The Shelter
Fleeing Libya's civil war in 2011, 115 refugees were relocated from the shores of Lampedusa to a ghostly tourist complex in the Italian Alps. This report charts their troubled stay at the empty hotel, Le Baite.
"After spending one year I'm going to the commission", says a nervous African refugee. It's the day of reckoning he and 114 other men have waited for in the unlikeliest of settings, the Italian Alps. "I'm going there to beg to stay to find my future in Italy". For a year the vacant hotel Le Baite, 1800m above sea level in Montecampione's ski resort, has housed the asylum seekers in its ghostly halls. "We can easily accommodate six, seven hundred people" says hotel manager Giuseppe Fortunato, who welcomed the influx of guests at a time when there were few. Yet for Kpax NGO member Carlo Cominelli, who oversees the refugees' existence in Italy, the hotel is a private sector purgatory for those without a legal future. "Undoubtedly these people will be completely lost", he says.
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