Italian coast guard intercepts an Algerian vessel with illegal immigrants, trying to disembark on the island of Lampedusa.
These Italian Gap Pictures, made by photojournalist Piet den Blanken (1951), fit in the tradition of his social photography. One of his projects is to photograph the new outer borders of Europe. Here an increasing number of refugees and illegal immigrants are met by very different border police, soldiers, coast guards, civil servants - and sometimes by criminals and men-traders.
These new pictures show two extraordinary situations:
1. The island of Lampedusa, 200 km south of Sicily, where numerous North-Africans illegaly try to enter Europe, and
2. The harbour of Brindisi, also in the south of Italy, from where refugee Albanians are deported back home.
The Maroccans, Tunesians and Algerians who land at the small (600 inhabitants)
island of Lampedusa all sailed from the coast of Tunesia, often in rickety vessels. They arrive exhausted, seasick, unconscious sometimes - and knowing they will be arrested by the Italian coast guard.
After a short medical check the coast guard hand these illegal immigrants over to the carabinieri. This Italian state police put them immediately on a ferry to Sicily. Then, without exception, they all are told to leave the country.
But according to Italian law orders they get two weeks time for an appeal. In those two weeks they are allowed to go free. They use this period to go underground, or to travel further on, to France and Germany.
These two countries have protested in the European parlement against this leaking gap in the new European outside borders.
The other pictures show the situation in the harbour of Brindisi. During the exodus from Albania early 1997 tens of thousands of Albanians fled to Italy and spread all over the country.
Nowadays the Italian police hunts these Albanians down and put them on transport to Brindisi. Here they are put aboard special ferries that bring them back to their country.
Click here, or on the picture above, to start the photo series (consisting of 10 pictures - keep on clicking on them to see the next ones).
Or click here to go to Den Blanken's homepage, from where you have access to his other picture-series: The Prostitution Pictures, Cuba as it is, The Kid-Soldier, Manhunters, the Ceuta Tragedy and more.
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