Meloni's Albania deportation experiment has failed

Last Tuesday (28 January), as Giorgia Meloni’s government resumed its attempts to force people seeking safety and a better life in Europe into prison camps in Albania, electricity broke down in the port of Shengjin. 

As port staff struggled to get the lights back on, officials realised that among the people they were incarcerating were four children. 

They had to be taken to Italy — now the third time this has happened. The camps have sat empty since they were opened, home only to stray dogs. 

This power failure reflects the challenges facing Meloni’s plan. She has staked not only her moral standing but also her credibility on this deal succeeding, yet it continues to be mired in uncertainty and setbacks.

On Friday (31 January), the courts ordered that the remaining 43 people taken to Albania were to be returned to Italy.

Meloni has claimed that people exercising their legal right to claim asylum, or humanitarians providing aid, are criminals. But it is her attempt to strongarm her way past Italian and international law that has led to this mess.

With each transfer to Albania, the government has claimed to only be returning non-vulnerable people to safe places.

We know that no one who puts their life at risk in a sea crossing has come from a place of safety, and all face some form of risk. 

Italian authorities have proven incapable of even conducting a ‘proper’ selection process. Meloni’s government has managed to deport minors and vulnerable people to Albania time and again. Even with the deck stacked in their favour, they exposed the deal for what it truly is — an inhumane and reckless political stunt.

And we know that the countries the government designates as “safe” are nothing of the sort, as the EU’s recent partial retreat on its Tunisia-funding has shown. Authorities in the country are selling sub-Saharan migrants as slaves, further fuelling a cycle of violence and exploitation.

Some of those shipped to Albania come from Egypt, whose government routinely jails human rights activists and dissidents. 

Even after the Sisi regime’s security forces were infamously implicated in the death of an Italian student, Italian and EU politicians continued to fund those forces.

Let’s also not forget that most of those arriving on Italian shores have fled Libya; where they have been tortured and even sold into slavery from camps supported by Italian and EU funds.  

These grim deals have fuelled human misery and have only made journeys more dangerous and deadly — which is why the Italian government is now placing all its hope in the Albania deal.

Propaganda stunt

It’s not just hope but hard cash that Meloni has thrown into the deal, which is set to cost the Italian public over €800m, with €100m squandered already. And other EU countries look set to follow suit. 

Who gains? Not people incarcerated in camps, not Albanians sold on false promises of regeneration in the camp towns, and not Italians who need affordable homes and secure jobs instead of more wasted resources.  

Beyond the political gains Meloni’s government hopes to reap from this propaganda stunt, the only economic beneficiaries are the corporate profiteers gouging the state to run camps, and perhaps the police agents being paid to lounge on the beach near empty facilities. 

All of this has been tried before. The shameful UK’s deal to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda ended in expensive and illegal failure, with not a single person deported. 

Australia’s offshore detention camps in Nauru — where people were held in brutal and squalid conditions at a cost of half a million Australian dollars per detainee — were found just this month to have violated international law by the UN’s human rights committee. 

In short, every time these deals have been tried, they have hurt — or even killed — people, broken the law, and redistributed public funds to rich contractors. 

Meloni’s reliance on Elon Musk to support the deal could not better symbolise how the wealthy and powerful scapegoat people crossing borders to divide us. 

The longer this deal exists, the more all of our rights are at risk. As someone who was imprisoned by the EU’s most authoritarian government on trumped-up charges, I know all too well the dangers involved in policies that lock people up with no due process.

It’s not coincidental that the Meloni government is also seeking to drive through a sweeping attack on our civil liberties that begins with an attempt to ban detained migrants and prisoners from protesting the conditions they are being held in. 

The political energy and resources being spent on deportations and prisons in Albania should instead be going toward supporting people; both those born here and those seeking a better life here.

And the naval ships ferrying people across the Adriatic could instead be used to rescue them, in a year where at least 2,200 more people have drowned on our doorstep. 

It’s time for Meloni’s government to face reality — this unlawful and, hopefully, unsuccessful plan is embarrassing Italy on the world stage. And as other European countries seek to copy Italy and produce their own return hubs, they should learn from our country’s cruel, expensive, experiment.