SOS MEDITERRANEE / Muriel Cravatte
Asmaan* and Moska*
A*, 34, her one month old baby Arman* and M*, 29, are two sisters from Afghanistan. They were rescued with 128 other survivors in a complex rescue operation from an unseaworthy 15-meter steel fishing vessel in the Ionian Sea, close to the Italian coast, on December 15th, 2024. The survivors told our teams they had been at sea for up to six days, departing from Izmir, Turkey between December 8th and 9th.
A* had a boyfriend there and got pregnant: “In Afghanistan, you need to be married to have a baby. My boyfriend’s family, who is related to the Taliban, was opposed to this marriage, because I am Hazara, one of Afghanistan’s largest ethnic minorities, persecuted by Taliban fighters. My family is in danger now because of this: they told me I had to leave Afghanistan”.
Her sister adds: “We must be strong, but we are very worried for our family that is still in Afghanistan. If a Taliban finds out that a baby is born out of marriage, the Taliban law is to kill the woman. The life of a woman is more threatened than a man’s. Even more if she is Hazara.”
So, A* took the decision to flee Afghanistan. Her younger sister decided to accompany her, to protect her and the baby to come. They traveled to Iran in a car, illegally. Then to Turkey. The trip lasted for three weeks: “We even had to walk for some time. I was very tired and stressed. I had to stop in Turkey. We went to the hospital to find help and check on the baby. There, the doctor told me that the baby needed to get out. Arman was born one month early because of the trip and the stress provoked by the voyage.”
“Afghanistan and Turkey are the 2 worst countries to be in the world. The whole world has forgotten about us, in Afghanistan. Many European countries were present in Afghanistan before the Taliban (NATO). We had embassies to help apply for asylum. Now that the Taliban are here, they all left. They all forgot about us.
Life in Turkey was very bad, police persecuted us: they asked for our papers and considered us as illegal. They took us to the police station and shouted at my sister, ordering her to go back to Afghanistan. Even though she was pregnant, they ordered her to run. But she could not. That was two days before Arman was born.”
Arman stands for “wish” in Pashto. He was born in Yalova, Turkey on 12 November 2024.
M* explains that after giving birth, her sister was not feeling good and did not have enough milk to breast feed Arman. She needed to rest. “We waited one month for A* to recover. After that we, decided to go to Europe, maybe Switzerland. We heard that we could be safe there. We just want to find a place in Europe to be safe and to go the university to be able to find a job.”
Asmaan*, Moska* and 161 other survivors were later disembarked in Ravenna on December 17th, 2024.
*Names modified to protect the identity of the person.
Testimony collected on December 17th, 2024, by Morgane Lescot onboard Ocean Viking.
