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Refugees of war are not criminals or potentially violent people but are men, women and children victims of violence, trying to escape. This is not a difficult concept to understand, but Italy rejects refugees treating them like criminals, like commodities, like waste. Berlusconi's government is criticized for his behavior by the EU and UN, but doesn't give a damn.

Some time ago Berlusconi's Interior minister denied that people rejected to Libya were real refugees, now he argues that the rejections are "compatible with Community law and existing international conventions, particularly with regard to the protection of persons applying for asylum or international protection." Is what is written in a note sent on Friday, September 11th to the European Commission, which last July 15 had asked for clarification on the rejection. 
Nothing strange, almost all the political action of this government is to hide truth and broadcast another one appropriately manufactured for regime's televisions. In reality, Italy has already rejected since May almost 1,300 people, mostly Eritreans and Somalis, who in our country would automatically be entitled to protection, as war refugees. Moreover, they are also nationals of former Italian colonies. Meanwhile, the immigrants of other nationalities can come to Italy as they want, by plane, by train, by car, by bus. Some end up being illegal because they don't find a job, but given that in our country there are almost 1 million illegal immigrants obviously not all of them will be rejected. Others cannot be rejected because they are Europeans, like the Romanians.So why the government fight against a small minority of immigrants (Mediterranean sea barges in 10 years have brought to Italy only 5% of total immigration), and above all the weaker ones and worthy of protection? Because Berlusconi's regime televisions misinform, and have pushed the groundless myth of an invasion by sea, which doesn't exist, and that is enough to stop it to solve the immigration problem. All completely false, inhuman, stupid and senseless.

But what can you do when a mass of lies have become the regime's official truth? the majority of Italians didn't even see one photo of rejections. Neither they can distinguish between an illegal immigrant who steals, an illegal immigrant who has only lost his jobs and a refugee of war, even though the two latter categories are the vast majority over the first one. Neither they know aomething about the international treaties that Italy is violating, or about what's happens in Libya to refugees, detained and often tortured, without having committed any crime. 
But there are criminals in this story. The criminals are the men in the government that violate international treaties and trample basic human rights of thousands of people for political propaganda purposes. Criminals who go unpunished. 

Francesco Defferrari