Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. From time to time the sea spits a jaw, a vertebra, a rib onto the white sand. Pieces of human remains drying in the sun like scorpion shells. Many bodies collapse face down on the warm sand, looking into the belly of the earth, looking for a place to take refuge. Thousands of others wander like nameless tombs in an abyssal bottom in the open sky. The sea swallowed them in one bite, without guilt, without remorse.
The drama of immigration is a labyrinth of existential paradoxes that are built on the cynicism of double standards: high-end emigrants or invisible format emigrants. Soccer is no exception. There are stories that to be understood require a long life. This is not the case of Alu Souleymane (fictitious name at the request of his foster family), and who, at only 7 years old, hid in the corner of a “patera” to cross part of the ocean and reach the shore with one last breath. . That was how he felt fear in his bones, in his flesh, in his soul. Fear is a dangerous weapon, only hunger overcomes it. Between fear and hunger, big money is amassed: black and white. Never before have so many mouths been fed with so few hands. Those raw materials that run amok on the fury of the Chicago Stock Exchange indices prove it.
Alu was hungry, and decided to appease it by escaping from a continent where its main economic activity has become the export of hungry people. She also came hungry for soccer, and she found herself face to face with the “gentlemen” of FIFA. Those guys in suits and ties who are always doing what they shouldn’t be doing: buying wills and neglecting the most unprotected football.
From the Canary Islands, Alu decided to write them a letter: “For the Gentlemen of FIFA”. “I am an 11-year-old boy who wants to play soccer. I have been training for almost two years and trying hard to be able to play soon with my teammates (…) I don’t understand why they let them play and not me, the only difference is it’s that I’m black and I was born in Africa and that’s the least it should matter”, this is how Alu expressed his frustration and his feeling of discrimination.
The Zurich-based body decided, in 2001, to impose strict regulations that prevented migrant and homeless children from participating in official FIFA competitions. The children could train, but not compete. Thus, the inclusive power and social protection that football could generate was lost. His moving letter and the brave behavior of Judge Reyes Martek finally achieved that in October 2022 – at the FIFA congress in Auckland – the modification that migrant children under state guardianship can be registered to compete in a club as long as they are not professionals.
Paradoxes of fate, in the same month of October, the extreme right-wing government of Georgia Meloni decreed a state of emergency in a shameful turn of the screw to European anti-immigration policies with two orders of provisions. The first with a decree law of February 23, 2023, aimed at sabotaging rescue operations for migrants at sea. The second provision is a measure as senseless as it is cruel. It consists of the abolition of the so-called special protection that until today had allowed the reception, integration and, in many cases, access to employment to thousands of immigrants without political asylum and in conditions of serious hardship and vulnerability.
The right to emigrate is a valid fundamental right. It is also the oldest of human rights, having been formulated for the first time in the 16th century by Francisco de Vitoria. We do not belong to where we come from, but where we want to go. Foreigner is a beautiful word if no one forces you to be. Let them tell Meloni.
2023-05-13 03:01:00
#gentlemen #FIFA #hunger #Alu #hatred #Meloni
