Salvini’s far-right mayor learns English in Malta, but can’t resist anti-immigrant rant

A far-right Lega mayor has posted a video on her Facebook during her educational sojourn in Malta claiming the island has not given refuge to any African migrants. 

“Walking around this island’s streets, you won’t see one migrant. I’ve been here one day now and people here tell me you won’t see any migrants, simply because Europe has emptied the barrel of migration onto Italy,” Cascina mayor Susanne Ceccardi says in the video which she filmed on her smartphone outside Castille place, Valletta.

Her shoddy observation belies data showing Malta received 1,616 asylum claims in 2017 while hosting over 900 asylum seekers in open reception centres.

The Tuscan mayor, who won the formerly centre-left stronghold of Cascina, population 44,000, has in the past railed against civil unions saying “we won’t take our kids to the Gay Pride”, and even taken issue with a child’s choir singing John Lennon’s Imagine in an online rant on the song’s ‘communist’ lyrics.

Italy’s populist right-wing government is refusing to abide by international law and take in rescued migrants to their nearest and safest port, and instead push them to Malta. Only recently its prime minister Giuseppe Conte changed tack to request ‘solidarity’ from EU nations and take in a share of rescued migrants.

Italy welcomed over 156,000 asylum seekers on average every year since the Lampedusa tragedy in 2013 prompted the launch of the Mare Nostrum rescue mission, which also took responsibility of migrants rescued by the Maltese armed forces.

Her Facebook profile shows Ceccardi was in Malta to learn English at one of the island’s schools.

“The [centre-left] PD governments led by Letta, Renzi and Gentiloni did nothing to stop the business of migration because it probably suited their NGO friends. With Matteo Salvini, this policy is all but finished together with the good life led by migrants in Italy.”

Ceccardi also railed against the use of Italian taxpayers’ money to host migrants rescued by Italian naval forces. “Italy is not ready to be Europe’s rubbish-bin or the receptacle of Africa’s delinquents. Wake up Europe, Italy has arrived.”