A 43-year-old Nepalese national who suffered a cardiac arrest last Saturday in the disused warehouses of Trieste's Old Port died at the hospital on 13 January.
The man passed away at the Cattinara Hospital in Trieste after being taken ill and rescued in the abandoned warehouses of Porto Vecchio, an area where several migrants seek shelter. His condition, already critical, worsened until his death on January 13. He was found in cardiac arrest caused by a pulmonary embolism; the alarm was raised by some fellow countrymen.
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Exchange over asylum seekers in Trieste
The incident prompted a response on Saturday from the Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS), which denounced how the "suspension of rights" of asylum seekers in Trieste "puts lives at risk." According to ICS, the day before falling ill, the 43-year-old had "attempted to present himself at the police headquarters" to start the asylum application procedure but was "unable to gain access to the offices."
Regional Security Councillor Pierpaolo Roberti responded to ICS, stating that "attributing the illness of a Nepalese asylum seeker to the responsibility of law enforcement amounts to an act of political scavenging." Municipal councillor Alessandra Richetti (Five Star Movement) said that the "conditions" in which the 43-year-old was living were "in themselves inhumane and dangerous," stressing that the migration phenomenon "must be managed."
Fabrizio Maniago, secretary general of the Friuli Venezia Giulia branch of the Italian Union Police Workers' Union (Siulp), recalled in a January 13 statement that in Trieste the number of asylum seekers has risen "from 100-150 per year twenty years ago to -- during major identification operations -- 120 people in a single day," while "the number of police officers at the Trieste Police Headquarters has dropped from 600 to 400 over the same period."
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ICS: 'Access to the asylum procedure is not working properly'
"This person had been outdoors for weeks, probably arriving in Trieste around Christmas. His death was caused by this condition or by a worsening of a situation that would not have occurred under normal circumstances, or would have been addressed in time," said ICS president Gianfranco Schiavone.
"I want to remind everyone that this person had the right to access the reception system and to receive healthcare, and he received neither."
"He was abandoned outdoors, with temperatures in recent days dropping below zero, and he is not the only one," Schiavone continued. "There are dozens of people every day who turn to the day centre clinic for respiratory syndromes and various illnesses, often difficult to diagnose in a facility without specialised equipment or the possibility of carrying out tests."
Regarding the fact that the warehouses where migrants seek shelter have been repeatedly closed and sealed in recent times, Schiavone added: "It is clear they are not suitable spaces, but it is not enough to close them - something else must be opened. This is Trieste's problem. And in this city, access to the asylum procedure continues to function poorly."
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