Do you remember the ministerial circular letter 1305 and the prohibition for journalists to enter the CIE? For some strange reason, the prefecture of Potenza never received it. Who knows why…a fax jam, a manager on leave, an absent-minded official? No matter what, the fact is that when Raffaella Cosentino submitted a request for a press pass to visit the centre, the Prefecture didn’t hesitate an instant and kindly fixed an appointment for her to visit the detention centre. The result of this visit is this video. Shot with mobile phones by the detainees themselves who then handed it to the journalists. It contains the evidence of police beatings and of the attempts to escape. And the images of the Guantanamo of Palazzo, a small village in the region of Basilicata.
Ninety Tunisian guys have been locked up for two months in cages for chickens, as Raffaella calls them in the article that was published on the new web page of the Enquiries of Repubblica.it. The video released by Repubblica ended up on the national channels and was broadcast in two editions of the Tg3, provoking harsh reactions from the president of the region of Basilicata, De Filippo, who reported he had been kept unaware of everything and that even today it would be forbidden for him to enter the centre. In the meantime a group of parliamentarians in Rome is organizing a trip to Basilicata. In order not to leave the Tunisian detainees alone, especially now that they’ve become the target of the officers’ intimidations and threats after the release of the video. Now it’s clear to everyone why Maroni doesn’t want the press to stick their nose in, and thus become an obstacle for the work that the expulsions machine has to carry out. To go more in depth on this issue we suggest you read the enquiry written by Raffaella Cosentino, who is one of the first people to sign the appeal “Let us enter in the CIE”, which has the National Federations of the Italian Press as its adherents.
translated by Alexandra D'Onofrio