It’s the end of censorship. The new Interior Minister Maria Cancellieri has reopened the doors of the centres for identification and expulsion (CIEs) to the press. Thus ends the era of censorship. Which lasted more than eight months starting last April 1, when the then Interior Minister Roberto Maroni established the ban on press entry into CIEs with the famous circular 1305. In recent months a group of journalists has sided against this censorship, with the initial step of a first appeal launched in May by Fortress Europe. The group grew over time, thanks to the decisive and strong support of the Union and the Order of Journalists, and of a group of parliamentarians and associations that gave rise to the campaign lasciateCIEntrare, last July 25, in front of the CIEs of half of Italy. Colleagues Raffaella Cosentino and Stefano Liberti, supported by the Forensic Union for Human Rights and by the Open Society, went so far as to appeal against the ban on entry. But the Interior Minister backtracked before it got to the judges. And now that the censorship is over, the ball is in the journalists’ court.
In fact, now we have to hope that unlike what happened in previous years, journalists get moving and ask for authorization from the Prefectures in question to visit the detention sites as soon as possible. And tell the stories. Because without those stories we will not be free of the imagery of the frontier that has been sewed upon us. We begin, on our part, by re-publishing photos taken in recent years inside CIEs, in the gallery above, whereas all material collected since 2009 can be found in the CIE SPECIAL.
translated by Camilla Gamba