Parliament approved new Italian funding for the Libyan coastguard

After a long discussion, the House's favorable vote came. The provision provides for an allocation of 10 million euros for Libyan militias, considered by many responsible for inhuman treatment of migrants

(photo: Pablo Garcia / Afp / Getty Images) The first green light had already arrived in Senate on July 7, but on 16 the parliament definitively approved the refinancing of Italian missions abroad, including those in Libya and the Sahel, the areas where most migrants who arrive in Italy transit. Above all, the provision provides for an allocation of 58 million euros, 10 of which (3 million more than last year) for the training and training of the Libyan Coast Guard, the variously organized security force - there are some objected on its own definition as a unitary body - which patrols the 600 kilometers of the Libyan coast by coming into ambiguous contact with human trafficking and - as demonstrated by numerous journalistic reports and investigations conducted by organizations for the defense of human rights - perpetrating violence against migrants who reach this area.

The vote has divided the majority is stranded in a very heated discussion in the Chamber, so as to require that the measure be voted on in two parts. The first one, no Libya, has been adopted with 453 votes in favour, none against, and 9 abstained; the second, with reference to the missions in Libya, has received 401 votes in favour, 23 against and one abstained. The votes of the centre-right are united, then, those of the democratic Party and the Movement 5 stars. Among the 23 not there were those of Matthew Orfini, Laura Boldrini, Judith Pines Pd, Erasmo Palazzotto and Nicola Fratoianni of Free and Equal, and Riccardo Magi +Europe. Orfini, in an interview with Linkiesta has also said that the vote yesterday is, “one of the darkest pages of the democratic Party” .

relations between Libya and Italy

As is well known, the relations between Libya and Italy are regulated by a memorandum of understanding signed in 2017, between the then government Gentiloni, and the executive branch of the libyan national unity led by Fayez al Serraj. An agreement that would regulate the flow of migrants in the Mediterranean, which, however, proved to be a tool with which they are repeatedly violated human rights of those seeking to reach the Italian coasts . In almost three years, the funds stanziat by Italy in favour of the libyan coast Guard are progressively increased up to reach the figure of 22 million euros .

Surveys and international surveys have shown that among the militias in libya there are heavy criminal infiltration, especially human traffickers, who then take large earnings from the management of migrants, and detention centers are real prisons where anyone who is a recluse suffers violence, torture and rape, often indefinitely.

Erasmo Palazzotto of Leu – promoter also of a resolution in which demanded to stop or financing of the libyan coast Guard – has, in fact, commented on the vote in the Chamber as “unacceptable” because “every minute more in which we take in walk the mission we are responsible for those acts of violence and torture documented in detention centres in libya” .