ROME POLICE last weekend discovered more than 100 illegal immigrants, including 24 Afghan minors, hiding in and around Ostiense railway station, one of the city’s major stations. All the young people are believed to have been in transit with their intended final destinations being Germany, Norway, Sweden or the United Kingdom where they would hope to meet up with family members or other Afghans.
Initial reports suggested that “Afghan children” had been sleeping in the sewer system beneath the station. However, Rome Council Social Services official Sveva Belviso said yesterday that the Afghans were not children but rather 16- and 17-year-old youths. Furthermore, while they had used manholes leading to the sewers to hide their few belongings, they had in fact been sleeping on station benches.
The social services official, who visited the youths in a Rome “holding centre” to which they have been transferred, said that many of them claimed they had paid up to $10,000 dollars for an illegal “safe passage” that took them from Afghanistan via Pakistan, Turkey, Greece and finally to Italy en route for northern Europe.
However, media reports suggest that some of the Afghans may be as young as 14. Speaking to reporters yesterday, one of the Afghan minors, 14- or 15-year-old “Khaled”, claimed that he had made at least part of the journey to Italy strapped to the axle of a lorry. He also said that he had been offered money to prostitute himself but had refused, preferring instead to scavenge for scraps of food in rubbish bins.
The Rome branch of the charity Save The Children reports that the numbers of Afghan minors passing through Rome has increased significantly in recent years, passing from 32 in 2004 to 264 in 2007.
Save The Children also says that more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors arrived in Rome last year from various countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.