A new network in Italy is fighting against “CPR” migrant detention centres on the Mediterranean coast

~ thymo nzk & Ibiscus ~

A protest of over 500 people took place on Saturday 28 June in the small touristic coastal town of Diano Marina, where the government is planning a new detention centre for migrants. Marching from the pier along the coast, the demonstration finished just outside the abandoned military compound where the detention centre is to be sited. Slogans included “No borders, no nation, stop deportations” and “Revolt and evasion”.

One of the first policy announcements of the neo-fascist Meloni government, elected in 2022, was to extend the deportation system in Italy by ordering the construction of new “centri di permanenza per i rimpatri” (CPR)—the Italian equivalent of immigration removal centres. Inside this repressive structure, basic provisions of the liberal rights-based order are absent. Not only are they run by private companies, they also lack any form of transparency—so all solidarity activists have are detainee accounts of the violence they face.

Since 1999 at least 34 people have been killed in the current 10 CPRs in Italy, including the prominent case of Moussa Balde. Abuses reported in detention centres have included forced psychopharmacological consumption. The colonial dimension of this racist apparatus is also evident. Similarly to Trump’s deportation system to El Salvador, the Meloni government has already built and opened a CPR in Albania, managed by Italian authorities.

The opposition to the planned CPR expansion in Liguria is diverse. A first protest was called in 2024 by local elected officials and shop keepers, demanding that the CPR is not built in their backyard. Since then, a wider coalition of local solidarity networks, associations and political groups have been coordinating a movement against this and all detention and deportation centres, with the slogan “né qui né altrove” (not here, not anywhere).