To Europe via Libya

Gaddafi's rapprochement with the West could make life harder for African migrants hoping to reach Europe

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By Tellervo Yrjämä-Rantinoja
     
      The Saharan night is pitch black. The turban-headed Tuaregs push the travellers into land rovers on the southern edge of the sandy desert in Arlit, in Niger. The guides instruct the travellers to fill their water bottles and to take blankets along, because nights in the desert are cold.
      "I wanted to get to Europe, and the cheapest way to do that was to cross the Sahara into Libya", begins the story of one undocumented immigrant, MacDonald Simpson, 38, of Ghana.
      The oil-rich Libya is a transit point for immigrants from black Africa. In Libya they can earn the travel money they need to get to Europe.
      Simpson’s parents are dead, and his impoverished home country could not offer him a decent living. Behind him he left a wife and a daughter. His older brother had sent a map showing the route, and information of whom to contact.
     
The trip was a frightening prospect.
      "We were told that we were going at our own risk, and that we could die in the desert. Bundles of banknotes exchanged hands, and the travellers were advised to hide the rest of their money and jewellery. Simpson stuffed a bundle of dollars into a condom and hid it behind his testicles.
      The travel usually took place at night along routes that the smugglers were familiar with. The two land rovers were packed with 37 travellers, who sometimes were not able to get out and walk for six hours. They warmed themselves by a campfire fire and ate canned fish as bread cooked over the fire. In the daytime they stayed hidden.
     
The smugglers left the travellers at the Algerian border on the outskirts of Tamanrasset.
      On the edge of the city Simpson lost track of his friends. He was arrested and thrown in jail because he did not have an Algerian visa in his passport. The police took the money in his pocket.
      Simpson bribed himself out of the cell, and found new Tuareg smugglers who took him to Djanet near the Libyan border.
      The mountains near the border between Algeria and Libya were impassable by land rover, and the four-day trip to the oasis town of Ghat had to be made on foot. The Hoggar mountains loomed on the horizon.
      It was a difficult climb, and the sight of two bodies left in the bush was unnerving. Midway the Tuareg guides disappeared. Things were not looking good.
      Then a group of armed bandits in military uniforms attacked.
     
"One Nigerian was killed, four women were raped, three were kidnapped. They stole our jewellery and our better clothes", Simpson explains.
      "We were at the mercy of the desert without a guide."
      He suspects that the guides worked together with the soldiers; the Tuareg guides reappeared as if from nowhere, and Simpson finally got into Libya.
      At the border the police arrested him and found the dollars that he had hidden away. Simpson lost his last money.
      He faced deportation back home, because there was no visa and no entry stamp in his passport. He escaped his cell and got some money and a forged Arab-language identity document from a Senegalese who helped immigrants. With these he finally reached the capital Tripoli.
     
Simpson’s tribulations date back more than ten years. Twice he has tried to reach Europe from Libya with the help of forged papers, but was arrested both times at Tripoli Airport. He did not want to try to cross the Mediterranean on his own, because he feels that it is too dangerous.
      Libya was not the golden land of dreams that he had imagined it to be. He worked at odd jobs at a bakery, on a boat, and in a chicken house.
      Then he got lucky. Simpson got a job as caretaker for Thomas Weber, the German consul. Now he has an identification card issued by the German Embassy, but no residence permit, in spite of years of applying for it.
      Simpson says that he is stuck in Libya, and that he is getting along fairly well. His suit, briefcase, and leather shoes make him look more like a businessman than an illegal immigrant.
      He has compiled a book of his experiences in the Sahara called When Darkness Falls Across the Desert.
      He still hopes to reach Britain some day to write another book.
     
Libya continues to attract immigrants from other African countries. Some of the arrivals are young men with little knowledge of things who excitedly ask where they can get a car that will help them get to Europe quickly.
      In the seedy back alleys of Medina, the old town of Tripoli, and on the edge of the city wall, hundreds of Africans peddle copies of watches and other trinkets. On the roads out of Tripoli Africans lurk, hoping to get work for even just one day.
      Life could get tougher for Libya’s black immigrants. Just 20 years ago Libya was welcoming people from Sub-Saharan African to work in the country, but things went against them when the international embargo led to increased unemployment. Four years ago anti-African sentiment escalated into rioting between Libyans and immigrants in Tripoli.
      Last year planeloads of them were sent back home. The African restaurants in the old town of Tripoli were shut down in the autumn, but a few African entrepreneurs remain in the bazaar.
      One of them is 26-year-old Ibrahim, a barber who arrived in Libya from Ghana two years ago. He says that he came to Libya to make money, but that the country did not meet his expectations.
      He has few customers, now that there are fewer Africans than before. The cheerful man laughs and says that he hopes to return home and become a professional football player.
      Sitting in the barber’s chair is Maya from Chad, who is also considering going back home. The 27-year-old tailor came to Tripoli three years ago. At first he did quite well.
      "Libyans do not like Africans any more. Now everyone is being thrown out of the country", he complains.
      The two do not openly say that they hope to cross the sea and get to Europe illegally.
      However thousands of immigrants from black Africa see Libya as a transit country - the shortest way to Europe. The fastest routes from Libya lead to Italy - to the island of Lampedusa or Sicily. Thousands made landfall last year, and hundreds drowned in the waves of the Mediterranean.
     
On the other shore of the Mediterranean, a facility run by the Catholic aid agency Caritas houses some of the lucky ones who made it across the sea.
      The young Eritrean men Efraim Dawit, 20, and Mehdin Nabute Gheburu, 32, came by ship from Libya. Dawit came last summer, and Gheburu a year earlier.
      They are the immigrants that can be seen in news pictures every summer, when coast guard vessels stop ships that are bulging with people.
      The men say that they had no difficulties finding boat owners to take them to Europe.
      "Friends in Tripoli got us in contact with Libyan smugglers", Dawit says at the refugee reception centre in Rome.
      He was afraid of the trip, because news of shipwrecks and drownings circulate among those hoping to leave. "It is known that the sea is dangerous, the skills of the captain are uncertain, and often the boats do not even have a compass or other navigation equipment. People rely on their good luck."
     
Those hoping to get to Europe were taken by truck to the seashore in the middle of the night. "I do not know exactly where, because I do not know Libya", Dawit says. The business is lucrative for the smugglers: the going price is a thousand dollars.
      The ship was loaded with 190 passengers. It was so crowded that they were not even able to use the toilet. Nevertheless, the 36-hour journey proceeded without problems. The ship landed at Pozzallo, Sicily on June 27th. Italian police had spotted the ship from a distance, and met them at the shore.
      Dawit was given a medical examination at the detention centre, and he applied for political asylum.
      Dawit is an orthodox Christian of mixed background - the child of an Ethiopian mother and an Eritrean father. He says that after the border war between the two neighbouring countries he faced persecution in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa because of his background. He fled to Europe through Sudan and Libya.
     
Efraim does not want to go back to his father’s country, because he does not know anybody in Eritrea. Besides, the young man would face military service in both Ethiopia and Eritrea. As a Christian, Dawit did not want to stay in the predominantly Muslim Libya, hoping instead to get into Christian Europe.
      The asylum applications of Dawit and Gheburu are still being processed. Gheburu, who fled the Eritrean military, has been waiting for a decision for nearly a year and a half.
      In the mornings, the young men study Italian and in the afternoons they kill time on the streets. Only at five in the evening do they get into the reception centre run by Caritas and the City of Rome. The centre is situated in a former dormitory for railway workers.
      They get their warm meals through a hole in the wall, and the doors are locked. Nevertheless, the facility, which houses 40 men, is spacious and clean.
      The reception centre offers short vocational training courses, as well as language courses, and instructions on seeking work, because legislative changes mean that asylum seekers are allowed to work while their applications are being processed. Dawit has not even tried to look for work, because he says that he would fist like to learn Italian.
      "It is really difficult for black Africans to get work even in a pizza place, because Italians look down on them", says Alessandro Agostinelli, the director of the centre.
     
Everything in Italy is different from what Dawit expected. "There is no housing, no work, and no money, and I can’t speak the language", he says. And he doesn’t know anyone in Italy.
      Nevertheless, Dawit would like to remain in Italy, if he could get political asylum there. Getting asylum has become a slower process in Italy, ever since the processing of applications has been given to a single board of the Ministry of the Interior. Before the law was passed, a decision took a month and a half. Now the waiting time has stretched to a year and a half.
      When two years have passed, Dawit will be able to renew his application. However, he feels uncertain.
      "I have heard that it is easier to get asylum in Finland and the other Nordic Countries. Is this true?" he asks.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.1.2005

More on this subject:
 Libya pressures Europe to stop flow of immigrants

TELLERVO YRJÄMÄ-RANTINOJA / Helsingin Sanomat
tellervo.yrjama-rantinoja@hs.fi