is an Italian investigative journalist and author. He writes for the Italian weekly l’Espresso and his reportage and undercover investigations have been translated all over the world. Between 2003 and 2007 he crossed the Sahara desert four times with hundreds of migrants, infiltrated a gang of human traffickers in northern Africa as a gangster’ personal driver, was rescued at sea, jailed in the Lampedusa detention centre as an Iraqi illegal migrant, and worked as a slave labourer in a tomato farm in Italy. Gatti related all of his undercover experience gained while in transit from Africa to Europe in the book Bilal: il mio viaggio da infiltrato nel mercato dei nuovi schiavi (Rizzoli). The book was also published in French, German, Norwegian and Swedish.
Offering undocumented migrants the assistance that they need is well within the means of EU member states, says Fabrizio Gatti in conversation with Glänta editors Göran Dahlberg and Linn Hansén. Instead, governments continue to bicker among themselves as to who is to pay and people continue to fall prey to the traffickers.
Every day, people risk their lives on epic journeys across the Saharan desert and the Mediterranean Sea, in search of safety and a better life: often only to be confronted with the buttresses of Fortress Europe. Eurozine presents highlights from Stories without borders, the exhibition series first displayed in Conversano, Italy from 11 September to 5 October 2014.
A journey that takes one beyond the limits of human imagination: this is how Fabrizio Gatti describes his experience of a week spent undercover among immigrant labourers in Puglia in order to report on the horrors that these modern slaves endure.
According to Fabrizio Gatti’s estimate, at least 268 refugees drowned in the Lampedusa shipwreck on 11 October 2013. A month later, Gatti established that the tragedy could have been avoided, had the vessels in the vicinity with resources to support every victim been allowed to respond according to common sense. But they were not. Referring to laws and regulations, Italian authorities passed the buck of responsibility to Malta.
