Lies, grief and a ticket home for illegal Indian migrants

Dubai: Twenty-four Indian men, two of them too young to shave, were sitting under the fake palm trees in the transit zone at the Dubai airport, dressed in track suits like a sports team - but one dejected by loss.
The 24 were making the last leg of a journey home to the farmlands of Punjab. They had not meant to return so soon. Most had left six or nine months ago on a desperate voyage along the newest route of migration from Asia to Europe, going by plane to the Middle East, then across Africa and by sea up the west coast toward Europe.
But the voyage ended in disaster, leaving them stranded in a dismal warehouse in Mauritania. Now they were being escorted home.
As they headed home they told the painful tale of their failed migration, just a few stories from the vast global saga of people in motion. Some spoke of horrors at the hands of people-smugglers - drug injections, beatings and knife-fights in the dark hull of an ailing ship. Yet, for all the fear and privation, there was scant relief in their return to their villages and farms. Ahead of them lay shame, vanished livelihoods and insurmountable debt.
04/04/07 Caroline Brothers/International Herald Tribune, France

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Categories: Foreign Apr 2007