Migrant centres are like concentration camps - Berlusconi

Italy's holding centres for immigrants are like "concentration camps", Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said yesterday, adding it was more humane to send migrant boats back to Libya than let them enter Italy.

Mr Berlusconi's government has drawn strong criticism from the United Nations and human rights groups for its new policy of diverting migrants intercepted at sea back to Libya.

"I think it is much easier... to examine individual situations in the country of origin, otherwise they come here and go to a camp which, I should not be saying this, is very similar to a concentration camp," Mr Berlusconi told reporters.

The UN refugee agency says the practice of deporting migrant boats, which began earlier this month amid a steady warming of ties with former Italian colony Libya, breaks international conventions on the rights of asylum seekers. Since coming to power last year, Mr Berlusconi's government has cracked down on illegal immigration, controversially making it a crime to be an illegal immigrant.

It plans to double the number of holding camps for migrants to 20 from 10 and has renamed them Identification and Expulsion Centres.

Last week, the lower house of Parliament passed a Bill which trebles the amount of time immigrants can be held in such centres to six months.

Aid groups have long denounced overcrowding, poor hygienic conditions and in some cases police abuse at the holding centres, particularly the one on the southern island of Lampedusa where most of the immigrants from Africa wash ashore.

The Northern League, a junior partner in Mr Berlusconi's government which is behind most of the new anti-immigration measures, once likened the Lampedusa centre to a "five star hotel".

Mr Berlusconi was speaking at a joint news conference with European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, who said the priority should be to avoid humanitarian disasters at sea and reinforce patrols to prevent the migrants from leaving. Still, he said, the rights of asylum seekers should be respected.

UNHCR says the hundreds of people deported in recent weeks included asylum seekers and it is calling on Italy to accept them back.

Almost 70 per cent of 31,200 asylum requests in Italy last year came from immigrants who arrived on its southern shores, UNHCR said, and about half of those were accepted.

The deportations have been strongly criticised by rights groups, Catholic organisations and the Vatican.