Berlusconi y Gaddafi cambian dinero por inmigrantes 'sin papeles' en Roma

Las ONG denuncian la política libia en la primera visita del dictador a Italia

MIGUEL MORA - Roma - 11/06/2009

El líder libio Muammar el Gaddafi llegó ayer a Roma para ratificar el acuerdo bilateral de cooperación económica y migratoria con Italia, que zanja décadas de tensión entre la ex colonia y la ex metrópolis. Gaddafi, de 67 años, fue recibido por Silvio Berlusconi, de 72, en el aeropuerto, mientras en la calle se organizaban sentadas de protesta y manifestaciones. La oposición se opuso a que Gaddafi pronunciara hoy un discurso ante el Senado. El coronel se limitará a visitar el Parlamento.

La jaima de Gaddafi, en los jardines de Villa Pamphili.- REUTERS

Silvio Berlusconi
A FONDO
Nacimiento:
29-09-1936
Lugar:
Milán

Muammar el Gaddafi
A FONDO
Nacimiento:
1942
Lugar:
(Sirte)
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Italia invertirá 3.564 millones de euros para mejorar las infraestructuras

El pacto tiene un elemento crítico: el uso de patrullas navales conjuntas

Gaddafi aterrizó con sus inseparables amazonas y su habitual parafernalia beduina. Desafiante, llevaba cosida en la pechera de la casaca militar una foto de Mukhtar, líder de la guerra colonial asesinado por los fascistas italianos. La jaima quedó instalada en Villa Pamphili, un enorme parque, entre excepcionales medidas de seguridad. Berlusconi dijo que se trata de una visita histórica y Gaddafi recordó que ha venido porque Italia finalmente pidió perdón por los abusos coloniales.

La primera visita de Gaddafi a la capital italiana sella el importante acuerdo según el cual Roma invertirá 5.000 millones de dólares (3.564 millones de euros) en el país africano, a razón de 200 millones anuales durante 25 años, para mejorar las infraestructuras.

Fuentes oficiales revelan que Italia aportará recursos humanos y tecnología a Libia para construir un sistema de radares para vigilar las fronteras del desierto sur.

El pacto tiene un elemento crítico, el uso de patrullas marítimas conjuntas en aguas libias e internacionales para evitar que los inmigrantes que zarpan en barcos desde Libia lleguen a las costas italianas. La ONG Human Rights Watch recordó que en un mes de patrullas han sido devueltos a Libia 500 inmigrantes, y aportó testimonios directos de torturas y maltratos en los centros libios.

Bill Frelick, director para refugiados políticos de la ONG, afirmó que "Berlusconi y Gaddafi venden el acuerdo como un tratado de amistad, pero en realidad es una alianza sucia que permite a Roma eludir las leyes internacionales sobre el asilo. Libia tiene una terrible marca de abusos y maltrato de emigrantes, y no puede ser visto en ningún caso como un socio serio para proteger a los refugiados".

Human Rights Watch, que acaba de visitar Libia, Malta e Italia para entrevistar a inmigrantes, afirma que todos los sin papeles que han pasado por los centros libios se quejan de haber sufrido torturas, malos tratos, hambre, detenciones sin límite de tiempo y "condiciones inhumanas y degradantes".

Libia no ha firmado la convención de la ONU de Derechos Humanos y carece de un sistema de asilo político. Las ONG calculan que hay miles de sin papeles en los 40 centros de retención libios, pero ignoran cuántos de ellos son refugiados. Los emigrantes interceptados son devueltos a Libia en masa y sin criba. Si alguno necesita protección o es particularmente vulnerable, si hay enfermos o heridos, embarazadas, menores o víctimas de trata, no se sabe.

En este momento hay tres navíos militares italianos patrullando en aguas libias y está previsto que otros tres entren en acción en semanas. El centro de Lampedusa, hasta hace un mes abarrotado y que en tiempos recientes sufrió un motín y un incendio, está hoy vacío.

El Alto Comisionado de Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados (ACNUR) expresó su profunda preocupación el 7 de mayo por la devolución automática de sin papeles. Tomas, un eritreo de 24 años que intentó abandonar Libia cuatro veces hasta que Italia le concedió asilo, fue torturado en numerosas ocasiones, según ha explicado a HRW: "Me pegaron tres guardias con palos de metal y de madera. Me pegaron durante más de 10 minutos. Me llamaban negro y me pegaban. Cuando caí al suelo me dieron patadas. Me golpearon la cabeza con una barra de metal".

Su relato completo se puede leer en la web www.hrw.org/node/83699.

FONTE

Libia sì ma povertà in Africa no. L'Italia non mantiene le promesse

Giovedí 11.06.2009 15:33

All’attenzione che l’Italia mostra nei confronti della Libia e del suo leader Muemmer Gaddafi, non corrisponde uguale sollecitudine dei governi di Roma nel sostegno delle popolazioni sahariane che lottano da anni contro la carestia e la fame. Lo stato italiano ha disatteso in modo clamoroso l’impegno preso in modo solenne nel corso della riunione del G7 di Gleneagles del 2005 di incrementare il volume degli aiuti verso la regione suhasahariana.

A condannare l’Italia, ed a giudicare la sua azione questi quattro anni, “un completo fallimento”, è One, l’associazione filantropica che ha tra i sui fondatori Bono e vede tra i suoi sostenitori Bill Gates.

Silvio Berlusconi, anche allora alla guida del Paese, aveva promesso nel maggio del 2006 che entro la fine del 2008 l’ammontare degli aiuti sarebbe arrivato a superare i 5 miliardi di euro, tre miliardi e mezzo di euro in più rispetto al livello precedente. A 6 mesi e mezzo dalla scadenza del termine, One mette in evidenza nel report presentato mercoledì, ha rispettato solo per il 3% l’impegno assunto e non avrebbe alcuna intenzione di colmare il gap, al contrario, l’esecutivo starebbe preparandosi a tagliare ulteriormente lo stanziamento. Il presidente di One, James Drummond, afferma che l’Italia, per altro il Paese che ha in questo momento la presidenza del G8, ha perso completamente la credibilità sui temi della lotta alla povertà.

Nel suo report, l’associazione condanna anche la Francia, che ha disatteso il suo impegno di incrementare gli aiuti a 8,4 miliardi di euro da 3,1 miliardi di euro. Negli ultimi due anni Parigi ha tagliato in modo pesante il flusso degli aiuti con una delle zone dell’Africa con cui ha forti legami storici e culturali dovuti al passato coloniale.

fonte

WHO IS FOOLING WHO?

Awkward photo? There may be more to come as Colonel Gaddafi visits Rome

• John Hooper in Rome
• The Guardian, Thursday 11 June 2009

Silvio Berlusconi welcomes Muammar Gaddafi, who arrived wearing a photo of Omar Mukhtar, a resistance leader against Italian colonialism. Photograph: Alessandro Di Meo/EPA

One of them likes to call himself an "emancipator of women". The other likes women to call him "papi". So when two of the world's most flamboyant and eccentric politicians – the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi – met yesterday in Rome, women figured large.

The Libyan leader was accompanied by his all-female, 40-strong bodyguard squad, its members dressed in khaki uniforms and red berets. And the schedule for his controversial first visit to Italy included, at his own request, a meeting tomorrow with large numbers of Italian women. Very large numbers.

The plan was for "only" 700. But officials said yesterday that such was the colonel's drawing power the event had had to be moved to a concert hall with a capacity for 1,000.

Berlusconi has had more than a little trouble lately with embarrassing photos. So it must have been with a sinking ­feeling that he watched the Libyan leader descend the aircraft steps with another one pinned to his chest.

The photograph Gaddafi wore to several of the ceremonies on the opening day of his visit did not show young women in underwear by Berlusconi's poolside, let alone a former Czech prime minister in the altogether. But it was discomforting for his hosts all the same: it showed the Libyan resistance leader, Omar Mukhtar, the "Lion of the Desert", on the day before he was hanged by ­Italian colonialists in 1931.

Gaddafi flew in with a 300-strong retinue, on three Airbuses. As ever, he brought with him a giant Bedouin tent, which was erected in a Rome park.

Security for his visit was tight. But that is partly because, while Gaddafi may have bones to pick with Italy, some Italians have bones to pick with him.

Officially yesterday it was all smiles as the colonel praised Italy for having "turned a page on the past". Relations have improved since Berlusconi's ­government agreed last year to pay $5bn (about £3bn) reparations for Italy's ­colonial rule. Italy, Gaddafi said, had "apologised, and that is what allowed me to be able to come here today". But not everyone is happy about the visit. Gaddafi is set to encounter protests over a deal that allows Italian patrols to return would-be migrants, including asylum seekers, to Libyan ports. Yesterday he dismissed claims that the deal prevented asylum seekers from applying for protection, in a way that visibly disconcerted his host, normally a champion of political incorrectness.

"This is one of the lies that is put about," the colonel declared at a joint press conference after his talks with ­Berlusconi. "The Africans do not have problems of political asylum. People who live in the bush, and often in the desert, don't have political problems. They don't have oppositions or majorities or elections."

The Libyan leader, who is also chairman of the African Union, went on: These are things that only people who live in cities know. [Other Africans] don't even have an identity. And I don't mean a political identify; they don't even have a ­personal identity. They come out of the bush and they say: 'In the north, there's money, there's wealth' – and so they go to Libya, and from there to Europe."

According to the UN, an unusually high proportion of the migrants who cross from Libya are ­asylum seekers fleeing wars and disorder. But Gaddafi was having none of it. "Please, don't take seriously this business about political asylum. The idea they are all asylum seekers makes you laugh sometimes."

Gaddafi tries to shame Italians

The Libyan leader turned up in Rome with a photo pinned to his chest, designed to provoke his hosts

By Jack Bremer

FIRST POSTED JUNE 11, 2009

If there was one world leader who could upstage Silvio Berlusconi in terms of embarrassing behaviour it was Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. And yesterday he duly obliged when he arrived in Rome for a state visit, accompanied by his all-female troupe of 40 bodyguards, turned out in khaki uniforms and red berets, and with a special request for a meeting with 700 Italian women.

This is the sort of thing 'Papi' Berlusconi understands, of course, and a concert hall has been booked so that Italian women prominent in the fields of business, politics and culture arts can be assembled for a speech from the Libyan leader.

But what got Berlusconi's goat was that when Gaddafi came down the aircraft steps at Rome's Ciampino airport, he had a photograph pinned to his chest - a black and white picture of the Libyan resistance leader, Omar Mukhtar, the so-called 'Lion of the Desert', taken on the day before he was hanged by the Italians on September 16, 1931.

Gaddafi insisted on wearing the picture to the various state functions he attended on Wednesday, to remind his hosts that Mukhtar had led the guerilla war against Italy's ambition to open up 'The Fourth Shore' in Libya - in effect, to re-establish a Roman Empire in north Africa. Asked by his executioner if he had any last words, Mukhtar replied only: "From Allah we have come, and to Allah we will return."

It was a mystery why Gaddafi felt the provocative photo was necessary, given that one of the purposes of the trip was to shake hands on Berlusconi's recent agreement to pay £3bn in reparations for Italy's colonial rule of Libya from 1911 until the end of World War Two.

Gaddafi praised Berlusconi for having "turned a page on the past". Italy, he said, had apologised and "that is what allowed me to be able to come here today
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