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By Abdinasir Mohamed Guled
Jawhar, Somalia, December 12, 2009 – Mohamed "Yarisow" Hassan lived in
war torn Mogadishu for over 20 years before he attempted to flee to
Yemen by boat.
He failed to reach Yemen three times, each time just barely surviving
tragedies at sea.
Hassan carries an aged bag with some belongings, ready to board a car to
Bossaso, from where he’s hoping to catch a boat to Yemen and to a better
life. He knows that Bossaso, the harbor where the migrants’ journeys
start, will be crowded with other determined youths looking to cross the
Gulf of Aden in spite of all the difficulties.
‘’This is a thoroughly unpredictable, deadly journey’’ Hassan told The
Media Line at a bus station in Jowhar town. ‘’I pray to survive all the
things you hear in traffickers’ heartbreaking stories.”
Every day, hundreds of immigrants are crammed into small wooden boats
and ordered to sit on their knees as armed smugglers sit on guard at the
edge of the boat. They face beatings by traffickers, the threat of
sharks that prowl the waters where boats regularly break down, and the
lack of water throughout the long journey.
According to survivors’ testimonies, thousands drown every year, many of
them forced off smugglers’ boats often miles from the shore in deep
waters.
‘’On my last attempt, traffickers badly beat a pregnant woman after she
asked for a more comfortable position,’’ he says, recalling the
distressing journey to Yemen. ‘’They threw her into the sea.”
Hassan was beaten with gun-buts when he tried to stand for a breath of
fresh air. He is lucky to be alive.
‘’I can hardly imagine the horror of that time,’’ he said.
But despite the difficulties he is still hopeful he will fulfill his
dream: a better life and a job in Saudi Arabia.
“It’s a long journey that needs great efforts and patience,” he said.
‘’I know that I will undergo difficulties, but I can’t bear what is
happening in our country. Al-Shabaab may force you into war, and if you
refuse they will kill you.’’
The numbers of immigrants coming into Yemen from Ethiopia, Somalia and
Eritrea, are on the rise. Every month, thousands reach the shores of a
country that is itself strained with internal fighting between its
government and violent insurgents.
A September report by the UN refugee agency UNHCR found there were over
160,000 registered refugees in Yemen, 153,080 of whom were Somalis.
With the unabated chaos in Somalia, swathes of Mogadishu’s inhabitants
are looking to escape through any means possible. Officials in Puntland,
a semi-autonomous region in northern Somalia, are finding it
increasingly difficult to cope with the flow of migrants.
More than 15,000 Somalis are living in camps for internally displaced
persons, but life in the camps is often so hard it pushes those that
have survived to emigrate elsewhere. Most are struggling not only with
the effects of long-term poverty and familial turmoil, but the
additional traumas that have resulted from their daily exposure to
bombings, violence, and the all pervasive fighting that has taken over
their lives.
Mohamed Sheikh Ali, a former high school student who fled Mogadishu,
said life was only marginally better in the camps.
“I can say we have freedom of movement, but not a good life and no help
except basic aid,” he said.
Analysts believe hundreds of children have died as a result of the war
in Somalia.
‘”More than 150 children under 15 died while they were fighting
alongside Al-Shabaab’’ Somali political analyst Nor Shamsudin told The
Media Line in Mogadishu. ‘’When you see children fleeing to neighboring
countries as immigrants, you realize that the situation is incredibly
desperate.’’
Despite the possibility of robbery, abandonment and coming across wild
animals living in the shrub, refugees will travel long distances by foot
to get across the border.
“I was beaten and robbed by three men with guns near the Sudanese border
on my way to Libya,” an anxious young survivor told The Media Line. “I
was forcibly repatriated with nothing to do in Mogadishu.”
Djibouti has also become a stop for large numbers of refugees on their
way to Yemen.
Fatima Ibrahim, 24, made a deal with human traffickers in Djibouti for a
sea voyage to Yemen.
“I am about to leave to Djibouti through Somaliland,” she said. “There
is a ship there which will take us to Yemen. Being here in Mogadishu is
not a life.’’
Her plans have not been easy on those close to her.
“I have tried to tell my husband and family about my plans but they all
rejected it,” she told The Media Line. “I can’t listen to them, I have
to leave soon.”
Though the most popular destination is Yemen, where immigrants are
mostly able to enter refugee camps, some are less lucky.
‘’Yemen is a good country, but as increasing numbers of people arrive,
they are being jailed,’’ Hassan said.
As his bus blared its horn and the driver pressed him to board, he left
for Yemen, waving goodbye with only the small shoulder bag on his back.
There, on what they call the beaches of death, lay the body and dreams
of a young Somali, washed up on the shore.
Two days ago, he left the Horn of African through the Somali port of
Bossaso along with 124 clandestine passengers on board a crammed little
boat.
Every year, thousands attempting to escape from poverty and war, put
their lives in smugglers’ hands to cross the gulf, where they hope, a
better future awaits them. This man's dream ended, on the wrong side of
the shore, and like many others, he is now just a body with a number for
an epitaph resting in a graveyard overlooking the sandy beach.
Yasseen, an Ethiopian refugee was one of the ‘lucky’ ones who reached
Aden alive. Badly bruised, dehydrated with skin sores and rashes, he set
foot on the beach happy to have made it alive.
"I am determined to reach Saudi Arabia," says the 28-year old only a few
hours after landing on the shores of Yemen, where he hopes to find
someone to smuggle him to Saudi Arabia.
"Conditions on the boat were unimaginable," says Yasseen, who affirmed
some passengers go insane during the 36-hour trip.
"We were 120 people in a boat that can actually only take 20 people, all
piled up over each other. We urinate, throw up and defecate in the same
spot the smugglers put us. You go crazy," he said, as he prepared to
meet one of the Medicins Sans Frontiers doctors, stationed on the shores
of Aden to provide emergency aid to new arrivals.
Another refugee, who identified himself as Youssef, said he came from
the province of Walu in Ethiopia, and hopes to become a “political
prisoner”.
"When smugglers threw us on the water, they told us this was Saudi
Arabia, but we discovered it was Yemen," says Youssef, who will have to
cross around 3000km of inhospitable lands on his way to Saudi Arabia.
Passengers have reported being beaten savagely during the trip so as to
keep them still. Abrupt movement can cause the boats to capsize and
since language is a barrier, metal bars talk.
"For the smugglers, killing a refugee or two is as normal as drinking
water," says an old woman, who made it with her young daughter after a
similarly tough journey.
Women and children, and men are put into separate groups on the same
boat but the treatment is the same for all, with no food and almost no
water onboard.
Upon reaching the Gulf, the passengers are thrown overboard whether they
know how to swim or not, said Yasseen. Some are saved by their survival
instinct; others swallowed up by the waters and drown.
Despite the dangers, many still choose to leave family behind and
undertake the grueling crossing repeatedly until they succeed in
entering Saudi Arabia or one of the Somali UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency)
camps in Yemen, built to receive the newcomers.
Claire Bourgeois, head of UNHCR in Yemen admits the odds are against
Somalis as well as Ethiopian refugees, whose numbers are swelling.
"The war in Somalia is driving tens of thousands to immigrate to Yemen.
Ethiopians are also escaping famine," she says.
"We try to provide help when they land. But our funds are limited," she
told the Media Line from her office in Sanaa.
Although thousands of refugees flock from the Horn of Africa seeking a
new life in a western country, few of them actually make it.
Bourgeois says UNHCR has been given a quota to resettle around 700
refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Sudan and Eritrea every year.
"Of course, the number is so small, it is nothing, the criteria to
resettle is very tight," she admits.
Yasseen has seven days to leave the country, before being whisked away
by police and locked up in the smoggy prison cells of Yemen, where he
faces yet another uncertain future.
UNHCR managed to get a seven-day grace period for Ethiopian refugees,
before they are threatened with prison and deportation. In that time,
many desperately try to join family members or relatives in Saudi Arabia
or Yemen often with little idea of where they are.
For those who attempted the crossing to find a better life in Yemen or
Saudi Arabia, the situation isn’t as good as they hoped it would be.
Those in Yemen live in overcrowded refugee camps under difficult
circumstances and many of the girls and women often end up working in
the sex trade.
The road ahead is still very long and filled with obstacles and
hardship, admits Yasseen, with a tired smile on his scorched and
emaciated face.
"We don’t have a choice. We have to move on," he said with clear
determination.
The journey has just started for Yasseen as he is drawn closer to his
dreams, that of being a shepherd.
Many start the long walk across the inhospitable desert to Saudi the
very next day.
Like ghostly figures drifting over the sand with their white t-shirts
and sarongs flapping over bony legs, they cross the inhospitable desert
to Saudi armed with slippers and a bottle of water.
Despair inhabits those who have no other choice but to leave, wherever
the destination, whatever the dangers.
Source: The Media Line, December 10, 2009
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