Reported by Abdulaziz Osman and Nicolas Pinault
Edited by Pete Cobus
February 2016
As Europe continues to absorb a migrant flow of Biblical proportions, stories of those fleeing the shock of war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have come to dominate headlines.
But stories of sub-Saharan Africans, the economic migrants and refugees of chronic instability and regional violence, are less likely to resonate globally — unless their travails are met with calamity.
Of an estimated 130,000 Africans who attempted the journey in 2015 alone, most are escaping the entrenched day-to-day norm of institutionalized and grinding poverty — what some call the residual effects of a bygone colonial era.
In a makeshift encampment in Rome, 16-year-old Gambian migrant Morro Saneh put it more succinctly: “We simply want to live like human beings.”
Hailing from even the farthest reaches of the Sahel, the sub-Saharan migrants’ two primary routes to the “promised land” intersect Libya, the lawless morass of internecine warfare and dueling government entities. It’s here, in the cauldron of the post-Arab Spring Maghreb, where the grim prophecy attributed to ousted despot Moammar Gadhafi appears to be coming true: “The Mediterranean will become a sea of chaos.”
Those open waters now before them, an oceanic expanse of desert behind, they’re faced with the defining decision of their journey: whether to risk crossing fickle tides that, having claimed a record 3,771 migrants in 2015, on a calm day reveal the tantalizingly close shores of Southern Italy. But even for those lucky enough to reach the resort-studded coast, paradise quickly becomes a kind of purgatory. Like their Middle Eastern counterparts, the sometimes stateless travelers remain deadlocked between smugglers who exploit their hardship with impunity, and the governments that won’t permit them to stay. These are their stories.
Editor’s note: Despite important distinctions between the terms migrant, refugee and asylum seeker, we were unable to confirm the entire personal backstory of each subject interviewed, and therefore use the terms somewhat interchangeably.
Adrift
The Invisible African Diaspora
Reported by Abdulaziz Osman and Nicolas Pinault
Edited by Pete Cobus
February 2016
*PART I: ROUTES
The Road In
*PART II: LIBYA
Edge of the Abyss: Descent Into Libya
*PART III: TESTIMONIES
The Crossing: Testimonies
*PART IV: THE SMUGGLERS
The Merciless 'Magafe'
*PART V: CONCLUSION
The Road Ahead: Lives in Peril, Policy in Limbo...
http://projects.voanews.com/adrift-african-diaspora/
Received on Wed Feb 24 2016 - 18:20:45 EST