Italian police ‘show them the way out.’
Television footage (below) showed riot police wielding clubs and beating the migrants as they jumped from a balcony near the island’s commercial port Wednesday. The clashes came a day after migrants set their overcrowded holding centre on fire to protest Italy’s policy of forced repatriations.
Some 26,000 Tunisians and 28,000 people of other nationalities from Libya have arrived in Lampedusa this year since the beginning of the Arab revolts. Italy has been sending the bulk of the Tunisians home if they don’t qualify for political asylum, but residents on the island have complained they are being overwhelmed with migrants and are bearing the entire EU’s immigration burden alone.
Clashes broke out Wednesday as some residents hurled stones at migrants who were threatening to blow up some gas canisters, news reports said. Angry residents also assaulted TV crews and other journalists covering the rioting, telling them to leave the island alone.
The clashes left several people injured, the reports said.
Lampedusa mayor Bernardino De Rubeis denounced the government for abandoning the island to cope with the chaos alone, calling the migrants “delinquents” and insisting the island wouldn’t accept one more.
He said he kept a baseball bat in his office for protection.
Video and more HERE