Published by Don Mattia Ferrari | 27 / Jul / 2023

Fati, Marie and Our Faults

We publish the article written by Don Mattia Ferrari, chaplain of Mediterranea Saving Humans, in La Stampa about the death of Fati and Marie, who died of hunger and thirst in the desert on the border between Libya and Tunisia.

The woman and the little girl who were deported in the desert together with the other migrants and died of thirst, whose photo has gone around the world in recent days, finally have a face, a name and a story.

The woman's name is Fati Dosso and she was born 30 years ago in the Ivory Coast. She moved to Libya, where she lived for five years. Her husband is from Cameroon. Together 6 years ago they gave birth to little Marie. Due to the situation of grave danger in Libya, they try several times to cross the Mediterranean, but are always caught at sea by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, financed by Italy and Europe on the basis of the 2017 agreements and then always renewed.

Fati, her husband and Marie surrender and go to Tunisia. In recent weeks, however, they are suddenly taken away by the military. Europe, at the urging of Italy, started to sign a memorandum with Tunisia to give it money in exchange for containing the migrants, and in this context, Tunisian militias started to capture migrants and deport them to the desert areas on the border with Libya.

Trapped in the desert, Fati's husband desperately goes to find water for them, at which point all traces of him are lost. Fati and little Marie do not survive: they end their lives like this, embraced, killed by thirst, killed by the deportations of the Tunisian militias, killed by the violence of Fortress Europe.

And these are just a few of the victims killed these days as a result of deportation by the Tunisian militias.From the trapped migrants, audios continue to arrive in which one hears children crying and the deportees pleading: 'We are dying one after the other. Help us, don't abandon us here'.

In the face of this plea, the only one who has responded promptly to the migrants' pleas for help is Pope Francis, who appealed for their safety in the Angelus on Sunday. The governments are proceeding swiftly on these policies and on the ratification of the Memorandum in which respect for human rights is not foreseen, while a large part of the opposition reacts with relative weakness, to the point that in Avvenire Marco Iasevoli has feared the risk of a sort of "broad understandings of cynicism and realpolitik" in Italy and Europe.Faced with all this, can we still call ourselves human? For those who have faith, can we still call ourselves Christians?

To justify this cynicism, the powerful use the usual excuse: there is no alternative. The biggest lie of this historical era is to make us believe that another world is not possible. Instead, there is an alternative and it was also seen in last Sunday's counter-summit, organised by Mediterranea and Refugees in Libya, which saw the interventions of activists from various African and European countries and migrants themselves. The counter-summit took place in Spin Time, the occupied Roman building where around 400 people of 27 different nationalities, including almost 100 minors, live together in a large community, along with several thousand activists from various movements, from student movements to ecological movements. The joy one breathes at Spin Time is proof another world is possible and much more beautiful.

The migration crisis is complex, it intertwines the human right to migrate with the crisis of global justice caused by capitalism that forces people to migrate in order to survive, and therefore requires solutions that guarantee the right to migrate and the right to stay.

Finding these solutions is not easy, but there is a way to find them, and Pope Francis has always indicated it in 'Brothers All', when he explains the importance of politics involving popular movements: "In certain closed and monochromatic economicist visions, it seems that there is no place for popular movements. [...] It is necessary to think about social, political and economic participation in ways that include popular movements and animate local, national and international governmental structures with that torrent of moral energy that arises from the involvement of the excluded in the construction of the common destiny [...]. Although they are annoying, although some 'thinkers' do not know how to classify them, one must have the courage to recognise that without them democracy atrophies, becomes a nominalism, a formality, loses representativeness, becomes disembodied because it leaves out the people in their daily struggle for dignity, in the construction of their destiny'.

So here is the way to the solution: governments and political forces recognise popular movements as active subjects and protagonists, involve them. Only in this way will it be possible to build true fraternity. And only an incarnated fraternity will allow us to build together the civilisation of love. Because another world is possible if we truly love.

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