GJADER — Calm sea, excellent visibility. “Nothing, nothing yet,” says the port director Sender Marashi. It’s October: they are dismantling the summer amusement park, and someone is still swimming. All the ships you see here are fishing boats loaded with mackerel and sardines. But soon, an Italian Navy vessel will dock here.
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It will bring the first load of migrants, starting the so-called “Albania project.” It is by now a much discussed project in Italy, which has left deep doubts both to its usefulness and its humanity.
It’s a matter of luck. Everyone who attempts the Mediterranean crossing to reach Europe faces four possible levels of misfortune. The first is death by drowning.
Mediterranean roulette
The second, for those who survive, is being found in the sea and taken back by the so-called “Libyan Coast Guard,” a merciless organization financed by the Italian government: that would mean more torture, more violence, more money to pay.
The third level of risk is meeting an Italian patrol boat: that will probably mean, from now on, slow navigation towards Albania. Which is not the European Union migrants hope to reach, even if it dreams of some day being part of it.
For this reason, the fourth option, being saved by an NGO ship, will soon become, by far, the best of possibilities for a migrant crossing the Mediterranean: NGOs will not go to Albania.
More often than not, the Italian government will assign a very distant port of disembarkation to the NGOs: it’s a way to punish them for what they do and make their job harder. It can take an entire day to reach Genoa, Ravenna, or Ancona from the islands of the Sicilian archipelagos, but the migrants won’t care too much: those far-away ports are still Italy, they are still Europe.
Destiny in a few days
Only adult men from countries deemed “safe” can be deported to Albania. But Italy also considers Egypt, Tunisia and Bangladesh safe, while an Oct. 4 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union sets other parameters. For a country to be considered safe, it must be safe everywhere, and for every citizen. Ask that Tunisian boy who had one of his testicles cut off in retaliation after he got his girlfriend pregnant if returning to Tunisia is safe for him. How will the judges who will have to decide on individual cases behave?
The law states that the expedited procedure to apply for asylum should take a maximum of 28 days. Individual cases are examined in a hurry, with the asylum seekers not understanding the language, let alone their rights or the judicial process. Trained interpreters are needed. Accurate information that puts people in a position to exercise their right is crucial. They need to know clearly, for example, that in the case of a denial by the commission, the time to appeal has just been reduced to 7 days.
We expect these migrants to defend themselves in Italian, in a country that speaks Albanian, while they speak a third language — and can’t leave the cage they’re in.
Having to go through the whole procedure in Albania, standing trial via video calls, is going to make the migrants’ lives much more complicated. They will feel alone and helpless. How are they going to find a trusted lawyer who understands the Italian and European legal system in Gjadër, Albania? And if they find them, how are they going to meet them, if they can’t leave their cages?
We expect these migrants to defend themselves in Italian, in a country that speaks Albanian, while they speak a third language — and can’t leave the cage they’re in. This does not sound like a scenario that particularly cherishes these people’s right to a fair trial.
A very small Italian exclave
The guards say: “Beyond the gate, it’s another country.” Instead, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama says: “Those centers do not concern us.”
It’s not clear what will happen in the event of riots, fires, or escape attempts. Or, more simply, if a person inside feels sick and needs urgent medical care from a hospital: who is going to take care of all that, which country?
“The agreement with Italy provides that no migrant will ever leave the center,” Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama always says. This seems to suggest that many costly and unpractical return trips across the Adriatic Sea are to be expected.
To build the hotspot at the port of Shëngjin and the detention center in Gjadër, the Meloni government has already allocated 65 million euros. The expected management cost is 120 million per year. But it is a hypothetical cost. Underestimated. Because no one knows how many transfers – actually – will be made. How many police officers will be deployed on assignment, and how many direct and variable costs will have to be sustained.
What we are seeing is pure propaganda.
In the first half of 2024, 13,330 repatriation orders were signed in Italy, but only 2,242 expulsions were carried out. What will happen to migrants who receive an expulsion order on Albanian soil? The probability that the Italian government will have to accompany them back to Italian soil, only to abandon them to their fate shortly after, is very high.
Why is the Italian government doing all this, then? One thing looks almost certain: not for the benefit of being able to expel migrants directly from Albania. Very few countries have direct repatriation agreements with and from Albania, except for Tunisia, based on a bilateral agreement. But to the Italian government, that seems to be enough. At least enough to convince Italian voters that the government is taking a tough approach to immigration.
“What we are seeing is pure propaganda,” said one researcher of the migratory phenomenon.
But while the government is looking for consensus, we are facing the risk of creating a lawless zone. It will be difficult to gather testimonies and documents to monitor what will happen there. These centers in Albania are created to be “a legal elsewhere.” A worryingly ambiguous place where things happen without any witness.
