The city of Trapani is preparing to confer honorary citizenship on the crews of the NGO ships involved in the “sea taxi” operation, which lasted seven years and ended last April with the “no proceeding”.
A “important gesture“, as stated in the reasons,”towards cultural and civic awareness, against racism, xenophobia, indifference and against discrimination based on religion and any diversity, which it intends to recognise, with the highest civic honor, the commitment of the crew members of the NGOs Jugend Rettet, Save The Children and Doctors Without Borders and what their life testimony represents in the construction of a present and a future of peace in a Trapani “Gateway to the Mediterranean”.
A trial that of the Iuventa crew, which for many should not have been celebrated, the subject of a scandalous investigation because it was immediately considered “technically wrong”. And in the end the trial in which the crew and owners of the humanitarian ship Iuventa were among the main defendants, which lasted 7 years, ended up costing 3 million euros and resulting in no proceeding, while other migrants continued to die at sea.
That borderline welcome that “embarrasses”
“Trapani is the gateway and port of the Mediterranean, Salvini will not be the one to influence our history“, so stated the new mayor Tranchida in 2017, a period in which the traffic of migrant routes was intense and continuous, declaring the city available “to face any emergency future That regard migrants And rescued in sea“.
Only to then become the “mayor who embarrasses the Democratic Party” in 2020 for having prevented migrants and NGO staff from going ashore. In that period, the mayor Giacomo Tranchida himself, in fact, issued his own ordinances no. 118 of 10/08/2020 and n. 127 of 20 August 2020 to prohibit the disembarkation of hundreds of migrants from the “Azzurra” and “Aurelia” cruise ships.
An episode that led fellow party member Valentina Villabuona, president of the provincial assembly of the Democratic Party of Trapani, to define Tranchida as infected by “populist drift”.
A decision that would seem to clash with the decision to confer citizenship on NGOs and which, as underlined in the union resolution, is intended to be a “sign of recognition of the high moral and educational value of preserving the fight against a migration policy that does not comply with the protection of human rights and of the active role of civil action in the fight against phenomena of intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred and violence , which are based on the duty to protect human rights defenders and ensure that they can carry out their role without fear of reprisals“.
