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Posted by ACN News on 11/1/2013, 2:09 pm
Message modified by board administrator 11/1/2013, 2:10 pm
ACN News: Friday, 11th January 2013: Ethiopia
High res. pictures available on request
Emanuel’s Odyssey:Cheated by human traffickers at 13 years of age
by Eva-Maria Kolmann
Every year, 25,000 young women and men leave Ethiopia to find work abroad in order to be able to support their families. But the reality is different. They are exploited, robbed of their freedom, sexually abused and cheated out of their wages. On 13 January, the Catholic Church holds its 99th World Day of Migrants and Refugees. In his message, Pope Benedict XVI condemns human trafficking and exploitation.
Emanuel was 13 when, with the blessing of his parents and 90 euros in his pocket, he left his native village in the north of Ethiopia to seek work in Yemen or Saudi Arabia. He handed over almost all of his money to an “agent” to bring him over the border to Somalia. From there, he was to travel to Yemen where he had been promised a job with a large construction firm. Instead, what awaited him was an Odyssey through Ethiopia, during which Emanuel was constantly starving. When he finally reached the Somalian port of Bossaso, he had to board a fishing boat. He used his remaining money to pay for the crossing. The boat would normally have held 50 people at most. But the human traffickers crammed 250 people into it, so that they had scarcely enough room to breathe or stretch their legs. When the vessel reached Yemen, three days later, many of the illegal migrants were no longer alive. The traffickers had ordered them to jump into the water, many kilometres from the coast, in order to avoid problems with the Yemeni coastal police. But many of the men, women and children on board were unable to swim, and drowned pitiably. A number of others had already been thrown overboard by the traffickers on the high seas to prevent the completely overloaded boat from capsizing.
When he arrived in Yemen, Emanuel could see that the traffickers had cheated him. Nobody was waiting at the coast to take him to his new employer. He was completely alone and had not eaten anything for three days. In the end he followed a group of Ethiopian immigrants into the town. After spending several days living in the streets, he was hired by a Yemeni farmer. On the farm, the 13 year-old often had to work for more than 15 hours a day at the hardest physical labour. He never saw any wages. After five months, he managed to flee. Now the boy decided to try his luck in the town. After several weeks of starvation, and when he had lost all hope, he was picked up by the police and sent back to Ethiopia with only the clothes he stood up in.
The boy does not want to go back to his family. His shame at his supposed “failure” is too great. He says: “What would my father say? What would the people in my village say, if I came back empty-handed? My father sold his few goats and possessions to pay the agent. Now my family has nothing left. They are all waiting for me to send money home. How can I go back?” Instead, he will now try to find work in the towns of Dire Dawa or Jijiga in the district bordering on Somalia. “When I have saved enough money, I will send some of it to my family and then try again to reach Yemen.”
Father Hagos Hayish, Secretary General of the Ethiopian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, knows many stories of this kind. “It makes you want to weep,” he says. There have even been cases of women who have returned home with their hands chopped off because their employer in Saudi Arabia accused them of theft. This is the draconian punishment laid down by the Sharia.
(Father Hagos Hayish blessing a young boy in Ethiopia © Aid to the Church in Need)
The Catholic Church in Ethiopia tries to educate young people about the dangers of emigration, and especially about human traffickers, so that they do not allow themselves to be tempted by false promises. The Church also cares for the victims of trafficking, as well as for the many refugees who enter Ethiopia from neighbouring countries such as Somalia and South Sudan. The international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) supports numerous projects in Ethiopia which have been set up by the Catholic Church in favour of migrants and refugees, as well as large numbers of refugee projects throughout the world.
Editor’s Notes
Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.
The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, Aid to the Church in Need’s Child’s Bible – God Speaks to his Children has been translated into 162 languages and 48 million copies have been distributed all over the world.
While ACN gives full permission for the media to freely make use of the charity’s press releases, please acknowledge ACN as the source of stories when using the material.
For more information or to make a donation to help the work of Aid to the Church in Need, please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 7246 Baulkham Hills NSW 2153.
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