In Italy, the intercultural LGBTI associations “Certi Diritti,” “Il Grande Colibrì” and “Renzo e Lucio” express their great preoccupation over the new “immigration decree” signed by Di Maio (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Lamorgese (Minister of the Interior) and Bonafede (Minister of Justice). The decree establishes 13 countries designated as “safe countries of origin” and respectful of human rights: Albania, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Ghana, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Senegal, Serbia, Tunisia and Ukraine. The decree doesn’t argue at all these choices and doesn’t even take into consideration the legislative decree n. 25/2008 that guaranteed the possibility to exclude categories or groups of people persecuted in those countries.
Gabriella Friso (Certi Diritti) explains: “There will be a quickened procedure for asylum seekers who arrive from these countries. If they don’t prove that their case is exceptional, their application for protection can be rejected as unfounded because the decree says that no risk of persecution or serious harm exists. Furthermore, there’s a complete absence of the suspensive effect for the eventual plea: at the first denial follows the expulsion.”
We can prove that women and sexual, ethnic, religious and national minorities are persecuted in these countries and that there are cases of violence linked to human trafficking.
According to our associations, the Government’s choice endangers the right of asylum of the most vulnerable categories, which is a clear violation both of the Italian Constitution (articles 3 and 10) and the Geneva Conventions of 1951 on refugees (article 3).
Not only the list is totally and embarrassingly unjustified, but it also lists a variety of countries which do not meet the criteria of rule of law which should have been valued writing the list itself.
With sexual minorities, we wonder how can be possible to think that “no acts of persecution exist […] in the form of torture or other punishment such as inhuman or degrading treatment” in some “safe countries of origin” proposed by the decree: Algeria, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, and Tunisia punish homosexual intercourse between consensual adults with jail, as several cases showed even recently. In other countries like Albania, Kosovo, and Ukraine, social homophobia and transphobia are very strong and cases of violence are so frequent that LGBTI people are limited in their full and serene expression of their own identity.
The Algerian refugee Lyas Laamari, vice president of Il Grande Colibrì, explains: “In Algeria, homosexual people risk undergoing anal tests, a very painful and humiliating practice assimilated to torture. Then they can receive up to 3 years imprisonment. In prisons, humiliations, tortures and beatings are very common. How can you consider it a safe country?”
Legislative decree n. 25/2008 imposes that “the designation of a safe country of origin can exclude parts of the territory or categories of people,” but it wasn’t applied to any of the 13 countries listed in the new decree. The provision doesn’t offer any attention to particular conditions of discrimination and persecution that sexual, religious, ethnic, and national minorities suffer in some listed countries.
Our associations denounce the new decree. Pier Cesare Notaro, president of Il Grande Colibrì, says: “We certify that there is no discontinuity from the previous course of action (which was deeply xenophobe and detrimental to fundamental human rights) dictated from former ministers Minniti (centre-left) and Salvini (far right).”
“Majority forces should prove if they care for human rights: they can’t defend them just with words to hit the political enemy when they are at the opposition and then trample on them when they are in power,” declares Mauro Pirovano, president of Renzo e Lucio.
Certi Diritti
Il Grande Colibrì
Renzo e Lucio
