Lots of catching up to do!<\/p>\n
The visit to the Centro Astalli (Jesuit Refugee Services is the name of the international organization) was informative and eye-opening.\u00a0 We first met with a representative who related some of the history of JRS’s origins, as well as the current workings of the legal processing of political asylum permissions in Italy.\u00a0 The process can be very long and bureaucratic, which especially for a person coming to a country not speaking the language and with nothing is a very daunting challenge.\u00a0 While an applicant is waiting for their case to be reviewed by a commission, which can take as long as a year-and-a-half, he or she is not able to do much of anything.\u00a0 There are some shelters available through various organizations as well as municipally-run facilities, but these could be as minimal as tents with beds, and are normally only available to applicants from evening until morning, when they are compelled to leave.\u00a0 After our orientation, we visited the soup kitchen where the Pope had recently gone, located in the basement of a building.\u00a0 It was very basic and relatively small.\u00a0 We also visited a men’s shelter farther away from the center called San Saba, also administered by JRS.\u00a0 It was originally the movie-theater of an old church, now converted into a center housing 30 men.\u00a0 We did not really meet any refugees here, but were shown around the building, which in this case was very clean and simple.<\/p>\n
The following day, we traveled all the way to the last stop on the metro line, in order to visit one of JRS’s few shelters for women.\u00a0 The long distance immediately struck us as much more isolated and less convenient for those seeking work or assistance in the city.\u00a0 It housed approximately the same number of people as San Saba, and was tucked away off of the road in a very beautiful and quiet environment.\u00a0 We met another worker here who informed us about the shelter, facilities offered, what kind of work the women do, countries of origin, etc.\u00a0 Though both of these meetings were very informative, it felt somewhat awkward to be intruding into their personal space.\u00a0 We were not introduced formally to any of the refugees, and it did not seem as though they had been forewarned of our visit, as opposed to JNRC, in the case that they may not want to be present.<\/p>\n
The flight to Malta was about an hour and a half, and it felt wonderful to step off the airplane into warm air and sunshine!\u00a0 Malta has a very unique and amazing history and therefore combination of many different cultural influences.\u00a0 For example, the Maltese language is a combination of Arabic and Italian.\u00a0 As they were most recently colonized by the British, English is the other official language.\u00a0\u00a0 Last night we met representatives from Malta’s JRS chapter, who showed a documentary called “Mare Chiuso,” or Closed Sea.\u00a0 It was about some of the refugees who had attempted to seek asylum in Italy by traveling across the Mediterranean from Libya by ship, which is a major passageway for asylum-seekers. \u00a0 Because this was in 2009, the year that Berlusconi made an agreement with Quaddafi to prevent any refugees from escaping Libya to Italy, the refugees were intercepted by the Italian coast guard and handed over to Libyan authorities, after which they were thrown into prison and only managed to escape (s0me, that is) when the war in Libya broke out.\u00a0 This is a violation of the international law of “non-refoulement,” which says that people seeking political asylum cannot be taken anywhere that their life or freedom might be threatened.\u00a0 Some of the refugees who made it to a camp on the border of Tunisia were later allowed passage to Italy or monetarily compensated, but this was a small compensation for the tribulations they suffered due to this “Pushback” policy.<\/p>\n
After the documentary we went to a local restaurant\/community center for mainly Eritreans and Ethiopians and enjoyed some delicious food and drink over conversation of politics in the Horn of Africa since colonial times, human-trafficking, etc.<\/p>\n
More on the visit to a Jesuit Community Church of mostly Nigerians this morning to come.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lots of catching up to do! The visit to the Centro Astalli (Jesuit Refugee Services is the name of the international organization) was informative and eye-opening.\u00a0 We first met with a representative who related some of the history of JRS’s origins, as well as the current workings of the legal processing of political asylum permissions … <\/p>\n