Somali Refugees Find a New Kind of Hardship in Italy

[benfy]

dal new york times di oggi evivva la cività italiana



Somali Refugees Find a New Kind of Hardship in Italy
By IAN FISHER

Published: October 31, 2004


OME, Oct. 30 - Not a stray human sound escapes the old Somali Embassy in a discreet and elegant neighborhood in northern Rome. But creak open the iron gate, and another world emerges. It is, more precisely, a place where worlds converge: the rich and the poor; the order of Europe and the chaos outside it.

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For a bed, two men share a spot on the hood of a green Fiat hatchback in the compound. One of them is Barre Muhammad Abdi, just 21, whose route to his damp and dirty mattress is nothing short of epic: he fled the warlords and bullet-chipped palaces of Mogadishu last year, crossed the Sahara and then paid $800 to sail from Libya in a boat of refugees north to Italy. Two people among the 140 died, he said, in four wandering days across the sea.

"I came to Italy because I thought I would find a better life," he said in his native language. "I didn't find this good life."

On a recent morning, Mr. Abdi was one of about 55 Somali refugees sleeping on the grounds of the disused embassy as the weather turned wet and sour. They slept inside a garage swept to remarkable tidiness, on an open patio packed two to a cot and in a hallway leading into the embassy's offices, the inside of which has been locked since Somalia's last stable government crumbled nearly 14 years ago. The embassy, the men's only alternative to the street, was relatively empty. A few weeks ago, 150 or more Somali men slept there, the refugees said. The women stay across town, in the consulate.

Earlier this month, the men watched - along with all of Italy - as more than 1,000 other refugees made the journey on a single weekend from North Africa across the Mediterranean in crowded boats to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. The Italian government, seeking to discourage both human trafficking and more refugees from coming here, immediately bundled up most of them and flew them back to Libya, where many had begun their journey by sea.

The move prompted quick denunciations from human rights groups, opposition politicians and the Roman Catholic Church. Under the Geneva Conventions and Italian law, the critics argue, people landing in Italy and claiming asylum have a right to have their cases heard, something that could not have happened with so quick a return to Libya.

"Basically, they didn't take responsibility for the situation of these desperate people," said the Rev. Vittorio Nozza, director of the Italian branch of Caritas, a Roman Catholic aid group. "The response didn't give enough time to understand the circumstances of these people."

In the embassy of Somalia - the very symbol of the faraway failed state whose disorder encroaches nonetheless on rich nations - the reaction among the men was more emotional. Nearly all of them had made the crossing themselves, endured rough seas and cheating middlemen, watched people die of starvation and from drinking sea water, then emerged to a life in Italy that had not been quite what they expected. A few, in fact, watched those sent from Italy with envy.

"Some of the people in Libya call us and ask us, 'How are things there?' or they want to ask us, 'Do you think we should cross to Sicily?' " said Abdi Farah, 36, who came to Italy across the Mediterranean last year. "I say: 'Don't leave. There is nothing here for you.' "

"I am very sorry for those who are arriving now," he added. "The Italian government doesn't treat refugees with humanity."

In fact, human rights groups complain, the Italian government does almost nothing for refugees here - and that is why the Somalis are living at the embassy. Though the men have put in applications for asylum, cases can drag on for years, leaving them in a legal limbo. They are not permitted to work, though they say they would like to. Unlike in some other European countries, Italy does not provide them housing or permit them free study.

So mostly they wait, socialize in a handful of Somali restaurants, eat on charity or from money earned by Somali women who clean houses or try their luck in more generous European nations. Then they are often shipped back to Italy. In just over a year, Mr. Farah has been expelled twice from England, once from Norway and, most recently, from Ireland in May. Since then, he has stayed at the embassy.

[Missino]

[benfy]

pardon? this forum isn't in italian.

thank you for your attention for this thread.