Italy disillusions Somali refugees

By Ian Fisher
The New York Times

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ROME — 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, during four days of wandering 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, 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 a patio packed two to a cot and in a hallway leading into the embassy's offices, which have been locked since Somalia's last stable government crumbled nearly 14 years ago.

Women stay across town

A few weeks ago, 150 or more Somali men slept there, the refugees said. The women stay across town, in the consulate.

Early 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.

On the embassy grounds — 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 said. "The Italian government doesn't treat refugees with humanity."

Human-rights groups complain, the Italian government does almost nothing for refugees here — and that is why the Somalis are living on the embassy grounds. 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.

Reduced to waiting

So mostly they wait, socialize in a handful of Somali restaurants, eat on charity or from money earned by Somali women who clean houses.

Sometimes they try their luck in more generous European nations. Then they are often shipped back to Italy. In just over a year, Farah has been expelled twice from England, once from Norway and, most recently, in May, from Ireland. 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. "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 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. Receiving no help in Italy, Ahmad 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.

"It is very hard to live here," he said. "The cold weather is coming. And for a young person who would like to study and create a life, there are no possibilities."

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 three months ago. He knew life would be hard here. But comparing it to life in Somalia, he said he did not care.

"Because there the issue is: when are you going to die?" said 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."