Amnesty accuses Italy of abusing refugees

Amnesty International has accused Italian police of using violence to fingerprint and record migrants and refugees.

The human rights groups said there was evidence of 24 accounts of ill treatment, including violent tactics such as beatings and electric shocks.

Italy has yet to respond to the allegations but has maintained that the treatment migrants and refugees receive is with care and professionalism.

Amnesty supported this in the report stating most Italian police officers involved in the process were largely professional but called for an independent review of the allegations of certain officers.

“The European Union’s pressure on Italy to ‘get tough’ on refugees and migrants has led to unlawful expulsions and ill treatment which in some cases may amount to torture,” the report explained.

Many refugees and migrants who reach Italy are reluctant to be fingerprinted as this will mean they are unlikely to be allowed to leave Italy. According to EU law, migrants must stay in the first country they reach which is determined by which country first records their fingerprints.

One of the men quoted by the report was a 27-year-old from Darfur, Sudan, who said he had been beaten and stunned by electric shocks before being forced to strip naked.

The treatment was not exclusive to men; one Eritrean woman said she had been slapped repeatedly in the face until she agreed to be fingerprinted.

Amnesty’s researcher on Italy, Matteo de Bellis, condemned the “appalling abuse” of migrants and refugees according to the BBC.

“I have gathered consistent testimonies of people who told me how they were beaten, slapped, even electrocuted by means of stun batons, people who have been threatened, people who have been arbitrarily detained just to force them to give their fingerprints,” he said.

The report has since been sent to the Italian interior minister but there has been no reply from Italian authorities.

More than 150,000 migrants and refugees have been rescued from the Mediterranean Sea and taken to Italy so far this year with more than 470,000 arriving by boat over the past three years. Some 3,750 have died making the journey this year alone.