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| Tuesday, 28 May 2002 |
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by Sarath Malalasekera Police yesterday arrested 54 foreigners and 18 Sri Lankans who were allegedly attempting to leave the country illegally for Italy aboard a fishing trawler from Galle. A special Police team led by Gampaha Senior SP Lucky Peiris with the assistance of several personnel attached to the Southern Range arrested the 42 Pakistanis, 12 Indians and 18 Sri Lankans. Investigations directed by Western Province North DIG Pathmasiri Liyanage and conducted by SP Lucky Peiris revealed that the kingpins of this human smuggling racket had charged amounts ranging from Rs. 150,000 to 300,000 from each prospective illegal immigrant to ferry them to Italy. Investigators are trying to ascertain how the Pakistanis and Indians came to board the fishing trawler. Galle District ASP Tennakoon is assisting in the investigations with the officers from Habaraduwa and Ratgama police stations. After recording the statements of the suspects they will be produced before Court, a senior police officer told the 'Daily News' yesterday. In February, the Navy seized a fishing trawler carrying 90 would-be illegal immigrants to Italy, just two days after a similar vessel capsized drowning five people. Three trawlers packed with a total of 250 men, all Sri Lankans, were stopped by the navy in January. A Rome datelined AFP report added: For thousands of wretched immigrants eyeing a better life in Europe, the rugged coasts of Italy's southern underbelly of Sicily, Calabria and Puglia are the golden gates to realising their dreams. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are drawn to the coastline, prey in a game of cat and mouse played out at sea between unscrupulous traffickers and the hard pressed Italian coastguard. The immigrants are Kurds, Sri Lankans, Liberians or Sierra Leoneans. The ports of Catania in Sicily, Crotone in Calabria, and Otranto or Bari in Puglia, Italy's heel, have become synonymous with almost nightly news footage of a wretched tide of humanity - men, women and children having often survived weeks at sea in squalid conditions. They land only to be whisked off to refugee centres to await a decision on their fate by Italy's immigration authorities. Most are deported, only to try again when they have saved enough money to pay the traffickers anew. More than 20,000 immigrants arrived illegally in Italy last year and 6,500 - Kurds, Albanians, Sri Lankans, and Africans - in the first three months of 2002, almost double the figure for the corresponding period last year. But experts agree that these figures are only the tip of the iceberg, saying they fail to account for the many who have slipped through the net along Italy's 7,600-kilometre (4,700-mile) coastline. Many use the well trammelled path of using fake passports or overstaying their tourist visas. Italy is however only a stepping stone to a further destination, a stage in the journey. Kurds head to Germany to join up with the Kurdish diaspora, the Sri Lankans make for Britain, authorities say. The Italian government has had enough. "Italy and Europe have a reduced capacity" to take in immigrants, Italy's President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said during a recent trip to Morocco, driving the message home in one of the countries seen as nurturing the ceaseless supply of illegals. But the drop in the Italian birth rate has changed the complexion of the problem, according to Gian Carlo Biangiardo, a lecturer in demographics at the University of Milan. "From now until 2050, we can take in seven to eight million immigrants, or around 150,000 a year," he said. According to recent statistics, Italy had 1.47 million foreigners with proper residency papers at the end of 2000, 2.5 percent of the population of 57.8 million, relatively low by European standards. With the oldest population in Europe, Italy is faced with a dilemma. It needs immigrants to compensate for the low birth rate, to feed its industry's need for workers, but it fears them. Like elsewhere in Europe, that fear is playing into the hands of the xenophobic Northern League, the uncompromising right wing of Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition. |
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