48 days after the kidnapping of the Italian aid worker Silvia Costanza Romano in the village of Chakama, in Kenya, uncertainty is the setting for the whole story. The news coming from the local authorities is few and often smoky. Thus Possibile's secretary, Beatrice Brignone: “More than a month and a half after her death, silence fell on the kidnapping. After the irritating social controversies, few seem to be interested in the issue. A distressing situation on which it is instead necessary to keep attention. There are only hypotheses and indiscretions, but little is known about the research of the young Italian aid worker. The government, and in particular the Farnesina, give a signal on the state of research. Silvia ”, concludes Brignone,“ represents the altruistic Italy that helps populations in difficulty, putting their own safety at risk. The closeness and commitment of the institutions are a precious and not just a symbolic act ”.
Also very interesting is the examination of the investigations made yesterday by "Il Manifesto"
One of the three alleged kidnappers on whom the police put a bounty, Yusuf Kuno Adan, has been dead for six months. The death certificate was shown to the media by the son. A fact that should be investigated, because often in Kenya the certificates, from those of ownership to those of birth and death, are not falsified but officially drafted in the competent offices, in a "false" way even if they are "true": just get in touch agreement on compensation (for this there are, for example, lands that have three or four owners all with official documents issued by the competent office).
A curfew has been decreed in the Tana River area. The police firmly believe that Silvia Romano is in Kenya, "otherwise we would have noticed": or if she had gone to Somalia from one of the border crossings (four towns scattered in the desert El Wak, Lafey, Liboi, Dhobley and one wrapped in Chiamboni forest). The rest are 682 kilometers of a sui generis boundary: it exists only to be overcome.
According to the latest police information, it is believed that Silvia Romano is somewhere in the Tana river district, an area of 38.782 square kilometers "inhabited" by shepherds Orma and Wardei, Pokomo peasants and Waata hunters: groups in conflict above all for access to resources (pastures, water, land). The shepherds arrived from Somalia and Ethiopia in the Tana River area after the severe drought of the 1978-79, entering an area traditionally inhabited by Pokomo peasants.
The land in the Tana river district is not of private owners, but it is mostly of the government and the land ownership system is largely communal. However, in December 2000 there had been a violent conflict following an attempt by the government to assign land titles. The beneficiaries would have been almost exclusively Pokomo peasants: the outcome had been 130 people killed and 1000 Pokomo remained homeless.
But the interesting fact is that in the interviews with residents, the majority (60%) reported that they did not feel safe when the government made the army intervene during the conflict: "Harassing people and beating without any reason". This explains the current difficulty of the security forces to find collaborations in the field in an area where the state is perceived as both absent and oppressive. But there is a second factor to take into consideration: the social structure of the population. It is necessary to enter the mentality of the clan: if a person speaks is finished not so much in physical terms, but existential his life loses its meaning and is filled with curses. If a person of a rival clan talks, he risks something even more dangerous: a war between clans. We must enter the mentality of a society that is not made up of individuals like ours, but of a society in which the ego is contained in us.
Basically it seems that the Italian volunteer Silvia Romano is in the midst of an internal war between the population of the Tana River district and the local authorities. The risk is now that Silvia Romano can be sold, or used, as a bargaining chip, with criminal groups in Somalia, very active in the trafficking of human beings.
Sivia Romano is then added to the list of 8 Italians who disappeared in the world, as reported by Fanpage.it.