(AFP) Anger in Italy grew Sunday over an interior ministry order to transfer all migrants out of a town at the centre of a national debate on the integration of asylum-seekers.
The ministry has said all migrants must leave the Calabrian town of Riace in southern Italy following the arrest of its mayor Domenico Lucano earlier this month for allegedly fiddling the system to benefit refugees.
Sources at the ministry were later quoted by Italian media outlets to have rowed back on the forced transfers, saying the migrants would “only be moved on a voluntary basis.”
Those electing to remain, however, would no longer “benefit from the reception system.”
