It was December 16th when Florence Must Act organized the first sit-in, which was well attended and full of informative interventions, which was held in Piazza Santa Maria Novella. “Illegitimate, Illegal and impracticable” was the claim that served as the subtitle of that public demonstration. Well, a few months after then, Florence Must Act, the movement of citizen activists that since 2020 has been leveraging civil society with awareness-raising actions and promoting moments of active discussion on migratory issues, is once again proposing the flash-mob “No to Italy-Albania protocol” on the afternoon of Sunday 19 May, this time with a performative action by artivisimo.
Here is the program: From 4.00 pm to 8.00 pm some members of the Florence Must Act performative action will stand for approximately 30 minutes in each of the following squares: Piazza della Stazione, Piazza Santa Maria Novella, Piazza Duomo (in the front at the Palazzo della Regione Toscana), Piazza San Firenze, Piazza Santa Croce. To follow the action in real time it will be possible to monitor the group via the Florence Must Act Instagram page.
The flashmob of the Florentine chapter of the pan-European Europe Must Act movement will involve a number of people involved in organizing the performance, which involves the display of a dinghy with some people on board and others who will instead remain immobile, outside the symbolic vehicle of aid and rescue par excellence, for the entire duration of the flashmob.
The date chosen for the flashmob is not random: for months, in fact, the opening date of the so-called ‘centres in Albania’ has been announced for months as 20 May following the agreement signed by the Italian and Albanian governments in November 2023 for the ” strengthening collaboration on migration matters”, ratified by parliament last February. This agreement between Italy and Albania scares us because it seems to be totally in line with the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, recently approved at European level and which will determine a management of the phenomenon increasingly focused on the creation of informal agreements with third countries to outsource migration management. The well-founded fear is that the ‘Albania Model’ will then be used and exported in the future to implement screening procedures outside European territory.
However, as regards Albania, from the information we have so far thanks to journalists, activists and jurists who have already gone there, there is still no trace of these centers. There are cranes and some workers at work but not even a shadow of the centers of Shengjin and Gjader… Strange! Given that officially the start of operations of all the aforementioned centers (as foreseen in the notice of expression of interest for the assignment of reception within the centers) should be “no later than 20 May 2024”.
The Italy – Albania Protocol, we remember, provides that migrant people intercepted by Italian ships in international waters can be transported to Albania, following an unspecified procedure for dividing up vulnerable and non-vulnerable people. It also envisages the construction of two centers in Albania divided as follows: the first structure will be built near the port of Shengjin, approximately 70 kilometers north of Tirana, where the disembarkation and identification procedures of newly arrived migrants should take place. Instead, in Gjader, twenty kilometers further north and inland, two other centers will be set up. One center will be dedicated to ascertaining the prerequisites for the recognition of international protection, while the second structure will in fact be a detention center for repatriation (CPR).
Source: Florence Must Act
