The curse of the emigrant… by Riccardo Alfonso
68 million fugitives leave their land each year to escape wars, famine and poverty. It is a very remarkable fact that generates destabilization and social repercussions in the host countries that are not necessarily at the borders of the disaster lands. Someone, in Africa, crosses the desert to look out along the coasts of the Mediterranean and, before trying on slender boats the great leap towards Europe, remains victim of the merchants of human beings who enslave them and treat them as goods of exchange for lucrative business. It is a mass exodus involving all the continents and most of the nations of the world.
To shelter is a duty that we can not disregard as citizens and institutions. Yet this chain of solidarity that should find us all agree with the most perverse and selfish nature of those who live their earthly adventure in conditions of prosperity and do not think to break his bread to share it with those who are without it. But there is also a more serious aspect if we think that wars are foraged by arms merchants, corrupt governments and religious and tribal fanaticisms. To all this we add the pietism of fashion that exalts poverty to exploit it with children with ragged and dirty clothes that beg a pittance on street corners or disabled people of all ages.
Italy more than other European countries is experiencing this existential drama and despite those trying to alleviate the suffering of the weakest by most of the voluntary associations, it has not had the necessary support from the governments that have succeeded in these last years. Their representatives are ready to tear their clothes off for the overwhelming misery of others but beyond words they do not go any further. They do not try to solve problems but they are only ready to criticize aseptically and to see the twig in the neighbor’s eye and not the beam that penetrates into their own. But we try not to imitate them and we are committed to continue to support a proposal for the construction of “thirty citadels of knowledge”, under the UN protectorate, along the African coasts facing the Mediterranean and providing for the project to be financed with 5% of profits made from the production of weapons and their sale. Our initiative has long been submitted to the UN, to the governments of some Western countries but ten years have passed and no one has tried to answer us if not some official in praise of our initiative but also warning us that the idea was too good because the egoism of the states and the greed of the private could give some support.
Riccardo Alfonso
