Among other migrant crackdown measures, Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has promised his people the removal of the dangerous eyesores known as squatter camps from their country.
Though he has received heat from the opposite side for his strict migrant policies, he is certainly holding to his promise.
According to Italian news source il Giornale, one of these slums, which was occupied by over 1,500 migrants, was bulldozed recently due to its dangerous conditions. Frequent fires had lead to several deaths in the past few months.
The event occured only after the Italian government offered the migrants living there the chance to move to safer migrant homes – an offer which only 8 migrants took, with the majority choosing to risk continuing to live in the shanty town, where they could continue participating in illegal affairs.
Check out the story from The Guardian:
More than 1,500 people are being ousted from the refugee camp at San Ferdinando, in southern Italy, in the largest eviction since Italy’s rightwing populist government’s immigration measures kicked in.
On Wednesday morning, almost 1,000 paramilitary police officers surrounded the 400 shacks where the migrants have lived since the camp was established in 2010, near Gioia Tauro, in Calabria. As people were ushered out clutching their few possessions, bulldozers demolished the shanty town of cardboard and wood huts in a matter of hours.
“As promised … we went from words to actions,” said the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right League party. The majority of the camp’s inhabitants are from sub-Saharan Africa and worked in nearby farmers’ fields as illegal agricultural workers for paltry, exploitative wages.
Breitbart gives more details in its report:
Approximately 1,592 migrants have been removed from a shanty town migrant camp in southern Italy as part of the populist government’s policy to dismantle squatter camps across the country.
The shanty town, formerly located in the southern Italian city of Reggio in Calabria, was bulldozed this week by police following a series of problems stemming from the makeshift camp in recent months, Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports.
Safety concerns at the camp have been a major issue, with fires breaking out over the last few months that have led to three deaths, the most recent being a 29-year-old Senegalese man who died last month.
In the aftermath of the death of the Senegalese man, populist Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini said the government had offered up 133 places in migrant homes but only eight migrants accepted the offer.
“They preferred to stay in the shanty towns, just abuse and illegality,” he explained.
Of the total 1,592 migrants who lived in the camp, 200 have been sent to migrant homes, 460 have moved on their own accord and 923 are currently being housed in a tent city set up by the government.
This is not the first time Salvini has ordered the destruction of dangerous living spaces. In November, he destroyed mafia homes that had been constructed illegally.
Watch Salvini personally bulldoze one of these homes in this Italian news clip shared on his Twitter:
It's nice to see a leader who keeps their promises getting personally involved in what they do. Go Matteo, and Make Italy Great Again!
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