Category: Asylum seekers

Cannibalism on the way to Lampedusa and other fascinating Somali tales

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Scene Of Cannibalism For The Raft Of The Medusa by Theodore Gericault

They were only at sea for three days but, what the heck, rather than starve (hardly possible in three days is it?), one of the aliens took a chunk from a dead man.   That is perhaps the most dramatic moment of this fascinating tale from a Somali migrant desperate to cross the Mediterranean and find a new life in the land of milk and honey—Italy!

The story is here at Vice.com and below are some excerpts.  You decide if the storyteller is for real (but maybe first revisit, Greenfield on the Hyena Cure!)  (Emphasis is mine)

On Tahrib!

Hassan Ali is a 23-year-old Somali who survived gun battles and poverty in his youth in his native country before deciding in 2009 to embark on Tahrib, the perilous journey from Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Thousands of Somalis make this trip every year, and this month it made headlines after a boat caught fire and capsized on October 3, killing over 300 would-be immigrants. Eight days later, a different vessel capsized in an accident that claimed at least 34 lives. Here, Hassan speaks about his troubled life before the trip and the horrors he experienced en route to Europe.

The cannibalism didn’t start until our second boat journey, from Libya to Lampedusa. We had already been traveling for ten days; people were dying and there was no food. I actually saw one guy cutting a piece of flesh from another man’s body.

Our Ali wanted to be an astronaut, but that wasn’t (understandably) possible in his home town in Somalia where squabbling clans were bringing AK-47s to mosques and shooting at ten-year-olds racing home.  So, our young and desperate adventurer, upon reaching the age of 19, found enough friends and relatives to front him $800 to go on Tahrib (described as attempting to get to Europe, but one definition I saw was that it translated to ‘smuggling’—being smuggled or doing the smuggling wasn’t clear).

Mom thought he was crazy!  That is what all Moms say!

I first heard about Tahrib on the radio when I was 19. There were people in Europe talking about their new lives and how they’d traveled there from Somalia by boat. It sounded like a good idea. After a while I told my parents I planned to leave. They were shocked. “Are you mad?” my mother said. “You’re a young boy, what has gotten into you?” I told them how I thought Tahrib was my only way forward, that I could only find a better life in Europe. They thought I was joking. When I called them from the first boat months later, they were terrified.

First boat was bad, but no cannibalism yet!

Our first trip was from Beled Hawo to Bosaso, a port city on the northern shore of Somalia. It wasn’t the worst journey, but we had hardly any food and the people who drove us there were being very cruel, shouting at us and hitting people occasionally. I was only a kid [editors note:  Somalis are “kids” for a long time, I noticed that when they were leaving Minneapolis to join al-Shabaab, kids, just kids!] —I missed my hometown already and everyone seemed so sad even though they were heading off for this exciting new life.

Captured by Libyan armed men who extracted $300 from Mom and Dad for Ali’s release and then on to the merry Tahrib again!

All I wanted was to be back in Beled Hawo with my parents. I didn’t care if I ever made it to Europe. Even if, miraculously, we survived the journey, how would the Europeans treat us? Would I get a visa? Would I be thrown in jail? I was terrified.

The trip across the Mediterranean was the worst part—people were dropping dead and others needed a little protein with their bread and biscuits.

It took another ten days to find a boat from Libya to Lampedusa. Then the real horror began. There was only bread and biscuits on board and the heat was unbearable. People were dropping dead and the captain did nothing. People started eating each other: it was like something from a scary movie right in front of my eyes. That leg of the journey took three days. It felt like years.

Ali, the would-be astronaut, knows who to blame for all of this horror—politicians who don’t help Somalia!  Of course that is the moral of the story after all!  Ali continues:

Everyone knows that politicians in Europe and Africa are doing nowhere near enough to address the dangers of Tahrib. Otherwise all those people would not have died near Lampedusa this month. No one is addressing the real issues—the violence, the poverty—that led me away from Somalia. [Here is an idea—-how about if Somalis get their own house in order!—ed]

Postscript!  Italy let me rebuild my life—-back in Somalia!  WTH!

People tell me Lampedusa is beautiful. I have no idea. I can barely remember any of the landscape I saw: everything was so terrifying. But, Alhamdulillah [praise to God], I made it there alive and, amazingly, got an Italian visa after three months of being held at a camp. Some people I traveled with waited years and others never got one. I love Italy, though. I lived there for three years and made a small living working in various jobs. I may never be an astronaut but Italy let me rebuild a life that was destroyed. I’m back in Somalia now—not in Beled Hawo but another city. I hope I get to visit Italy again some day.

Ahhhh!  What are we missing here?

Warship rescue update! Not Somalis after all!

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Crew on the USS San Antonio help African migrants aboard the ship after their dinghy encountered rough waters in their attempt to get to Europe. Photo: US Navy

Reader Charles, from Malta, has alerted us to more news on the latest African migrant boat incident we told you about last night.  Turns out the migrants are not Somalis but come from various African nations and when brought ashore in Malta became violent demanding they be taken to Italy.

I don’t know who made the Somali ID mistake, but I wouldn’t put it past the illegal aliens to initially claim Somali ethnicity knowing the West is bending over backwards to accommodate Somali “refugees.”

Below are the two reports from Charles (emphasis is mine).

From the Times of Malta (yesterday):

A group of 129 migrants arrived at Marsamxett on board a patrol boat – some 24 hours after their rubber dinghy was spotting in rough seas 70 miles south of Malta yesterday.

One was referred to hospital.

The migrants – mainly men – appeared in good health as they disembarked from the deck of the patrol boat. Some were covered by blankets.

Most of them – 70, are from Gambia, 36 from Senegal, two from Nigeria, three from Sierra Leone, one from Guinea, six from Guinea-Bissau, 10 from Mali, and one from Burkina Faso.

Clearly economic migrants!  Not “refugees” or “asylum seekers” escaping persecution!

To read more of the story, one must subscribe.

Then also from the Times of Malta yesterday, rescued Africans got violent when they were placed in detention:

A group of some 130 newly-arrived migrants caused a disturbance at Safi Detention Camp – protesting that they wanted to be sent to Italy.

Informed sources said the disturbance started when members of the group objected to being held at Safi Detention Centre.

They insisted that they wanted to be sent to Italy.

Items were thrown at Detention officers and reinforcements of the Police Rapid Intervention Unit and the AFM were called in.

Photo is from an AFP story that has the nationalities of the aliens listed as well.

For new readers, I’ll bet we have over a hundred posts on Malta over the last 6 plus years.  We follow the island nation’s troubles with illegal immigration because the US State Department (egged-on by the Jesuits of Malta) has contributed to it by turning some Somalis (mostly young men!) who arrived there illegally into “refugees” and sent them to America thus creating a magnet for more illegals to attempt the journey.  Click here for our Malta archive.

Addendum:  Here is a story I don’t have time to post. It is about the pile-up of mostly economic migrants in Libya all hoping to get aboard one of these vessels to Europe.  I wonder what Samantha Power, Hillary and Susan Rice think now about their excellent adventure in Libya—so much for the responsibility to protect!

US Warship in Mediterranean rescues Somalis from dinghy

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
It’s a good thing the USS San Antonio doesn’t carry immigration lawyers on board or asylum requests might have been filed!

Update October 18th:  Not Somalis at all!  Instead a mishmash of African economic migrants who turned violent when put in detention in Malta—read all about it here!

120 of them according to the news from the Associated Press:

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — The American warship where an al-Qaida suspect was interrogated after being snatched from Libya by U.S. special forces has come to the rescue of 120 Somali migrants.

A statement Thursday from the Maltese army says it asked the USS San Antonio to intervene Wednesday because it was close to the migrants’ dinghy. The Somalis were having trouble in rough seas and high winds some 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Malta and were taken to the Mediterranean island.

Libyan terror suspect Abu Anas al-Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, was captured during a military raid in Libya on Oct. 5 and questioned for a week aboard the San Antonio before being transferred to the U.S. He is due to stand trial on terror charges in New York City.

The ship is very similar to the one that came to the rescue in the newly released Somali pirate movie, “Captain Phillips,” which I had not particularly wanted to see after I read reports that some of the crew of the Maersk Alabama thought the film was inaccurate.  After seeing it, I do recommend the movie for a whole host of reasons I won’t go into here.  But, if you read Greenfield’s ‘Hyena Cure’ yesterday (and see the movie) you may see that Greenfield is on to something.

Regular readers know that boats are launching daily carrying illegal migrants from Africa hoping to reach the promised land—Europe.   Some make it, some don’t.

France caves to pressure, agrees to take 500 Syrians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
French President to Guterres: O.K. O.K. we’ll take 500!

No word on whether some of that number will be the Calais occupiers.

From France 24:

France has agreed to take in 500 Syrian refugees at the request of the United Nations following talks in Paris between French President François Hollande and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, the UN agency said Wednesday.

Even the Socialist Hollande knows what Muslim immigrants have done to France!  Maybe they will insist on Christians only.

With no end to the conflict in sight, the UN agency has urged EU nations to offer asylum to some 10,000 Syrians this year and another 30,000 in 2014.

[…..]

Some 50,000 Syrians have so far applied for asylum in the EU, mostly in Sweden and Germany.

Speaking of Sweden, they are hastening their country’s decline with a record number of asylum seekers—mostly Syrians and Eritreans—tweeted by Fjordman, here.

Photo is here.

S. 744 provision: “Statelessness” would be one more reason to enter US illegally; receive asylum

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Esther Olavarria: Shhhh! Let’s keep it under the radar!

As so-called “Immigration reform” surely now returns to the front burner in Congress, Don Barnett, writing at the Center for Immigration Studies, alerts us to yet another reason the Senate-passed S.744 will be a nightmare for America.  Barnett says being “stateless” in the US could be reason enough to allow the illegal entrant to stay and be granted asylum.

Longtime readers here know that we have covered the advancement of the media meme of “statelessness” extensively in our coverage of the Burmese Rohingya (whole archive here) and to a lesser degree the attachment of that label to Palestinians.  The label could be applied to Somalis as well.

Here is Barnett (emphasis mine):

White House Director of Immigration Reform Esther Olavarria reportedly told an audience at the September 19 Congressional Black Caucus annual conference that S.744 (the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill) has a number of “important provisions that have stayed under the radar, and we’d actually like to keep them under the radar … because we want to be able to maintain them as we go through the legislative process.”

The elite media, indeed the entire commentariat, is seemingly anxious to keep the whole bill “under the radar”.

Chalk up one more provision of the bill not quite ready for prime time news hour discussion: Section 3405 of S.744 creates a new category of individual eligible for conditional and then permanent residency as a result of being identified as a “stateless person present in the United States”. There is no need for the individual to establish that he or she fears persecution; it is sufficient to merely declare oneself “stateless”.

Asylum has always been available to stateless individuals who manage to get to the U.S. as long as they establish a “well-founded fear” of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group”.

[…..]

The U.N. estimates there are some 12 million stateless persons in the world today. This group includes former Soviet and Yugoslav citizens still in limbo in successor states as well as certain Palestinians, Somalis, Syrians, Royhinga from Burma, and others.

Read it all.

Here is some information from wikipedia on Olavarria.  The page is outdated in that it doesn’t include her role in the Obama White House:

Ms. Olavarria has spent years representing immigrants and working on the issue of immigration. Between 1986 and 1998 she was a staff attorney for the Haitian Refugee Center, co-founder and managing attorney of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, and on staff with Legal Services of Greater Miami as directing attorney with the American Immigration Lawyer Pro Bono Project. From 1998-2007 she was counsel to Sen. Edward Kennedy and the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Refugees and from 2007-8 Senior Advisor for Government and External Relations to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. From August 2008 until her appointment to the Department of Homeland Security in February 2009 she was Senior Fellow and Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Guess that tells you all you need to know!   For readers visiting here for the first time, Kennedy was the chief architect of the Refugee Act of 1980 that was responsible for our present-day refugee program.   And, of course the Center for American Progress is a George Soros creation.

Photo is from the Wilson Center, here.