Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

detainees are completely dependent on the staff at a time when their lives are extremely
stressful and uncertain. As one detainee noted:
“[M]aybe the worst thing for me is that if you do not make a racket, nobody comes and
nobody cares. Then, I don’t understand why if their aim is to send people back to their
home countries, they don’t do it immediately. I can understand it may take one or two
months to organise the repatriation, but no more than that. You cannot keep people who
did nothing locked in a cage without telling them for how long. One month and then
another one and then another one and you will never know when this torture will finish.
And you don’t know how it will finish. But at a certain point most of the people here only
want to go out and go back to their country. If they don’t have a family here, they just want
to leave Italy” (Interview 18).
However, some interviewees seemed to believe that problems between the staff and detainees
stemmed from the detainees themselves 88 . Questions were raised about whether the CIE staff
are sufficiently trained and capable of dealing with the volatile situation inside the CIE:
“I’ve noticed a level of complete ignorance among the staff [Red Cross and military staff].
When there are moments of tension they are not solved or calmed down at all. There is a
lack of respect: in the first place from the military personnel, but respect is also missing
from the Red Cross. There is a lack of professionalism, there are no rules and the staff are
not prepared for what they are asked to do” (Interview 8).
Allegations were even raised about violence at the CIE, specifically about the role of the Guardia
di Finanza and the Carabinieri military police corps 89 . Perhaps the following poignant words can
best express the current state of affairs in Turin's CIE: “Here they are doing something really
wrong because we have not been arrested for criminal matters! We are called “guests” so we
should be treated as guests - not as animals” (Interview 15).
2. VIOLENCE
An endemic problem at the CIE concerns the manner in which the staff and security personnel
behave. While two detainees alleged physical violence, a frequent refrain from the detainees
was the uncaring manner in which the personnel conducted themselves 90 . The two detainees
who alleged violence explained it in the following terms:
“They laugh about us, they bother us. It also happened a few days ago. I asked to see the
doctor as I’ve been on a hunger strike for eight days. They put me inside a cell, I told them I
couldn’t stay there because I couldn’t stay alone and it was cold but they pushed me inside
and wanted to hit me with a truncheon” (Interview 14);
but he wanted to go back to his country because he had been inside CIE for three months. But they did not want
to send him back to his home country, so he cut his veins - in a horrible way in front of them [CIE
staff/military]. Nobody intervened” (Interview 15).
88 “It's very subjective. Some detainees appreciate very much the work of the Red Cross staff, they recognise
they do a lot. But people working inside CIE, including guards, change quite often. [….] CIE staff treat female
detainees in a more gentle way than male detainees, maybe because they are considered less violent and less
dangerous than men” (Interview 8).
89 See the next section: Part B. Conditions of Detention, Chapter VI. Relationships with CIE staff, 2. Violence.
90 “Nothing. They do not intervene. And it is not necessary to call the Red Cross or the guards. There are
cameras: they immediately notice when tensions rise up and we start fighting. They come closer and they stay
there, outside the cage, staring at us while we are fighting” (Interview 18).
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