Meet Mo
©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
by
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
23 June 2021
Published:
17 September 2021
Meet Mo.
33 years old and from Khartoum, Sudan.
He did not want his photo taken to protect his identity.
To reach The Netherlands he crossed the Middle East and Europe by plane.
He is an activist who was arrested in his country. His home was invaded by the government and he suffers from psychological trauma.
In two days in January 2017 he flew from Khartoum to Saudi Arabia to Italy. He paid a trafficker $3,000 USD to move him to safety and did not tell his family he was leaving to protect their security.
“When you have no other option, you can do anything to survive,” Mo said. The trafficker traveled right at his side on the plane. He didn’t know the exact flight route when he started, he was just following the trafficker’s direction. After landing in Italy he took another plane to a small airport in The Netherlands.
He traveled on trains for the first few months in Holland because he didn’t know he could claim asylum right there at the airport. He went finally to Ter Apel, Netherlands for his asylum claim. He traveled to Europe years before as a tourist to Italy where his fingerprints were taken for the visa, meaning it is the country of his first reception, and he must have his asylum claim processed there due to the Dublin regulation.
He is 37 years of age now and living in Utrecht, Netherlands, where we recorded this story on 23 June 2021.
Mo is an amazing human being.