as behind the bars of a CPR centre. The next steps, including in the other five regions affected by the plan, will tell us whether the event in Castel Volturno was merely a positive one, or rather the beginning of a new movement for the rights of everyone.
Mediterranea Saving Humans
