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EUROPE-MIGRANTS-ITALY-POLITICS
Italy evicts migrants from Rome camp
ROME, Nov 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Italian police on Tuesday bulldozed a
symbolic makeshift camp in Rome which has housed tens of thousands of
migrants during their journeys to northern Italy and the rest of Europe.
“Stateless, lawless no-man’s lands will no longer be tolerated,” Interior
Minister Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right League, said as diggers
rumbled through the camp, run by the Baobab Experience association.
Men could be seen wheeling away their belongings in shopping trolleys,
while youngsters hugged tearfully as tents were dismantled around them,
according to an AFP photographer.
A cut out photo of Salvini’s head glared from the side of a rolled up
mattress as a crane swept up discarded belongings in the abandoned parking
lot near Rome’s two main train stations.
Around 100 migrants had been living there after leaving — voluntarily or
otherwise — Italy’s reception system.
In 2015, when the borders were still open, some 35,000 migrants transited
through Baobab on their way to the rest of Europe. The camp had been located
in an old factory at the time.
The association was behind a protest last week against Salvini’s
“inhumane, dangerous and unacceptable” security decree, which the UN’s human
rights body has said conflicts with international laws on refugees and human
rights.
“It’s already the 22nd time that the camp has been cleared, but I think
this time it has been shut down for good,” Baobab coordinator Andrea Costa
said.
BSS/AFP/ARS/2015 hrs