by Nick O’Connell
EU Political Analysis

4 February 2020

Last Sunday 2 February the 2017 Libya Memorandum was renewed and extended for another three years after human rights and migrant organizations like Migrants of the Mediterranean pressured the Italian government to back away from it.

The agreement legitimizes Libya’s inhumane treatment of migrants at the expense of Italian taxpayers.

The government renewed the treaty through the works of Minister of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese, promising to gradually modify it and close the detention centers at a future time that has not been defined.

Migrants of the Mediterranean has long reported on the incredible human rights abuses at the hands of Libyan authorities.

Richard was tortured for months in one of these detention centers. Fabulous ate a cup of a flour and water mixture and drank salty tap water for months while watching people die by his side.

To put the country’s instability into further perspective, last week the UNHCR had to abandon their Tripoli office for security concerns. If even the United Nations has to leave the country, how can European nationalists advocate in good conscience for closed ports and returning migrants to a country that is by no standard a safe harbor?

Meanwhile, some of Italy’s ongoing anti-migration sentiments are directly fueled by two infamous Security Decrees signed into law by the previous government controlled by far right leader Matteo Salvini.

If the current government is committed to distancing itself from demonizing behavior toward the country’s own most marginalized inhabitants, it should immediately strike down the Decrees, just as Minister Lamorgese has repeatedly promised to do.

This would have immediate effects on the country’s immigration mechanism and limit the far-right’s reach and message. Striking the Decrees would, for example, restore a country-wide reception system that was considered exemplary for its efficiency, its professional staff, and ability to integrate migrants into Italian society.

This is just one example of the true aim of the Decrees: a tool specifically designed by a political class to further polarize the country and embolden far right groups’ rhetoric, which would otherwise remain on the fringes of society.

At MotM we are committed to creating a narrative based not on hatred and anger but on stories of hope and integration––our only way forward.

The far-right has anger, fear, and a strong anti-migrant rhetoric on their side. We have facts, humanity, and solidarity on ours. We know we are on the right side of history. Help us put humanity first.