I’m A Human Being — A Refugee In Italy Responds To Salvini’s “Dogs And Pigs” Slur

-Essay-

ROME — My name is Soumaila Diawara. I’m neither a dog nor a pig: I am a refugee. Italy, the country where I have been living for the past 10 years, is my home. Here I was welcomed, and I was able to rebuild my broken life.

Yet, I cannot stop thinking about the fact that, to some, I am a “dog” or a “pig,” a dangerous enemy of the same nation that gave me a second chance. A random thug ready to steal, even rape.

I was having dinner with my wife on Saturday, on an evening like any other, when I heard Matteo Salvini, the Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, speaking on national television about me. I heard him comparing me and those like me to animals, with language so vulgar I could not stay silent.

 Leaving home

Are we refugees and migrants, dogs and pigs? People like us, persecuted and tortured inside Libyan prisons? We, who risked our lives at sea?

It’s true, I was treated like an animal during my long journey to Italy, three years of hell while all I was trying to do was save myself. I left Mali in 2012, after one of two consecutive military coups.

Before that, my life was normal, I had a house in Bamako and I had just finished my studies. But my political activism for the opposition party African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence (SADI), made me an enemy of the military junta. So, like hundreds and thousands of Malians, I found shelter in a neighboring country, Algeria.

In the country’s capital, Algiers, I found a job. But when the Ebola pandemic broke out in Sub-Saharan Africa, many in the Maghreb region thought that it was us, black people, who carried the virus. We were discriminated against, and staying became dangerous.

I managed to obtain a student visa for Sweden, which allowed me to access Europe legally. But on the day of departure, at the airport without any explanation, I was not allowed to leave, despite having all the documents.

Detention in Libya

After that, there was no other way but the one leading to hell: Libya. The most dangerous place I have ever been and where I would not wish even my worst enemy to end up, not even those who consider me an animal. I was locked in a Libyan detention center for more than a year and a half. What I went through is still marked on my skin, and it will be there forever.

The scars on my back, on my arms and on my legs, all bear memories of torture. They stand witness to the beatings that human traffickers, my jailers, would inflict on me to ask me to call home and ask for money.

I remember those moments with fear.

I was not the only one. Women were raped constantly, some of them were brought outside and forced to prostitute themselves, only to be raped again by the guards once they would come back to the detention center. Talking about this is hard, because it is impossible to describe such horrors.

Blind bet

In 2014 I managed to collect enough money to get out of that indescribable place, a black hole sucking so many of our lives. This time I tried to cross by sea. A blind bet.

There were 120 of us crammed into a wooden barge. I remember those moments with fear. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, I thought we could have sinked at any moment. Many didn’t know how to swim, and black, unknown and frightening waves surrounded us. People around me were screaming and crying out of desperation. Some of them prayed. We only felt safe once a boat of the Italian coast guard rescued us. I was only 26. I was a young man, not an animal.

I think about the kids rescued at sea, people like me.

Today, when I go to schools to tell young kids what it means to be a refugee, I think about the kids rescued at sea, people like me. Lost souls that, instead of starting a process for the recognition of their rights in Italy, were brought to Albania, only to be brought back at a later moment. Students ask me lots of questions, they want to know why someone would risk their life to leave their country, questions that those in power don’t ask themselves.

I wonder if someone explained to the migrants brought back and forth from Albania what was going on. I picture them lost like me when I first arrived here. They must have thought that they have finally made it, but they are still in a limbo. And then Salvini’s words came, words that do nothing but show the arrogance of power, of those who feel they are above everything. Even above the respect for laws and the rights of human beings.