EveryOne Group is asking the institutions to grant political asylum to the refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea in Bruzzano (Milan) according to the regulations laid down by international law.

Milan April 18th, 2009.

At midday on Friday April 17th, 2009 about 300 refugees from Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia took shelter in the former Leonardo Da Vinci apartment hotel in Via Senigallia, 6 in Bruzzano, a district in Milan. Police officers immediately arrived on the scene while the Prefecture of Milan is already talking about a clearance of the premises. The authorities have declared that, after an evaluation of each case, the refugees may be forcibly repatriated. This approach to a serious and clear humanitarian drama reveals a xenophobic and inhumane attitude, as the refugees are from countries where violations of human rights are systematic and have been defined “horrendous” by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Asper and the most important organizations for the defence of the fundamental rights of the individual and peoples. “In Somalia the civil population is subjected to murder, torture and rape; sacking is widespread and whole towns have been razed to the round,” said Michelle Kagari, (Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Programme) last year in Nairobi. “In Eritrea people are denied their civil and religious rights. There is no free press. Arbitrary imprisonment, enforced military service, torture and ill-treatment are everyday events,” say representatives from Asper, the association for the human rights of the Eritrean people, while Human Rights Watch has today published a report in which it appeals to the host countries to put an immediate stop to the deportation of refugees back to Eritrea where the use of detention and torture towards innocent people has reached intolerable levels. Thousands of witnesses, many of whom have vanished into thin air, have given accounts of horrifying violations of human rights in Ethiopia and harsh criticism of the Ethiopian authorities has been expressed by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. It is important to prevent Italy committing the umpteenth crime against humanity. According to Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro and Dario Picciau, the leaders of EveryOne Group, “refugees from Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia should immediately, and without exception, be granted asylum, according to the Geneva Convention, the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, seeing that an enforced return to their country would mean arrest, detention, torture and in many cases death”. That is why the international human rights organization is asking the Italian institutions not to look for squalid and inhumane loopholes for refusing to obey the asylum laws and – at the same time – it is asking the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the EU Parliament to keep watch and prevent the umpteenth tragic abuse being committed.


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