Thesis 100dpi

GODLESS PEOPLE
AND
INVISIBLE VICTIMS
“You don’t imagine that your dreams can end in a moment on this journey…
He [the soldier] pulled me by the hand and told me to walk further
into the bushes. He took me far away from the train tracks until we were
completely alone. He told me to take my clothes off so that he could see
if I was carrying drugs. He said that if I did what he said he would let me
go.”
Margarita (not her real name), a 27-year-old Salvadoran migrant,
describing how she was sexually abused by a soldier, Amnesty
International interview, June 2009
84 REFUGIUM
‘‘When you have a gun
pointed at your head,
you don’t really have
a choice if you want to
survive. I was raped
twice by three men…I
didn’t want to lose my
life.’’
Every year thousands of migrants are ill treated, abducted or raped.
Although these atrocities leave lifelong scars on the people who
endure them, these actions are rarely reported and almost never make
it to the media headlines. They are committed by smugglers, traffickers,
other criminals, and even state officials. Arbitrary detention and
extortion by public officials are common.
Human crimes committed by smugglers or other criminals are rarely
reported, and are sometimes actively covered up by international organizations
and communities. Mistreatment involving state corruption
and complicity are kept silent, and abuse that occurs in remote areas
is often only captured in the memories of survivors.
Women and children are by far the most vulnerable. Men tend to be
affected differently – they are kept as hostages and used for organ
trafficking, among other heinous abuses.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
New research conducted by Amnesty International shows that women
and girl refugees face violence, assault, exploitation and sexual harassment
at every stage of their journey, including on European soil.
According to testimonies, women are sexually assaulted either by the
smugglers themselves, traffickers, members of armed groups, or state
officials. An untold number of attacks take place along the smuggling
route, while women are being held in private homes or abandoned
warehouses near the coast, waiting to board boats to Europe.
Antoinette, a 28-year-old woman from Cameroon, said of the traffickers
who held her captive in April 2016: “They don’t care if you’re
a woman or a child…They used sticks [to beat us] and would shoot
in the air. Maybe because I had a child they didn’t rape me but they
raped pregnant women and single women. I saw this happen.”
Amnesty International in Sicily and Puglia confirmed that women
reported a high level of sexual violence during the journey.
Huffington Post reports that 80 percent of women and girls are raped
while crossing into the U.S. Sometimes sex is used as a form of payment
when women and girls don’t have money to pay bribes. The rape
along these routes is so common that women take contraceptive pills
before the journey because they know what is ahead for them.