Father Don Biancalani, who has been hosting migrants at an Italian parish for years, recounts episodes
New episodes of violence have occurred in a reception center for immigrants in the Italian city of Pistoia, managed by the 'friend of migrants' priest Don Massimo Biancalani, who has been hosting over a hundred people on average in the parish for years.
At the moment, the center hosts about 120 migrants.
In the days before Easter, on at least two occasions, the intervention of law enforcement was necessary due to disturbances and clashes; two guests ended up in the emergency room with minor injuries.
"Someone mentioned three episodes," Don Massimo Biancalani told ANSA. "In reality, there were two different altercations, for trivial reasons, involving three people in one case and two in the other."
"They are all guests of the facility, who were immediately stopped. In the first case, a boy was slightly injured in the wrist, perhaps with something sharp, but the blunt object was not found, and during the scuffle, he had a nosebleed. In the second case, which happened for similarly trivial reasons, two boys who were in a bunk bed, one below and the other above, got into a scuffle, causing a bit of a commotion, nothing more."
Excessive number of guests at the root of the tensions
For Don Biancalani, the presence of so many people is one of the triggering factors of the conflicts, to which "the absence of institutions" adds.
"We need to find a solution to this large presence of migrants in the area," said the priest. "We've been saying this for years; we need more facilities like this, but resources are needed because in our case, we don't receive any public funding, so we don't have staff, and it's clear that we're at risk. We have situations with problematic boys, and tension and stress sometimes cause these incidents, which, by the way, have always occurred."
"The institutions should take responsibility for these situations," the priest continues. "We have nothing, except for the help of a few private individuals and some associations. Politics should intervene because here we have 120-130 people, and we have to take care of them ourselves."