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Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 12:44:46 -0500 (EST)
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Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Somali Refugees Find a New Kind of Hardship in
 Italy
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Somali Refugees Find a New Kind of Hardship in Italy

October 31, 2004
 By IAN FISHER





ROME, Oct. 30 - Not a stray human sound escapes the old
Somali Embassy in a discreet and elegant neighborhood in
northern Rome. But creak open the iron gate, and another
world emerges. It is, more precisely, a place where worlds
converge: the rich and the poor; the order of Europe and
the chaos outside it.

For a bed, two men share a spot on the hood of a green Fiat
hatchback in the compound. One of them is Barre Muhammad
Abdi, just 21, whose route to his damp and dirty mattress
is nothing short of epic: he fled the warlords and
bullet-chipped palaces of Mogadishu last year, crossed the
Sahara and then paid $800 to sail from Libya in a boat of
refugees north to Italy. Two people among the 140 died, he
said, in four wandering days across the sea.

"I came to Italy because I thought I would find a better
life," he said in his native language. "I didn't find this
good life."

On a recent morning, Mr. Abdi was one of about 55 Somali
refugees sleeping on the grounds of the disused embassy as
the weather turned wet and sour. They slept inside a garage
swept to remarkable tidiness, on an open patio packed two
to a cot and in a hallway leading into the embassy's
offices, the inside of which has been locked since
Somalia's last stable government crumbled nearly 14 years
ago. The embassy, the men's only alternative to the street,
was relatively empty. A few weeks ago, 150 or more Somali
men slept there, the refugees said. The women stay across
town, in the consulate.

Earlier this month, the men watched - along with all of
Italy - as more than 1,000 other refugees made the journey
on a single weekend from North Africa across the
Mediterranean in crowded boats to the tiny Italian island
of Lampedusa. The Italian government, seeking to discourage
both human trafficking and more refugees from coming here,
immediately bundled up most of them and flew them back to
Libya, where many had begun their journey by sea.

The move prompted quick denunciations from human rights
groups, opposition politicians and the Roman Catholic
Church. Under the Geneva Conventions and Italian law, the
critics argue, people landing in Italy and claiming asylum
have a right to have their cases heard, something that
could not have happened with so quick a return to Libya.

"Basically, they didn't take responsibility for the
situation of these desperate people," said the Rev.
Vittorio Nozza, director of the Italian branch of Caritas,
a Roman Catholic aid group. "The response didn't give
enough time to understand the circumstances of these
people."

In the embassy of Somalia - the very symbol of the faraway
failed state whose disorder encroaches nonetheless on rich
nations - the reaction among the men was more emotional.
Nearly all of them had made the crossing themselves,
endured rough seas and cheating middlemen, watched people
die of starvation and from drinking sea water, then emerged
to a life in Italy that had not been quite what they
expected. A few, in fact, watched those sent from Italy
with envy.

"Some of the people in Libya call us and ask us, 'How are
things there?' or they want to ask us, 'Do you think we
should cross to Sicily?' " said Abdi Farah, 36, who came to
Italy across the Mediterranean last year. "I say: 'Don't
leave. There is nothing here for you.' "

"I am very sorry for those who are arriving now," he added.
"The Italian government doesn't treat refugees with
humanity."

In fact, human rights groups complain, the Italian
government does almost nothing for refugees here - and that
is why the Somalis are living at the embassy. Though the
men have put in applications for asylum, cases can drag on
for years, leaving them in a legal limbo. They are not
permitted to work, though they say they would like to.
Unlike in some other European countries, Italy does not
provide them housing or permit them free study.

So mostly they wait, socialize in a handful of Somali
restaurants, eat on charity or from money earned by Somali
women who clean houses or try their luck in more generous
European nations. Then they are often shipped back to
Italy. In just over a year, Mr. Farah has been expelled
twice from England, once from Norway and, most recently,
from Ireland in May. Since then, he has stayed at the
embassy.

"That is where we live," he said, standing on a patio
barely protected from the sky and crammed with six musty
cots and four sleeping bags on the ground, a few of them
lumpy with sleepers inside. "The rain last night was bad.
It has been quite some time that we have lived like this.
We have no water, no electricity."

There is one bathroom with only cold water, and the line
can be two hours long. A few have prepaid cellphones, which
they charge for free at a cafe down the street. A worker in
the cafe and a few other neighbors said the Somalis were so
quiet it seemed that not more than a half a dozen were
staying there.

They may be nearly invisible, but they are still reminders
of both an unsolved problem in Europe and the extraordinary
risks people will take, legal or not, to find a better
life.

Fuad Ahmad, 18, who says he wants to become a doctor, fled
Mogadishu in 2003 because of the danger and the lack of
schools. Like Mr. Abdi, he paid $800 to an Arab middleman
to cross to Italy from Libya in October in one of two
plastic boats lashed together carrying, he said, about 140
people.

"The Arab man told us we would be in Italian territory in
24 hours," he said. "But that didn't happen."

On the third day, the boats separated and two children on
his boat died. On the fourth day, he said, a 30-year-old
man drank sea water and died. Fifteen days after they left
Libya, they were rescued, but 11 people had died along the
way. The second boat, which he said set sail with 105
people on board, arrived with 13 bodies and only 15
survivors. The case filled Italians with guilt, and Italian
politicians promised greater sympathy for migrants and an
end to the treacherous crossings, which claim hundreds of
lives each year.

But Mr. Ahmad said he got no help. So he left for Sweden,
where he said he began school. A few weeks ago, he was
returned to Italy under a new law that requires asylum
seekers to be returned to the country where they first
entered Europe. He is now sleeping in the embassy grounds
on a cardboard box with blankets plucked from the trash.

"When I came here I was told that because I came through
that disaster that I would be helped," he said. "It is very
hard to live here. The cold weather is coming. And for a
young person who would like to study and create a life,
there are no possibilities."

The Somali Embassy was closed in 1991, when civil war
brought down the government of Mohammed Siad Barre, and
over the years the cream-colored paint began to flake and
the nation's blue flag faded, though it still flies. A net
exporter of people until recent decades, Italy of late has
begun to receive waves of migrants, first from Albania and
Kosovo, then from Turkey and the Middle East and now from
conflicts in Africa. About four years ago, Somalis with no
other place to go began living in the embassy compound with
its three permanent residents: a former driver, a security
guard and the custodian. The population is never steady,
residents say. The numbers swell in the summer when the
weather is warm and people make the dangerous trip from
Libya. But as the weather cools, many leave for elsewhere
in Europe - colder than here, but more likely to provide a
warm place to stay, until they are shipped back to Italy.

"Very soon I will go to France, and ask for asylum there,"
said Ahmed Hajji Ali, 29, who came to Italy in 2003 and
spent nine months last year in Norway. "I won't be on the
street. I will have food. When the winter is over, they
will send me back here."

He said this was not the life he came to Europe for. He
said he argued when some Somalis complained that Italy did
not give them a place to stay, saying he did not want
handouts. "If you have a job," Mr. Ali said, "you can have
a house."

For the conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi, this movement from Italy to other European
countries proves his government's central point: that Italy
bears a disproportionate burden of migration given its
closeness to Africa, and that there must be a unified
European immigration policy. One such proposal is deeply
dividing European governments: Italy, Britain and Germany
support the establishment of so-called reception centers in
North Africa so asylum cases can be processed outside
Europe.

Supporters say this would deter people from making the
hazardous trip across the Mediterranean and would prevent
loss of life at sea. Critics say this puts the best face on
a policy that, in reality, would create camps that would
allow Europe to distance itself from its legal obligations
to provide asylum - and to, in effect, subcontract that
obligation to nations without the same laws or respect for
human rights.

Critics also say it is unlikely to stop the most desperate
from the world's worst places, people like Abuker Sheekh,
35, who crossed from Libya only three months ago. He knew
life would be hard here. But comparing it with life in
Somalia, he said he did not care.

"Because there the issue is: when are you going to die?"
said Mr. Sheekh, who had spent five nights at the embassy,
sharing a small bed with a man whom he had never met. "Here
I don't think about when I am going to die."

Soon, it seems, Somalis here may even be deprived of their
embassy. A new government has been formed in Mogadishu, and
though other such attempts have failed before, Ahmed
Sugulle Hersi, the Somali consul in Italy, said talks were
already under way to reopen the embassy. He said this meant
the refugees might have to leave the grounds, though not
without some agreement with the Italian government "to
solve the problem."

Some, he said, may end up staying here legally. Others may
go back to Somalia - but not anytime soon.

"It's not safe there now," he said. "Eventually, when there
is a peaceful Somalia, these people will want to go home."

Jason Horowitz contributed reporting for this article.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/international/europe/31refugees.html?ex=1100331086&ei=1&en=ccd9ded8a43a9d74


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