by Fred Kuwornu*
NEW YORK (IDN) – The trafficking of
human beings worldwide produces 150 billion dollars for the various mafias, of
which 100 billion come from the trafficking of Africans. Every woman trafficked
earns the Nigerian mafia 60,000 euro. Trafficking 10,000 in Italy results in
600 million euro a year for the mafia. No African would willingly come if they
knew the truth about what awaits them in Europe.
I do not want to get into the eternal
Italian civil war based on factions and not content, but as an Italian of
African descent and now an immigrant in the United States, I believe the time
has come to talk about and treat immigration, or rather mobility, as a problem
and structural phenomenon which has various levels and not as a tool for
politicking or being dragged around like the disputed children of two parents
who use them as a weapon of blackmail for their divorce.
According to UN estimates, millions
of human beings are trafficked every year with an estimated 150 billion dollars
in turnover ... I repeat 150 BILLION. I do not know if you have ever lived or
worked in the real Africa and which Africans you know in Italy, or if you are a
journalist gaining informing from non-Italian newspapers, but the trafficking of
human beings with various accessories (children, organs, prostitution) is not a
phenomenon that concerns only the "little Italy" of ports or no
ports, but a global phenomenon that earns the African, Asian and Mexican mafias
150 billion – and I repeat 150 billion – dollars a year.
This money is not then redistributed
to the poor population of these countries but used to subjugate them even more
with harassment of all kinds, destabilising the already precarious political
balance, by reinvesting it in drugs and weapons.
Have you ever wondered why, on equal
terms of poverty and belief that Europe is a land of plenty, those coming from
Mozambique, Angola, Kenya are very few, or those arriving from Ghana (my
country of origin which has a GDP of seven percent and the absence of war and
persecution) try to come?
Because there is something called the
Nigerian Mafia that advertises in villages telling people that for 300 euro in
4 weeks it is possible to come to Italy and from there, if they want, move on
to other European countries. Except then ripping them off as soon as they get
into a van, suddenly raising the fee by 1,000 dollars, which increases again
when they arrive in Libya, where they are asked for another 1,000 dollars for
the final crossing. All this, not in 4 weeks as they promise, but with an
average waiting time of one year.
To this should be added minors who
are entrusted to women who are not their real mothers and who will then
disappear once they have settled in Europe, and hundreds of women who will
instead be channelled into prostitution, each of them worth 60,000 euro in
takings for the mafia itself. Just by trafficking 10,000 towards Italy, the
Nigerian mafia has a turnover of 600 million euro a year.
To this is further added what Africa
loses: young resources. I have met Ghanaians who sold their taxi or their own
small herds to come to Europe and find themselves on a street begging or
earning three euro an hour if all goes well, treated like beasts, and who
obviously cannot even put aside money as it was in their plans.
Even if they want to go back they
will never do so through shame because they would not know what to say to the
village, they would not know how to justify the money spent to get to Europe;
rather, they foment other departures by posting selfies on Facebook showing
that all is well, not telling the truth out of shame, and so other young people
(eighteen-year-olds, unschooled) try to come to Europe because they think it is
easy to get rich.
What is the point of maintaining that
this slave trade and this criminal scam of the Nigerian mafia, like their
counterparts in Asia, should continue?
Who is it good for? It is not good
for the African continent. It is not good for the single African who reaches
Europe because 90 percent go underground and in any case will never find decent
work. It is not good for Italy, which does not have the economic and cultural
resources to manage and substantially keep so many people who cannot
contribute, especially in a country where 40 percent of the peers of these
young Africans are already without a job. And it is not even good for the image
that the European has of the African because he or she is always seen as a
victim, a poor person, a weak person.
This as an African, but also a human
being, is the most racist – besides colonialist – attitude that can exist,
because it does not help anyone except the mafia and those who work in good or
bad faith in all this industry linked to providing immediate assistance.
With 5,000 dollars it is easier to
open a small business in many African countries than come to Italy to beg, and
if only this concept was clear and popular, 90 percent of people would probably
never leave for Italy.
Especially those who have completed
sixth year and are aged 20. It is not the same type of immigration as 30 years
ago where many were also 30-year-olds, some graduates, but many with higher
education and they still found jobs in factories and lived in dignified
conditions.
I do not know the situation of NGOs
dealing with assistance at sea, but I know very well those operating in Africa
and most are just part of a parasitic system. For the greatest African thinkers
and real political leaders, one of the first things to do is to drive out all
NGOs from Africa because, even if the staff who work there – the young
volunteers – are in good faith, the NGO system has always served to control and
destabilise Africa, as well as create subjection to assistance, not counting
the financial business of donations and waste run up by NGOs to maintain leaders
by exploiting the image of the poor African child.
Enough of this counterproductive,
racist and ignorant way of thinking. It would be interesting to see some of
these NGOs take initiatives in Scampia (a suburb of Naples with a high crime
rate - ed.) by putting photos of some Neapolitan children in advertisements.
We are tired of your exploitation of
this theme for your ideological motives or your fascist or anti-fascist battles
on the skin of a continent about which you know little or that you have romanticised
and idealised, and that you use to clear your conscience or soothe the guilt of
your privileged status. It is time to do serious analysis and field concrete
winning solutions, not poison the wells of one party or the other, because
whoever wins loses Africa.
It would be useful to have a report
from some village in Edo State (Nigeria) to understand the level of cunning,
malice and criminal fantasy that has been reached and you will discover that
perhaps just transporting and deluding a young illiterate twenty-year-old and
his family is the minimum that this powerful and underestimated criminal
organisation perpetrates every day, exploiting the desperation and ignorance of
people, some of whom are willing to do anything ... even sell a newborn child
for 100 dollars.
If this is still tolerated, the risks
will not be only for Italy, but also for African countries where the problem of
dictators is compounded by the presence of narco-traffickers at the level of
Escobar's Colombia or the Mexico of El Chapo, with yet more deaths and
underdevelopment of what is already there.
* Filmmaker Fred Kuwornu was born in Bologna in 1971 to a Ghanaian
father and an Italian mother. After a degree in Political Science, he worked as
a radio and television author, collaborating with the RAI, the Italian national
public broadcasting company, and various production companies. In 2010, he
produced and directed 'Inside Buffalo', a historic account of the 92nd Infantry
Division, the African-American segregated combat unit which fought in the
Second World War.
(Translation by Phil Harris)
