Reunited after months apart
Separated migrant mum and son finally meet in Spain
MADRID: An African woman has been reunited with her fouryearold son in Spain after they reached the country in separate boats and were kept apart without contact for months while authorities established they were related.
A lawyer who took their case to the European Court of Human Rights said 33yearold Bahoumou Totopa and her son Abdramane Aziz Cisse met on Monday in Melilla.
The boy had been under the care of social services in the Spanish enclave in northern Africa.
The reunion came after the European court questioned the Spanish government last month for not allowing contact between the mother and the child while confirming their relationship.
Women’s Link Worldwide Lawyer Teresa Fernandez said the reunion went smoothly even though Totopa, who is from Ivory Coast and speaks French, had difficulty communicating with her son.
Abdramane is much more fluent now in Spanish than in French.
“She was very nervous at first, but she’s extremely positive now,” Fernandez said about Totopa.
“She says she wants to learn Spanish now as soon as possible.”
Before Monday, Totopa last saw her child more than seven months ago, when he and her younger sister set off from Morocco’s coast in a rubber dinghy to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
The boy’s aunt nearly drowned during the March trip and was taken to a hospital in Melilla after Spanish authorities found their boat.
Totopa had followed them in another boat in April and ended up in peninsular Spain after a rescue operation on the Mediterranean.
Unable to travel back across the strait to Melilla, she filed documents and DNA samples to prove she was Abdramane’s mother.
Authorities in Melilla allowed them to communicate via video conference for the first time in late October, after the European court questioned the Spanish government’s handling of the case, according to lawyer Fernandez.
The need for the European court to be involved “is a sign that in Spain, there is prevalent discrimination against those who are women, migrant, of African origin and in an irregular administrative situation”, Fernandez said. — AP