VENTIMIGLIA — The video was shot Monday, capturing a brutal scene of a truck driver using a metal-tipped belt to whip nine undocumented young Eritrean women trying to get to France. As the clip has spread on social media in Italy, details have come out that offer a glimpse of the suffering that migrants like them face.
The incident was filmed at the truck stop in Ventimiglia, an Italian city just across the border from France. Since then, Christian Papini, who directs the local Caritas NGO, spoke with several of the young women, all around the age of 18. “We were waiting at the station in Ventimiglia when a man asked us: France? Yes!, we replied, France! France!,” one of the young women said. “That’s where we want to go. He asked us for 150 euros each.”
Like so many others from sub-Saharan Africa, the youth endured a perilous journey, through the the desert to Libya, then across the Mediterranean to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, and finally northward through Italy, trying to reach France.
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On Sunday, they were all at the truck stop of Ventimiglia. They said the man who approached them to collect their money didn’t complain when some of the girls only gave him 100 euros. “I’ll let you go this time,” he said.
Papini said the girls were told by the smuggler to standby while he waited for the right moment. As soon as a driver left his heavy-duty truck with a Romanian license plate to go get some lunch, it was time. “Get on!” screamed the smuggler, as broke the seals of the rear box and opened the truck.
Then, he wished them a good trip, closing the truck with the girls inside. He assured them that they would arrive in France within an hour.
The right moment
But the driver was nowhere to be found. The truck didn’t start, and the summer heat inside was unbearable. “There was no air, we couldn’t breathe,” one of the girls told a rescuer. So they started screaming and hitting the rear box. When the driver came back, he heard the noise. What happened after that was seen by everyone.
There is a big man in Bermuda shorts using a loading belt with a metal edge, and hitting the girls on their back while they jump off the truck. If these images are now spreading it’s thanks to another driver who recorded the scene and sent it to a Romanian news website.
They were tired, but also upset because their trip failed.
“The girls were very scared and deeply marked by what happened,” says Papini of Caritas. “They stayed with us that night. They speak almost exclusively in Tigrinya, so we needed an interpreter. They were tired, but also upset because their trip failed. In fact, they have left again already. This is how it works at this border. People try to cross until exhaustion. They either manage or go insane or become desperate alcoholics sleeping under a bridge.”
None of this is new here in Ventimiglia. People have been transiting through the city for years, without any adequate hosting facility. The average today is 30 to 70 people per day, and the methods to cross the border are widely known. To describe them, it’s enough to remember the 45 deaths recorded in the area: some died electrocuted along railroad tracks, some hit by a speeding train, others run over on the highway like dogs, or stabbed because they refused to submit to the smugglers’ demands.
Silence at all cost
The Eritrean girls have left already. Like all those stopping by Ventimiglia along their journey, they know that they have to erase any trace of their presence in Italy. If the French police found any proof of that, they would have 48 hours to send them back to Italian territory. This explains the piles of trash on the side of the streets: the clothes, the receipts, the love letters, they represent all the things that cannot be said.
“They also throw away phone cards before attempting to cross,” says Papini. “I feel like Eritrean girls are pushed to leave their country by unbearable poverty and hunger. The boys already left to escape the compulsory military draft, which leaves them no choice.”
The girls are now believed to be in France. The smuggler — one of many in the area — hasn’t been identified yet, and the same goes for the truck driver. A source from the border police says that he could be Bulgarian or Romanian, adding that the authorities have started an investigation based on the video.
But one problem remains: this type of crime can only be prosecuted upon complaint. Of course, none of the girls will press charges, because that would give a reason to French authorities to expel them, and could leave them stranded on Italian soil forever. But they don’t want to stay here.
“We’re going to France,” they told Caritas. “That’s where we have some friends who made it.”
