THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora! The African Courier is an international magazine published in Germany to report on Africa and the Diaspora African experience. The first issue of the bimonthly magazine appeared on the newsstands on 15 February 1998. The African Courier is a communication forum for European-African political, economic and cultural exchanges, and a voice for Africa in Europe.
According to a report of the Italian news agency ANSA, a 20-year-old Ghanaian migrant has killed himself in a Caritas facility in Cremona. He was visiting a friend in the Italian city and was staying temporarily in the facility. The man, whose name was not revealed in the report, is believed to have suffered from psychological trauma.
The director of the Cremona Caritas, Antonio Pezzetti, was quoted as saying that the young man had been taken to a hospital by a friend in the evening of 17 July for psychological unease.
”Around 11 PM, while he was waiting for medical tests, he left. No one would have foreseen what happened,” he added. The young man’s body was found at 4 am the following day in the stairwell of the facilities by one of the guests. He’s believed to have poisoned himself.
The diocese expressed its condolences to his family in Ghana and said that many youths in their facilities ended up with psychological problems due to long waits for official documents allowing them to stay in the country after many difficulties in their ”journeys of hope” towards an expected better life in the EU.
In April, a Gambian migrant named Gaye Demba also killed himself at a reception centre run by the Catholic Diocese of Turin. The 28-year-old man hanged himself.
Turin Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia said the Gambian took his life due to “interior wounds that we weren’t able to heal.”
Health experts say most irregular migrants suffer from psychological trauma, among other mental illnesses, due to their terrible experiences travelling through the Sahara desert, being exposed to human rights abuses in Libya and their risky journey across the Mediterranean.
Many of these African migrants, who have seen friends died during their journey and themselves have suffered physical violence, arrive in Europe to be faced with new uncertainties.
Felix Dappah
