12-year-old Nigerian boy's harrowing account of being kidnapped from his mother and smuggled to Europe on migrant boat
12-year-old Nigerian boy named (Maka for his protection) who
was rescued off the coast of Libya this month told rescuers a harrowing story
of being kidnapped and taken away from his mother, thrown onto trucks, locked
in homes and eventually put on a a migrant boat.
He was rescued Delete repeated word on September 10th, by a ship run by the non-profit organization Save the Children. The agency believed that he was being trafficked for eventual child prostitution or other forms of exploitation in Europe.
He was rescued Delete repeated word on September 10th, by a ship run by the non-profit organization Save the Children. The agency believed that he was being trafficked for eventual child prostitution or other forms of exploitation in Europe.
"He seemed to be travelling on his own and we verified that
pretty quickly,” Gemma Parkin, a spokeswoman for Save the Children who
interviewed him on the rescue ship, said. Maka’s story was incredibly worrying
and also his version of events may not even be the truth of the matter. He had
quite a naive view of what had happened to him." she said.
According to Maka, he lived with his mother in Nigeria and they had very little money. His father died in an accident when he was very young. One day while he was waiting for his mother at the market a man came and said he would give him some money to carry something to the next junction.
According to Maka, he lived with his mother in Nigeria and they had very little money. His father died in an accident when he was very young. One day while he was waiting for his mother at the market a man came and said he would give him some money to carry something to the next junction.
"I help him. The
man took me," Maka said. "I don’t even know where the man took me
to," Passed from hand to hand, car to truck, left by the side of the road,
and locked in different houses, Maka was moved from place to place with people
constantly asking him for money. He said he never had any. Many times he
thought he was going to be killed.
"I say ‘Where are
we going?’ I was thinking he wanted to go and kill me,” the boy recalled. Several
times he escaped from people he thought would hurt him. Eventually Maka said he
was taken to a small house where people inside were prisoners. Then he saw a
boat coming and the man who brought him talking with the owner of the
boat.
"I said ‘Please sir
I cannot die sir,’" the boy said.
He was then forced inside the boat. Parkin said many children
taken by human traffickers are misled by the belief they are going to be taken
to a better country.
"They think they
are going to be able to work," she said. "They think the streets are
paved with gold, but sadly along the route, the closer they get, the more they
realize that this is a very kind of dark undercurrent of the situation of
trafficking."
According to Parkin, despite experiencing abuse during their
journey to Europe, victims often feel stranded once they arrive, and often turn
to the traffickers for help.
"They are beaten
along the way and they have no means of going back the way that they
came," she said. "They have no option but to making that call to the
smuggler when they land in Europe."
After he was saved from the sea, Maka was taken to a Sicilian
port and is now at a reception centre for minors in Sicily. According to
Parkin, child protection experts realized that Maka may be a victim of
trafficking.
"He thought that
some of the people along the way were doing him a favour, or being kind to him.
But sadly our child protection team knows that many times this trafficking
route from Nigeria to Italy will pick up children along the way, will dupe them
with stories of what they’ve got in Europe waiting for them."
Officials weren’t even
sure how old Maka is. "He wasn’t even sure of his birth date," Parkin
said. "But we thought that he looked about 12 years old, but obviously the
age that you would only have just started secondary school, so incredibly young
to be travelling alone, which is why we were immediately concerned."
Parkin said they are working with Italian authorities to help
find a foster family for Maka.
"Our team is trying
to establish a relationship of trust with him to explain to him what the
dangers are and get him into a foster family where he can be safe,"
Parkin explained. According to
Save the Children, 16 per cent of the migrants arriving on the Africa route are
children and of those 93 per cent are unaccompanied.
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