Video to shed light on Italian refugee camp (INT)

Category: Interest
Subject: Immigration25.10.2005 – 09:50 CET By Teresa Küchler

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – A cross-party group of MEPs will broadcast a film on Tuesday (25 October) showing how the Italian refugee camp on the island of Lampedusa was cleared before the arrival of a delegation from the European Parliament.

The film from inside the camp by Italian undercover journalist Mauro Parissone, will be shown at a joint hearing with the socialist, liberal, leftist (GUE) and green MEPs with the banner “The Real Lampedusa: what the Italian government tries to hide from the EU”.

A delegation of MEPs visited the camp in September having earlier announced that they intended to gather evidence to confront the Italian authorities with allegations that they are expelling immigrants without having tested their legal status and keeping them in inhumane conditions.

When the MEPs arrived in Lampedusa on 15 September, only 11 people were in the compound. Inhabitants of the island told MEPs that the immigrants had been flown out, most likely to Libya, three days earlier.

However, Mr Parissone, present on Lampedusa well before the MEPs arrived has said he has managed to capture the evacuation of the camp on film.

Inside Lampedusa

He is not the only one to have done some undercover work.

Earlier this month, Italian reporter Fabrizio Gatti from left-leaning magazine “L’Espresso” entered the camp posing as Bilal Ibrahim el Habib, a fake Kurdish refugee.

After a week-long stay in the camp, Mr Gatti, who will be present at the hearing in Strasbourg, reported that the Italian police beat, verbally abused and stole from the immigrants.

Sicilian magistrates have opened a criminal investigation about the reported events on the camp.

But the Italian government maintains that immigrants at the centre were treated humanely and with Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli accusing the reporter of inventing his story.

Some Italian MEPs have also been critical of media coverage of the island.

According to Italian daily “La Repubblica”, Northern league MEP Mario Borghezio has been reported as saying that the Lampedusa centre is a “five-star hotel” while MEP Stefano Zappala, from the Italian governing party Forza Italia warned against making snap judgements.

He has argued that the European Parliament should take account of the national context of the complex issue of immigration – including humanitarian, social and security aspects.

Lampedusa is a small island located in the middle of the Sicilian Channel, 200 km from Sicily and 120 km from Libya, and geographically a part of Africa; with a population of 5,500.

The island has become an important outpost for people trying to reach Europe via Libya.

Murtali Mortali (SHT)

Category: Shoutrage
Subject: Fireworks

Li se nikteb issa mhux se jinghogob. Naqta’ fil-qosor.Din il-gimgha, il-Qrendi ghadda minn tragedja oħra. B.B., ta’ 52 sena, inharaq hu u jahdem f’wahda mill-kmamar tan-nar tar-rahal. Il-bierahtlula, disat ijiem wara l-accident, miet l-isptar.L-ghomor lill-familja tieghu.

Il-bierah sar il-funeral. Smajt il-banda tal-kazin iddoqq fil-pjazza.

Waqt li kienu qeghdin idoqqu, kull ghaxar sekondi, kwazi b’koincidenza mat-tmiem ta’ kull strofa, instemghet it-tfaqqigha ta’ murtal.

Kemm se jkun hemm aktar?

The Politics of Stipends (OPN)

Category: Opinion

Subject: Stipends (believe it or not)

 

Jacques talks about stipends in a recent post and gives a clear account of the politics and history (or the history of the politics) of the whole matter. I won’t hypothesise about the extent to which KSU is under the PN’s thumb – I suspect that it is not (although I’m not quite convinced by the argument that protests achieve nothing – if nothing else it is complacent and couched in a misunderstanding of the power of a public outcry).

What I wish to question is the wisdom of the route that we had chosen back in 98-99 (and which I had fully supported) that is a system based on maintenance costs, equipment costs and academic resources. There is one fundamental flaw in that analysis that I think requires attention. I shall base my analysis on an underlying principle of maximisation of resources. The survey that KSU conducted back in the day when Jacques was President of KSU and I was trying to help to run SDM (a very different SDM), makes one assumption that I believe is misguided, that is that students should be entirely autonomous. The flaw lies in that there is no distinction between maintenance and academic requirements.

Certainly, no student should be denied access to the university on financial grounds. However, that does not mean that students should buy all their books, should all own a computer and every piece of material that will no doubt become outdated in no time at all. The only people who really benefit from that are a few publishers of basic texts, computer dealers etc.

The alternative would be to allocate a specific fund to the University library. In this manner, rather than 100 copies of basic texts being sold every year, the library would buy a few copies to be kept in a short loan section. This would free up funds for the library to buy more books and subscribe to more journals (including the growing mass of excellent online resources). Would this not allow for greater academic development all round? Funds could also be set aside for student-requests for materials that are not available in the library (with supervisor approval of course).

The same applies to computers and other equipment. Would it not make more sense for government funds to be allocated to computer labs and hi-tech course-specific equipment rather than buying computers for students to chat on, play games and occasionally conduct research? (sounds condescending but is it untrue?)

I am pretty sure that dedicating funds for specific allocation to the university would allow for a vast reduction in government expenditure. Moreover, it would allow government to dedicate funds to the real issue in the stipends matter – student autonomy in social terms. The excessive demands of direct financing have meant that students end up with lots of books and photocopies but not what they really need: cash in hand commensurate to cost of living plus quality academic resources.In the final analysis I fear that at the time we may have been victims of our own independence…we sometimes were too keen to prove, perhaps to ourselves, that we would stand up to a PN government as much as we did to the short-lived MLP one.

JBB