The need for a protected, peaceable and affluent life pushes migrants to take perilous journeys, going through abuse and harassment on the best way, stripped of primary requirements and their dignity.
These experiences have long-term results and depart them with long-term trauma, based on Pamela Kerpius, head of a company advocating for migrant rights.
“There is a great need for mental health support services in the migrant community … Even if people aren’t speaking about their trauma, they have it,” she instructed Anadolu in a video interview.
Kerpius’s group, Migrants of the Mediterranean, is a humanitarian storytelling group. It paperwork experiences of migrants, principally those that cross the Mediterranean Sea in quest of higher lives.
Without correct psychological well being assist, migrants preserve carrying their traumatic experiences all through their lives, with no solution to overcome that heavy burden of feelings, she mentioned.
“Wherever they go, there’s still going to be this issue of not fitting into society and being understood as an outsider,” mentioned Kerpius, including that this will likely lead to lots of melancholy and anger.
Migrants of the Mediterranean, based in 2016, has to this point documented the tales of some 100 refugees.
A majority of them had been individuals who arrived in Italy by the Mediterranean Sea, with their nation of departure being Libya.
Kerpius mentioned the thought for the group got here to her when she first visited Italy’s Lampedusa island for a vacation.
“The narrative that was going forth in the media was that the people we were seeing on Lampedusa were people we should be afraid of,” she mentioned.
But her experiences confirmed her in any other case as she continued to return to Lampedusa to know the state of affairs and the way it was being managed.
She spoke to the individuals one-on-one as they narrated their journeys.
In Italy, most people her group has documented got here from West African and sub-Saharan African nations, resembling Nigeria, Gambia, Senegal and Guinea.
Kerpius and her staff additionally observe migrants arriving in different European nations, in addition to Asia, with 4 correspondents devoted to documenting their tales.
For occasion, within the Netherlands, the NGO met refugees who principally got here from Syria, coming into by Eastern Europe.
The group additionally retains monitor of migrants that it first documented in Lampedusa, who through the years have moved to different cities of Italy, and even different nations.
They keep in contact, documenting their current state of affairs, together with particulars concerning the asylum course of.
– ITALY’S SHIFTING MIGRANT POLICIES
Once migrants attain Lampedusa, they’re transferred to the migrant reception middle, identified domestically because the “hotspot,” for processing, defined Kerpius.
Just a few years in the past, the middle was open, in idea. There was a fence round it however there was a niche within the fence, which meant individuals had been capable of depart and go to the primary city.
It was within the city middle that Kerpius would meet refugees, and being an English speaker, was capable of join with individuals.
But now with restricted entry to the hotspot, she finds it troublesome to do her work.
Kerpius feels that Italy’s coverage towards migrants has “definitely shifted” through the years.
“There’s been the right-wing populist movement that’s really exploded in the country and that has affected how migrants are received,” she mentioned.
But she additionally believes that there’s a “dissonance between the policies you see on paper and being enacted at the ports, versus what you actually find when you’re talking to people out in the world.”
There are individuals who agree with the right-wing insurance policies, however there are simply as many who don’t, she mentioned.
“There are always people who are extending compassion, who have a lot of concern about the people in the migrant community … I have to consider that a line of hope,” she added.
Regarding the latest surge in migrants reaching Lampedusa, Kerpius mentioned that the state of affairs is a novel one as a result of it’s a small island.
“There isn’t the kind of resources available to the people of Lampedusa to manage a humanitarian crisis like this. This is something that can be averted,” she mentioned.
She feels that the disaster will be managed with the assist of the Italian authorities.
“But instead, what happens is that it’s left to a really small community to manage and the result is always going to be one of overwhelm. And because of that, it creates a political line of reasoning that, you know, this is something we just can’t manage,” she added.
Source: www.anews.com.tr
