Lampedusa, September 21st, 2011. The French-Canadian human rights defender Georges Alexandre, member of EveryOne Group and „Kayak for the Right to Life“ recently spent six months on Lampedusa, monitoring the situation of refugees from Africa and periodically transmitting his testimony to the European Parliament and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Georges is also an athlete and aboard his kayak he is currently making the crossing from Tunisia to Brussels in the hope of attracting the attention of the EU Institutions to the plight of migrants. The first part of the crossing took place over the last couple of days. It took Georges from Tunisia to Lampedusa, where he will soon set out for Malta.
Yesterday afternoon, the humanitarian activist was subjected to a serious episode of violence. „Yesterday, at approximately 5 p.m.“ said Georges, „some of the immigrants from the refugees’ reception centre sparked a fire in the building, to protest against the plight of refugees on Lampedusa. After following the events I went to buy something to eat from a sandwiches and drinks seller.
There a man approached me, he asked me who I was and starting to push me around. I moved away, but the man continued to provoke me, insulting me because I am a foreigner and mimicking the gesture of grabbing my testicles. I walked away after paying for the sandwich and drink. But the man followed me and a few minutes later he approached me again. He grabbed me by the throat, and started insulting me again: ‚Dirty foreigner, why are you staying here?‘ He tried to hit me on the head with an empty bottle, he had grabbed from me, and punched me twice in the face. He continued to insult me, until some Lampedusa islanders put an end to the attack. The man spat in my face repeatedly, urging me to leave the island.
My rescuers invited me to give up my humanitarian work, saying: ‚Do you want to get yourself killed? If you report this episode to the police, all of us here will testify in favour of your attacker, saying that it was you who started the fight‘. Georges Alexandre has already received threats on Lampedusa in the past, and his van was searched by the authorities. His reports are valuable testimony on the phenomenon of migration, and very useful to the international institutions and media. EveryOne Group has reported the attack on our activist to the European Parliament and the Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Defenders.
„Our human rights defenders have several times been subjected to harassment and intimidation,“ explain Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro and Dario Picciau, co-presidents of the humanitarian organization, „and in some cases, these were serious episodes that have been taken up by the United Nations, the European Commission, and Frontline, the international body that protects the activists persecuted throughout the world. Recently one of our Roma activists – a witness for the Council of Europe regarding the repression of the Roma people in Italy – disappeared from Pesaro and for the last two months we have lost track of him. Our work protecting the rights of minorities is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous.
We believe that behind the violence and intimidation towards Georges there is a specific plan, which aims to silence human rights defenders in Italy, as their reports and their campaigns in support of persecuted individuals and social groups cause a great deal of trouble for the promoters of intolerance and anti-immigration policies. We hope that the EU institutions and the High Commissioner for Refugees will adopt some measures to protect the valuable work of human rights defenders in Italy; or the persecution of refugees, the Roma and other minorities is likely to disappear behind a curtain of fear and silence, while the values of democracy and civilization will be permanently denied.”
In the photo, Georges Alexandre
