Africa to Europe
What Solution?
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I believe that it's time for us to look at the Immigration problem from the other side of the razor-wire fence.
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All the below found on BBC - which I gathered after reading this page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5029230.stm featured first below
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Authorities in Barbados are still trying to discover how a boat carrying the bodies of 11 men was found adrift off the Barbadian coast a month ago.
Police believe the men were mostly from Senegal after finding an Air Senegal ticket on board and a note left by one of the dying men.
In the note, the man speaks of his family in Bassada, Senegal. "Please excuse me and goodbye", he says.
It is thought the men were attempting to reach Spain's Canary Islands.
Coastguards brought the 20ft (6m) unmarked boat into port at Bridgetown after the gruesome discovery was made by a local fisherman in April.
Barbados police have said the cause of the deaths was starvation and dehydration.
Local journalist Tim Slinger has been covering the story for The Daily Nation newspaper.
He told the BBC's Network Africa programme that strong Atlantic currents had probably diverted the boat and that DNA tests would be needed to identify the men.
Things are bad. I don't think I will come out of this alive. I need whoever finds me to send this money to my family
(Note from Diaw Sounkar Diemi published in El Pais newspaper)
Evidence on the boat, and calls to the Barbadian authorities from anxious relatives as far afield as Senegal, Spain and Portugal, have helped police and forensic experts to piece together details of the men's fatal journey and how they ended up so dramatically off-course.
The investigation into the tragedy is being handled by several countries and Interpol.
Difficulties
Some 50 people were thought to have been on board when the boat left Praia in Cape Verde last Christmas.
The men, from Senegal, Guinea Bissau and Gambia, had paid a Spaniard based in the Canaries a total of some 50,000 euros ($64,000) for the journey.
The intended route was Cape Verde to the Canary Islands but it is thought the boat ran into difficulties and the Spanish man was contacted.
According to Spanish newspaper, El Pais, the boat was then towed for some way before being left to flounder with no fuel and little food and water.
Reports in El Pais suggest the tow line had been hacked with a machete.
Interpol has asked police forces around the world to try to locate the Spaniard.
For now, the bodies of the men are being kept in a morgue in Bridgetown while the investigation continues.
Better life
Thousands of would-be migrants attempt to make the hazardous sea crossing from Africa to the Canary Islands or Spanish mainland each year.
Some 7,000 migrants have reached the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean this year alone, but many die while attempting to make the perilous journey.
Earlier this month, Spain announced a three-year diplomatic drive in West Africa to try to stem the flow of African migrants to Europe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5029230.stm
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I am 19 years old and left Cameroon on 21 May 2005. I got to Melilla one week ago. My journey is quite short compared to other people's.
I stayed two months in the forest.
When you're in the forest you don't have peace of mind.
One day police come with helicopters, the next the gendarmes. You are always running, running, running.
I left all my family behind in Cameroon because we are poor.
We don't have anything.
I decided to be a better person so I could lift them up in the future.
'I will do any job'
I told them that I was going to Europe so they sold our family land and gave the money to me. That was our only family land.
Migrants in Melilla detention camp
The migrants in the camp spend their days listlessly playing cards
The money took me to Morocco.
I'm not disappointed to be here in the camp.
I know I must first stay here sleeping in a tent, but I know that one day I will be sent up to big Spain.
That's where I will start up my own life.
I will do anything in Spain, any job at all.
I don't intend to go back with empty pockets. I would look like less than an ant. My family would say I squandered their money for nothing. That would be a very sad and painful encounter.
Mohamed Balde, Guinea
Mohamed Balde
News of expulsions back to Morocco is spreading, causing concern in the camp
Everyone here in the camp, all of us, we'd rather die here than be sent back to Morocco.
Being sent back to Morocco is certain death.
My friends and I spent two years getting here.
We spent nine months in the forest, living off the bits of food Moroccans gave us.
Can you understand what it's like to live like that - the police with their knives and machetes attacking us?
Patrick Thomas, The Gambia
Patrick Thomas
I was studying agriculture and economics in Gambia
In Morocco it's very hard to live. No food, no place to sleep.
And the police when they catch you they take your money from you, they torture you and in prison they only give you half a piece of bread each day.
My arm is bandaged because I caught my arm on the barbed wire as I was climbing over the fence.
And the Moroccan police beat us. The Spanish police just catch us and take us back.
In my country people live in poor conditions.
If you're like me and your parents are not alive and you are taking care of your sisters, you must try and come to Europe.
Risking life
I was studying agriculture and economics in Gambia.
My father died and my mother was taking care of my schooling but then she died. Then my older sister took care of me but three years ago she had an accident and she also died.
So now I'm the only one taking care of my family.
I have no one to help me, but a lot of people I must help.
I have four sisters and three brothers living there. When I am in Europe I will help them so they can continue their education.
I am willing to risk my life to get to Europe.
I can't see any other solution.
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Eyewitness: Migrants suffer in Morocco
Xavier Casero, a doctor working with Medecins Sans Frontieres, tells the BBC News website about his experience treating African migrants in Morocco trying to get into Europe through Spain's enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
Xavier Casero says action to help the migrants is needed urgently
I worked in Morocco for a month and a half at a our clinic in Tangier, but most of my work was in a 4x4 vehicle, treating immigrants who live in the forest close to the border with Melilla.
They live in the middle of nature, in the wild, with no houses, no nothing. We carry all the medicines and medical supplies in the car with us.
They are very pleased when we arrive, because nobody else is looking after them. The only other people who visit are the police and the army. The immigrants aren't suspicious because MSF has been working there for three years, so they know us.
The typical patient is a person who has tried to jump the fence into Melilla, and is wounded and maybe traumatised.
Open wound
For example, the last man I treated was 24 years old, from Mali (the majority of them come from Mali, Senegal and Cameroon, or Nigeria). This man had a very bad head wound, after a Moroccan soldier had hit him in the head.
A Malian illegal immigrant in Morocco with a bandaged head
The immigrants won't go to hospital because the police are around
It was an open wound, and when I arrived in the forest it was eight hours after he'd been injured, and he was bleeding badly. He lost consciousness, and was very traumatised.
I saw cases like this every day - every time I went to the forest, I would find four, five, six cases like this.
Another problem is the lack of hygienic conditions in the forest. There's no potable water, nowhere to go to the toilet - they go to the toilet in the middle of the forest, close to where they live.
They live with wild animals, they have no shelter - they make little shacks with plastic sheeting - it's filthy.
If you visited, you might think it was impossible to live like this, but they do it. It's also overcrowded - there are 400 to 500 people in a patch of about 400m sq in the forest.
Forest births
I've seen a lot of women give birth in the forest. About 10% of the immigrants are women, and around a quarter of these women are pregnant. (Another quarter have small babies.)
I have no-one to help me, but a lot of people I must help
What motivates the migrants
In a month and a half, I saw six deliveries in the middle of the forest with no medical help, apart from us, but often we arrived too late to help with the birth.
One delivery I saw, the woman had a disease called eclampsia, with hypertension and convulsions. I remember the woman was convulsing - it was very dangerous.
We took her to hospital, and this story has a happy ending. She recovered, and the baby was fine.
But it was lucky we arrived. The immigrants won't go to hospital because the police are around - they prefer to stay in the forest, hidden from the security services.
Occasionally we do take patients to hospital, and the staff there always take them in, because we only take the most serious cases. We've never been refused, but they do it reluctantly.
We have to supervise their treatment, because sometimes the hospital refuses to treat the patients in the same way as the Moroccan patients. I know this is a serious allegation.
Often they tell us that MSF has to pay for the medicines for the patients. It's a form of discrimination.
It's true that Moroccans have to pay, but I know that there are some cases when they will tell us we need to pay for medicines they give freely to Moroccan patients.
'Many die on the way'
It is difficult work, mainly because of the working hours. We often work for 24 hours - we have to be available at night, on Sunday mornings, whenever there is an emergency.
European governments have to do something
But for me personally, this work is very fulfilling. This last experience in Morocco has changed my mind about the immigrant problem.
Sometimes you need to see the problem from inside - from close up, to change your mind. I had a different opinion than I do now.
The situation of these people is terrible - they have nothing. I don't know what the solution is, but the problem needs solving quickly because people are suffering.
And those who arrive at the border are only 10% of those who set out. Many die on the way.
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Dying to get to the promised land
By Chris Morris
BBC News, Melilla
Despite their fortifications, Spain's enclaves remain a tempting target for migrants desperate to reach Europe. The last two weeks have seen mass assaults on the border and many have been injured or even killed while attempting to scale the razor wire fences, as Chris Morris reports from the enclave of Melilla.
You can see them lurking in the shade of the trees - through the foliage, and through the razor wire which marks Europe's border with Africa. They are waiting for their time, for the chance to reach their promised land.
A glove hangs on the wire fence at the border
Migrants use gloves and cloth to protect hands against razor wire
Even among all the other places where rich and poor collide, this one stands out.
Melilla is an oddity - a tiny European enclave on the African continent. Part of Spain since the 16th Century, its faded colonial grandeur is protected by high fences and armed forces.
Every night a helicopter hovers overhead, another vain attempt to man the barricades of fortress Europe.
The migrants - young men from the war zones and poverty traps of sub-Saharan Africa - have one thing in their favour: strength in numbers.
'Good odds'
Every so often, hundreds of them storm the fences, equipped only with makeshift ladders hewn from the branches of trees, and with cloths tied around their hands - to ease the pain of razor wire slicing through flesh.
Six young men were killed at the fence this week, some of them shot by Moroccan security forces on the other side of the border.
It's not necessarily the end of the journey for those who manage to cross
But many more than six made it across the frontier - and that makes the odds pretty good, they say, when you have risked your life over and again just to get this far.
Hasan is 25 years old, from Ghana. He's been travelling across Africa for three years to reach Europe's doorstep. Three years! These are strong people, with the determination to succeed.
Many of them leave their homes in West Africa as teenagers, with no clearer plan in their minds than to head north.
Everyone knows roughly where Europe is. They travel well worn routes up through the deserts of Algeria and Morocco - dangerous roads populated by smugglers, thieves and less-than-welcoming official receptions.
They all seem to know someone who hasn't made it - road accidents, fights, beatings have all taken their toll. But for the toughest, and perhaps the luckiest (although they don't always look that way once they get here) the instinct for survival and improvement is the driving force.
Saturation point
"I'm happy now I'm here," Hasan says, as he stands in a small crowd outside a holding centre run by the Red Cross on the Spanish side of the fence.
"I want to work, and I won't let them take me back."
Moroccan soldiers build a camp on the other side of the border
The Moroccan authorities have been accused of dumping migrants in the desert
He's been in Europe for 10 days, and he's dreaming of the job he'll find to help fund his family back home.
But Spain may have other ideas. Hasan is another statistic, another illegal alien, and the authorities here have just sent migrants from third countries back to Morocco for the first time, under the terms of an agreement signed in 1992, but never before implemented by anyone.
Melilla, they say, has reached saturation point. It's the same story along the coast in Ceuta - Spain's other toe-hold on a continent it wants to keep at arms length.
A flood tide of illegal migrants has upset the cosy calculation that inequality can be sustained without cost.
It's happening all along Europe's southern frontiers. Here by land and elsewhere by sea they come - in rickety boats, barely fit to float and packed to the brim. To Malta, the Canaries and the Italian island of Lampedusa. In Malta even the army is outnumbered by illegal immigrants. And patience is wearing thin.
But, let's face it, this is the latter-day invasion we've brought upon ourselves. In a world of instant communications and global images we can't hide our affluence from anyone. The news has reached the smallest African village... and who can blame them if they start heading in our direction?
The response here? Well, the fence is being improved, going up in height from 10 to 20 feet. I can't imagine it will make much difference, the ladders will simply get longer.
But it does mark a toughening of official policy. It's a sticking plaster solution though, not a cure - and everybody knows it.
Medieval siege
Nothing much will change until development brings more prosperity and more jobs to Africa - one of the great challenges of our times. This tiny land border feels a long way from Bob Geldof and Making Poverty History. But this I suppose is what that is all about.
For now we are left with the grainy pictures of the ladders being thrown against the fence, our modern version of the medieval siege. The bravest climb first, and take their leap into the unknown.
As darkness falls at Melilla's holding centre, small groups of migrants begin to queue for food.
Two plastic bags swirl in a sudden breeze and dance on the wind, as if in mock combat.
So many Europeans take what they have for granted. So many Africans are dying to get their share.
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From Endy
Well, I found all that this morning and although I told myself ages ago to keep off the political boards (it ain't good for my morale) I had to post.
Of course we already know this **** goes on
So - what can be done?
Solution?
Irrigate Africa
It's time for us to share the wealth. End the spending of Billions and billions on war and nuclear progress and make Africa green again.
It can be done.
Just imagine a united, world wide effort of this sort. It's not a fantasy.
Artists like Peter fend (American) have had their work on African irrigation stripped out of galleries by the CIA - for even suggesting it.
Oxfam Greenpeace and others are begging for it
While Africans continue to face an early death, do we ever think when we run water from a tap - that 2.5 Billion people STILL do not have any clean drinking water?
Sending aid each time there's a draught isn't f.......... good enough.
If people had a life where they were born - if they just had some hope - some belief that the lucky West were DOING SOMETHING to help them solve their problems - if they could farm their own land and create their own wealth - what would happen? END OF IMMIGRATION.
There are at lot of things that I am 'against'
But as I get a bit older I realise that its much more positive to be 'for' something.
I'm 'for' the irrigation of Africa, the Middle East, India and South America.
Environment wise - it might just save our planet.
It would bring a huge stability to both Africa and the Middle East
where people grow up deeply effected by their environment
It would be a healing process - one which black peoples around the world are owed - because it was us (I'm British but I'm also talking about 'all of Europe' and the United States) who damaged them early on - by manipulating, de-humanising and suppressing them.
While everyone, including Britain, are yakking on about what we should do with these immigrants - I say, lets give them reason not to want to leave their country.
Lets get together scientists, engineers, and those with a vision for the future (there are plenty out there) and lets DO SOMETHING.
It may be wrought with huge problems - but surely it's the right attitude.
