Fake news, Covid-19 give ammunition to far-right propaganda on Italy’s Lampedusa

Far-right groups are exploiting the situation in Lampedusa more than ever before, telling locals that migrants are bringing Covid-19 with them and ruining the island, as Federica Marsi reports

Migrants wait to board a coast guard ship off Lampedusa island (AP)

On Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa, an increase in migrant arrivals that stretched reception facilities beyond capacity has stoked fears of a new crisis, giving the extreme right new fodder for its anti-migrant rhetoric.

An immigration centre, built to host 96 people, has been used to house up to 10 times that number over the summer, a situation described by the island’s mayor, Toto Martello as “untenable”.  

It is seven years since the heartbreaking shipwreck off the island’s coast cost the lives of 368 migrants, many of them fleeing desperate situations in Eritrea and Somalia. The tragedy on 3 October 2013, at the time prompted an outpouring of solidarity for the plight of migrants, but today political tensions on Lampedusa are at boiling point.