A truck driver whipped a group of immigrant women out of his trailer

Italian police are investigating a truck driver on Tuesday who forced him to get out of his truck with whips a group of migrant women who had climbed into the trailer of the vehicle, probably to cross into France, near the border at Vetimiglia (northwest).

The scene was recorded in a video that has already gone viral on social networks and has caused commotion due to the brutality of images which was also reproduced by almost all local media.

The videos show the driver holding the cargo strap by the steel end as he forces the women out of the truck and then hitting them with it like an improvised whip.

The women, of Eritrean nationality, had been rescued by the Caritas organisation in Vetimiglia the previous night at the “general reception point” and after the violent reaction of the truck driver they returned there and told what had happened, according to local media.

“These are shocking and painful images,” said Serena Regazzoni, head of the Caritas immigration department in the area, who denounced that “the lack of a reception camp remains an insurmountable gap,” when hundreds of people continue to arrive without pause in Italy and other ports of entry to Europe on board precarious boats with which they escape poverty, hunger or wars in their countries of origin.

Political parties also criticized the images of the truck driver, who is already being investigated by the police.

“Cruelty and dehumanization of migrants,” said Laura Boldrini, a member of the Democratic Party (PD) and president of the Permanent Committee of the Chamber of Human Rights in the World.

For Boldrini, this is “the poisoned fruit” of a hypocrisy that “points out migrants as a public enemy,” but “closes one or both eyes” when they are exploited because then “the enemy is convenient and functional for productivity.”

“Every year thousands of people try to cross this border to seek refuge in France, many of them young women who could be our daughters and they are treated like the girls in that video,” said Raffaella Paita, a senator from the Italia Viva party.