Sunday, October 23, 2005
Human suffering
Smugglers dupe Africans with hopes of Europe
OUJDA, Morocco - The man in his thirties introduced himself as Yaya and, for a fee, promised to make Joe Kararla's dreams come true.When I read stories such as this, I am reminded that I have it soft and good. So many other people don't. In the midwest, we hear about vanloads of Mexican illegals being found in various stages of distress, or dead. These illegals are trying to find a way of feeding their families, whether here, or at home in other countries. The story in the link is heart-breaking. That the smugglers are making big money off these people to take them somewhere, and then falling back on their promises, makes me hope they (smugglers) burn in hell for eternity.
So began the four-year plight of the Ghanaian who simply wanted a better life in Europe. That hope and his heart are now broken. Cheated and stripped of his savings by Yaya and other human traffickers, and hauled back from Europe's threshold by Moroccan police he says beat him, the 28-year-old's trek across Africa ended with a deportation flight from Morocco, a country that did not want him, to a homeland where he sees no future.
Kararla is among thousands of victims of deception and betrayal by smugglers who prey on young men from the war zones and poverty traps of sub-Saharan Africa. With ladders fashioned from branches, slicing their hands on the razor wire, hundreds have tried to scale fences protecting Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast in recent weeks, with sometimes deadly results...
