EXCLUSIVE: Charity steps in to help child refugees of Lampedusa who fled to escape hell

THE charity Save The Children is more commonly linked with earthquake and famine in the developing world but a wave of human misery arriving on the shores of the tiny Mediterranean island of Lampedusa means that, for the first time, it has made Italy the focus of a major campaign.

Refugee mother and baby JONATHAN HYAMS

Four-month-old Alma waits with Somali mother Fatima, 23, for a ferry from Lampedusa to Sicily

Aid workers are dealing with lone youngsters as young as nine, whose greatest concerns in life should be getting their homework done on time.

Instead they have found themselves among the 13,000 unaccompanied children to arrive on the island in the past year alone.

The charity employs its own experts in Lampedusa’s migrant reception centre to provide legal advice and aid to the refugees, who have harrowing stories to tell of journeys that include rape and murder.

Spokeswoman Gemma Parkin said: “The issue of unaccompanied children coming to Europe, desperate for help, is absolutely one of the most important issues Save The Children is dealing with right now.

“We are calling for a single EU law across Europe on migration and the rights of children.

"This absolutely has to happen.

“These children are making treacherous journeys from war-torn countries and persecution, often travelling alone.

"They risk their lives to reach Europe because they hope for a future.”

The charity is also calling for the EU to resume its air sea rescue operation, which was axed last year.

Eritrean children walkingJONATHAN HYAMS

Eritrean children roam the docks

“We can’t allow these children to drown off European shores,” Ms Parkin said.

Most of the children have travelled alone from as far away as Somalia, Gaza or Syria, where civil war makes survival virtually impossible.

Their journeys to a better life are scarcely safer, with harrowing stories of rape, starvation, torture and murder at the hands of unscrupulous people smugglers.

Ismail, 14, from Somalia, one of the 88 children to reach Lampedusa in February, said: “We walked by foot for 15 days until we reached Khartoum.

"I ate only bread and Mango juice.”

Once a pupil at a private school, he was forced to leave his native country after the death of his father, travelling through Ethiopia to reach Libya.

He said: “In the desert the traffickers took the women and raped them.

"One of these was a woman who was seven months pregnant.

"We tried to stop them but they threatened us with arms.

All Europe is good, there is no conflict or war in Europe

Yusuf

“The woman who was pregnant, when she came back to the group, took a scarf and tried to strangle herself but luckily we stopped her.”

Others said they were forced to use plastic petrol containers to cross the alligator-infested Tezeke River into Sudan.

Yusuf, 17, escaped Gaza, travelling through Lebanon and the Sudan to reach Libya where he was held captive on the frontline and forced to collect spent bullets for scrap metal.

He said: “The route was very difficult, then we were held in a detention centre in Libya for one and a half months.

"We slept naked on the floor.

"Every hour or so, someone came and started beating us with an electric cable.

“A 70-year-old man with heart problems was beaten, thrown on the floor and was kicked in his tummy and heart.

“They forced us to collect rusty bullets from the ground, bullets that could cause us eye or head injuries at any time, while they kept inside to protect themselves.

“We had to walk on glass and thistles which stuck in our feet.

Giovanna Di BenedettoJONATHAN HYAMS

Media officer for Save The Children, Giovanna Di Benedetto, on the docks of Lampedusa

“A Libyan smuggler planned to take us out.

"He put 53 of us, like goats, in two pick-up vehicles that could only take 20 persons.

“Veiled gunmen drove us towards the desert.

"Then they dropped us there with our faces on the ground and hands tied.

"Our hands became red from the tight cable ties.

"The driver started to beat us.

“We left Libya from an area called Sabratha.

"We thanked God.

"We even wished to die in the sea rather than in Libya.

"I felt relieved when I reached here.

"All Europe is good, there is no conflict or war in Europe.

"We have hope here. In Europe a child has a value.” 

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