TURIN – NEWS FROM THE DETENTION CENTER

Source: No CPR Torino

🔴 UPDATE from CPR IN REVOLTA 🔴
3 NOVEMBER
This evening around eight o’clock all areas started a protest about the bad and smelly food. All the inmates in the centre joined the uprising by refusing to eat with clapping and shouting in anger. In the GREEN area the rioters set fire to some objects. Inside, the carabinieri’s trucks surrounded the areas and are ready to enter with shields and batons.
In the evening a group of supporters gathered under the walls of Corso Brunelleschi to support the inmates with supportive choirs and smoke bombs. From inside they respond warmly.
🔥 FIRE AT THE CPR AND AT ALL BORDERS

🔴 UPDATE FROM THE DETENTION CENTER OF CORSO BRUNELLESCHI TORINO 🔴
31.10.2020
FIRE AT DETENTION CENTERS AND ALL BORDERS!
During the week a group of supporters approached the walls of the Detention Center of Corso Brunelleschi to give support to the inmates with a noisy greeting. For a few minutes choruses, slogans and smoke grenades warmed the insurgents inside who immediately responded warmly with shouts and beats showing how strong is the will to make their voice come out of those infamous walls.
Yesterday we were able to hear four guys on the phone inside the Detention center.
They told us that they are still forbidden to use their cell phones and the only way to communicate with the outside is to use the phone cards that are purchased at their expense directly from the managing body (the French multinational Gepsa, specialized in making profit with the places of detention).
The telephone booth in every area of the center continues to be deactivated for incoming calls.
The meal situation is always ignoble. Many inmates are forced to eat only watered-down powdered milk and cookies for several weeks because the food provided twice a day is often rotten and smelly.
After eating many people fall asleep entering a state of catalepsy due to the usual medicines that are added to food. Last week some inmates from the GREEN area protested during the food delivery and in response they were beaten and insulted by the guards.
Health care within the detention center continues to be absent. Hygienic conditions are poor, housing units are never cleaned or disinfected. Any form of disability is ignored from a medical point of view, as told us by a Moroccan gentleman with a problem in the lower joints who more than a month ago was dumped as a parcel inside the RED area and since then abandoned without a wheelchair and without a crutch. He can only go to the bathroom thanks to the help of his roommates who built him a polystyrene support.
According to an estimate of the inmates there are more than one hundred people inside the detention center (CPR).
At the moment, out of six areas in total, two are completely uninhabitable, BLUE and VIOLA, due to the riots that broke out at the beginning of the year and destroyed and burned down several rooms in the center. Even in the RED, WHITE and YELLOW areas many housing units are still uninhabitable causing a continuous and dangerous overcrowding inside the rooms in operation, where there are seven beds and on average currently sleep between ten and fifteen people. Even in the GREEN area, where all the housing units are habitable and overcrowded, there is a lot of concern among the inmates for a possible contagion. A Moroccan boy told us that only one surgical mask is provided when you enter the center and it is never changed again.
In September and October the bustle between entries, exits and expulsions seems to continue at full speed. In order to contain the health emergency due to COVID-19, Morocco extended the state of health emergency until November 10 and adopted various containment measures, including the closure of the borders.
During this period the expulsions have mostly occurred against Tunisians, who constitute the majority in the Turin’ detention center. After the meeting in Tunisia this summer between Ministers Lamorgese, Di Maio and the Commissioner of the Neighborhood, Oliver Varhelyi, where it was announced: “we have restarted the repatriation of migrants at the rate of 80 people per week”, the Tunisian authorities announced the reopening of the borders and the gradual resumption of foreign connections from June 27. The guys we have heard in these days have informed us that every Wednesday and every Sunday a group of Tunisians is picked up by the guards and loaded on a bus to be repatriated. The deportations take place during the night and are often an opportunity to search the rooms.