Refugees bust out of Italian camp criticised by UN
24 Jan 2009 11:26:42 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds details) ROME, Jan 24 (Reuters) - More than 1,000 asylum-seekers and would-be immigrants broke out of an Italian reception centre on the island of Lampedusa on Saturday and marched to the town hall a day after the U.N. criticised conditions at the camp. Police said the group forced open the gates of the camp and marched peacefully to the town centre to protest against their detention. They were joined by a few hundred locals who also want the inmates transferred to bigger camps elsewhere in Italy. Nearly 2,000 people are crammed into the camp, where Italian authorities hold people picked up or rescued trying to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa in small boats. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) made a rare criticism of Italy on Friday, expressing concern about the camp which it says is only built to accommodate 850 people. Originally a temporary stop for people waiting for transfer to other centres in Italy, the camp's role has changed this year with tough new immigration rules meaning all those rescued are kept in Lampedusa until being granted asylum or expelled. Hundreds of people are now sleeping outdoors under plastic sheeting, with overcrowding creating what the UNHCR called a "difficult humanitarian situation". Many locals are opposed to Italian government plans to build a new camp to identify and expel illegal immigrants, which they say would turn the island into a "sort of prison" rather than a humanitarian centre for refugees rescued from the sea. Mayor Bernardino De Rubeis, who leads opposition to the new camp, urged protesters to return to the camp and said he would seek Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's personal intervention to have them moved to more suitable accommodation off the island. "Only if you return peacefully to the centre can you be transferred out of here," he said, according to local media. About three quarters of migrants reaching Italy by sea last year applied for asylum, of whom half got refugee status or protection on other humanitarian grounds, the UNHCR said. (Writing by Stephen Brown; additional reporting by Wladimiro Pantaleone in Palermo; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Palestinian boys pray outside a destroyed mosque during the first Friday prayers after the end of Israel's offensive on Gaza in Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza January 23, 2009. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis ...
