Trieste Silos, “Dux” Graffiti and Degradation: Asylum Law, the Constitution and State Responsibility

The graffiti reappear. And not in just any place.

They reappear right there, in front of the silos of Trieste, where dozens of asylum seekers who have not yet found dignified accommodation try every day to build a makeshift shelter that is as livable as possible, amid degradation, filth, abandonment and the near-total absence of essential services. A place that has been tolerated for far too long as if it were normal, when in fact even minimal political and administrative will would be enough to recover at least one of the enormous warehouses and restore to these people a shelter worthy of a civilized country.

Graffiti never appear by chance. Not in public space, not in history, and certainly not when they appear in places already marked by fragility and abandonment. The reappearance of the word "Dux" in the area of the Trieste silos is neither an isolated provocation nor a folkloric gesture: it is an act with a precise political and legal meaning, made all the more serious by the fact that it is directed at people already exposed to extreme vulnerability.

Context is decisive. The silos area today represents one of the most emblematic points of the Balkan route in Italy, where people who have crossed borders, violence and pushbacks converge—often in violation of fundamental rules of international law. The material conditions in which these individuals live—without housing, adequate healthcare or essential services—raise serious questions regarding the State's positive obligations. Article 2 of the Italian Constitution requires the protection of inviolable human rights, while Article 3 enshrines substantive equality, which cannot remain a mere abstract formula in the face of such evident degradation. Added to this is Article 10, paragraph 3, of the Constitution, which recognizes the right of asylum and requires the State to ensure effective, not merely formal, protection.

Yet there is a further level, deeper and less visible, that must be addressed: what happens at the silos is not only abandonment, it is also a form of de facto "remigration." Not the one proclaimed in political discourse as deportation outward, but an internal, silent and progressive remigration, consisting in pushing people further and further to the margins, further away, increasingly outside the boundaries of the polis. A dynamic that renders migrants invisible, confining them to degraded spaces, removing them from public sight—and therefore from collective responsibility.

Observed with legal rigor, this form of remigration is neither neutral nor accidental. It is built through a combination of omissions, administrative practices and normative mechanisms which, although formally lawful, produce substantively expulsive effects. It is not merely a failure to receive; it is a process of displacement, fragmented pushbacks, and the fragmentation of lives and legal pathways to the point of making them unmanageable. It is expulsion without a formal act, yet with very real consequences.

In this sense, remigration does not coincide solely with the outsourcing of asylum procedures to third countries, but begins much earlier, within European borders. The Dublin Regulation, in its practical application, has generated a chain of forced transfers that often amount to indirect pushbacks. Individuals who arrive in Germany or France are identified and then sent back to countries of first entry such as Bulgaria or Croatia, where reception conditions are frequently criticized by international bodies. From there, many attempt the Balkan route again, in a cycle that exposes them to repeated violence, deprivation and a progressive loss of legal status.

At this point, the concept of remigration reveals an even more troubling dimension: it is not only a geographical displacement, but a gradual erosion of legal subjectivity. Many of these individuals are not "economic migrants" in the simplistic sense of public debate, but former Afghan soldiers, technicians, professionals—people who collaborated with Western missions or who come from contexts of conflict and instability. Their journey transforms them, however, from potential holders of protection into bodies in transit, stripped of documents, often robbed or deprived of their belongings, reduced to a condition of mere biological survival.

When these people reach Trieste, after enduring a sequence of pushbacks, violence and transfers, they do not encounter a system capable of reactivating the circuit of rights, but rather a further layer of exclusion. The city thus becomes not a point of arrival, but a point where the failure of European policies accumulates. In this framework, the silos are not merely a physical place: they are the materialization of a grey zone of law, where guarantees exist on paper but do not translate into effective protection.

The stark yet realistic expression used by Dr. Fornasir—"feeding human beings to rats"—captures precisely this gap between proclaimed rights and lived reality. It is not merely a moral denunciation: it represents a possible systemic violation of international and constitutional obligations. Where the State tolerates conditions incompatible with human dignity, it risks violating not only Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but also the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits any form of return to situations of danger or inhuman treatment, even when carried out indirectly.

At the supranational level, the framework is even more stringent. The prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment, enshrined in Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, does not concern only direct violence, but also material conditions imposed or tolerated by States. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly affirmed that abandonment in conditions of extreme precariousness may constitute a violation of these provisions.

In this scenario, the appearance of symbols linked to fascist ideology takes on an even more serious meaning. The Italian legal order, through the Twelfth Transitional and Final Provision of the Constitution, prohibits the reorganization of the dissolved fascist party. This principle was implemented by the Scelba Law and reinforced by the Mancino Law, which respectively punish the apology of fascism and discriminatory and hate-based conduct. The legal assessment of such acts cannot ignore context: a symbol that might appear ambiguous in abstract terms becomes unequivocally intimidating when directed at people already marginalized and perceived as "others."

Yet repression alone is not sufficient. The central issue remains public responsibility in the management of territory and social vulnerability. Article 97 of the Constitution requires public administration to act according to criteria of efficiency and good governance, which include the prevention of urban and social degradation. Leaving entire areas in a state of structural abandonment is not neutrality: it is a form of inertia that produces legally relevant and socially dangerous effects.

The result is a self-perpetuating cycle. The more people are left to fend for themselves, the more they are ghettoized; the more they are ghettoized, the more a perception of insecurity consolidates, fueling hostile reactions. This dynamic is well known: marginality is not only a condition, but a factor that can generate further exclusion. In this sense, degradation is not caused by the presence of migrants, but by the absence of adequate policies of reception, integration and management of public space.

Allowing symbols of an authoritarian past to re-emerge precisely in places where human dignity is most exposed means undermining the constitutional pact on which the Republic is founded. It is not a matter of limiting freedom of expression, but of preventing public space from becoming a ground for the legitimization of hatred and discrimination.

The episode of the Trieste silos therefore demands a reflection that goes beyond mere news reporting. It requires, on the one hand, the rigorous application of rules that protect the democratic order and repress discriminatory conduct; on the other, it demands a structural intervention capable of restoring dignity to those who today live at the margins. Because without dignity there is no substantive legality, and without substantive legality any repressive response is destined to remain incomplete.