On this morning joy and emotion prevailed at Fiumicino airport as 51 Syrian refugees arrived on a scheduled flight from Beirut with the humanitarian corridors promoted by the Community of Sant'Egidio and the Italian Protestant Churches in agreement with the Interior and Foreign Ministries.
They come from Lebanon at war, some from areas directly affected by ongoing military operations. While they were being welcomed in the large hall of the airport, another 42 people, travelling on the same plane, were in transit to Rome on their way to Paris. Thanks to the humanitarian corridors 9 families will be welcomed and integrated in France. Most of them (22) are minors or young children.
The refugees were living in camps in the Bekaa valley or in precarious housing on the outskirts of the Lebanese capital for years. Yet the current conflict has resulted in worsening living conditions for those who have the right to be welcomed, but no one to help them.
Hugs from relatives, smiles and a few tears because as of today the long-awaited peace is there: it is the future in Italy. The refugees will be living in seven different regions (Calabria, Campania, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany), the children will be enrolled in school immediately, their parents will learn Italian and once they receive refugee status, will receive assistance in entering the workforce. In short, life begins anew.
‘Your arrival is a gesture of peace,’ said the president of Sant'Egidio, Marco Impagliazzo, ‘’As of today, we are all the same community, and we welcome you. We want to expand the Humanitarian Corridors from Lebanon, given also the international situation. They are a great response for you but also for us in Italy,' added Impagliazzo. He then criticised the recent initiative of detention centres in Albania: ‘The more you build walls, the more irregular immigration grows.
The more you pull down the walls and expand regular flows and humanitarian corridors, the more the suffering of migrants and the role of the smugglers will decrease’
Besides the president of Sant'Egidio, Pierfrancesco Sacco of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Prefect Carla Di Quattro of the Ministry of the Interior also spoke at the welcome press conference. Daniele Garrone, president of the Federation of Evangelical Churches, stressed that ‘the real challenge’ coming from migration is ‘what kind of democracy and Europe we want to be in the future and if we want to live up to our constitutions, to that discovery of human rights we made after the Second World War and after great dictatorships’.
