Some 100 migrants who landed from
the coast guard ship Diciotti after a 10-day standoff with the
EU left a hotspot in Messina Tuesday for a Catholic-run
reception centre in Rocca di Papa south of Rome.
The migrants will get there after a 10-12-hour journey,
sources said.
The Democratic Party (PD) former mayor of the Lazio town,
Pasquale Boccia, said: "it can't be done, there is rancour on
the part of the residents, which is turning into hatred, we're
already hosting enough of them".
Th head of the cooperative that runs the migrant centre in
Rocca di Papa, Domenico Alagia, said "they will remain a few
days in the centre and then will be welcomed by the diocese
which said they were prepared to take them around Italy".
Another 39 remained in the hotspot in the Sicilian city,
waiting to be transferred to Albania and Ireland, the only two
nations who have said they will take some of the Diciotti
migrants.
Most of the migrants will be moved to the Catholic Church
centre near Rome, the Italian Bishops' Conference (CEI) told a
news agency on Monday.
"They will be moved as soon as possible, in the coming hours,
to the centre run by Auxiluim, pending their transfer to
the many dioceses who have given their availability: Turin,
Brescia, Bologna, Agrigento, Cassano all'Jonio, Rossano
Calabro, to cite only those I know about," CEI's head of social
communications, Father Ivan Maffeis, told the SIR religious news
agency.
The stand-off came after Interior Minister Matteo Salvini
kept the migrants aboard saying they would not land until the EU
agreed to take them.
Salvini is under investigation by an Agrigento prosecutor for
alleged kidnapping, illegal arrest and abuse of office.
Albanian Premier Edi Rama said Tuesday Italy had been left
alone by the EU to cope with the migrant emergency.
Speaking in Genoa after agreeing to take in 20 Eritrean
migrants from the Diciotti after the standoff, Rama said "Italy
has been the most welcoming country in Europe in the last 30
years, but it has been left alone and nerves are no longer so
solid, we intervened hoping that Europe would do something
concrete to resolve the problem".
"We (Albanians) were once the Eritreans. Italy was our
promised land and the Italians did not ever leave us in the
middle of the sea".
Migrants "should be drowned in the open sea", a doctor at
Spoleto hospital said on her Facebook page recently, sources
said Tuesday.
The doctor works in the ER ward at the Umbrian hospital.
Il Messaggero newspaper said she called migrants "n**gers
with Nike shoes and full bellies" and said they had scabies
because of the "violence they perpetrated".
The local health authority told ANSA it had started
disciplinary proceedings against her.
The doctor made her remarks in a Facebook group with some
38,000 doctors on it.
Her profile had been deleted Tuesday morning.
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