African migrants hoping to start a new
life in Italy after risking their lives crossing the
Mediterranean have headed to the area of Wednesday’s Earthquake helping
local people who lost everything in the disaster.
“We need to help the people here,” said
a 20-year-old man from the West African state of Benin, who gave his name only
as Abdullah.
“We saw people losing their lives and we feel bad. It’s
to show respect for them and their dignity,” he said.
Using shovels, hoes and rakes, the
group of about 20 migrants helped to prepare the ground for tents and cleared a
field for helicopter landings. During a break, the migrants, who are all
Muslims, knelt to pray near one of the tents.
“It
was their idea. They wanted to do something, so we helped make it happen,” said
Letizia Dellabarba of the Human Solidarity Group (GUS) charity that brought the
migrants to Pescara del Tronto.
Hopes of
finding more survivors faded on Friday three days after the powerful quake hit
centralItaly,
with the death toll rising to 267.
Italy has taken in more than 420,000 boat
migrants, most from Africa, since the start of 2014. The influx has caused
political friction, with some right-wing parties lambasting the government for
not doing more to halt the flow.
Even the
tragedy of the earthquake did not temper some anti-immigrant sentiment in the
country.
Under
a headline reading “Criminal State”, the right-wing newspaper Libero ran two
pictures side-by-side on its front page – one showing Italian quake victims
sleeping on the floor of a basketball court and another showing smiling African
immigrants in front of a hotel where the government is putting them up.
Dellabarba
said most of the migrants who helped in the quake zone were from Burkina Fasso,
Niger and Senegal and had arrived in Italy in boats run by human
traffickers.
She said some
of them had been jailed in Libya before paying traffickers to travel on
unseaworthy rubber boats to Sicily. Thousands of migrants have died trying to
make the crossing.
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