Where are the foreigners?

This is a frequent question asked at the Niger border. Where are the foreigners? is meant to identify them, set them aside and steal their money as much as possible. Traveling document and the principle of free movement of persons in ECOWAS remain but mere documents and principles. Or rather only good as subjects to be discussed during expensive international meetings.

The situation is known to all, particularly to the least privileged, the international migrants and the women. Any border is a trap, a risk, a time of segregation, an untold violence. If some countries use walls and fences, here they use violence with human face. An incarceration room, some insults and sometimes rape.

Each one with his border
Each one with his border. Asking some people to be set aside is a form of what was known as “apartheid”. Whether in South Africa or elsewhere, it was disgusting and sparked off a feeling of indignation as time went on. However, the domestic one, is no less insulting. This is an obvious and painful type of discrimination that hurts human dignity. Especially those who perpetuate it shamelessly..
The two migrants from Guinea had left Alger on April 7, 2015 to arrive in Niamey on Sunday April 12. Their journey had been smooth until In-Guezzam, Algeria where they were informed that the Niger border of Assamaka was closed. After waiting for a day at the bus station, with other migrants, it become necessary for them to board a vehicle to Arlit passing through the desert. The Niger soldiers stopped them in the desert made them alight from the vehicle asking were where the foreigners. Once identified, there were set into groups, based on their countries of origin. Each Nigerian and Cameroonians paid 15,000 CFA about USD 25. For other West African citizen, they paid about USD 17 each while the Niger nationals paid barely USD 2.
Amadou and Diallo had already experienced the trauma of living as migrants in Algeria. They worked hard in building sites without being paid full salary, they have been to jail for lack of immigration papers. Amadou and Diallo had equally tried to reach Spain taking up the challenge of straddling the fences of Melilla in Morocco. After a stay in the forest of Nador, stripped and whipped every day by morocco police, they decided to return home. Thus arriving in Arlit in Niger. There, they were taxed USD 25: 17 at entering and 8 at the exit of the city. The uranium mining in Arlit may not be as profitable as before but the activities of the frontiers are, at least, for someone! And that’s not all. Before entering Agadez they were again taxed USD 8.

Our migrant friends go home without any money
Our migrant friends are returning home without money, thanks to the help of an association based in Algiers. It could therefore be said that this association is partly financing security agents working at the frontier…
In the beginning of the Bible an officially recognised sacred book, there is a question God asked Cain, the one who according to the Bible story killed his brother. “Where is your brother”? Asked God, and Cain answered: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” This answer of Cain reported by the same book is surprisingly echoed nowadays.
Indeed identifying people among others as foreigners so as to steal money from them is to give the same answer as Cain did, history from that point of view has not moved an inch. Let’s watch out and be careful as one day somewhere in this world, we too may be strangers.

Mauro Armanino, anthropologist,
Niamey, April 2015