Trapani, the mayor ready to grant honorary citizenship to NGOs

April 20, 2024, 12:37 pm

3 min read

TRAPANI – The NGOs protagonists of the trial which lasted seven years, which has just concluded in its preliminary phase in Trapani with the pronouncement of the acquittal and which saw the crews involved in dozens of rescues at sea between 2016 and 2017 under investigation, will have recognized honorary citizenship in Trapani. The mayor announced it Giacomo Tranchida.

“I take inspiration – says the mayor – from what has been published by the press on the sentence with which the Gup acquitted all the suspects and the crews of the NGOs, Jugend Rettet, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders, involved in the maxi investigation launched in 2016 in Trapani“.

“The fact therefore does not exist, or rather: the fact exists that in recent years a ship, the Juventa, has been missing in saving human lives at sea, there was one NGO, Jugend Rettet, less in the commitment conducted by NGOs in the Mediterranean to save children, women and men from drowning. This is how I read the news about the closure of this court case which fueled political outbreaks and more.”

Tranchida explains that the recognition of honorary citizenship to NGOs is based on the culture of the city: “That culture which has been handed down by Trapani fishermen for centuries. When there is a man at sea, that man must be saved, without ifs or buts, without knowing where it comes from and without knowing where it is going. It’s about saving a human life. And that human life can be represented by a child, a woman, pregnant or not, a young man, a man, who thought of landing on an island, on a different coast, in search of a future, perhaps escaping from wars, from torture, from hunger.”

“I think that anyone who behaves in this way, regardless of all international laws, which I believe regulate in the same way the right and duty to save a life at sea, belongs to the cultural citizenship that here in Trapani has been handed down for centuries, thanks in the meantime to our fishermen”.

The mayor of Trapani asks all institutions to reflect better on the migration phenomenon. “Today, counting the three NGOs Jugend Rettet, Save the Childrem and Doctors Without Borders, as honorary citizens of the city of Trapani, does not give credit to them, because their credit is silent and among the waves of the sea saving human lives, rather provoke a reflection for all our institutions, which should cross all bodies of the State: life must always be saved.”

Finally, the mayor sends an invitation to the national government: “Having said that I hope that in terms of compensation for damages, apart from any legal proceedings that NGOs may wish to initiate, there is a ship that has been stuck in the port of Trapani for years, the Juventa, which has become old iron, and I hope that the Italian State, that the Italian Government, at least finances the works for the recovery of this ship or entrust a new vessel to the NGO which was deprived of it, so that this NGO can return to sailing in the Mediterranean, and prevent the museum, the largest in the world of migrants who died while looking for a safe haven, from continuing to be enriched with corpses at the bottom of the sea”.