manifested a second illness. When the ambulance was finally called, Medhi passed away while he was being transferred to the hospital.15 The most recent death inside the CPR in Caltanissetta was on the 12th of January 2020, when Aymen Mekni, a 34-year-old man from Tunisia, died inside the facility. Even in this case the real causes of death have never been clarified. While the police headquarters claimed it was a case of ‘natural death’, according to his fellow detainees he did not receive appropriate medical assistance.
Following Aymen’s death, several protests broke out, which lasted for days, in an attempt to stop deportations and obtain freedom for all detainees.
Beyond collective protests that have been breaking out inside the centre, other individual and collective acts of resistance have occurred over time to condemn the inhumanity of the Italian detention regime. In February 2014, during a solidarity presidium outside the centre, five detainees attempted to escape: three were caught, while two managed to get their freedom. Subsequently, on the 26th of March 2014, the local media reported an escape attempt by 40 detainees (half of the migrants inside the centre at the time): some climbed the fence trying to escape, while the others protected them with a pebble stone.
Considerable damage was reported to the vehicles of the police which intervened to block the escape attempt, which eventually failed. Other attempts to escape also occurred in August and September of the same year.
Another meaningful episode of resistance, in this case of individual nature, is that of Adriana, a transgender woman transferred in April 2017 from Brindisi-Restinco to Pian del Lago's CPR, because of the death threats and violence she had suffered by her fellow
15In the night between the 29th and 30th of June 2008 there was a similar event, this time in the Identification Centre next to the CPR, where Yussuf Abubakr, a 24-year-old Ghanaian man, also complained of severe chest pains but was not assisted before his death. This incident was also the subject of a subsequent parliamentary inquiry.
Photo Credits Francesca Bertin
Detention and Covid-19 in Italy 70
male detainees. Inside Pian del Lago, Adriana began a hunger strike to denounce her protracted confinement and shed light on the condition of migrants confined in detention centres more generally. As she reported in an interview with no border activists:
Even if a person has spent their whole life working in Italy, has paid more than 30 years of taxes, because their residence authorisation had expired for 15 days they ended up in a CIE [previous denomination for detention centres in Italy]. All this for lack of work.
There is evidence of two other revolts, which broke out in September and December of 2017 and were led mainly by Tunisian detainees. Protesting against the frequent collective deportations to Tunisia, detainees set fire to underwear and clothes, sheets and tablecloths.
Particularly, in December, three pavilions of the facility were damaged: blackened walls, damaged floors and pieces of plaster fallen everywhere remained as the traces of the revolt. Finally, in February 2020, just before the outbreak of the pandemic, the police entered Pian del Lago's CPR to carry out the unexpected ‘removal’ of some detainees, who then started a protest. As activist reports highlight, the police again responded by means of force.
During the Covid-19 outbreak:
9th March - 18th May 2020
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t the beginning of the pandemic, on the 6th of March, Borderline Sicilia reported the presence of 17 people inside Caltanissetta’s detention centre, despite the facility having broken windows and toilets, concrete beds with very thin and damp mattresses, and lacking adequate healthcare services.Denouncing the dramatic situation inside the facility, the Sicilian network No CPR, Borderline Sicilia, LasciateCiEntrare and other local activist groups launched a petition to immediately close the centre.
Yet, as the national lockdown was enforced, it became much harder to obtain information about life in this site of confinement, as NGOs and solidarity groups were not allowed to enter. A testimony from an activist of Borderline Sicilia, collected by our research team at the end of April, raises the hypothesis that migrants continued to enter the centre in that period, though in small numbers. This happened despite the protests occurring in January and February 2020 had severely damaged the facility and drastically reduced its capacity. Moreover, as confirmed by the lawyer Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo, it is worth noting that
the CARA situated near the CPR has been used during the first national lockdown to quarantine people arriving in Italy by boat, filling the facility above its normal capacity.16 According to the information we collected, no sanitary nor hygiene measures were taken inside Caltanissetta detention centre in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. The environment was not cleaned regularly and no PPE was distributed to the detainees nor information provided on how to protect them from the contagion. Staff, however, did use masks and other protective equipment. As reported by activists of the LasciateCIEntrare campaign at the end of February:
In these days of attention to the coronavirus, the staff arrives with face-masks, but does not give any information to the detainees: ‘they do not tell us how we must safeguard ourselves, what we must do. Imagine we are just beasts in the slaughterhouse for them. Weighed in gold. How much does your country spend on this infamy? Because then here the people [staff] are so rude and mean to us.
The guy who fell because of the police is sick and yet they don’t give a damn. He recently landed in Italy and they didn’t even let him ask for asylum.’
On the 21st of April (Bulletin no. 26), the National Guarantor finally announced the closure of Caltanissetta's CPR due to its inadequate conditions, as set out by the Ministry of Interior. Yet, three days later (Bulletin no. 27), two people were surprisingly reported
16As lockdown measures were eased in Europe and Northern African countries, migration flows increased in July, especially from Tunisia. As a consequence, the CARA became increasingly overcrowded and massive evasions took place (see here and here).