(Photo: Phillip Martin)

by Phillip Martin

50 years ago this month, black and white activists boarded buses in Washington and headed into the Deep South. That took courage in 1961.The year before, the Supreme Court had made segregation illegal in interstate travel. But the law wasn’t being enforced in the South. And so those bus passengers forced the issue.

They became known as the “Freedom Riders.”

This month, a racially integrated group of 40 American – and foreign – students recreated the Freedom Riders’ journey. Ray Arsenault, the author of a history of the Freedom Riders of 1961, is leading a group of 40 College students on a tour of one of Alabama’s most notorious sites. This place just outside of Anniston, Alabama, is where fifty years ago, the Ku Klux Klan attacked a Freedom Riders’ Greyhound bus bound for New Orleans. After slashing the tires, the bus was firebombed, which forced the riders into the road.

Along this highway outside of Anniston, Zilong Wang, who was born many years after 1961 in Baotou, China, is thinking about the lessons of non-violence practiced by the original Freedom Riders and how they might guide his beliefs and actions.

“This is not just a healing of the past but also it sheds a light on the future. Not just a future of the United States but also for China, because China will definitely go through a similar period,” Wang said. “How can we use non-violence and civil disobedience to bring meaningful reform into China’s social system under the condition of social harmony and stability, I think we’re learning a lot from them.”

Wang, a philosophy student at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, is one of a handful of students chosen to board a bus from DC to New Orleans, to re-create the journey of 50 years ago along with original freedom riders. They met important figures from the time along the route.

Like John Siegenthaler, who was an assistant to US Attorney General Robert Kennedy in 1961. He pointed out the contradictions of era – the Administration was pushing for freedoms around the world even as president Kennedy tolerated segregation and injustice throughout the Jim Crow South.

“The timing of the Freedom Rides and the conflagration that he (President Kennedy) hoped would never come, came at exactly the wrong time,” Siegenthaler said. “Came at the moment when’ he ‘s not able to make a convincing case about freedoms around the world, is not able to convince the Soviet Union ‘look free your people, let your people go. He’s not able to make that case because he had not let his own people go.” Siegenthaler said that the critical worldwide focus on domestic events in the USA helped to push the Administration into supporting civil rights.

Those events included attacks on Freedom Riders at this Trailways Bus Terminal in Birmingham, Alabama. This is the 8th city visited by the students on Freedom Ride 2011. Here Zilong Wang comes face to face with Freedom Rider James Zwerg, whose bloodied face peered from newspapers in 1961 helped compel hundreds of new riders to join the movement. Zwerg offers the college kids some pointers for their struggles, whatever they may be.

Follow the money: “If you want to bring about change you’re going to have to go the decision makers. In trying to change the movie theaters, it wasn’t going to happen,” Zwerg said. “In Nashville, for example, we had to make the people who owned the theaters decide to change.”
On this journey South, Zilong Wang and his fellow travelers also learned about the ultimate price that some paid for the advancement of human rights in the United States. The bus carring the 40 students has stopped in front of the 16th Street baptist Church in Birmingham. A bomb planted here took the lives of four little girls on September 15th , 1963.

Zilong Wang is only one of several foreign students on this tour of history and memory. Bakhrom Ismoilov is studying at Eastern Oregon University. He’s from Tajikistan. He equated some of the violence his country has recently experienced with the segregation of the south during the 1960’s. “It helps me a lot to see how much bigger and how much bigger scale it was. I can definitely relate this to terrorism, and actually putting a population of black Americans in fear,” Ismoilov said.

And over the din of the 16th Street Baptist Church Choir, Doaa Dorgham, a Palestinian born in Kuwait who wears a headscarf, laments what she sees as the irony of past and present discrimination in her adopted American land. “The irony of this situation is here I am celebrating how 50 years ago we made great strides to stop segregation in public transportation and discrimination, and then I’m in an airport and have to go through a body scan and have to go through a pat-down. And how is it that no one is able to see the correlation?” Dorgham asked.

As the Freedom Riders’ Tour winded down, students were asked what they will do with the knowledge they’ve collected along the way. Tanya Smith, who grew up in Haiti, and plans to return there to lead a non-violent movement on behalf of youth, spoke up.

“Just like the Freedom Riders saw the need in society for change, Haitian youth realize the power they do have and the stake they have for building Haiti’s future,” she said. “And I want to be able show that non-violence is more effective in the sense that you’re able to do what you’re doing without resorting to the same tools that your oppressors are using against you.”

Marsaxlokk, Malta

Dusk is falling on the fishing village of Marsaxlokk on Malta. On one of the fishing boats, members of the mostly foreign crew all nod when asked if they have spotted or rescued African migrants on these waters.

“Yes, yes, yes,” said a man from Egypt.

Another fisherman, named Teela, from Indonesia, who declines to give a surname, joins the conversation.

“African people yes, yes, on the water. I see one person dead already. Yes, dead. So just looking and then we go.”

The fishermen then ask me to turn off my recorder. One of them said that he smuggled a boatload of Africans from Malta to Sicily — about 66 miles away — to make some extra money during the EU imposed fishing ban period.

Pozzallo, Sicily

And the port city of Pozzallo is where many undocumented migrants first land in Sicily.

“We have almost every week boat people landing here,” said Otillio Falcone, a humanities teacher and a tour guide here.

“Pozzallo is one of the places, closest places and there are lots of people arriving,” he said. “In the past, much more. Now a bit less, but still. This story has been going on for years. Now, let’s just say, its normal now.”

Malta’s strict detention policy is one reason why the numbers have dropped. The pacts to limit immigration signed by Italy and Libya have also greatly affected immigration flow. Even so, the stream of illegal migration to Sicily continues.

In the ancient Sicilian, seaside village of Taormina the theme from the Godfather greets the crowds of tourists. But on a Medieval backstreet, Samuel, a migrant from Senegal, stuffs unsold tourist trinkets into a bag. He vents his frustration after being chased off the main road by police “Bruto Italia. Ill scifo. No buono qua. Milo pesa.”

Samuel, as he calls himself, said Italy is ugly and he makes little money here. A few months ago, he was in a jail cell in Malta. After his release he fled to Italy, illegally, he said, but this is not what he had hoped for. What he has found in Sicily is what other Africans say they too are discovering: Italy is no longer the ideal place they once imagined: In Rosanna, Italy ,last winter, clashes between Africans and local residents demonstrated enormous tensions over migration, skin color and race.

The Rainbow House

Back on Malta, Herta Troponi, who runs a residence for African families that is translated as the Rainbow House, said migrants lately have their sights on other countries that they believe to be more hospitable to people with dark skin.

“Northern Europe, Sweden, Norway; all those countries in the north. They know there are problems even in Italy. So the further they can go north the better.”

One 24-year old Somali resident, who first arrived in Malta in 2004, is ready to leave again. She first slipped out of Malta illegally one year after she arrived here, after being denied European Union asylum. She settled in Switzerland and one of her three children was born there.

However, in 2008, after being fingerprinted, her illegal status was discovered and she was deported back to Malta. Now she wants to return to Switzerland, and seems unaware that the country today is led by a vehemently anti-immigrant party. What matters to her is the life she led in that West European nation.

“When I stayed In Switzerland they gave good house, and good life, good money and good education. Malta is small, they can’t.”

Unrealistic expectations are common to migrants everywhere. For a 15-year-old Ethiopian named Faisa, the desire to reach Norway is based on something quite simple and less elaborate.

“Because I like the name, Norway,” she said.

Denver

More than three thousand miles away, a Somali immigrant is struggling to establish himself in a new home. On this day, Daoud Ali Muhammad, whom we met at the beginning of this series, is learning his way around wintry Denver on the tram.

Daoud’s long journey to Denver also took him through Malta, where he applied for and received humanitarian asylum in the US.

“I attempted twice to leave Malta. I went to Germany and was caught and sent back and then I went to Italy and then they caught me and sent me back to Malta too. And I went to a priest and I told him my life story and my family died in Somalia and he told me to go and register with the UNHCR.”

Though less popular than Europe, according to migrant surveys and the United Nation’s agency responsible for refugees, the UNHCR, the US is also a much-desired destination for the accidental tourists in Malta.

“The idea is to recognize that Malta is doing a humanitarian service for the world,” said Doug Kmiec, US ambassador to Malta. “I was with a government official and he said ‘we can’t accommodate them all because we’re a small country, so we’re very grateful to the United States for taking a good portion of those that they can. The United States provided resettlement opportunities for about 200, and we have taken that most recently to 340.”

Most of those brought from Malta to the United States are Sudanese, Eritreans and Somalis. This is why Daoud Ali Muhammad is now in Denver, where he is also receiving help from Omar Nour, who helps run the Somali Community Center of Colorado. Nour traces Daoud’s long route from Africa to Denver by running his index finger across a world map; from Somalia to Libya, to Malta, to Germany to Italy, back to Malta and then across the Atlantic to the US Nour expects many more Somalis will follow and laments that his native land has become a growing source of homeless nomads.

“One of the tragedies about this migration is it used to be the men who used to migrate and now we’re seeing woman, old people, just trying to get out of Somalia,” Nour said. “And a lot of them are wasted in the Sahara, in Libya, in Central Africa. Everyday when you look on the news or Somali websites you’ll hear very horrific stories about people dying. It’s very tragic. A whole nation uprooted and everybody wants to get out.”

The US is the eighth country that Daoud has lived in since 1992 and suggests this may not be his last.

“I really don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to settle in one place and say this is the place, this is home,” Daoud said. “My life story seems to say that I keep moving and that never leaves me alone. I would like to settle one day and have a home. But God knows how long it’s going to take.”

Sadly, Daoud Ali Mohammed’s long journey may not be over. He recently lost his job driving a cab, he’s behind on the rent, his heater is broken and he’s barely eking out an existence in wintry Denver. Now, he said he’s thinking about moving on.
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Our series on Nomadic Migration and Skin color was edited by Anthony Brooks. The Color Initiative is made possible by funding from the Ford Foundation.

• The Color Initiative

'The conditions in our detention centers really leave much to be desired,' says Father Joseph Cassar, Malta Director of Jesuit Relief Services, JRS

Day after day, Daniel sits on a wooden crate on a busy corner in the oldest piazza in Malta’s capital, Valletta. After leaving his native Ghana and trekking through desert and seven African countries, Daniel arrived in Malta eighteen months later, only to spend another 18 months in mandatory detention:

“After I came out I could not get any proper documents,” he said. “So I’m in Malta here for nothing.”

I ask him how long has he been looking for work.

“I’ve been here so many times. Since I’ve started to come to this corner, I haven’t received what I like. So I’m still waiting. We are just sitting here for nothing, no work to do. So we don’t know what to do here. Even though you can see many, many blacks, and many immigrants here, they are just roaming about, doing nothing.”

At the outdoor bus terminal, dozens of dark-skinned men tell similar stories:

“The situation in Malta is critical.”

Salif came from Nigeria, and like many migrants stuck her in Malta, he had hoped to get to mainland Europe.

“The immigrant here is suffering.”

I ask him: “why Malta? why did you come here?”

“Well we were going to Italy but along the line we get to Malta.”

“If you can’t stay in Malta, where would you like to go,” I ask:

“I would like to go to Italy, Spain, but they cannot give me passport. “

“So you have no passport, so you are basically stuck here in Malta?”

“Yes, I do not have passport to leave. That’s why I’m here.”

Malta’s Justice Minister, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, is sympathetic, but only to a point.

“And so this Nigerian fellow feels that he has got the wrong deal because had he come to Italy the situation would have been completely different. Because he would have been an asylum applicant there and that would have allowed him to move along. I have only one solution. To send them back to their countries of origin, which is difficult.”
Difficult because Malta doesn’t have repatriation agreements with most of Africa.

“How to repatriate persons who are economic migrants, who are not in any way involved in the labor market , is an issue.”
That means it can’t send these migrants home; and it can’t send them on to third countries, SO many languish here in Malta. And for many white Maltese, that’s a problem: Yuriken Borsch, A 16-year-old student, fears the migrants are overwhelming his tiny island nation.

“We’re a small country and we have many illegal immigrants for a small country that we are. Every immigrant someday will have to buy a home in Malta and there’s no place for them.”

That is why most Africans in Malta end up in the Hal Far open centre.

“It was an airplane hanger here,” a Somali man said, who asked to be identified as “Ahmed.”

Ahmed took me on tour of the restricted Maltese facility. It is an old airplane hanger, lined with bunk beds and home to African men and women released from detention. The men and women live in separate facilities. Despite the rank odor of porta-potties and overflowing kitchen waste, no one appears to be malnourished or abused. But Ahmed said Hal Far is unfit for human habitation:

“I can’t live in this situation. I told them, the government, I would prefer to go to my home country to living here. I have no place to sleep; Nothing to eat. I don’t have anything, so I prefer to go to Somalia, and they told me you can’t go to Somalia because Somalia is a dangerous place.”

“These large numbers of people who are new comers to our society need to be housed somewhere,” said Alexander Tortell, the director of the Agency for the Welfare of Asylum Seekers.

“We cannot house them on ships. We cannot house them in the countryside, which we do not have. And, therefore, these people are placed either in open centers or else when they leave the open centers, they themselves make their own arrangements to live in the community.

Some also live IN the Rainbow House outside of the capital city. True to its name, a spectrum of bright colors decorates the front door. This is one of several government-run homes for migrant women, children and families, most of them from Somalia. Herta Tropinai, a social worker who runs this facility, said the neighbors aren’t happy.
“To say the truth we have had a lot of complaints—about the noise, about the fact that we’ve got a lot of rubbish outside. They are petty things, but they sometimes have a good reason for it. But they wouldn’t cause these problems if they were Maltese people.”

Alexander Tortell does not disagree:

“Well I think it (skin color) is a factor, and I would add sadly that a persons appearance determines the success or otherwise of integration. The difference between the Bosnian, and I would add, Albanian arrivals, is that it was more silent in the sense that, let’s just take 2008 arrivals, for example, 2775 persons arriving all at once practically in the space of a few months.”

Until recently, Rainbow House resident Abdul Aziz and his family lived in the open camps.

“This house is better. Before I lived in Hal far. But this house is better for me. It’s near my job.”

“What is your job?” I ask.

“Paint.”

“You’re a painter. Is it full-time?”

“Not full time. Maybe six hours, five hours, always.”

“Was it difficult to find a job?”

“Yes.”

The Maltese government gives each asylum seeker a stipend of about one hundred Euros per month. But even that meager amount has stirred resentment among some Maltese who believe that Europe is being overwhelmed by African asylum seekers. In some instances, that has led to violence against migrants AND their supporters:
“On two instances, someone came on the grounds of two of our communities and cars were set alight,” said Father Joseph Cassar of Jesuit Refugee Service of Malta – OR JRS.

“And then just one month later. It was the car on the front door of our human rights lawyer while the family was inside at night. Although no one has been caught or indicted or anything of this sort, we can very much say that this has to do with the position which JRS has been taken advocating the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.”

Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici accuses the right wing media and others of stirring up racist anti-immigrant opposition.

“Unfortunately we had a rise of political speeches from different parties saying you should get these persons as soon as they come here and get them another boat and send them back from where they came. These arte all the roots of an alarmist approach, because in point of fact we have in this country less than 5000 persons resident here, so we are speaking of one person who is a colored skin to a thousand.”

But with more than 5,000 migrants stuck in this tiny country, government officials like Alex Tortell fear a greater backlash if the migrants cannot be integrated into society.

“The experience of integration all over Europe is that integration cannot start—in the strict sense of the word—before a person has a full time legal job. Unfortunately, because of Malta’s limitations, we have thousands of people who haven’t gotten to that point and we have to admit, they won’t get to that point because we can not get to that point because the limitations, the limitations are real.”

Some illegal migrants qualify for what’s known as subsidiary status, which allows them to go to another European Union country. But thousands remain stuck in Malta, jobless and living in difficult conditions – eager but unable to leave this tiny island nation. Download MP3

• The color initiative

Father Joseph Cassar, Malta Director of Jesuit Relief Services, JRS. 'The conditions in our detention centers really leave much to be desired.'

Not far off the coast of Malta, the coast guard has intercepted a leaky boat carrying dozens of Africans, and it’s sinking fast. Donning gloves, burly Maltese sailors pull men and women from their flooded dinghy to a hanging ladder.

Thousands of other dark-skinned immigrants have made similar attempts to reach continental Europe through Maltese waters, said Major Wallace Camilleri of Malta’s Maritime Squadron:

“It’s not relevant for me how many do cross over,” he said. “How many do make it. Sometimes I ask myself ‘how many do not make it?’”

These illegal migrants are among the lucky ones. A short time later the coast guard enters the port of Valletta — Malta’s capital – carrying the latest group of accidental tourists to come to this island nation.

“We wanted to reach Italy but they told us you cannot go in Italy,” said Ahmed from Somalia, one of the men among them. “You have to come to Malta.”

And once here, illegal African migrants like Ahmed often languish in detention for up to 18 months. That’s how long it can take to determine their status, and whether they’ll be permitted to go on to continental Europe, sent home or remain here.

Dr. Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici is Malta’s Justice Minister. He said his nation of 400,000 –the smallest of the European Union’s 27 countries — is trying to balance humanitarian obligations while protecting Malta from a tidal wave of economic migrants.

Bonnici said African migrants understand all too well the advantages of reaching continental Europe.

“Those advantages are naturally abused by those who are not entitled to that status,” Bonnici said. “So these persons realize that coming to Malta means that they will be put into these detention centers and they’ll have to wait. And if they are not entitled they will remain in detention for 18 months.”

And Ta’ Kandja is where many of the illegal immigrants find themselves within hours of setting foot in Malta: a detention center surrounded by barbed-wire.

“We are at the solidarity block within the Ta’ Kandja detention center,” Bonnici said. 96 people can be accommodated in each detention center.”

Lt. Brian Gatt, a six-foot seven army officer, supervises this prison. We enter a holding area with dozens of bunk beds. Among the detainees here is Obaswan Osagakenney, who said he was fleeing Muslim-Christian fighting in Central Nigeria:

I ask him: “Would you have come if you knew you were going to be here for 18 months?”

He first looks at the floor and then calmly says: “For me I believe it would be better for me because I was running for my life and if I had a place where my life would be secure for the next 18-months, I think it is better”

But because of its strict immigration rules, the European Union rarely grants humanitarian refugee status to Nigerians. So just what will happen to Osagakenny — and when – is unclear.

The same uncertain fate awaits an asylum seeker from Eritrea, who — in spite of the EU’s view of his country as a major violator of human rights — was surprised to learn that he could be held at Ta’ Kandja for as long as a year and a half.

“Eight months or 18 months? We came to get freedom,” he said. “I surprised if they say 18 months, what can we do. We can’t do anything.”

Maltese officials hope that the country’s strict detention policy will discourage other African migrants from making the hazardous journey from Libya across the Mediterranean.

But critics, like Father Joseph Cassar of Jesuit Refugee Service of Malta, call the policy unfair.

“The conditions in our detention centers really leave much to be desired, and as far as I’m concerned do not meet the minimal standards established by the European Union,” Cassar said. “And we’re talking here about administrative detention, so it’s not the result of a judicial process, but administrative detention for illegal entry into Malta’s territory, which last for as long as the refugee procedure determination takes. In other words, if it takes eight months for your application to be examined and determined than you’re going to be eight months in detention.”

What’s worse, Father Cassar says the policy is racist. He argues that in the 1990s, thousands of Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats fled the Balkan Wars and found safe haven In Malta – a benefit that he says is often denied dark-skinned Africans.

“I would say skin color in this particular circumstance has a lot to do with it,” Cassar said. “Because it makes people in a homogenous society, as the Maltese one would be or would have been until quite recently, that makes people more visible. There are many more foreigners living on Malta who come from countries that are not members of the European Union. In other words third country nationals from other European countries. These people would be far less visible because they are of the same racial background.”

For his part, Ta’ Kandja prison superintendent Brian Gatt scoffs at the notion that race has anything to do with Malta’s detention policy. He said the guidelines are needed to send a firm message to illegal migrants that life in Europe is not all its cracked up to be:

“Because in many places in Africa they receive a lot of satellite TV stations which picture Europe as being paved with gold,” Gatt said. “And that is a reason why so many people cross from Africa to Europe. They think that they will make money, become rich, which is not the case. Because in Europe, everyone can see with his own eyes where many of these people end up. Underneath card board boxes on the fringes of cities with nothing to do, begging, etc. etc.”

And Mike Cassar, a supervisor at the Detention facility, and no relation to Father Cassar, says Malta treats all of its detainees well.

“They are safe, and they know they have a person here, a team of people here, who care about them,” Cassar said. “Because if you don’t care about them, you’re no good for this job. We don’t get trouble here. We don’t get trouble here.”

But in 2009, there was trouble. According to Maltese officials, Somali detainees rioted to protest their detention, and it took dozens of police to restore order.

And several months ago, residents of an open center protested a government ban on the use of a loudspeaker system to announce the Muslim call to prayer. Meanwhile, migrants continue to arrive in Malta, in search of new lives and opportunities.

What many of them don’t know is that in many places the doors to entry into Europe are slamming shut. Download MP3

• The color initiative

African migrants rescued at sea by the Armed Forces of Malta (AFM). The AFM has come to the aid of hundreds of illegal migrants in an area at sea the size of Texas

Inside a classroom at the Emily Griffith school in downtown Denver, Twenty-Seven year old Daoud Ali Muhammad is trying to improve his English. The class gives Daoud a chance to talk about the challenges he is facing in the US:

“Daoud Is your apartment hot or cold?” asks the ESL instructor. “Cold,” said Daoud. “I don’t have it (heat). I don’t have it. Today I wake up and report it. I tell them. I tell my apartment manager…I have no heat. I was freezing. It doesn’t work.”

In spite of day-to-day hardships in chilly Denver, this city has welcomed Somali refugees for decades. Many came directly from that failed state; the poorest and most unstable in Africa. Others were airlifted to the US from refugee camps in neighboring countries. But Daoud represents a new kind of refugee; one who’s route to the US was much more complicated, said Barbara Eiswerth of Iskash*taa Refugee Harvesting Network, a non-profit based in Tucson, which assisted Daoud along the way.

“With Daoud, we’re seeing a different Somali population coming in, in that their paths were longer and more convoluted,” Eiswerth said. “So that is different, in that they have been struggling and adapting and readjusting and resettling in various countries.”

Toward the end of the night, Daoud throws on a thick coat as his English class comes to an end. It’s 15 degrees outside and he said the cold weather and unemployment makes life in Denver difficult. But it’s nothing compared to the journey he took to get here: Before landing in the US, Daoud had lived in seven different countries—most recently on the small island nation of Malta. He first fled on foot across Somalia’s border in 1992 at the age of nine.

“My family was killed,” he said through a translator. “And that was the tipping point for me to leave Somalia. I fled to Kenya and lived there until 2003. Then from Kenya, I went to Ethiopia. I couldn’t live there and then left Ethiopia. And from Ethiopia, I moved to Sudan and lived there for a while and then I moved to Egypt. And from Egypt I went to Libya.”

Libya is where tens of thousands of desperately poor Sub-Saharan migrants, like Daoud, end up. They attempt the often-deadly trip in spite of red-hot deserts, hungry hyenas and rampant banditry. Some of those who make it find work in Libya, but most become stranded there with little to do. And most set their sights on Europe. Daoud tried to make the trip north aboard a smuggling vessel, but he was arrested as he tried to board, and sent to a prison in Tripoli, where he became seriously ill.

“I believe it used to be a chemical plant because all of us had skin rashes and the Libyan prison guards used to beat us at least twice a day,” Daoud said. “And that’s what created and forced us to break out of jail. My intention was just to get out of Libya and head to the seas and to see where my luck takes me.”

Daoud alleges that his dark skin color had a lot to do with how he was treated in Libya: “They directly called me a slave. So, it was horrible. They will tell you in your face.”

Jean-Philippe Chauzy is director of communications for the International Organization for Migration in Geneva. He’s traveled frequently to Libya, and said, Daoud’s story is shared by many migrants there.

“They came in clandestinely or their passports have been confiscated or lost,” Chauzy said. “They’ve got no money. They’re not getting any proper jobs. They cannot go forward because they realize the risk and do not have the money to pay smugglers. They can’t go back because they do not have the documentation. The smuggling routes only work in one direction. South, North.”

And North was where Daoud Ali Muhammad was determined to go when he boarded a second smuggling boat with the goal of reaching Italy.

“Some of our friends had relatives overseas so we received money from them and paid a middle man and he put us on a boat that wasn’t working well, and when we left Libya and were just a couple of miles the engine died. So we had to swim back to shore. Look around to make sure the Libyan Coast Guard didn’t catch us again.”

A 2009 treaty between Italy and Libya has substantially reduced the number of African migrants that actually make it to Europe. But poverty, war and instability in their home countries compel many to keep trying. So after nearly 24 months in and out of Libyan jails, Daoud again headed to sea. He boarded a dinghy with dozens of other Africans in yet another effort to reach Europe.

“The 3rd time we successfully landed in Malta.”

The Maltese Navy rescued Daoud and his fellow travelers after their boat began to sink. When Daoud finally stepped foot in Europe several years ago, it was not the Europe of his dreams.

“We were immediately detained, and we were in prison for almost five months,” Daoud said.

Eventually, with the help of both the US and the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, Daoud finally got out of Malta and made it to Denver, where’s he’s now trying to start a new life. But thousands of other African migrants trying to reach mainland Europe remain stuck in Malta, the European Union’s smallest member state.

With a population of just 400,000, the tiny island nation is trying to discourage illegal migration to its shores. Most black asylum seekers who arrive there are jailed like Daoud, some of them for as long as 18 months. Maltese officials say they have little choice in the matter because they simply do not have room or resources to cope with this wave of illegal migrants.

The number of migrants has slowed dramatically in recent months from a high of nearly 3,000 in 2009 to just several hundred this year. So officials in that nation have had some success in getting the word out that “these tired, poor and huddled masses” are not welcome in Malta. Download MP3

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: It’s been 15 years since South Africa abandoned its brutal system of racial segregation. But a new movie is reminding South Africans of the days when apartheid was the law. The film is called Skin. It’s based on the painful true story of Sandra Laing, a woman with dark skin born to white parents in 1955. Phillip Martin has the story.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Sandra Laing’s skin color didn’t matter in her early years. She and her family lived in a rural part of South Africa. It was only when her parents enrolled her in a white boarding school that her troubles began. Her older brother went to the school but he had lighter skin and was considered white. But Sandra’s skin was darker and she wasn’t welcome. Her father played by actor Sam Neill shows the headmaster documents to prove his daughter’s whiteness.

FATHER: What does this say?

HEADMASTER: A piece of paper is not going to reassure all the parents who call me everyday to complain that there’s a black child at this school. Sandra is a disruption. Sandra does not belong here.

MARTIN: Sandra is then reclassified as colored, the South African term for mixed race, and is forced to leave the school. Her father, a proud Afrikaner, challenges the classification. A 10-year-old Sandra Laing gets brought before government board. They measure her head, her torso, and the thickness of her curly hair. Her father erupts.

FATHER: I’m telling you she’s white. I’m her father. I’m as white as you are. This is her mother. Undeniably white. And Sandra is our daughter. Blood of our blood.

MARTIN: Then a genetics expert testifies on behalf of Sandra’s family.

GENETICS EXPERT: I believe there’s a plausible genetic explanation for Sandra’s appearance. The history of our country is such that many indeed we believe most Afrikaners carry black genes.

JUDGE: Silence. Please go on.

GENETICS EXPERT: So two white-looking parents can contribute enough black genes to produce a child quite a lot darker then themselves.

MARTIN: The South African government accepted the explanation and amended the constitution to recognize the children of two white parents to be white, regardless of appearance. And so Sandra Laing was reclassified as white. But she never returned to the school. At age 16 Sandra fell in love with a black man and ran away. She was then jailed for violating laws against interracial relationships. Her parents won her release and invited her home. But Sandra then pregnant chose to move with her boyfriend to a black township. She then tried to get herself reclassified again as colored. Sandra eventually left her husband and moved with her children to the outskirts of Johannesburg where she worked in a factory. Anthony Fabian, the director of skin, heard about Sandra’s story a few years ago when he was interviewed on the BBC.

ANTHONY FABIAN: I was moved to tears by her story and also very angered by it because it was clear that although Sandra’s white family had prospered Sandra was living still in abject poverty in a township. Didn’t own her home. Could barely afford to clothe or feed her children. And I felt that some kind of reparation needed to be done. And as a filmmaker I had an opportunity not only to tell her story and bring it to the world but also to make a difference at the center of it.

MARTIN: Sandra tried for years to contact her parents but her letters were always returned. Then in 2001, 27 years after she left home, Sandra was reunited with her mother who died soon after. She never saw her father again but in an interview Sandra Laing says she believes he never stopped loving her.

SANDRA LAING: My mother told me that my father died and she wanted my address to send me some money that my father left me. I just felt that my father still loved me which is angry because I left him.

MARTIN: But to this day Laing’s brothers refuse to speak to her. Directory Anthony Fabian says Sandra’s story reaches far beyond South Africa.

FABIAN: It’s about how we treat people who are different from ourselves. In the United States with a bi-racial president the racial identity debate has really come to the fore. And I think it’s very important that we keep that debate present – that we keep talking about these issues because they haven’t gone away.

MARTIN: Skin, the film about Sandra Laing, opens today in New York and Los Angeles. For The World I’m Phillip Martin.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

“I can tell you that throughout the whole area of Africa, beliefs exist that people with albinism are cursed, that the mother had sex with the white man, that she had sex with a European ghost, that these people are evil, that they’re possessed, that they’re substandard, that the disease is contagious.  There’s a host of myths that prevail for hundreds of years for people with albinism in large parts of Africa.”

Listen to Part 1:

Download MP3

To see more photos from Tanzania, click here.

In part two of Phillip Martin’s series on albinism worldwide, he surveys global efforts to show albinos in a more favorable light. Martin interviews Rick Guidotti, a fashion photographer who, in 1999, photographed a young albino woman named Christine (at left) for a Life Magazine photo essay entitled “Redifining Beauty.” Guidotti remembers:

“She walked into my studio with her head down, shoulders hunched, eyes down as well, one word answers, no eye contact.  This kid had zero self esteem because of being teased her entire life because of her albinism.  So I thought, well I’m going to photograph her in respect to the way I would photograph anyone, Cindy or Claudia.  So the lights went on, the music the fan. I grabbed a mirror, and was like, ‘Christine look.’   This kid looked in the mirror, and for the first time, saw a beautiful girl.”

Listen to Part 2:

Download MP3

For see more of Rick Guidotti’s pictures, click here, or visit Rick’s website, Positive Exposure.

To hear more of Phillip Martin’s reporting, visit The Color Initiative.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Albinos lack pigmentation in their skin and their hair. It’s for this reason alone that Albinos have been the victims of mutilations and ritual crimes, especially in Africa. Human rights advocates have documented the slaughter of more than 40 Albinos in Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya. Philip Martin reported yesterday on the sometimes deadly prejudice against Albinos. Today he surveys global efforts to show Albinos in a more favorable light.

PHILIP MARTIN: For years, Manhattan based Rick Guidotti made his living as a fashion photographer, shooting pictures of beautiful women who are known by their first names only – Cindy, Claudia and Tyra. Then one day he was introduced to a young Albino woman named Christine.

RICK GUIDOTTI: She walked into my studio with her head down, shoulders hunched, eyes down as well, one word answers, no eye contact. This kid had zero self esteem because of her being teased her entire life because of her albinism. So I thought well I was going to photograph her with respect the way I would photograph anyone, Cindy or Claudia. And so the lights went on, the music, the fan. I grabbed a mirror and was like, Christine, look. And this kid looked in the mirror and for the first time saw a beautiful girl.

PHILIP: That photograph became the centerpiece of a 1999 award winning photo essay in Life Magazine called “Redefining Beauty”. Soon Rick Guidotti was being asked by people all over the world to photograph their Albino children, families and entire Albino communities.

RICK: So I started traveling.

PHILIP: Guidotti became an advocate for people with albinism, and formed a nonprofit called Positive Exposure. He visited places round the world where Albinos were shunned and persecuted. But he also discovered places where they are deified. And in the Cook Islands of New Zealand for example, he found that Albinos are revered in legend.

RICK: And it’s a legend about hate turning discrimination into prejudice. I mean awareness, education, acceptance, friendship, then love, and out of that love comes this first person with albinism.

MALE: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

PHILIP: This recording made by Rick Guidotti, is of a tribal leader in the islands of the Atlantic coast of Panama. It’s home to the Kuna, an indigenous people with one of the highest rates of albinism in the world. More than one in 200 of the islanders are Albinos. This man is a Kuna spiritual leader. He says Albinos are Godlike children of the moon, and they face no discrimination because they are his brothers and sisters.

PETER ASH: Panama is a rare example and we’ve heard of this and a few other indigenous tribes, where people with albinism are worshiped and revered.

PHILIP: Peter Ash is a successful businessman in Vancouver. He’s also a person with albinism. His Canadian nonprofit, Under the Same Sun, advocates for Albinos worldwide.

PETER: Obviously I’d certainly prefer that than having them killed. But I mostly just prefer that you treat us as anybody else. Because the problem with having them worshiped and revered is that if the chief of that tribe changes or the tradition of that tribe changes, it’s still undergirded by this notion that they’re somehow magical or different.

PHILIP: Ash blames popular culture for this widely held perception. For example, he believes African films that glorify witchcraft have fanned anti Albino superstition and violence in East Africa. And he says Hollywood is also to blame.

PETER: Even in North America, every single Hollywood portrayal of a person with albinism – think of Da Vinci Code, The Princess Bride, The Matrix Reloaded, Powder.

MALE: Afraid you’re going to get a little color on that marshmallow ass of yours.

MALE: Look man, you better get out of here. Johnny. How about it, huh?

PETER: Think of them all. When have you seen a person with albinism portrayed in a positive way? In every single instance the person with albinism is a villain, they’re evil, they’re twisted, they’re odd.

PHILIP: The portrayal of Albinos in popular culture including in film, is the focus of a recent documentary from South Africa called “White Negro”. [MUSIC]

FEMALE: I’m also what they call an Albino. It means that I have no pigmentation, but believe it or not, both my parents are black. My father was shot when I was four. He did not accept me as his child.

PHILIP: In South Africa, which has a relatively large Albino population, anti Albino prejudice including job discrimination, is widespread. Not according to Thabo Leshilo. Leshilo is editor of the Sowetan newspaper, which has led a campaign against anti Albino bias in this self-proclaimed racial democracy.

THABO LESHILO: Every year we run a writing competition, with the South African Albinism Society. This competition is aimed at helping people understand albinism, and also to help eradicate in a small way ignorance about albinism in Africa, and also in South Africa specifically.

[ANNOUNCEMENT]

PHILIP: Alberto Pascoal, the Brazilian jazz instrumentalist, is an Albino. Like other famous Albino musicians, notably Salif Kieta of Mali and King Yellowman of Jamaica, Pasquale sees himself as a global ambassador for people with albinism, even in places where anti Albino prejudice runs deep.

HERMETO PASCOAL: Because even in Africa, two years ago when we were on tour in Johannesburg, I was treated with great respect, even as the audience acknowledged that I was an Albino.

PHILIP: As a teenager growing up in Caru-aru, Perhambuco in Brazil’s northeast, Pascoal says he was always being stared at, and sought comfort in the company of other Albinos.

HERMETO: The name of the street where I lived was Black Street, and there was one section where only Albinos lived. There’s a black drummer I love who also lived on Black Street, who now lives not far from here in Curitiba. We used to hang out on Black Street and play music all night. Blacks and Albinos on Black Street.

PHILIP: Pasquale says he has no problem with any race, and believes Albinos can do pretty much as they please in Brazil. They also have one clear advantage, he jokes. They’re all beautiful. As internationally acclaimed artists like Hermeto Pascoal talk openly about their lives, they’re challenging popular notions of what it means to be Albino.

MURRAY BRILLIANT: Albinism teaches us I think a lot about our assumptions about race.

PHILIP: This is Dr. Murray Brilliant, a geneticist and expert on albinism at the University of Arizona.

MURRAY: We define race primarily by pigmentation, and so any change in that pigmentation could change our perception of race, because when we see people who have different skin pigmentations and hair color, we make certain assumptions about them. And then when you see people with albinism those assumptions are not there anymore.

PHILIP: Thabo Leshilo, editor of the Sowetan newspaper of South Africa, agrees.

THABO: It also shows you I mean just how ridiculous it is, an obsession with color. To find some people with albinism, actually being whiter than a lot of white people that I know.

PHILIP: In fact, many non Albinos still don’t understand the truth of albinism, which explains why anti Albino prejudice remains pervasive in many parts of the world. But human rights advocates say education and the promotion of positive images of Albinos in popular culture is slowly helping to turn that prejudice around. For The World, I’m Philip Martin.

LISA: Our reports on Albinos were edited by Anthony Brooks. You can find photos and more on Albinos worldwide at our website. Just visit theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. Albinos in much of sub-Saharan Africa are in danger.  Albinos are people who lack the pigment melanin in their eyes, their skin, and their hair. It’s a genetic defect, but in much of Africa, it’s also reason for extreme and deadly prejudice. Phillip Martin has been reporting for us about race and color around the world. Today, Phillip has the first of two stories about the growing threat to albinos.

PHILLIP MARTIN: In a musty apartment building in central Madrid, human rights lawyer Javier Ramirez says he’s fighting to save a man’s life.  This past April, 18-year-old Moszy, as he calls himself, was among 60 African refuges that came ashore in the Spanish Canary Islands.  But with a face as white as chalk Moszy stands out.   He’s an albino, a condition that makes life in much of Africa miserable and dangerous. Moszy is locked away in a Spanish immigration detention center, so Javier Ramirez speaks for him.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: Albinos face persecution in terms of the Geneva Convention for Refugees because these people suffer personal persecution.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez is with the Spanish Commission for Refugees.  He says Moszy is seeking political asylum in Spain because albinos face persecution in his native Benin, in West Africa.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: They suffer violence.  You know, so they face a huge discrimination in their country for origin. And they suffered persecution not only by a few, but also by the huge majority of the community and the society.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez says across most of Africa, discrimination against people with albinism runs wide and deep, particularly in under-developed rural areas where people are less educated.  Thabo Leshilo is editor of the South African newspaper, The Sowetan, which has reported on human rights abuses against albinos in Southern Africa.

THABO LESHILO: ‘Cause there’s still a lot of ignorance. People still believe, for example, that people with albinism don’t die.  That they actually disappear, and don’t get buried.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Leshilo says over the past 19 months, these prejudices have taken a deadly turn. In Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya some 60 albinos have been victims of ritualistic murders in which their body parts have been hacked off and sold.  The buyers are witch doctors acting on behalf of often wealthy, sometimes educated businessmen seeking to improve their fortunes with so-called albino magic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You bring bones here and an albino’s hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How will that help?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Help?

PHILLIP MARTIN: This is a recording from A BBC investigation last year that exposed the business of killing albinos for their body parts.  It found that an arm fetches 800-dollars, and a leg up to a thousand dollars.   This conversation voiced over by actors is with a witch doctor in Northern Tanzania.  It was secretly recorded by the reporter posing as a businesswoman in search of albino body parts

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the albino’s hands?

WITCH DOCTOR: We use the potion from that, for your fishing nets.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the legs?

WITCH DOCTOR: The legs will help you in the mining business.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: If I can’t bring these body parts can you help?  I can’t do these things alone because, you know, I’m a woman.

WITCH DOCTOR: There are ways. There are people who can get these body parts for you.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Over the past 19 months, 46 people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania, 10 in Burundi, and at least one in Kenya.  Because traditional healers require body parts from living beings, some victims, as young as 2 months old, have been attacked and hacked to pieces alive. Rick Guidotti, a former New York fashion photographer turned human rights activist, recently traveled to Tanzania to investigate the killings.  He fears that the attacks could escalate as economic conditions worsen in East Africa.

RICK GUIDOTTI: When there’s an opportunity to feed ten children when you bring the bones of one child with albinism, it’s greed but it’s also survival.  And these children, their lives are threatened, and it’s only going to get worse until people stand up and start prosecuting the people that are suspected of these horrifying crimes.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That may finally be happening.  Just last week, eight men who were convicted in connection with the murders of albinos in Burundi were sentenced to prison.  One was told he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. The sentences were seen as a major victory for albino human rights advocates in Burundi.  But so far, despite many arrests, there have been no convictions in neighboring Tanzania. Tanzanian government officials say they are moving as fast as they can, but not fast enough for Peter Ash.

PETER ASH: If I was born in Tanzania, my life would be in danger, because I have exactly the same genetic disorder they do, and I can’t sit by and do nothing.

PHILLIP MARTIN: For Peter Ash it’s personal. Ash is an albino, who lives in Vancouver.  He says he suffered prejudice growing up in Canada, but nothing prepared him for what he encountered in Tanzania.  On a recent trip there Ash says young men taunted him with chants of “Deal, deal, let’s make a deal!” suggesting they could cash in on his body parts.  Now Ash travels with his own security detail to Tanzania, where he says he feels a deep kinship with the country’s albinos.

PETER ASH: There was an almost instant connection that I had with the folks there, because I’m not black and I’m not African and I don’t speak Swahili, but the fact is they are my people.  They are my brothers and sisters because genetically in some ways, they have as much or more in common with me then they do their own people. And I was really gripped by Edmund Burke who said, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” And I decided that was not an option for me.

PHILLIP MARTIN: So two years ago Ash founded Under the Same Sun, a Canadian charity to assist Tanzania’s albinos, who number nearly 200-thousand out of a population of 40 million people, one of the highest rates of albinism in the world.  Bill Oetting, a geneticist at the University of Minnesota, says albinos who escape the body poachers still face the prospect of shorter lives.

BILL OETTING: We have a situation where in Africa being light skin is going to be detrimental from a survival standpoint because you’re going to have a higher susceptibility to skin cancer.  And many individuals who have albinism within Africa do die early because of untreated skin cancer.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That motivated Peter Ash of Under the Same Sun to donate sunglasses, tanning lotion, and protective clothing for albinos in Tanzania.  He’s also funding cancer research and human rights monitoring in the country.  And he’s turned his attention to the albino asylum case in Spain.  While there is less information about the fate of albinos in Benin, where Moszy is from, Ash says he takes his claim of persecution seriously.

PETER ASH: I can tell you that through the whole area of Africa, beliefs exist that people with albinism are cursed, that the mother had sex with the white man, that she had sex with a European ghost, that these people are evil, that they’re possessed, that they’re substandard, that the disease is contagious.  There’s a host of myths that prevail for hundreds of years around people with albinism in large parts of Africa.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Even so, Spanish human rights advocates face an uphill battle proving that Moszy faces a real and deadly threat of persecution, if returned to Benin.  Meanwhile, 10′s thousands of other albinos continue to confront deadly prejudice across much of Africa. For the World, I’m Phillip Martin

LISA MULLINS: Tomorrow Phillip Martin examines efforts to generate positive images of albinos worldwide. For example, a group of South African journalists is sponsoring a writing competition.

SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALIST: This competition is aimed at helping people understand albinism, and also to help in educating in a small way ignorance about albinism in Africa and also in South Africa specifically.

LISA MULLINS: That’s coming up tomorrow on The World.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Phillip Martin

The Color Initiative is a series of reports that examine complex global issues of politics, culture, history and society through the framework of human perceptions and experiences related to color. Correspondent Phillip Martin is executive producer for Lifted Veils Productions, a Boston-based non-profit radio journalism organization dedicated to exploring issues that divide (and unite) society. The project is made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation and additional funding from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Funding Exchange.

“Skin”: a youth under apartheid Oct 30th, 2009: Phillip Martin has the true story of Sandra Laing. She grew up in South Africa in the 1960s and ’70s as the black daughter of white Afrikaners. Her story is now the topic of a movie: Skin premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, and was released to a limited number of US theaters in October Download MP3

Albinism worldwide July 28th, 2009: In his second report on albinism worldwide, Phillip Martin surveys global efforts to show albinos in a more favorable light. Martin interviews Rick Guidotti, a fashion photographer who, in 1999, photographed a young albino woman named Christine (pictured) for a Life Magazine photo essay entitled “Redifining Beauty.” Download MP3

>>>Read more on the albinism stories and see user comments

Skin whitening in Asia March 11th, 2009: Skin whitening is a growing industry in China, Japan, and India. For many Asians whitening is part of a long tradition, but these days it’s also the result of the powerful influence of white western culture. Download MP3

Africans and African Americans December 2nd, 2008:Phillip Martin reports on how the election of Barack Obama might help bring together two groups that haven’t always had a good relationship: African Americans and African immigrants. Download MP3

Racial attitudes in Puerto Rico August 20th, 2008: Puerto Rico is proud of its reputation as a racially diverse island. But a new report challenges the notion of racial harmony in Puerto Rico. Phillip Martin has the latest in his series of reports on color around the globe. Download MP3

Color and the US view of Iraq
March 21st, 2008
Philip Martin explores whether prejudice and racial stereotypes influence how Americans view Iraqis.
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Malaysia’s ethnic Indians protest
March 7th, 2008
Ethnic Indians in Malaysia have long supported that country’s ruling party. But not this time around. Before Malaysia’s elections, ethnic Indians were taking to the streets to protest discrimination.
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Race, immigration, and the presidential election
January 21th, 2008
Race and immigration are two major issues in the current presidential campaign. They’re also old standbys in American politics.
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Race in American movies
December 19th, 2007
Phillip Martin went to Taiwan, where most people form an image of America based on how the United States is portrayed in Hollywood films. Martin watched the recent film “Crash” with a group of young Taiwanese and then asked them to describe what the film says about race relations in the US.
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Race as a marketing tool
November 8th, 2007
Phillip Martin reports on how a European clothes company has fared championing racial diversity through its marketing campaign. Benetton’s goal has always been to sell casual clothing. But it’s used skin color to build its global brand.
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