Re: [blind-democracy] Thousands of Unaccompanied Refugee Children Travel to Sweden

On 11/4/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Thousands of Unaccompanied Refugee Children Travel to Sweden
> Saturday, 24 October 2015 00:00 By Rory Smith, Truthout | Report
> Two young boys stop on the roadside as Syrian refugees marched north near
> the village of Kliplev, Denmark, September 9, 2015. (Photo: Mauricio Lima /
> The New York Times)
> Do you want to see more stories like this published? Click here to help
> Truthout continue doing this work!
> Locked in containers on transport ships, shoehorned in undersized boats in
> the Mediterranean, strapped to the undersides of freight trucks and stuffed
> in the beds of pickup trucks, vast throngs of unaccompanied children from
> Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Eritrea, Morocco and other nations are
> undertaking one of the world's most perilous journeys to get to Sweden.
> Their aim? Securing a better future for themselves. This refugee current
> reflects the seemingly insoluble desperation and hopelessness so pervasive
> in many countries; it is an alarming trend and a portent of things to come.
> The refugees' journeys end sometimes haphazardly or unintentionally in the
> various immigration centers of Sweden. They are known there as
> ensamkommande
> flyktingbarn (unaccompanied child refugees under the age of 18).
> Sweden's Immigration Service estimates that 12,000 unaccompanied refugee
> children - 50 percent of whom are under the age of 16 - will arrive in
> Sweden by the end of the year. But particular numbers are hard to validate,
> and it is often assumed that this trend is severely underestimated.
> "IF WE HAD WHAT WE NEEDED FOR A FUTURE IN OUR OWN COUNTRIES, WHY WOULD WE
> ALL BE IN SWEDEN?"
> "We don't know how many of these kids are living in Sweden unregistered and
> without papers," said Sara Hellsten, a Swedish social worker who manages
> one
> of the homes that shelter refugee children as they await the processing of
> their asylum petitions. "Many come to Sweden and then hide with contacts
> they might have because they are terrified of being sent back if they
> present themselves to the police or immigration."
> Leaving everything behind - assuming they had anything left to leave - they
> set out alone on an unparalleled journey toward what they hope to be a
> better life. "If we had what we needed for a future in our own countries,
> why would we all be in Sweden?" asked one youth.
> Many children seeking asylum elect Sweden as their final destination based
> on news stories they see on TV in their home countries or on word of mouth,
> both of which may have hinted at Sweden's open immigration policies. Others
> end up in Sweden through fortuitous circumstances.
> "I was in a refugee center in Germany with hundreds of other refugees,"
> said
> Youssef Abdessamie, a Moroccan who left home when he was 14 and arrived in
> Sweden three years later. "I met some other refugees who told me about how
> Sweden was a better country than Germany, how I had a better chance of
> staying in Sweden than anywhere else."
> Though the factors driving these children to set out alone to Sweden are
> myriad and depend very much upon their country of origin, there are some
> general trends. For Somali, Afghan and Syrian children, the reasons for
> their fleeing are similar. Years of war have flattened schools, hollowed
> out
> infrastructure and laid waste to their nations' economies. Many children
> have lost their entire families to bombing campaigns, militant groups,
> poverty, malnutrition and disease. Many youth are now under direct threat
> from these very same militant groups, whether al-Shabab, ISIS or whatever
> other unidentified splinter groups are operating in these areas.
> "IN LIBYA, THERE ARE NO RULES. THE SMUGGLERS SAID, 'WE TAKE YOU AND DO
> WHATEVER WE WANT WITH YOU AND IN RETURN YOU GET TO EAT.'"
> For Eritreans, it is torture, kidnapping and various other forms of
> oppression enacted by one of the world's more autocratic regimes that
> pushes
> them to Europe. And for Moroccan children - the newest and fastest growing
> child refugee demographic arriving to Sweden - it isn't war but the
> oppressiveness of poverty that urges them onward. The impoverished small
> towns and blighted city areas of Morocco are home to throngs of parentless
> children whose only families are the friends they live with on the streets.
> "It is hard to describe the feeling of fear and desperation there [in
> Morocco]," Abdessamie said. "You have to feel it. Life doesn't make any
> sense. Hopelessness is everywhere. You would kill yourself if you didn't
> have your friends."
> All of the routes to Europe are equally nightmarish; they abound in
> instances of sadism that seem to substantiate the existence of some
> underlying evil in the cosmos. Take the typical journey from Somalia to
> Sweden, for example.
> Those Somalis willing and able - having the financial recourse to cover
> what
> is thought to be a costly one-time fee - will approach smugglers operating
> in their region. Any business worth its salt, smuggling included,
> understands the concept of supply and demand. As such, smugglers can be
> found wherever there is strife, and as a consequence, desperation and the
> desire to get away. This includes Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp,
> which lies in northern Kenya, just across the border from Somalia.
> From Somalia, or these same camps, the first stop is always Khartoum,
> Sudan.
> The trip over seemingly endless stretches of barren and moon-like Saharan
> desert requires several days to a week, and is often undergone without food
> or water. Once in Khartoum, refugees are stowed away in one of what is a
> network of small rooms around the city, each holding upward of 80 other
> refugees.
> Once locked into these rooms - effectively becoming prisoners to these
> smugglers - another travel fee is levied on them. They are then subjected
> to
> daily beatings, rape and torture until - with what few phone calls they are
> allowed between these sessions of brutality - they can convince their
> relatives to send the necessary money. This same practice, step for step,
> is
> repeated at every stopover en route to Europe.
> "There was one case of a kid who had five family members left in one house
> back in Somalia," said Amiin Adbihafi, a Somali-Swede who works with newly
> arrived refugee children in Sweden. "Having spent all his money on the
> initial fee, thinking it would cover the entire trip to Europe - as
> promised
> by the smugglers - he didn't have anything to pay the next fee. His family
> was forced to sell their house, essentially everything they had left in
> Somalia, in order to pay for the rest of the trip."
> Assuming they get the requisite funding and survive any violence inflicted
> upon them, the child refugees are taken to Libya and hidden away in one of
> another series of apartment rooms scattered across the coast.
> "In Libya, there are no rules. There was one girl who hadn't eaten for a
> long time; she was starving," Adbihafi said. "The smugglers said, 'We take
> you and do whatever we want with you and in return you get to eat.' They
> were referring to raping her, and of course, she didn't have a choice. She
> would've died had she not done what they wanted."
> Rape is common along all of the routes to Europe. To pay the many
> unforeseen
> ancillary fees that are imposed on these youth during different legs of the
> trip, oftentimes both girls and boys are forced into working as indentured
> slaves. Selling their bodies and performing sexual favors are some of the
> more widespread forms of this slavery.
> Those that can make the next payment are taken from these storerooms at
> night and packed onto boats - often so overcrowded that they capsize en
> route - and begin the forbidding trip across the Mediterranean. It is
> estimated that over 20,000 migrants have drowned over the last two decades,
> with nearly 3,000 having already drowned this year. Those that refuse to
> get
> on these vessels are beaten and oftentimes murdered.
> "Many people watching or reading the news ask how they can take this risk.
> There is no choice, no election," said Harun Pasalic, a Bosnian-Swede
> working to help refugee youth acclimate to their new country. "There is no
> going back. They don't have a choice. They are forced on these boats, and
> if
> they did happen to escape, there is no way they could make it back alive to
> their countries."
> THE WOUNDS INFLICTED DURING THIS TRIP EXTEND BEYOND JUST THE MENTAL ONES.
> Upon landing on the Italian coast, refugees are escorted to and cordoned
> off
> in one of the various understaffed, underequipped and overcrowded
> prison-like immigrant holding centers typical of Europe's Mediterranean
> countries. Within these compounds, they are met by the last line of
> smugglers, who - again assuming the refugees have the money - fashion them
> with fake passports and sometimes plane tickets directly to Sweden.
> Others begin the overland route, which includes travel by trains, buses and
> trucks, and stays in nongovernment-operated refugee centers, as well as
> mosques and informal refugee camps. If and only if they make it to Sweden,
> which by land is becoming increasingly difficult, given Europe's reluctance
> to open its borders to refugees, these kids find the closest police
> station,
> and there they present themselves to be fingerprinted and have their asylum
> cases processed by Swedish Immigration.
> "Any kid traveling alone from one of a variety of far-flung countries,
> enduring every imaginable form of brutality along the way, and then somehow
> making it to Sweden, should be congratulated and awarded with a prize; such
> is the mental fortitude, resilience and resourcefulness demanded by such a
> journey," said Hellsten, the Swedish social worker.
> "If anything, this is a testament to their steadfast determination to
> create
> a better future for themselves and for Sweden," Hellsten added.
> When asked if he had anything to say to anyone reading or listening, one
> child refugee answered: "We want to help make this place a better country.
> We all speak at least three languages. Give us a chance. We are more than
> capable of doing this."
> Understandably, after enduring a phantasmagorical array of traumatic
> encounters, refugee children arrive to Sweden in a variety of mental
> states,
> some better than others. "It took one kid a year and a half to get here
> from
> Somalia and along the way we was beaten, threatened and raped," Adbihafi
> said. "He has nightmares, suffers from PTSD, doesn't eat, doesn't sleep."
> The wounds inflicted during this trip extend beyond just the mental ones.
> "Because rape is so common during their trip, and they are forced to live
> in
> an array of overcrowded and wholly unsanitary conditions, many youth, after
> finally arriving to Sweden, end up at our ward being told they have HIV or
> severe tuberculosis," said Maria Sjögren, a nurse who works at one of
> Gothenburg's infection clinics that treats many newly arrived youth.
> And yet, for most, it isn't the mental or physical anguish of their trip,
> but the process ahead, a period of limbo they live through in Sweden as
> they
> await the final decision from Swedish Immigration - the executioner's song
> -
> which will decide if they can stay or if they will be sent back to their
> home countries, the entire journey for nothing.
> Asked about being afraid of suffocating or being caught while locked inside
> a container full of vegetables as it crossed from Morocco to Spain aboard a
> cargo ship, Abdessamie responds, "There is no fear in the crossing. You are
> focused only on getting to Europe, to a better life. The only fear is being
> sent back, to your death."
> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
> RELATED STORIES
> Child Migrants Are Refugees the US Helped Create
> By Nathalie Baptiste, Foreign Policy in Focus | Op-Ed
> US Program to Resettle Central American Minors Likely to Help Few
> By Jane Guskin, David L. Wilson, Truthout | News Analysis
> "Refugee" or "Migrant" - Which Is Right?
> By Adrian Edwards, New America Media | Report
> ________________________________________
> Show Comments
> Hide Comments
> <a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the discussion
> thread.</a>
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Thousands of Unaccompanied Refugee Children Travel to Sweden
> Saturday, 24 October 2015 00:00 By Rory Smith, Truthout | Report
> • font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
> reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
> reference not valid.
> • Two young boys stop on the roadside as Syrian refugees marched
> north near the village of Kliplev, Denmark, September 9, 2015. (Photo:
> Mauricio Lima / The New York Times)
> • Do you want to see more stories like this published? Click here to
> help Truthout continue doing this work!
> Locked in containers on transport ships, shoehorned in undersized boats in
> the Mediterranean, strapped to the undersides of freight trucks and stuffed
> in the beds of pickup trucks, vast throngs of unaccompanied children from
> Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Eritrea, Morocco and other nations are
> undertaking one of the world's most perilous journeys to get to Sweden.
> Their aim? Securing a better future for themselves. This refugee current
> reflects the seemingly insoluble desperation and hopelessness so pervasive
> in many countries; it is an alarming trend and a portent of things to come.
> The refugees' journeys end sometimes haphazardly or unintentionally in the
> various immigration centers of Sweden. They are known there as
> ensamkommande
> flyktingbarn (unaccompanied child refugees under the age of 18).
> Sweden's Immigration Service estimates that 12,000 unaccompanied refugee
> children - 50 percent of whom are under the age of 16 - will arrive in
> Sweden by the end of the year. But particular numbers are hard to validate,
> and it is often assumed that this trend is severely underestimated.
> "If we had what we needed for a future in our own countries, why would we
> all be in Sweden?"
> "We don't know how many of these kids are living in Sweden unregistered and
> without papers," said Sara Hellsten, a Swedish social worker who manages
> one
> of the homes that shelter refugee children as they await the processing of
> their asylum petitions. "Many come to Sweden and then hide with contacts
> they might have because they are terrified of being sent back if they
> present themselves to the police or immigration."
> Leaving everything behind - assuming they had anything left to leave - they
> set out alone on an unparalleled journey toward what they hope to be a
> better life. "If we had what we needed for a future in our own countries,
> why would we all be in Sweden?" asked one youth.
> Many children seeking asylum elect Sweden as their final destination based
> on news stories they see on TV in their home countries or on word of mouth,
> both of which may have hinted at Sweden's open immigration policies. Others
> end up in Sweden through fortuitous circumstances.
> "I was in a refugee center in Germany with hundreds of other refugees,"
> said
> Youssef Abdessamie, a Moroccan who left home when he was 14 and arrived in
> Sweden three years later. "I met some other refugees who told me about how
> Sweden was a better country than Germany, how I had a better chance of
> staying in Sweden than anywhere else."
> Though the factors driving these children to set out alone to Sweden are
> myriad and depend very much upon their country of origin, there are some
> general trends. For Somali, Afghan and Syrian children, the reasons for
> their fleeing are similar. Years of war have flattened schools, hollowed
> out
> infrastructure and laid waste to their nations' economies. Many children
> have lost their entire families to bombing campaigns, militant groups,
> poverty, malnutrition and disease. Many youth are now under direct threat
> from these very same militant groups, whether al-Shabab, ISIS or whatever
> other unidentified splinter groups are operating in these areas.
> "In Libya, there are no rules. The smugglers said, 'We take you and do
> whatever we want with you and in return you get to eat.'"
> For Eritreans, it is torture, kidnapping and various other forms of
> oppression enacted by one of the world's more autocratic regimes that
> pushes
> them to Europe. And for Moroccan children - the newest and fastest growing
> child refugee demographic arriving to Sweden - it isn't war but the
> oppressiveness of poverty that urges them onward. The impoverished small
> towns and blighted city areas of Morocco are home to throngs of parentless
> children whose only families are the friends they live with on the streets.
> "It is hard to describe the feeling of fear and desperation there [in
> Morocco]," Abdessamie said. "You have to feel it. Life doesn't make any
> sense. Hopelessness is everywhere. You would kill yourself if you didn't
> have your friends."
> All of the routes to Europe are equally nightmarish; they abound in
> instances of sadism that seem to substantiate the existence of some
> underlying evil in the cosmos. Take the typical journey from Somalia to
> Sweden, for example.
> Those Somalis willing and able - having the financial recourse to cover
> what
> is thought to be a costly one-time fee - will approach smugglers operating
> in their region. Any business worth its salt, smuggling included,
> understands the concept of supply and demand. As such, smugglers can be
> found wherever there is strife, and as a consequence, desperation and the
> desire to get away. This includes Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp,
> which lies in northern Kenya, just across the border from Somalia.
> From Somalia, or these same camps, the first stop is always Khartoum,
> Sudan.
> The trip over seemingly endless stretches of barren and moon-like Saharan
> desert requires several days to a week, and is often undergone without food
> or water. Once in Khartoum, refugees are stowed away in one of what is a
> network of small rooms around the city, each holding upward of 80 other
> refugees.
> Once locked into these rooms - effectively becoming prisoners to these
> smugglers - another travel fee is levied on them. They are then subjected
> to
> daily beatings, rape and torture until - with what few phone calls they are
> allowed between these sessions of brutality - they can convince their
> relatives to send the necessary money. This same practice, step for step,
> is
> repeated at every stopover en route to Europe.
> "There was one case of a kid who had five family members left in one house
> back in Somalia," said Amiin Adbihafi, a Somali-Swede who works with newly
> arrived refugee children in Sweden. "Having spent all his money on the
> initial fee, thinking it would cover the entire trip to Europe - as
> promised
> by the smugglers - he didn't have anything to pay the next fee. His family
> was forced to sell their house, essentially everything they had left in
> Somalia, in order to pay for the rest of the trip."
> Assuming they get the requisite funding and survive any violence inflicted
> upon them, the child refugees are taken to Libya and hidden away in one of
> another series of apartment rooms scattered across the coast.
> "In Libya, there are no rules. There was one girl who hadn't eaten for a
> long time; she was starving," Adbihafi said. "The smugglers said, 'We take
> you and do whatever we want with you and in return you get to eat.' They
> were referring to raping her, and of course, she didn't have a choice. She
> would've died had she not done what they wanted."
> Rape is common along all of the routes to Europe. To pay the many
> unforeseen
> ancillary fees that are imposed on these youth during different legs of the
> trip, oftentimes both girls and boys are forced into working as indentured
> slaves. Selling their bodies and performing sexual favors are some of the
> more widespread forms of this slavery.
> Those that can make the next payment are taken from these storerooms at
> night and packed onto boats - often so overcrowded that they capsize en
> route - and begin the forbidding trip across the Mediterranean. It is
> estimated that over 20,000 migrants have drowned over the last two decades,
> with nearly 3,000 having already drowned this year. Those that refuse to
> get
> on these vessels are beaten and oftentimes murdered.
> "Many people watching or reading the news ask how they can take this risk.
> There is no choice, no election," said Harun Pasalic, a Bosnian-Swede
> working to help refugee youth acclimate to their new country. "There is no
> going back. They don't have a choice. They are forced on these boats, and
> if
> they did happen to escape, there is no way they could make it back alive to
> their countries."
> The wounds inflicted during this trip extend beyond just the mental ones.
> Upon landing on the Italian coast, refugees are escorted to and cordoned
> off
> in one of the various understaffed, underequipped and overcrowded
> prison-like immigrant holding centers typical of Europe's Mediterranean
> countries. Within these compounds, they are met by the last line of
> smugglers, who - again assuming the refugees have the money - fashion them
> with fake passports and sometimes plane tickets directly to Sweden.
> Others begin the overland route, which includes travel by trains, buses and
> trucks, and stays in nongovernment-operated refugee centers, as well as
> mosques and informal refugee camps. If and only if they make it to Sweden,
> which by land is becoming increasingly difficult, given Europe's reluctance
> to open its borders to refugees, these kids find the closest police
> station,
> and there they present themselves to be fingerprinted and have their asylum
> cases processed by Swedish Immigration.
> "Any kid traveling alone from one of a variety of far-flung countries,
> enduring every imaginable form of brutality along the way, and then somehow
> making it to Sweden, should be congratulated and awarded with a prize; such
> is the mental fortitude, resilience and resourcefulness demanded by such a
> journey," said Hellsten, the Swedish social worker.
> "If anything, this is a testament to their steadfast determination to
> create
> a better future for themselves and for Sweden," Hellsten added.
> When asked if he had anything to say to anyone reading or listening, one
> child refugee answered: "We want to help make this place a better country.
> We all speak at least three languages. Give us a chance. We are more than
> capable of doing this."
> Understandably, after enduring a phantasmagorical array of traumatic
> encounters, refugee children arrive to Sweden in a variety of mental
> states,
> some better than others. "It took one kid a year and a half to get here
> from
> Somalia and along the way we was beaten, threatened and raped," Adbihafi
> said. "He has nightmares, suffers from PTSD, doesn't eat, doesn't sleep."
> The wounds inflicted during this trip extend beyond just the mental ones.
> "Because rape is so common during their trip, and they are forced to live
> in
> an array of overcrowded and wholly unsanitary conditions, many youth, after
> finally arriving to Sweden, end up at our ward being told they have HIV or
> severe tuberculosis," said Maria Sjögren, a nurse who works at one of
> Gothenburg's infection clinics that treats many newly arrived youth.
> And yet, for most, it isn't the mental or physical anguish of their trip,
> but the process ahead, a period of limbo they live through in Sweden as
> they
> await the final decision from Swedish Immigration - the executioner's song
> -
> which will decide if they can stay or if they will be sent back to their
> home countries, the entire journey for nothing.
> Asked about being afraid of suffocating or being caught while locked inside
> a container full of vegetables as it crossed from Morocco to Spain aboard a
> cargo ship, Abdessamie responds, "There is no fear in the crossing. You are
> focused only on getting to Europe, to a better life. The only fear is being
> sent back, to your death."
> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
> Related Stories
> Child Migrants Are Refugees the US Helped Create
> By Nathalie Baptiste, Foreign Policy in Focus | Op-EdUS Program to Resettle
> Central American Minors Likely to Help Few
> By Jane Guskin, David L. Wilson, Truthout | News Analysis"Refugee" or
> "Migrant" - Which Is Right?
> By Adrian Edwards, New America Media | Report
>
> Show Comments
>
>
>