From the Mediterranean to Ventimiglia: in memory of the martyrs for freedom of movement

From one end of the peninsula to the other, we join our voices with those of the families of the victims of the border system, to denounce once again the violence of external and internal borders, to remember and demand justice for all those who lost their lives trying to cross them, to continue fighting together for the abolition of all borders, whether maritime or terrestrial. 

As the MEM.MED Mediterranean Memory collective and the Ventimiglia Solidarity Group, we echo and support the struggle of the families who demand truth and justice.

Today, we relaunch the appeal written collectively in June 2025 by mothers, sisters, and family members of people who have died or disappeared because of the border, so that their voices and their stories of anger, pain, and love, but also of silence and institutional abandonment, may rise high and powerful against borders. Because these stories represent thousands of acts of violence that take place every day at borders.

This appeal is even more powerful today, in the face of yet another state massacre that took place on August 13th 2025, off the coast of Lampedusa, in which 60 people survived but 23 lost their lives and more than 15 are still missing.

In their memory and in memory of those who have died or disappeared at sea, and in all other places of deprivation, detention, and confinement where the racist and colonial border regime is enforced. Because the struggle for freedom of movement is rooted in the memory of the names, stories, lives, dreams, and desire for freedom of those who are called “migrants.” It is mothers, sisters, and family members who carry on this struggle and claim that their loved ones did not die or disappear for nothing, but are martyrs for freedom of movement.

APPEAL TO ITALIAN, EUROPEAN, AND INTERNATIONAL AUTHORITIES AND CIVIL SOCIETY
FROM MOTHERS, SISTERS, AND FAMILY MEMBERS OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIED OR GONE MISSING AT THE BORDERS

We, mothers, sisters, and family members of people who have disappeared or died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean and other border and confinement areas such as CPR and Hotspots, join our voices in this urgent appeal for truth, justice, and remembrance. Current migration policies transform the right to movement into a death sentence for those living south of the Mediterranean. With this text, we wish to express our condemnation of this system and present our demands to those who have the power and duty to respond.

We demand truth and justice for those who have lost their lives or disappeared in border areas.

In particular, we demand:

• Recognition of the mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, and families of missing persons, who must be listened to and informed, treated with respect, and not ignored, obstructed, or criminalized by states, embassies, and international organizations.
• Facilitate access for families to search for their loved ones, in particular access to procedures for identifying bodies, including through DNA testing, in countries of origin and in European countries
• Guarantee the return of victims’ remains to their families and, where requested, their repatriation to their countries of origin, at the expense of the States. Guarantee the burial of bodies in places designated by family members, in Europe or in the countries of origin.
• Access for family members in Europe and in border areas, places of detention, death, and disappearance to search for their loved ones, to participate in trials, and to celebrate the funerals of relatives in burial places far from their homeland. Facilitation of the issuance of visas, through the intermediation of embassies and consulates, to all family members of persons buried in Italy following a shipwreck at sea and death at the border, to allow them to pay their respects, remember and pray at the graves of their loved ones in Italian and European cemeteries.
• Independent investigations into deaths in shipwrecks, failure to provide assistance at sea, deaths in CPRs, hotspots, and border areas, and identification.
• Access to investigation files by families and lawyers relating to deaths, disappearances, and inquiries by the competent Italian, European, and consular authorities into massacres at sea and deaths at the border.
• Conviction of those responsible for failure to provide assistance, failure to search for missing persons, negligence, and abuse occurring in places of confinement such as CPRs and hotspots, with clear recognition of the responsibilities of states.
• Official recognition of the reasons for these deaths, of the victims and their families, for the repair of moral and psychological damage, and for non-repetition.
• Memorial for all those who have died at the border, with burial that is dignified and respectful of the religious beliefs of the deceased and their families.
• An end to policies of refoulement, containment, and violence at sea, involving the Tunisian and Libyan coast guards and the European agency Frontex, which cause deaths and disappearances and then hide and deny these acts of violence before the law, states, survivors, families, and civil society. We demand that rescue at sea be guaranteed for boats in distress.
• Implementation of migration policies based on human rights and safe entry channels that allow people to travel without danger; opening of borders and an end to the visa system for travel.
• Abolition of CPRs and all places of confinement and deprivation of liberty, an end to administrative detention that criminalizes and kills those who move, that represses freedom and human dignity.

Our daughters and sons, sisters and brothers were not criminals, but people in search of life, work, freedom, happiness, fulfillment. Their memory will not be erased: we will continue to fight until we obtain truth and respect. We demand that our pain be recognized and that the institutions do not criminalize us and our children, but take moral and legal responsibility for what happens at Europe’s borders.
These demands are not ours alone: they speak on behalf of other families who live in mourning, pain, silence, and institutional abandonment. We speak in the name of human dignity and for our living sons and daughters, to whom we want to guarantee a different future. History will judge those who were able to face injustice and those who ignored it.
These people did not die in vain. They are martyrs for freedom of movement.

With this appeal, we trust that the Italian, European, and international authorities, as well as civil society, will listen to us and take our requests seriously.

---

---