An Albanian whose asylum claim was turned down hanged himself in a Galway hotel room. Nuala Haughey hears a story of despair
Ireland wasn't the first choice of adopted home for Sokol Hata, a native of Albania. Three times he boarded a flight from Dublin for Canada with high hopes of a new life there, and three times he was turned back at Toronto airport.
At least this is what his friends say happened. For it is difficult to piece together the life of this 32-year-old immigrant who lived and worked here illegally under a false name and had a refugee application based on a fabricated claim that he was from war-stricken Kosovo rather than simply bleak, corrupt and poverty-stricken Albania.
Sokol's friends and family describe him as lively, chatty and resourceful. He had a way about him which touched people. When his asylum claim failed and he sought leave to remain in Ireland on humanitarian grounds, 28 people testified to the qualities which they believed made him worthy of a chance to live here permanently. But Sokol's application to the Minister for Justice was rejected and he was facing deportation when he killed himself just over a week ago.
Leaving behind a thankyou note to his Albanian friends here, Sokol travelled from Dublin to a hotel in Galway where he checked into a room and hanged himself with the cable from a telephone. He had earlier tried to take an overdose, but, as he wrote in the last of three suicide notes, "the pills don't work. I have to try something else".
In another of these haunting letters left in the hotel room and written in idiosyncratic English in a childish hand, Sokol said he decided to kill himself rather than face being sent back to his country. "I know that I have no future and I could get killed there, so I'm killing myself here," he said. "All my life I tried to work hard and to build a proper life. When I came to Ireland I start work. I don't get social or anything from the government. And I pay taxes for this government but still the prime minister want to send me back. Fuck you prime minister . . . because you don't give a fuck for anybody else."
Sokol's grieving friends and family cannot fathom how such a versatile individual felt so cornered that killing himself was his only remaining option. There were other avenues left unexplored, one of which was to try to regularise his position by securing a work permit, as his friend Haxhi had done. While technically work permit applicants must apply from out of the country, the authorities can and do make exceptions. Another option for Sokol was to quit Ireland for some other prosperous western European state. The stressful life of an illegal economic immigrant was not new to him; before he came here, he had worked in Italy, Greece and the UK.
Sokol was from an extended family of emigrants who have fled the former communist Albania, which has been cursed with corrupt governments, high unemployment, a worn-out infrastructure and widespread gangsterism and violence. It is estimated that the Albanian economy receives remittances from abroad of up to €600 million annually, mostly from immigrants in Greece and Italy.
Albanian gangsters prosper in their lucrative trade in illegal immigrants trying to penetrate the walls of fortress Europe. Hundreds die trying to reach Italy each year and Italian police scour the beaches and the Adriatic sea to fend off clandestine landings.
Sokol's maternal uncle, Qemal Shini, travelled this week to Galway to identify his nephew's body. He is legally resident in Italy, where he arrived illegally 10 years ago in search of work. Two of Sokol's three brothers live in Greece, his only sister in Italy. That leaves only his elderly parents and one brother living at home, in the Diber district of northern Albania.
Seated in a Dublin city hotel with Sokol's friends, Haxhi, Arjan and Ramzan, Qemal lowers his head and says in his native language "tragic, tragic, tragic". He seems angry and confused about his nephew's death. Angry with the Irish authorities for not offering Sokol the stability he has pursued for years, and perhaps angry too with the injustice of a world where Sokol and thousands of economic migrants like him must struggle and scheme and tell lies just to achieve the security and prosperity that we in western Europe take for granted.
It will be up to Qemal to explain to his sister's family that their son took his own life. They will naturally suspect that someone killed him, perhaps in order to steal money from them. That's because that sort of thing happens in Albania.
Qemal offers another morsel of information about Sokol's life; he says he was married and left his wife in Albania and her brother was out to get him. The interview starts with everyone referring to Sokol as Ismit, for that is the name he used with friends, his solicitor and employers. After several minutes, Qemal has a heated conversation with the other men in Albanian. Then they announce that Ismit was merely a name Sokol adopted, it is the name of his brother. Another layer of the life of an illegal immigrant is exposed.
Ramzan says he lived with Sokol for two years, after meeting him casually through other Albanian acquaintances. When Sokol received the deportation notice he immediately stopped work and moved out to live with Haxhi, as he feared immigration gardaí might come to deport him. One of his former employers, a building contractor (who says he paid tax and PRSI for Sokol, even though he was illegal) says he seemed confident his leave request would succeed.
"He phoned me the night before he died and said 'I'm just phoning to say thanks for everything you've done for me and I appreciate it'. I said, 'Ismit, is something wrong, are you going away?' He said 'I can't really talk about that, I just wanted to thank you boss'. I figured he was trying to go to another country illegally."