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Italy marked its first National Remembrance Day for the victims of immigration on Monday, with authorities and hundreds of youths gathering in the southern island of Lampedusa for a major event.
The occurrence was officially introduced by the Italian parliament this year to honor the memory of 386 migrants, who died in a major shipwreck on Oct. 3, 2013.
Various initiatives took place across the country, the main of which was indeed in Lampedusa where the tragedy occurred.
Over 200 students from Italy and other European countries joined local residents and some 25 survivors of the shipwreck in a demonstration across the tiny island, which is a major gate for refugees and migrants to get into Italy, and then Europe.
They all marched beyond a large banner reading "Protect people, not borders."
The youths had also spent some days on the island before the event, contributing to workshops on the migration issue within the larger project "Europe begins in Lampedusa" launched by Italy's Ministry of Education, Universities, and Research.
Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano and Lampedusa mayor Giusi Nicolini guided the main commemoration for the victims, including an at-sea wreath laying ceremony off the island's coasts.
"This recurrence is a last call for Europe, which cannot just stand by and watch," Alfano said.
Mayor Nicolini appealed to the European Union's (EU) solidarity "to extend to Italy, Greece, and all the Lampedusa-like places in the Mediterranean."
The two officials, along with Italy's Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and First Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans, had attended a conference on the island on Sunday to discuss the challenges of the current migration crisis, and the lack, so far, of an effective policy by the EU.
"The memory is helpful, but not enough, when the figures we face are still those of a massacre," president of Italian Lower House Laura Boldrini pointed out in a statement.
"People keep dying in the Mediterranean, and even more now than in the past," she added.
President of the Upper House Pietro Grasso chaired a forum on migration in the Italian parliament in Rome, while national association for social and civil rights ARCI performed a flash mob before the ancient monument Pantheon.
Besides remembering the 368 victims of Lampedusa, ARCI called for "humanitarian corridors for the refugees, and a real immigration policy" by the EU.
The commemorated shipwreck took place just a few kilometers off Lampedusa, which lies some 80 nautical miles from Tunisia and 160 from Libya. Some 366 people drowned when their 20-meter-long boat sank, after being set on fire by one of the smugglers. Another 20 people went missing, putting the final toll at 386.
(APD)
