Qassim Aways Saalim, a Somali asylum-seeker and journalist in Malta, speaks to KARL STAGNO-NAVARRA
“Let no Maltese or any other European citizen witness the horrors of a lawless nation like mine, and never feel the urge of running away, not only from war, but also from certain death, where you are hunted down with guns and machetes because all you did was speak on a radio station and appeal for peace.”
Qassim Aways Saalim, a young Somali migrant with humanitarian protection in Malta, speaks to me from his wind battered tent at the Hal Far tent village. 27-year-old Qassim is no ordinary refugee. He is also a journalist documenting his now one-year long stay in Malta, six months of which he spent in detention at Safi Barracks.
Qassim – formerly of Radio Simba in the Somali capital Mogadishu – shows me two plain copybooks, where he is neatly documenting his ordeal as an asylum seeker. “I am writing this because in the years to come, I want Europe to know what welcome my fellow people and myself have been given. All I know of Europe is Malta. I have lived in detention for months and lived in squalid conditions, until Allah heard my prayers and was released from my prison. After the cage, I was put in a tent.”
As he flips the pages of his copybook, and recounts his traumatic story, Qassim still manages to smile, because of our common knowledge about Somalia and its capital Mogadishu. Qassim comes from an area known as Villa Italia – an old colonial building that used to house the Italian governor and subsequently warlord Siad Barre. The area is quite derelict and poverty is rife. Many Somalis consider the area as ‘safe’ compared to the other parts of the completely destroyed city, however until just last week, mortars caused death and havoc among many innocent families.
In lawless Somalia, warlords and rival tribal factions have never surrendered their weapons. When the Americans abandoned Mogadishu it became a free-for-all, and hundreds of thousands of Somalis have died, or ran away.
“I worked as a radio speaker on Radio Simba broadcasting. Simba in Swahili means lion, and the radio was one of many that broadcasted appeals for peace. My radio director, my colleagues have all been killed. Others like me who managed to escape and kept up with their peace campaigns have been hunted down and been killed in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, and in places as far as Nigeria,” he says, as he fidgets with a copy of the press card he held in Somalia.
“You see I am not only a journalist but also a dissident,” Qassim says, as he also describes his escape on foot and by truck through the dangerous route out of Somalia into Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad and eventually into Libya where he hid in a farm for two whole months not to be caught by the Libyan police, until the day he set off on a boat towards Europe together with other Somali nationals. He was rescued by a Maltese patrol boat after spending three days stalled at sea, and he recounts his ordeal at the hands of the Maltese authorities in July of last year.
“We were whisked into a bus when we arrived to shore, and taken for fingerprinting. After that we were just dumped into a big cage. I knew I reached a European member state, I was constantly asking myself is this really it? I started to doubt it, and forgot all about it as soon as I was just kept behind bars for months, living like an animal.”
Qassim has since been released into an open centre after his request for humanitarian status was upheld by the Maltese government. He was transferred to the Hal Far tent village. But time and calendars don’t even matter here. The worst is that people like Qassim and hundreds of others, have no idea of what is to happen with them. What future could they possibly have?
He spends his days sitting on his bunk-bed, writing his diary and documenting his life, and his homeland. “I need books, paper, pens, internet,” he says, while I promise to relay his requests to Reporters Sans Frontiers. Before I leave, Qassim asks me to take a picture of us together. He smiles and asks me not to forget him.
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