The “Adriatic Guantanamo” ~ The “Adriatic Guantanamo
When? Friday, June 20, 2025 – 6:30 p.m. Where? House of Compassion Anna Lodeserto, journalist and researcher Nicolas Lesenfants Ramos, photojournalist (online)
The “Adriatic Guantanamo”
On Friday, June 20, on the occasion of World Refugee Day, the House of Compassion will host, as part of the mobilization week supporting the Palestinian people titled “Hunger Strike for Palestine”, a presentation of the photo exhibition and report produced by Anna Lodeserto and Nicolas Lesenfants Ramos in Albania. Their work focuses on the opening in 2024 of offshore administrative detention centers set up by the Italian government across the Adriatic Sea, now operational with the ambivalent support of European institutions.
The photos, taken in Gjadër—where the main closed center was built on a former military base—and in the coastal port of Shëngjin, are set against a tense political and legal backdrop. They document a profound transformation of European migration policies, characterized by outsourcing, deprivation of liberty, and legal uncertainty, ahead of the implementation of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum, scheduled for mid-2026.
These administrative detention centers could serve as a test for future European “return hubs” and outsourcing agreements with third countries, revealing the most disturbing excesses of a dehumanizing pushback system that undermines the dignity of people on the move—as well as that of European citizens made complicit in this system of detention, rejection, and control.
From detention without safeguards, massive public fund wastage, and irrational migration policy management to environmental damage caused by construction on the selected sites, legal challenges, and transnational mobilizations, the “Albanian model” crystallizes the tensions surrounding the Pact while revealing the opaqueness of outsourcing mechanisms. The images on display, alongside documentation on civil society protests in Albania, will bear witness to this and launch a public dialogue.
Members of the European Parliament who took part in the first monitoring missions in Albania’s closed centers will also be invited.
Image of the protest “The European Dream ends here,” organized by Albanian activists during the arrival of the first Italian ship carrying migrants at the coastal port of Shëngjin on October 16, 2024. Photo credit: Mesdhe ©
