MILAN (AP) — Italy’s former interior minister Matteo Salvini is campaigning to get his old job back with a stop on Thursday on Italy’s southernmost island, Lampedusa, the gateway to dozens of thousands of migrants arriving in Italy each year through the perilous center. Mediterranean Sea.
Salvini is sounding the alarm that the migrant reception center on the island, which would instead be known as a summer tourist destination, is ‘collapsed’, with more than 1,500 people crammed into a designed space , according to his tally, for 357.
“An absolute disgrace for Italy and for Europe,” Salvini said, accusing his successor of hiding the real number of migrants passing through Lampedusa with transfers to Sicily and elsewhere.
Salvini is making immigration a key part of his campaign for next month’s Italian legislative elections. The September 25 vote came after his right-wing Anti-Migrant League party, along with two other parties, withdrew their support for outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s 17-month pandemic unity government.
During Salvini’s short but dramatic tenure as interior minister in 2018-2019, migrant arrivals to Italy fell sharply as he pursued deterrent policies, including instituting lengthy government delays in the allocation of safe harbors to rescue vessels. He is currently on trial in Sicily, accused of kidnapping in one of these cases.
While his League led the right-wing coalition in the 2018 Italian elections, it lost popularity after joining Draghi’s government. He is now trailing in the polls behind another right-wing coalition partner, the far-right Italian Brotherhood led by Giorgia Meloni.
Now Salvini is fighting for his political relevance. If the right-wing coalition wins the September 25 vote, the leader of the party with the most votes would be chosen as prime minister to form a new government and smaller parties would compete for cabinet seats. Meloni is seeking to become Italy’s first female prime minister.
Not everyone on the island of Lampedusa is keen to be part of Salvini’s election rhetoric. The island’s mayor is concerned about the impact on tourism and insists that the current system of transferring migrants to Sicily and beyond avoided the emergencies encountered during peak arrival years from 2014 to 2016.
“The crucial element is not to slow down or block the transfer to the mainland,” said Mayor Filippo Mannino.
Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the Italian offices of the International Organization for Migration, said while migrant arrivals have increased this year by around a third compared to 2021, they are still well below 120,000. to 180,000 registered each year from 2014 to 2016.
“These are not emergency numbers. We are not facing a digital emergency. But we are facing a humanitarian emergency,” Di Giacomo said, citing 905 people who died or went missing at sea this year.
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David Lohmueller in Lampedusa, Sicily and Paolo Santalucia in Rome contributed.
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Follow all AP stories on global migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration.
Colleen Barry, The Associated Press
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