BOSASSO, Somalia, Dec 20, 2010 (AFP) -Her husband and four children
drowned two years ago while crossing the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, but
Binti Sheikh Abuka is determined to leave Somalia, saying everyone
will die some day anyway.
Each year tens of thousands of Ethiopians and Somalis make the
perilous crossing to Yemen in the hope of a better life away from
home, where economic deprivation, persecution and conflict have
devastated their lives.
Many of them die on the way on board the often overcrowded and rotten
small boats, while others, already weakened by long journeys from the
hinterland to the coast, die in the hands of ruthless smugglers.
"I am willing to go and I am not afraid. Allah is the one who gave me
yesterday and he will give me tomorrow," said Abuka, looking sad and
angry at her life in a filthy camp for the displaced in Bosasso, the
capital of Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region.
Abuka fled the deadly fighting in the capital Mogadishu with her
family in 2007, and a year later her husband and children were the
first to attempt the hazardous onward journey to Yemen from Bosasso.
The misfortunes of Abuka's family however seem to have no effect on
25-year-old Jamila Ali Rashid, a mother-of-three who plans to cross to
Yemen with her husband and children.
Squatting by Abuka's side, Rashid, who has lived in Bosasso for 11
years, recounts with a tinge of naive excitement her motivation to
emigrate.
"Life here is very hard. My husband does not have enough money to
support us. The reason I am leaving for Yemen is to get a better job.
Our plan is to leave together," Rashid said.
But at a cost of 120 dollars per person and her meagre earning of 30
dollars a month from garbage collection, the plan appears too
expensive for her means.
"This is our plan. Our plan is to leave, but I don't know whether we
will be able to get to Yemen," she added, also dismissing the dangers
of the trip. "We are all mortal, everyone is going to die one day."
Since 2010, Puntland authorities have intensified a crackdown on human
smugglers and many have relocated to coastal villages further from
Bosasso, while others operate from remote seaside locations in
Djibouti.
Puntland's Information Minister Abdulhakim Guled also said their
deportation of immigrants is to stop them from risking their lives on
the smugglers' rickety boats and to banish the chimera of a better
life across the sea.
"The reason we are deporting those who are trying to migrate to the
Gulf states is to spare their lives," he said, adding that they were
also wary that Islamist Shebab rebels may be trying to infiltrate the
region.
Despite the efforts to stem the flow of immigrants, Somalia's
persistent violence is driving hundreds from their homes, mainly from
southern and central regions of the country where armed groups are
fighting for territorial control.
But while unrest is uprooting families in Somalia, hundreds of others
are fleeing from neighbouring Ethiopia due to economic hardship.
At the shores of the Gulf of Aden in Djibouti's northern Obok region,
a clutch of lanky and weary Ethiopian men sit under a short acacia
tree, awaiting the next word from smugglers.
But on this occasion, the UN refugee agency chief Antonio Guterres
turned up to witness the human migration from this troubled Horn of
Africa region.
After Guterres recounted to them the dangers of crossing and the
illusion of economic reprieve in Yemen, the head of the group, Ali
Muhdin, a chequered shawl on his head, told him: "We are aware of all
that, but we want to try our chance. Staying home and crossing over
present the same dangers."
"From here we are in the hands of the traffickers. We don't know when
we will cross. For us it is over, we have left our country."
A few yards from the group, another team of men and women who had
trekked for 15 days from Ethiopia's Oromo region was also waiting to
take a boat from these shores where many would-be migrants have been
buried after succumbing to exhaustion, thirst and hunger or washed
from the high seas.
However, 17-year-old Hussein Mohamed and five others did change their
minds at the last minute when Guterres arrived at the remote desert
spot with a team of UN refugee agency officials and local
administrators.
"I changed my mind because I was afraid (of the crossing)," Mohamed
said, explaining that he deceived his father to give him 100 dollars
to pay the traffickers. "My father will be happy to see me," he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment