Lampedusa is on the verge of collapse – and Salvini wants to benefit from it – Italy

2023-09-14 16:54:03

The small island of Lampedusa, the “southernmost gateway to Europe”, has experienced many a crisis in recent decades. But none of the residents can remember such a rush of boat people as has been going on for a few days. “U mare chino c’è,” they say in their Sicilian-Insular dialect: “The sea is full.” By this they mean the long queue of refugee and rescue boats waiting to dock in front of the harbor on their island. Since the beginning of the week, more than 8,000 refugees have arrived in Italy in well over a hundred boats, the vast majority of them in Lampedusa. There were over 7,000 people in the local initial reception center, designed for 450 people, on Wednesday.