Albania has always had an “irresistible fascination” with Italian fascists, writes La Repubblica. “Ever since the infamous Count Galeazzo Ciano, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, attempted to ‘Italianize’ Albania by invading in April 1939, it appears that the post-fascist government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has managed to ‘Italianize’ a small part of the ‘Land of Eagles’, on the other side of the Adriatic.
These are the two reception camps for irregular migrants in northern Albania, where the government in Rome will send refugees “captured” in the Mediterranean trying to reach Italian shores. The two fields will be “Italian territory”. After all, they were manufactured and organized by Italy, at a cost close to one billion euros. That is, at the expense of Italian taxpayers.
Italian law will be applied on the fields and the team will be Italian only– police officers and employees of the Ministries of the Interior and Justice.
Repubblica even accuses the Meloni government of behaving like a colonialist power in relation to Albania. Although Meloni finds them and makes them, as his Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, fully agrees.
With maximum security prisons for dangerous criminals
Europe is used to refugee centers where thousands of people live for long periods without any secure prospects. But in Albania the camps are on a completely different level. They look like a maximum security prison for dangerous criminals.
However, Meloni’s plan came to fruition received enthusiastically by the President of the CommissionUrsula von der Leyen. “That’s it in accordance with Community law’ said Ursula von der Leyen.
After all, Italy’s far-right government is playing with what the governments of around 15 other EU countries think.: export asylum procedures to third countries outside the EU. The re-elected president of the European Commission is even pushing for it to be adopted across the EU.
The shift towards tougher measures against immigration is also reflected in the decisions taken by more and more countries. From the reintroduction of border controls in Germany and France, to the temporary suspension of asylum rights in Finland and Poland. The harsh rejection of immigration, a fundamental issue on the far-right agenda, is increasingly becoming a “normality” in the remaining parties – right and left.
“Shouldn’t become a model”
“The Italian model must not become a model”, warns the German Suddeutsche Zeitung: “The Italian deportation camps in Albania do not solve any problems”.
Society is becoming increasingly brutal, writes the Spanish El País, terrified of human rights. Neighboring countries with even fewer concerns about human rights are making deals to “solve the problem” in violent waiting rooms. And the result of our indifference will be a more violent and cruel society”, notes the Spanish newspaper.
The ghost of the fascist Ciano so wonderfully criticized by our great Sophia Vembo when Mussolini declared war on Greece, begins to wander the Old Continent again. We certainly hope that Ciano’s… attacks are not repeated: Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy and son-in-law of the dictator Mussolini, he was also a pilot in the Italian Air Force. He participated in the wars of fascist Italy in the second half of the 1930s, both in Ethiopia in 1935 and in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 as a bomber pilot.
In the early days of the Greek-Italian war, Ciano left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the cockpit of an Italian Savoia Marchetti 79 bomber and, on November 1, 1940, took part in the first aerial bombing of Thessaloniki….