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| Photo: L'Espresso |
Fabrizio Gatti
is an undercover investigative journalist well-known around Europe who revealed disastrous humanitarian conditions in the Italian asylum camp on the Mediterranean island Lampedusa in the beginning of October 2005.
Fabrizio Gatti is an undercover investigative journalist well-known around Europe. He has become known by several reports on the milieu of socially weak people over recent years.
In the beginning of October 2005, Gatti revealed disastrous humanitarian conditions in the Italian asylum camp on the Mediterranean island Lampedusa. Gatti personated himself as refugee and smuggled into the camp. He authentically reported in the known Italian paper l'Espresso on disastrous sanitary conditions, a camp hopelessly overcrowded and violence against refugees.
The organization "Doctors Without Borders" also thinks the Lampedusa camp is totally overcrowded. Alessandra Oglino who knows about the capacities of the camp from descriptions of her colleagues from 2002 to 2004 always watches the number of arriving and accounted refugees for her organization and reasons the number of refugees in the camp is twice as high as officially stated. Oglino confirms that Gatti had really been in the camp. And it’s also a matter of fact that neither humanitarian organizations nor parliamentarians were allowed access to the camp. Gatti’s under cover investigations were the only possible way to confirm the suspicion of disastrous conditions in the camp.
Awards:
- 2007 European Journalist Award for his report on illegal pickers in Apulia
- 2008 Literature Award Tiziano Terzani for his book Bilal: An illegal on his way to Europe