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‘No mama, no papa. All alone’: The 11-year-old Eritrean boy who has left his family behind to join thousands of migrants heading to Lampedusa

Tanjin from Eritrea is among 2,000 to land on the Island in the last five days He left his family behind and faces military conscription if he is sent back Around 300 migrants are thought to have

  • Tanjin from Eritrea is among 2,000 to land on the Island in the last five days
  • He left his family behind and faces military conscription if he is sent back
  • Around 300 migrants are thought to have drowned on their way from Libya
  • 170,000 migrants from Asia and Africa landed on the Italian island in 2014
  • Trend since start of the year suggests that figure will be surpassed in 2015

 

The smile on 11-year-old Tanjin’s face as he plays football on the tiny island of Lampedusa hides the life-threatening journey he took to get there.

He is one of 2,000 asylum seekers to land on Italy’s southern port since last weekend – having risked their lives crossing the rough Mediterranean waters on smuggling boats.

The Eritrean boy left his family behind and if he is sent back too, he faces being conscripted into the country’s military.

For that reason, the boy is likely to remain in Europe where he will continue his education.

 

He will now be transferred to a reception centre on the mainland that specialises in dealing with minors who reach the country alone.

Several children did not survive the trip. As many as 300 migrants are thought to have drowned on the rough Mediterranean waters after being ordered to get on flimsy rubber dinghies from Libya.

While Tanjin worked on his dribbling, Somali teenager Abdenajib was calling worried relatives back home.

‘I am saying that I’m in Italy now, it’s good. They see, I am saying that I haven’t died,’ he said after the conversation with his mother and sister who occupy a refugee camp in Kenya.

Abdenajib acknowledges how lucky he was to survive a day and a half at sea – just days after 29 migrants had perished from exposure.

And speaking through the chain-link fence at Lampedusa’s migrant reception centre, the 15-year-old revealed his dream was to become a doctor.

He said: ‘I want help, I want to learn and education. I want to go to Norway.’

His journey began in Kenya, from where he travelled through Uganda and Sudan before finally reaching the Libyan capital Tripoli. There, he handed over £700 to smugglers for the boat trip to Italy.

Most of the migrants on Lampedusa – including Adam from Mali – were rescued by the Italian coastguard or by merchant ships.

He said: ‘We were in the first boat and that’s why we didn’t have problems because Italians took us in when the waves started coming towards us.

‘As for me, I need Italian citizenship. Here, we are all tired. Since I left the north of Mali until now, there have been issues.’

 

The sudden surge in arrivals has stretched the island’s reception facilities to breaking point as the centre struggles to deal with three times the number of migrants it was designed to.

More than 170,000 migrants from the Africa, the Middle East and South Asia landed in Italy last year and the trend since the start of the year suggests that number will be surpassed in 2015.

Amnesty International said the European Union’s limited coastal patrol operation off Italy was desperately ill-equipped to cope with the soaring numbers.

Its spokesperson said: ‘Unless the void of Italy’s now defunct lifesaving Mare Nostrum search and rescue operation is filled, refugees and migrants will continue to die in great numbers at sea.’

 

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14 COMMENTS
  • tamrat tamrat February 23, 2015

    Dear assenians, I told my experience in derg time to share my experience. Children are born in their environment so they are not terrorized in what is happening. But the terrified when they see fear in their abat and inat. They ate not afraid to cross a border guared by hundreds thousands soldiers who can shoot and kill, stay in the “enemy ” country, cross a dessert, cross a sea. They do all this after they have done the last TALK with their dearest family.

    You see when they do that last TALK they don’t see the usual fear and hopelessness in their family instead they see HOPE.

  • Kiflom February 24, 2015

    JAY AKBAR FOR MAILONLINE and asmarino, Thanks for your kindness in revealing a piece of the reality of the recent flood of asylum seekers for the coast of Libya. I have attempted to follow the case for detailed info and I got one from a friend in Italy although he was also under deep sorrow for the death of the 300 still unidentified victims. It is now a challenge to all those who attempted to echo the arrogant comments and rejections of the problem of flooding out which included summary execution of teenagers about three months back of which to my information three of them were buried at their birth places. Now! LET THE WHOLE WORLD BE AWARE OF THE INTENSITY, WIDTH, DEPTH, EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM. HERE IS ONE SPECIFIC EXAMPLE. THE CASE OF THIS 11 YEARS OLD BOY. Do you think he is an economic migrant? Do you feel anything to witness such a humiliating reality of the totalitarian state.Can Isaias Afeworki and his lieutenants claim that this 11 years old boy went out because he has a dream of having the best life in Europe without his parents, sisters and brothers as well as his friends. It is frustrating to arrive to this stage whereby kids understand the life situations under the state and decide to go out irrespective of the problems they could face including death at such juvenile stage. Do you want to see worse realities than the mother who died with her children and the other who aborted within the Med Sea a year or something back. Things have gone fr beyond any means of reversing the situation until Isaias and his lieutenants are alive. So, let the world take the maximum possible measure against this totalitarian state which is a shame of Africa and the whole world. Those who are backing and supporting him have other alternative except to examine their brains or have them be examined by professionals. Are they expecting the fetuses to move out of the uterus of mothers and start getting out like what this 11 years old boy. When are they going to understand what is what if they couldn’t understand what they see with their own eyes?

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