They were all there today, at the conference organized at the Lampedusa airport, those responsible for those deaths – and of all the other bodies that, in an effort to reach Europe, now fill up the Mediterranean Sea: from the president of European Parliament Martin Shultz, to the Italian and European Minister of Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, featuring also Chamber of Deputies’ President Laura Boldrini. But since two days already, television broadcasts are crowded with heart-breaking and sorrowful (being it false) solidarity with the massacre survivors. The one of October 2013 was a massacre with instigators and perpetrators. Considering that, a year later, we are still witnessing many dying in the sea, till last week; or listening to the testimony of one of thousands migrants which came in Sicily on one of the barges of death – to realize how the fishermen on the high seas of Lampedusa are involved in daily salvation of human lives, whereas the Coast Guard cutters ram the barges that carry them, pushing them back on blue water. We know well how the “mare nostrum” operation envisages the opposite of a humanitarian safe passage or, at least, of reception (that here materializes itself in detention centers as the CIEs).

But the institutional representatives (by which, today, the Lampedusans yelled to be not represented at all) clearly underestimated that the denizens of the island know very well who they are – and which role those shady characters play in the implementation of those securitarian and border-shutting policies that turned the sea strip south of Lampedusa into an enormous cemetery.

Thus the conference organized at the airport by Italian and European institutions to clear their faces and hands stained with blood was repeatedly disrupted by the protest and the statements of the Lampedusans and the militants of the Askavusa collective.

And exactly when Schultz, one of the culprits of so many deaths and of the Fortress Europe’s policies of closure was about to give a speech, whistles and shouts erupted – emphasizing the position of whoever daily experiences that condition and against those who exploit it for their propaganda aims, in order to justify their own heinous actions. In spite of the intention of some small-time journalist writing on (a random newspaper, for example…!) La Repubblica, wanting an entire country to believe that the Lampedusans’ protests exclusively involve the drop of tourist turnout in the summer just gone-by, shouts and protests that disrupted the initiative tells us, on the contrary, about a solidarity and a closeness to dead and survivors alike – this time being a sincere and true one: “You are the culprits! You have no right to name the dead. It is us who have seen them, not you, we have seen many, too many of them! Enough, you leave now”. Later, when Schultz was about to resume its speech, he was faced with protests again: “Murderers, nazis! You must not talk, you must only be ashamed!”.

Heinous actions and humanitarian crimes of Fortress Europe are not going to stop here. It is firstly the Lampedusans that – as they did today – have the duty of restoring remembrance and dignity, by denouncing the true culprits.