A four-year-old girl who was separated from her parents as they tried to board a migrant boat from Tunisia to Italy was forced to make the journey across the Mediterranean without them.
The girl, referred to as Linda by Italian authorities, disembarked on the island of Lampedusa on 17 October after 26 hours at sea on a crowded wooden boat carrying a further 70 asylum seekers from Tunisia.
Authorities in Tunisia are attempting to repatriate her. Her parents have been given a travel ban and are accused of abandoning a minor.
“Linda is doing well, and she is in a community centre for children in Palermo, after having been transferred from Lampedusa to a community in the province of Agrigento,” said Majdi Karbai, who is one of three Tunisian MPs who represent Tunisians living in Italy. “She’s constantly asking about her parents and when she will be able to see them again.”
He added: “Her parents are in Tunisia and Tunisian authorities [on 26 October] imposed a travel ban on them. They would prefer to repatriate Linda, but the procedures are not so easy as the girl is under the legal protection of a local guardian.”
Karbai said Linda did not understand what was happening and had suffered an emotional shock.
The international NGO Save the Children has provided support to Linda. “She’s playing with other children and a psycho-social support team is helping her release her fears and pressure,” said Giovanna De Benedetto, a spokesperson for Save the Children. “We are taking care of her wellbeing.”
Linda and her family are originally from Sayada, a coastal city near Monastir, in the Sahel area, 20km (12 miles) south of Sousse and 162km south of Tunis.
Due to the current political crisis and food shortages in Tunisia, her father, a street food vendor selling chapati and mlawi sandwiches in Sayada, has not been able to make a living and decided to leave Tunisia with his family. Linda’s sister, who is seven, has a heart condition and needs constant health assistance. Her parents hoped in Europe the child could receive necessary care and before leaving had prepared a dossier containing her clinical records.
Migrant boats must be reached by sea and passengers must walk or swim in order to reach the vessels. On 16 October, as Linda’s father held her in his arms, he suddenly heard his wife scream. The woman, who was accompanying their other daughter, had entered the water carrying some luggage and was afraid of drowning before reaching the vessel.
“At some point Linda’s father had to step back to support the rest of the family and so temporarily sat Linda on the boat,” says Karbai, who worked as a cultural mediator on Lampedusa in 2011 and learned the details from one of Linda’s family members after the boat left Tunisia. “Meanwhile, the boat driver saw the big headlights of a truck and thought it was the police, so he started the engine and set off, leaving Linda’s family behind.”
Linda’s parents have refused to talk to the media. They are accused of abandoning a minor and could be charged with human trafficking. They were released from jail after the news of the girl’s arrival on Lampedusa.
Tunisia’s ministry of family, women, children and the elderly said in a statement that discussions were under way with the Tunisian consular services in Palermo to repatriate the child, and that a Tunisian diplomatic delegation is expected to meet the judge of the juvenile court in Palermo.
On Friday, a Sicilian judge blocked the girl’s repatriation. Before making a final decision, the magistrate asked that a report be sent to Palermo on the causes of the accident and Linda’s departure without her parents.
The newly elected government in Italy led by the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist origins, has promised the introduction of hardline measures to block the arrival of asylum seekers from north Africa.
North Africans are often considered “economic migrants” and are repatriated by European authorities who, despite the political instability and poverty in their countries, do not consider them deserving candidates for international protection. EU immigration policies are pushing thousands of people to risk their lives to take more dangerous routes to reach Europe.
The bodies of two men and two women were recovered off Lampedusa on Monday. The four people had been missing since Sunday when a boat carrying about 30 people sank 24 nautical miles south of Sicily. The body of a newborn girl was found the day before after another boat capsized off Lampione, an uninhabited islet.
Meanwhile, two NGO rescue boats carrying hundreds of asylum seekers in the central Mediterranean are expected to face the first test of migration policy under Italy’s new far-right government after Rome threatened to prevent them from entering Italian waters.
The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, operated by the NGO SOS Mediterranée, has more than 200 people onboard. The other vessel, Humanity One, flying the German flag and run by the German charity SOS Humanity, is carrying about 180 people. Most of them left Libya on small boats. The ships have asked the Italian authorities for permission to disembark their passengers in a safe port in Sicily, but so far have received no response.
The decision on whether to allow those onboard the two NGO vessels to disembark will rest with the new interior minister. The post that Matteo Salvini, who made high-profile moves to block such arrivals at Italian ports, had wanted to reassume, was given to Matteo Piantedosi, a technocrat backed by all parties. Piantedosi, who has said “governing migration is a priority”, sent a note to police departments and port authorities on Tuesday in which he wrote that the two ships were failing to “follow the rules in matters of security, border control and combating illegal immigration” and that the government could ban the vessels from entering Italian territorial waters.
Almost 20,000 people have died or gone missing since 2014 in the central Mediterranean, the most unsafe passage to Europe and one of the deadliest borders in the world.
