Zakaria Osman is a young man from Borama, Somalia. He was a teenager in high school when he decided to go to Europe to get a job and build his future. He had friends who had done the journey and were posting messages on social media.
“My ambition was to reach Europe to get a job, but young people aren’t all the same. Some travel and post photos on Facebook. They mislead those at home but also inspire them.”
The smuggler had told them they would stay in Yemen for only a few days but it turned out to be two months. Zakaria and his friends became impatient and staged a demonstration in the camp demanding to go to Sudan which made the smugglers nervous. The trip across the Red Sea to Sudan was an awful experience. The crew tried to rape a girl and Zakaria and his friends had to defend her. But in Sudan the journey became even worse.
“The car was driving at high speed. No one cared if anyone fell off. In the car I was in, one of the girls got sick. We were knocking on the car. They took guns and fired two shots at our feet. Then they said, if you want to die, get off. There is desert on one side and desert on the other. Libya, Sudan, and Egypt are deserts. There is no way you can leave, you must stay in the car.”
They had nothing to eat for several days and when they arrived at a traffickers’ camp in Libya they were so weak that they could not escape as they had been planning to do. They were detained and tortured to force their families to send money. They were kept there for three months and were brutally beaten every day.
At last they could not take it anymore and made a desperate attempt to break out of their prison. They destroyed the furniture but the walls were concrete and could not be broken through. The traffickers crushed the rebellion with gunfire and teargas and in revenge tortured 12 people to death.
After having paid they started the final leg of the journey, to the coast. Zakaria spent three days drifting in the Mediterranean. They saw European ships in the distance and an airplane had spotted them but no one came to help them.
Instead they were rescued by a Libyan ship and taken back to Libya. Zakaria was put into detention and finally realised his journey had been in vain. He decided to accept the offer to be repatriated.
He is now warning the youth of Somalia about the dangers of going to Libya.
“I’ve helped many youths stay away from travelling with smugglers. We went to schools and universities and raised awareness. When I remember those with me who made it to Europe, I also remember those with me who died. I say to myself, if I’d died there I’d have achieved nothing in this world nor in the hereafter. That’s what I believe.”