SHENGJIN: Italy and Albania on Thursday missed a deadline to open a controversial migrant detention camp in the Balkan country until their asylum applications are processed.
The facility is the cornerstone of a highly contentious agreement signed between Rome and Albania to sort migrants rescued at sea in Italian waters.
Those deemed most vulnerable are to be taken to Italy and the rest sent back outside the EU to the Albanian port of Shengjin.
Once there, the migrants will be transferred to another center at the former military base in Gjader while they wait for their claims to be processed.
“The complex of both centers will be in operation from August 1,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni promised during a visit to Albania in early June.
Despite promises to be operational on Thursday, the reality on the ground was very different.
AFP found that only a few housing units had been assembled at the Gjader camp after visiting the site this week, with little indication that it would be completed soon.
Italian authorities, which are responsible for building and running the camps, were reluctant to provide a new date.
Asylum seekers sent to Gjader will live in small units surrounded by high walls until their claims are processed by the Italian courts.
Meloni – the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party – said the facility would have an initial capacity of around 1,000 people and gradually expand to 3,000.
According to Italian media, around 10 judges are to oversee the video conference hearing with the asylum seekers in Albania.
The project has been condemned by human rights groups as “illegal” under international law.
But the impending arrival of migrants is largely seen as a welcome boost in this impoverished corner of northern Albania, which has paradoxically lost most of its people to migration.
Those who remain make a living mainly from agriculture and money sent home from Albanians working abroad.
Village head Aleksander Preka, 65, insisted the camp was an opportunity for Gjader.
“The area is growing, Albanian and Italian workers are buying in our shops, renting our houses,” said Preka, whose eldest child will drive the bus bringing migrants from Shengjin to Gjader.
Lots of new job ads have appeared in the village, including offers for nurses, cleaners and psychologists.
Senior jobs promise salaries of nearly 1,000 euros per month ($1,082), well above the Albanian average.
The visiting Italian ambassador even vowed to help solve problems with the local electricity grid – a perennial problem in Gjader.
But the migrants will not mix with the locals.
Instead, they will be locked behind the facility’s security fence and guarded by police.
Human rights groups have condemned the program’s lack of transparency, saying Albania’s status as a non-EU country has limited protections for asylum seekers.
“Bringing people to closed centers outside the territory of the European Union threatens the fundamental right to seek asylum,” said Flaminia Delle Cese of the International Rescue Committee.
