Page 10 - ARUBA TODAY

A10 WORLD NEWS
Tuesday 26 June 2018

Women were lying dead, men...” Migrants expelled in Sahara

By LORI HINNANT
Associated Press
ASSAMAKA, Niger (AP) —
Algeria has abandoned
more than 13,000 people in
the Sahara Desert over the
past 14 months, including
pregnant women and chil-
dren, expelling them with-
out food or water and forc-
ing them to walk, some-
times at gunpoint, under a
blistering sun. Some never
make it out alive.
The expelled migrants can
be seen coming over the
horizon by the hundreds,
appearing at first as specks
in the distance under tem-
peratures of up to 48 de-
grees Celsius (118 degrees
Fahrenheit).
In Niger, where the majority
head, the lucky ones limp
across a desolate 15-kilo-
meter no-man’s-land to the
border village of Assama-
ka. Others wander for days
before a U.N. rescue squad
can find them. Untold num-
bers perish; nearly all of the Migrants and locals wait for trucks arriving from Algeria to unload their cargo on Sunday, June 3, 2018.
more than two dozen sur- Associated Press
vivors interviewed by The
Associated Press told of countries” can expel mi- “There were people who their bodies from the sun “They come by the thou-
people in their groups who grants as long as they com- couldn’t take it. They sat and hide from the gen- sands. This time, the expul-
simply vanished into the Sa- ply with international law. down and we left them. darmes. He narrated every sions that I’m seeing, I’ve
hara. Unlike Niger, Algeria takes They were suffering too step of the way in a hushed never seen anything like it,”
“Women were lying dead, none of the EU money in- much,” said Aliou Kande, voice. said Alhoussan Adouwal,
men..... Other people got tended to help with the an 18-year-old from Sen- “You’re facing deporta- an IOM official who has
missing in the desert be- migration crisis, although it egal. tion in Algeria — there is taken up residence in Assa-
cause they didn’t know the did receive $111.3 million in Kande said nearly a dozen no mercy,” he said. “I want maka to send out the alert
way,” said Janet Kamara, aid from Europe between people gave up, collaps- to expose them now... when a new group arrives.
who was pregnant at the 2014 and 2017. ing in the sand. His group We are here, and we saw He then tries to arrange res-
time. “Everybody was just Algeria provides no figures of 1,000 wandered from 8 what they did. And we got cue for those still in the des-
on their own.” for its involuntary expul- a.m. until 7 p.m., he said. proof.” ert. “It’s a catastrophe.”
In a voice almost devoid sions. He never saw the missing Algerian authorities refused Most choose to leave by
of feeling, she recalled But the number of people people again. to comment. But Algeria IOM bus for the town of
at least two nights in the crossing on foot to Niger “They tossed us into the has in the past denied criti- Arlit, about 6 hours to the
open before her group was has been increasing since desert, without our tele- cism that it is committing south through soft sand.
rescued, but said she lost IOM started counting in phones, without money,” rights abuses by abandon- And then on to Agadez,
track of time. May 2017, when 135 peo- he said. ing migrants in the desert, the Nigerien city that has
“I lost my son, my child,” ple were dropped, to as The migrants’ accounts calling the allegations a been a crossroads for Af-
said Kamara, who is Libe- high as 2,888 in April 2018. are confirmed by videos “malicious campaign” in- rican trade and migration
rian. In all, according to the collected by the AP over tended to inflame neigh- for generations. Ultimate-
Another woman in her ear- IOM, a total of 11,276 men, months, which show hun- boring countries. ly, they will return to their
ly twenties also went into women and children sur- dreds of people stumbling The Sahara is a swift killer home countries on IOM-
labor and lost her baby, vived the march. away from lines of trucks that leaves little evidence sponsored flights.
she said. At least another 2,500 were and buses, spreading wider behind. Even as these migrants
Algeria’s mass expulsions forced on a similar trek and wider through the des- The International Organi- move south, they cross
have picked up since Oc- into neighboring Mali, with ert. zation for Migration has paths with some who are
tober 2017, as the Europe- an unknown number suc- Two migrants told AP gen- estimated that for every making the trip north to-
an Union renewed pressure cumbing along the way. darmes fired on them, and migrant known to have ward Algeria and Europe.
on North African countries The migrants AP talked to multiple videos seen by AP died crossing the Mediter- Every Monday evening,
to head off migrants go- described being rounded showed armed, uniformed ranean, as many as two dozens of pickups filled with
ing north to Europe via the up hundreds at a time, men standing guard. are lost in the desert — po- the hopeful pass through a
Mediterranean Sea or the crammed into trucks for Liberian Ju Dennis filmed his tentially upwards of 30,000 checkpoint at the edge of
barrier fences with Spain. hours to what is known as deportation with a phone people since 2014. the city.
A European Union spokes- Point Zero, then dropped he kept hidden on his body. The vast flow of migrants They are fully loaded with
person said the EU was in the desert and pointed It shows people crammed puts an enormous strain water and people gripping
aware of what Algeria was toward Niger. They walk, on the floor of an open on all the points along the sticks, their eyes are firmly
doing, but that “sovereign sometimes at gunpoint. truck, vainly trying to shade route. fixed on the future.q