The investigation made by the Italian magazine is very interesting Panorama on identity theft in Africa to the detriment of the Eritrean people. Fausto Biloslavo 21 December 2017 wrote an interesting editorial that we propose to try to understand something more about the phenomenon of migratory flows and especially unmask what is behind the trafficking of human beings.
"At the reception centers that I have shot in the last year at least one third of Eritreans are fake. Most of them are Ethiopians from the Tigray, who speak the same language and have somatic features similar to ours ".
To denounce the shocking cheating is a asylum seeker which comes from Asmara. The aspiring refugee continues: "In Africa, thanks to corruption, they steal and sell our identities because we are entitled to international protection, but we are surprised that this is tolerated in Italy".
Since 2013, when the boom after the terrible started Lampedusa shipwreck (368 dead), they landed in Italy over 100mila migrants who claimed to be Eritreans.
To a large extent they continued to Switzerland, Germany or Northern European countries. Over one third would in fact be of Ethiopian nationality, or economic migrants who do not have the automatic right to political asylum.
Years ago, the Austrian ambassador to Ethiopia, Andreas Melan, had denounced the deception claiming that "30-40 percent of Eritrean refugees in Europe are actually Ethiopians". It is important to know that there is no bad blood between Ethiopia and Eritrea, after the bloody war of 1998, which has not yet drawn a definitive border.
Even the Eritrean ambassador to Rome, Pietros Fessahazion, reiterated that "40 per cent of those who obtain asylum are actually Ethiopians".
Panorama has investigated the matter, bringing to light a mechanism based on identity theft from the UN refugee camps in Ethiopia and Sudan, on compliant cultural mediators that fly over the true nationality of the migrant and on characters, such as the Eritrean don Mussie Zerai, able to mobilize the rescue at sea to recover the boats off Libya. The same Eritrean asylum seekers reveal details. The writer has met them and knows their identities, but in the article they are indicated with fancy names to prevent them from being retaliated.
“In the Mai Ani refugee camp in Ethiopia, my identity was stolen” explains Fasil, who arrived in Italy in 2016 on a boat. "After years of waiting for the UN to be relocated to available countries, I discovered that another person had already left with my personal details".
The countries that welcome Eritreans through the United Nations are the United States, Canada, Australia, Norway, France and more recently Italy. The young Eritrean, now 27 years old, tells of the embarrassment of the Western official of the Refugee Agency (UNHCR), who checked his name on the computer: “She was amazed. My details were correct, but the photo of the person who had already left thanks to the United Nations was not mine. They had cheated me ”.
According to Eritreans, selling identities or documents in Africa, especially to Ethiopians, is an established business. The price of the entire operation in local currency ranges from 50 birr (1.840 euros) to 150 birr (approximately 5500 euros). Only the Eritrean ID card sells for $ 900.
In the last four years, asylum applications in Italy have been 12.916, but more than 100 thousand migrants arrived by sea declared themselves Eritreans to the landing. In July, the Asmara Information Minister, Yemane Gebre Meskel, told the BBC that "the number of Eritreans leaving the country is exaggerated. Between 40 and 60 percent are from Ethiopia or other countries in the Horn of Africa ".
Yosef, the oldest of the asylum seekers encountered by Panorama, recounts how “fake Eritreans ask for details about my country or the national anthem, to support the lie about nationality. It happened to me in Rome at the center of the Red Cross in via Ramazzini, now dismantled, and at Cara di Bari ”.
Munir and Futsum, wary physicists, arrived in November, confirm: "In the reception center of the capital, where we live, a fake Eritrean asked us how many colors our flag has. He was an Ethiopian who had to do the interview for the asylum request. "
Several cultural mediators and interpreters turn a blind eye or even encourage the "scam" of Eritrean refugees. "For 15 years I have acted as an interpreter in the Commissions for the recognition of asylum" tells an Italian-Eritrean. "Many Tigrins of Ethiopia obtained protection, saying they were fleeing from Asmara. I did not report anyone to the embassy, but they accused us of being spies of the Eritrean government: so they have assumed Ethiopian interpreters ".
Don Mussie Zerai, the "Moses of migrants" as he is acclaimed by a book, has for years been a point of reference, especially for the Eritreans who arrive on the boats. (He was then investigated by the Prosecutor of Trapani for aiding illegal immigration)
Zerai was part of a network of Eritrean activists in Europe who dream of regime change in Asmara. “Already in Eritrea I felt that Zerai could help us get to Italy” explains an asylum seeker, who has been in Rome since 2016, to Panorama. And another adds: "Before boarding in Libya there was talk of this priest who would send help".
A source of the Coast Guard at the time stressed that “Zerai's requests for intervention soon turned out to be an anomaly repeated over time. The rescue reports of the boats that left Libya almost always came from him. The well-founded suspicion is that it is part of a system, of a well-tested network ”. The priest rejects the accusations, claiming that he has always "acted legally for humanitarian reasons". And he had secured a lot of political coverage. Starting with the president Laura Boldrini, who welcomed him to the Chamber. On 3 October, then, during the commemoration of the Lampedusa shipwreck in 2013, he held, as a suspect, the celebration in front of the President of the Senate Piero Grasso (today also leader of Liberi e equuali) and the Minister of Education Valeria Fedeli.
Lucio Montanino, Pietro Gallo and Cristian Ricci, embarked on Save the children's Vos Hestia as security officers, started the investigation into the NGOs in Trapani, also talking about the reports of an Eritrean priest. “On 10 October 2016, a Save the children manager showed the commander on her mobile phone the precise coordinates of a boat that had left Libya, which was not found,” says Montanino. In the documents of the prosecutor's office a phone call between Gallo and Ricci explains the episode: "Then I told him (to the investigators, ed) this story of those Eritreans, who said that a priest had sent the message ”. And Gallo: “The message from the Eritrean priest arrived and we went there and found the wooden boat (. ..) and on board we also had the Eritrean mediator”.
Zerai (proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize) admitted that he warned several NGOs, such as Doctors Without Borders, WatchTheMed and Sea Watch. To Panorama Gallo confirms: "Save the children staff said that the coordinates had come from an Eritrean priest in Switzerland". Yes, because Don Zerai had been transferred from Rome to Friborg, where a strong Eritrean community lives. Gallo continues: "The impression was that the boat had been towed by traffickers in the middle of the sea, who then sent the position to get help".
Even an Italian source in Tripoli, in the front line against the trafficking of men, confirms: “Even in Libya it is known that many Eritrean migrants headed for Italy are actually Ethiopians. They pretend to be Eritreans knowing that it is easy to obtain political asylum ”.