Starting at 7:30 am on December 3 in Trieste, authorities carried out checks -- coordinated by the prefect’s office -- on 155 migrants and asylum seekers without lodging in the Porto Vecchio area.

The migrants were taken to reception centers in several different regions.

During the operation, two dilapidated warehouses were closed that the migrants had used for shelter and where fires had broken out.

The operation had been planned during meetings in the prefect’s office with representatives from the police headquarters, the Financial Police, the Carabinieri, the fire brigade, the Trieste town council, and the Friuli Venezia Giulia regional government.

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Meals assured, eviction 'went smoothly'

Personnel involved included prefecture staff for reception procedures, the police headquarters’ immigration office, medical teams and an emergency vehicle, police units, Carabinieri, and the Financial Police.

The Civil Protection set up tensile structures at the site of the operation and the Caritas foundation of Trieste handed out meals to migrants with funds provided by the prefect's office. Authorities reported that the operation proceeded smoothly.

Activities under the direction of the town council began to close and secure the warehouses where the migrants had been staying and where fires had broken out. The asylum seekers were informed of the operations and the possibility of lodgings at the special reception centers (CAS) and were given a medical examination prior to getting onto coaches to be taken to their destinations. The area was then cleaned.

The operation was to "ensure that asylum seekers be taken into care and transferred to reception centers in national territory, with respect for their dignity and their rights and while safeguarding them," said prefect Giuseppe Petronzi.

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'No humanitarian organizations involved'

The Consorzio Italiano Solidarietà (ICS) criticized the operation, noting that: "this morning the latest eviction was carried out in warehouses in Trieste's Porto Vecchio. About 150 migrants and asylum seekers -- many of whom had been abandoned in the streets for weeks, and who had found makeshift shelter in those warehouses - were put in line, identified, and transferred."

It added: "It is clear that this is a stop-gap measure lacking a structural strategy. The eviction does not resolve in any way the problem since -- as we have said many times before -- those seeking asylum or in transit who, starting tomorrow, will arrive in the city will find themselves in the same situation."

"The transfer was conducted without any involvement of organisations that deal with reception and support in the country, nor the UNHCR," said ICS.

"This exclusion confirms that the management of the migration crisis in Trieste follows an emergency and security logic and is dictated by media emergencies. This logic once again has nothing to do with the safeguarding of the rights of the most vulnerable."

"The problem," it continued, "created artificially by [government] institutions, is thus not resolved and will appear again in the next few months with an ever greater political responsibility."

"The most serious aspect," added ICS, "is the arbitrary exclusion of dozens of people -- at least 40, according to our estimates -- left out of the operation only because, at the time of the transfer, they were not inside the warehouses. No one had informed them of the intervention and no institution had tried to reach them."

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