Up to 250 migrants being detained in the Italian capital Rome barricaded themselves inside their detention center on Thursday a week after a Tunisian detainee sewed his mouth shut in protest against their poor treatment.
La Repubblica reported that around a third of the 780 migrants held at the facility in Castelnuovo di Porto took part in the stand-off, which was dispersed by the police using a water hose. Protesters also threw rocks at the police.
Angiolo Marroni, from the regional prisoners' rights organization (Garante dei Diritti dei Detenuti del Lazio) told the newspaper, “centres of identification and expulsion continue to be real places of desperate detention, where the recognition of fundamental rights is fleeting.”
Italian politicians have long demanded more help from the rest of the European Union to deal with the crisis, which disproportionately affects the bloc's southernmost countries.
They have called for a change to rules which oblige asylum seekers to remain in the country in which they first arrive.
Many migrants hope to travel onwards into northern European countries with stronger economies than Italy, which has grown little in a decade and where unemployment is near 40-year highs.
Well over 36,000 migrants have reached Italy in the first few months of this year, with the collapse of order in large parts of Libya leaving authorities struggling to combat the groups that control the illegal migrant traffic.
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