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IMMIGRATIO

‘Europe needs a human approach to immigration’

Alessandro Penso, from Rome, was on the path to a career in clinical psychology when a scholarship gave him the chance to pick up a camera and change direction. As the World Press Photo exhibition opens in Rome, featuring one of Penso’s award-winning images, he speaks to The Local about his work shooting social issues in Europe.

'Europe needs a human approach to immigration'
Alessandro Penso's award-winning Temporary Accommodation image. Photo: Alessandro Penso/World Press Photo

Penso’s single photograph of a school sports hall, with a light dangling from a basketball net and sheets hung around the court, was plucked from thousands of images to win one of nine categories in the prestigious World Press Photo contest.

Taken last November in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, the photograph is of a makeshift refugee arrival centre and represents one of the most pressing issues in Italy and Europe today.

“Fundamentally, my work concentrates on uncovering the European ‘welcome’ people receive,” Penso told The Local in Rome.

“In the autumn the number of arrivals soared to levels not seen in Bulgaria before. This was an emergency and the country was unprepared."

Around 8,000 people crossed the Turkish border into Bulgaria last year, a sharp rise on 2012.

Although the figures are far higher in Italy, where an estimated 43,000 people arrived by boat in 2013, the two countries face similar problems as gateways to the EU. The Syrian civil war has forced around 2.7 million people to flee their country and seek safety elsewhere, mostly travelling to Europe.

When Penso visited the Sofia school he found 800 people living there, the majority Syrians. “There were more than 300 children; they had tried to create a family atmosphere,” he said.

Stringing up sheets created a certain air of privacy, but with winter fast approaching, there was no hot water or heating.

“The Syrians had escaped the war and were desperate. Few have the intention of staying in Bulgaria, but because of European law, they can’t leave,” Penso said.

Under EU law, migrants and asylum-seekers must register in the first member state they arrive in and are barred from travelling onwards to other European countries.

Penso returned to Bulgaria in April and saw worrying signs: “The EU has given money, on Bulgaria’s request, and this would make you think the situation is better.

“Some centres have been refurbished, the walls are white and they’re not dirty anymore. But it’s getting worse because a push-back has begun,” he said, following reports that refugees are illegally being forced back into neighbouring Turkey.

While Penso admitted that one image would not be able to solve the problem, he said photography and the World Press Photo exhibition, in particular, could have a “very powerful” impact.

“Seeing the photos in an exhibition is completely different than seeing them in a newspaper, you stop for a bit longer and ask questions….it creates reflection among people,” he said.

Penso said he hopes his work can serve as a counter to anti-immigration “political propaganda”, allowing Italians to “see the reality” refugees face.

When the exhibition closes later this month, Penso will in June take his images on a tour across Europe in an effort to “create solidarity” among Europeans.

He called for a “complete rethink” on how people are welcomed and, after his experience in Bulgaria, said Europe needed “a more human approach to immigration”.

“The problem is not Italy, it’s not Bulgaria, it’s not Greece – it’s Europe. If they hide behind the incapacity of a few countries, they fail to confront the problem,” he said.

The World Press Photo exhibition is at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere until May 23rd.

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INTEGRATION

German Media Roundup: Sarrazin’s radioactive immigration debate

Inflammatory comments on Muslims and race by Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin have caused widespread outrage in Germany. Newspapers in The Local’s media roundup on Tuesday explore the repercussions.

German Media Roundup: Sarrazin's radioactive immigration debate
Photo: DPA

Sarrazin, who presented his controversial new book in Berlin on Monday, faces expulsion from the centre-left Social Democrats and losing his post at Germany’s central bank for saying Muslim immigrants threatened the country’s future and claiming Jews are genetically different than other people.

The cantankerous Bundesbank official, famous for his politically incorrect outbursts while serving as Berlin’s finance minister, had hoped to spark a debate about integration and immigration. But the consensus among Germany’s leading newspapers on Tuesday was that he had done neither himself nor the country’s political discourse any favours.

The Cologne daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger pointed to a pair of genuine “provocateurs,” the Greens’ Joschka Fischer and the Bavarian Christian Social Union’s Franz Josef Strauß, each of whom was at times controversial but who ultimately – unlike Sarrazin – energised the political debate.

“Democracy tolerates such challenges – indeed it needs them, for the provocateur poses uncomfortable questions, he brings out truths that some people don’t want to see. And ideally they are even entertaining.

“Thilo Sarrazin has nothing to do with this. And this Bundesbank board member with the pinched lips is certainly not entertaining.

“His truths are a precarious and well-worn mix of xenophobia, of murky statistical games … Sarrazin is no provocateur, he is a demagogue.”

The left-wing daily Die Tageszeitung wondered if there was a silver lining to the Sarrazin affair: a reminder that racism did not always come in the form people expected.

“The Sarrazin case is a healthy shock for Germany. It is high time to rid ourselves of the illusion that racist convictions always arrive in bomber jackets and combat boots. As we see, they can also thrive splendidly in bankers’ suits and on executive floors.”

Unlike other opponents of Islam, Sarrazin was claiming not just the existence of a ‘clash of cultures’ but of cultural and social differences based on genetic differences. And it was this racial theory that was most disturbing for Germany, it wrote.

“What should we do when, 65 years after the ban of Mein Kampf a racial theory tract once again rises to be a bestseller?”

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said Sarrazin had only himself to blame for his current predicament, however, emphasised the issues he raised needed to be addressed.

“Someone speaking of a Jewish gene in Germany can no longer be helped,” wrote the paper. “But tossing him into the camp of racists and anti-Semites will do little good.”

The FAZ said as long as the country’s political parties refused to address the issues of immigration and integration, German society would continue to be divided and people would turn away from politics.

“The debate about Sarrazin shows just how strong this alienation has already become,” the FAZ wrote.

The right-wing daily Die Welt concurred, saying Sarrazin had sabotaged the issues he was trying to draw attention to.

“The true casualty of the Sarrazin debate is that citizens get the feeling politicians don’t even want to talk about integration,” commented the paper. “Sarrazin is already radioactive. Anyone who wants to defend him publicly now has to have a Muslim background.”

The centre-left Süddeutsche Zeitung criticised Sarrazin’s comments, but warned against kicking him out of the SPD or relieving him of his post at the Bundesbank.

“Dismissal instead of dialogue doesn’t instil confidence and it would simply create a martyr who should have been better debated,” the Munich daily wrote. “But he highlighted a problem that will exist long after the outrage has subsided: the enormous integration deficit by Germany’s Muslim minority.”

The paper said, however, that Islam is not to blame for these problems, pointing instead to attitudes putting religion over the liberal values of the state.

“There’s no alternative to taking this path together with Muslims in Germany,” Süddeutsche Zeitung opined. “Integration is only possible when we avoid painting horror scenarios and give Muslims a real chance.”

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