Pino Corrias: A security decree devoid of humanity

This article is published in issue 40 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 3 October 2023

The sky falls, the world moves. Peoples migrate of Africa and Asia towards the West. One hundred million fleeing from 59 ongoing wars. Eight hundred million fleeing from hunger. One hundred million imprisoned in refugee camps. And we Italians in Italy, or rather in Europe, have just been reached by 131 thousand migrants in nine months, surrounded by a Mare Nostrum of chatter that is already the new electoral campaign, how do we respond?

Announcing that with the new security decree we will add about ten new boxes, more or less the size of matchboxes, but with barbed wire around them. One for each region that still does not have one, in “sparsely inhabited” and “easily perimeter-based” territories, to contain, or rather “detain”, a few thousand migrants who have received an expulsion decree or have committed a crime, but are not in prison because the sentence is not final. And they will remain detained no longer for three months, but directly for 18 months, a year and a half. Does our Constitution allow this when it states that individual freedom is inviolable? The doctrine of the constitutionalists says no. Government politicians pretend nothing happened. Those in the opposition stammer. Is it ever possible to imprison human beings without trial, without guarantees of defense or appeal? And lock them up doing what for 500-odd days? No work, no school. All left there, counting the minutes and the bars, after having crossed wars, seas and deserts and therefore young, courageous, impatient. Everyone is imagining, preparing, attempting the possible escape, or the impossible revolt, before the repatriation notice arrives.

In the new security language inaugurated by our Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi, the sentence inflicted is “administrative detention”, not “judicial”. So what? Do the authorities in charge imagine that that lexical delicacy is a relief for the imprisoned who we condemn not for what they have done, but for who they are?

The decree laws, in our system, are urgent because they are created in a hurry. They are needed when one is unprepared for the event, as happens with unexpected catastrophes, earthquakes, epidemics. But what is sudden, unexpected about immigration? What do we miss from the quadrants of the world? What have we not understood about the flow of entire populations that move chasing the dream of a little oxygen? Migrations are and will be the sign of the century. It has already happened since ancestral times. It will continue to happen at an increasing rate. Only fools can think of dealing with them as if they were Saturday night emergencies, between one election campaign and another. Only those in bad faith will continue to wield them to fuel collective fears, always ready to ignite, promising fire hydrants, walls, thundering and empty laws. Always persist in not thinking far and wide. For example, trying to face the titanic disorder of the world with a win-win welcome, some new ideas, a bit of humanity broader than a box of matches.

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