Since 2015, Europe's strategy to stop irregular migration has focused on arresting so-called smugglers. But those steering the vessels are usually desperate migrants themselves, forced to take the helm.
Italyâs Anti-Mafia Directorate and the âDirty Campaignâ to Criminalize Migration
Migrants from Morocco and Bangladesh wait on an overcrowded wooden boat off the coast of Libya for aid workers from the Spanish search-and-rescue group Open Arms on Jan. 10, 2020.Photo: Santi Palacios/APMigrants from Morocco and Bangladesh wait on an overcrowded wooden boat off the coast of Libya for aid workers from the Spanish search-and-rescue group Open Arms on Jan. 10, 2020.Photo: Santi Palacios/AP
April 30 2021, 8:00Â a.m.
Afana Dieudonne often says that he is not a superhero. Thatâs Dieudonneâs way of saying heâs done things heâs not proud of â just like anyone in his situation would, he says, in order to survive. From his home in Cameroon to Tunisia by air, then by car and foot into the desert, across the border into Libya, and onto a rubber boat in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Dieudonne has done a lot of surviving.