Indicted for having “sacrificed” his son: Africa trying to fight illegal emigration
For the first time in an African country, a man was arrested and charged with sending his son to Europe entrusting him to a trafficker. It happened in Senegal, one of the African countries that for years have been trying to discourage clandestine emigration. The expectations that lead to spending thousands of dollars to reach Europe by resorting to criminal organizations are almost always disappointed. The Senegalese government tries to make it clear to young people and their families, especially since people with a decent and even enviable economic and social position usually emigrate. "People don't leave here because they have nothing, they leave because they want better and more", already said in 2015 the minister of Senegalese abroad, Souleymane Diop, explaining that even teachers commit their salaries to emigrate and of university students their scholarships.
But the government campaigns have not convinced everyone. Many young people continue to leave the country. Since the Central Mediterranean route has become less safe, smuggling organizations have intensified the one leading to the Canary Islands and then to Spain, which in fact in 2018 and 2019 far exceeded Italy in number of landings.
It is on this Atlantic route that a 14-year-old boy, Doudou Faye, died in mid-October. His travel companions said that during the crossing he fell ill and that they had to throw his body into the ocean. Other Senegalese have lost their lives along the routes of illegal emigration. But the story of the young Doudou shook the country, moved by the circumstances that led to his death. In fact, it became known that it was his father, Mamadou Lamine Faye, who decided to send him to Europe, with Italy as a final destination. The idea was that the boy, who was good at football, would enroll in a sports center in Italy and become a footballer: not that he had a job, because in that case he would have traveled regularly. Without telling his wife and – local newspapers say – bypassing her surveillance, the man entrusted his son to a trafficker who for about 380 euros undertook to take him to the Canary Islands. There, other traffickers were supposed to transfer Doudou to Spain and then to Italy.
It is certainly not the first time that parents have entrusted a child to a trafficking organization and pay to take him to Europe. Every year thousands of unaccompanied minors reach the coasts of Greece, Italy and Spain: many because the family, persuaded by traffickers or others, thinks that, once they arrive at their destination, their son will earn and send money home.
But finally the Senegalese authorities have decided that such behavior can no longer be tolerated. The police are looking for the traffickers who fled but have been identified. In addition, on 11 November, Doudou Faye's father was arrested and charged with involuntary murder and complicity in the trafficking of migrants. The reactions of some mass media make it clear that at least part of the public opinion agrees. "Senegal. He makes his 14-year-old son who dies at sea emigrate illegally ”, headlined the daily Afrik.com on 12 November. The caption that accompanied the photograph of the boy read: "Dad sacrificed me."
After the news of Doudou's death, in less than a week two boats left from the coasts of West Africa were wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean and about 200 people died trying to reach the Canary Islands: it is possible that among them there were others minors "sacrificed" by their parents.
For having survived the journey and having reached their destination, thousands of children and adolescents can be said to be lucky, but they are equally victims, sacrificed by unwary, inexperienced parents, to say the least: victims because, even if an unaccompanied minor in Europe receives a special treatment, welcomed by a team of professionals, from the cultural mediator to the expert in children's rights, but when the welfare system ends its task, they find themselves uprooted, far from home, with remote possibilities of integration and prospect of a life of expedients.
In the same days when the Senegalese authorities decided to indict the father of a child sent to the fray, in Greece another parent was arrested on a serious charge. It is an Afghan emigrant traveling with a six-year-old son. The little boy drowned after the boat left Turkey with 23 other people on board and headed for the Greek islands was shipwrecked in the Aegean Sea for reasons not yet ascertained. The captain of the boat was arrested for emigrant trafficking. On 8 November the Greek police also arrested the child's father on charges of "endangering the life of others". The man faces up to ten years in prison.
Perhaps it is the first time that a European country has taken such an initiative. It certainly is in the case of Greece. There was no lack of negative reactions, especially from some non-governmental organizations. “It is a direct attack on the right to seek asylum – was the comment of Help Refugees / Choose love – it is a scandal that a grieving father is punished for seeking safety for himself and his son. The criminalization of people seeking protection demonstrates the failure of the European Union to find a solution to dangerous migratory routes ”. The European Council for Refugees and Exiles spoke of the "urgent need to find safe and legal ways that allow asylum seekers to reach Europe safely".
These are comments that leave you speechless. No one who has a role, a function in the apparatus created to deal with the migratory emergency of which Europe is a protagonist ignores that there are safe and legal ways for refugees seeking asylum, guaranteed by the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees assisted by countless other bodies, that the dangerous migration routes are those of irregular migrants, created by traffickers, and that at least 80 per cent of those seeking asylum in Europe, and an even greater percentage of those entering Europe illegally, they are not refugees fleeing wars and persecution, but people who use the expedient of calling themselves refugees in order not to be rejected. The responsibility of those who, be it a minor or an adult, die along the routes created by traffickers is also, and ultimately first of all, of those who consciously continue to support irregular emigration by pretending to do well.
The post Indicted for "sacrificing" his son: Africa trying to fight illegal emigration appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/incriminato-per-aver-sacrificato-il-figlio-lafrica-che-cerca-di-contrastare-lemigrazione-clandestina/ on Tue, 17 Nov 2020 03:41:00 +0000.