“Migrants are people,” Pope Francis reminds us
Environment — di Valentina Neri
Six years after his visit to Lampedusa, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for migrants and their rescuers: “They are people, not just social issues.”
“Migrants are people,” Pope Francis reminds us
Six years after his visit to Lampedusa, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for migrants and their rescuers: “They are people, not just social issues.”
On 8 July 2013, Pope Francis, who had ascended to the papal throne less than four months earlier, had chosen Lampedusa for his first apostolic journey. A destination no other pontiff had ever visited, it welcomed him with a crowd of ten thousand people. Six years on, Bergoglio returned to celebrate Mass for migrants and their rescuers at St Peter's Basilica.
Pope Francis's words for migrants
"On this sixth anniversary of the visit to Lampedusa, my thoughts turn to the least among us who cry out to the Lord every day asking to be freed from the evils that afflict them. They are the least, deceived and abandoned to die in the desert; they are the least, tortured, abused and violated in detention camps; they are the least, who brave the waves of a pitiless sea; they are the least, left in reception camps for too long to be called temporary," he stated during the homily. "Unfortunately, the peripheries of our cities are densely populated with people who are discarded, marginalised, oppressed, discriminated against, abused, exploited, abandoned, poor and suffering."
Read also: Migrants, Pope Francis: "Let us pray for them and for those responsible for their deaths"
"They are people, it is not just a matter of social or migration issues," he continued. "It is not only about migrants, in the twofold sense that migrants are first and foremost human beings and that today they are the symbol of all those discarded by globalised society."
The inhumane conditions of migrants imprisoned in Libya
The conditions of the Libyan detention camps mentioned during the homily have precious little that is human about them. They have been documented by the weekly magazine L'Espresso, which managed to obtain an exclusive series of photographs and videos. According to humanitarian workers, approximately six thousand people are imprisoned in the Tripoli area and would be entitled to humanitarian evacuation.
Read also: An airstrike in Libya kills 40 migrants at a detention centre
The situation is described as catastrophic above all in Zintan and Gharyan, south of the capital and therefore just a few kilometres from the ongoing civil war. "In the Zintan prison, during MSF staff's most recent visit there were 900 people, 700 of them locked in a hangar with no shower and only sporadic access to water. Not drinkable," reads the magazine's in-depth report.
In light of this situation, which has been ongoing for years, two lawyers recently filed a complaint against the European Union at the International Criminal Court. In order to defend its own borders, states the 245-page document, European countries have been willing to make deals with the controversial Libyan authorities. Thereby making themselves complicit, "directly or indirectly," in the arrest and detention of thousands of people.