Teenage refugee shares his dream of reaching Glasgow to start a new life
● Sonny hopes to join his uncle in Scotland – but it’s a dangerous journey
An aid worker has told the story of a young refugee from east Africa who hopes to make a new life with his uncle in Glasgow.
Sarah Crowe, who works for Unicef in Europe, met 15-yearold Sonny Tesfaye* in Rome, wafter his arduous journey by land and boat from Eritrea in a bid to reach Scotland.
He hopes, if granted asylum in Scotland, to continue his education and fulfil his dream of becoming an engineer.
Sonny, who is 15, left his home three years ago and has crossed the Sahara desert, been imprisoned in Libya, and survived a treacherous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, where he was resuced by aid workers after his packed dinghy ran into difficulties.
Along with many other young men, he left Eritrea to avoid becoming a soldier – and the harsh dictatorship of presidentis ai as afewerki, who has been in power since 1993.
The country is often referred to as the “North Korea of Africa” with international observers including UN investigators and independent human rights watchdogs like Amnesty International shut out by the authorities.
Ms Crowe said the journey had cost his family£2,750 – around four times the average monthly wage in Eritrea – paid to people smugglers to allow him to be released from prison in Libya, where he was tied up most days with 300 other girls and boys.
She said: “What happens is the smugglers, mostly a network of east Africans, phone his family and say ‘I have Sonny. You need to pay thousands of dollars if you want him to move on, otherwise we will torture and kill him.’”
She said that Sonny, who has since moved on to the French-italian border, did not know exactly where Glasgow was. She believes he could continue on to Calais, hoping to cross over to the UK, which is unlikely.
“At first, he thought Glasgow was in England and then when I showed him on the map, he was surprised,” she said. “It was then he realised that he still has a long, long way to go. He just hopes for a new life with his uncle there. That is what he wants.”
According to Unicef, around 17,000 children have arrived in Italy in the past year, 93 per cent of them travelling alone, while the charity estimates that at least 410 children lost their lives on the central Mediterranean last year alone.
Ms Crowe said: “[There are] traffickers never far away, waiting to prey on children, on the most vulnerable, exchanging help and information for services, cheap labour; all too often boys and girls get caught up in prostitution and drug rings.”
Italian psychologist Carmen Palazzo, who worked with Sonny during his time in Rome, said many young boys are badly treated in Europe.
She said: “Some of them tell me they are more upset by what they experience in Europe – racism, discrimination, cold bureaucrats – than all the things they went through before.
“They get bad dreams, flashbacks from the drama of crossing the Mediterranean and their horrible treatment in Libya, but this is in a way easier to deal with for them. What they don’t know how to deal with is what happens to them in Europe. They feel nobody cares and they’re treated like they’re invisible.” *Sonny’s name has been changed.