Amal’s Story
"Only God knows what I am going through"
- Amal Fled her home country
“I was beaten, threatened, and imprisoned by my own family,” Amal says. “I was hoping to find protection in Europe so I could reunite with my two children and husband in peace.”
Amal was forced to flee her home country after receiving threats and beatings from her own family, who claimed she had dishonored and shamed them by marrying a man from the minority clan.
On her journey towards peace, however, Amal was subjected to further hardship at the hands of her smugglers. At one point, when she was short of money, she received constant beatings and was held with little or no food in a so-called construction house for days until she was able to pay.
“We were so hungry, and there was no food,” she remembers. “Once a day we got expired pasta and sometimes nothing at all, just water. On the top of that we were beaten, particularly the males but even the females. I wasn’t raped personally, but there were a lot of females who were,” she adds.
While she was imprisoned in Libya, Amal heard about organ trafficking from her fellow Somalis. “I didn’t see it myself,” she says. “But I heard from others that those who are unable to pay on time… the smugglers sell their kidneys and hearts to doctors… then throw their bodies into the desert.”
Despite all the life threatening hardships of the journey, Amal managed to make it to Europe. Though, she admits, it isn’t exactly what she’d been hoping for. After having her fingerprints taken upon her arrival in Italy, Amal continued on to Denmark where she was hoping to get asylum. But due to the Dublin Regulation, she now risks getting sent back to where she started in Italy.
“I really want to stay in Denmark,” Amal says. “Only God knows what I am going through. They told me to talk to some lawyers, which I kindly accepted. I have an appointment with them tomorrow.”