Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's migrant crackdown could help him in European polls by playing to a popular law-and-order agenda and shifting attention away from his nasty divorce, analysts say. Despite UN criticism, Italy last week began intercepting refugees at sea and turning their boats back to Libya before they reach Italian waters, a move legal experts say may allow Rome to side-step any obligation to receive asylum requests.
Viewed together with tough legislation in parliament making illegal immigration a crime, analysts say Berlusconi is reviving the law-and-order campaign that got him elected a year ago - just in time for June 6-7 elections for the European parliament. "We're seeing a repeat of what happened in last year's elections," said political analyst James Walston.
"Berlusconi seems to be managing the agenda. He's moving it away from personal matters ... He's saying 'look at me and look at the wonderful things I'm doing to protect your streets'." The policy has met opposition from the United Nations, the Catholic Church and human rights groups, who say Italy is undermining access to asylum in Europe, but has won support well beyond Berlusconi's conservative base.
Prominent daily Corriere della Sera ran a front-page editorial backing the tough new approach on migrants and one of the centre-left's most senior leaders, Piero Fassino, said there was "nothing outrageous" about turning away migrants at sea. For Berlusconi, debate over immigration policy is a welcome change from the public spectacle of his separation from his second wife, who among other things has accused him of having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl.
The divorce has angered the church in predominantly Catholic Italy and a poll released on Wednesday showed the prime minister's approval rating fell by 3 percentage points to 53 percent over the past month. Berlusconi's recent talk of opposing a "multi-ethnic" vision of Italy, and comparing migrants arriving at sea to common criminals, has diverted some of the media attention.
Questions remain about the legality of Italy's new approach to migrants, with the United Nations saying it risks violating an international convention on refugees. But Corriere columnist Sergio Romano cited the strict US policy of refusing Cuban refugees intercepted at sea and legal experts pointed to similar policies adopted in Australia.
"Italians are adopting (this policy) consistently within international law to stop these people from claiming asylum rights in Italy," said Donald Rothwell, an international law professor in Australia and an expert on asylum issues.
Laurens Jolles, the Italian representative of the United Nations refugee agency, questioned Rome's decision to send refugees for processing in Libya, which does not have a national asylum law or refugee protection system. He called on Berlusconi to accept refugees who the UNHCR had screened in Libya and who appeared to have valid asylum claims. "I think at a minimum, it would be good if Italy could accept to consider readmitting those persons who we have screened," he told Reuters. "That would be a very good signal."
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