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.
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Child Migrants Are Refugees the US Helped Create
By Nathalie Baptiste, Foreign Policy in Focus | Op-Ed
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Thousands of Unaccompanied Refugee Children Travel to Sweden
Saturday, 24 October 2015 00:00 By Rory Smith, Truthout | Report
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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
