Julia Leithauser / SOS MEDITERRANEE
Drissa is 25 and from Mali. He was rescued on February 23, 2025 from a fiberglass boat in the Libyan SRR. Drissa was always smiling, always complying with all rules on board and thanking us for everything crew members did for him. There was a natural aura of wisdom glowing from him.
*Name changed to preserve privacy.
SOS MEDITERRANEE / Alisha Vaya
“I left Mali because of the jihadists attacking my village. These people say they’re waging a religious war, but we think it isn’t.
These terrorists will come and attack you. They kill people. They want to eliminate people in any way.
When they arrive in a village, they can even rape women there. They can rape; in some villages next to ours, they raped women there in front of their family. You can’t talk, because they carry guns. When you just talk, they kill you.
Killing men is nothing to them. Men are like a chicken to them; it’s as if we kill chickens every day to eat, for them, a man is nothing. They try to seize power so they can rule the country.
They killed a lot of people in my village. Everything is destroyed there. They killed some of my family members.
SOS MEDITERRANEE / Alisha Vaya
Since I saw that I thought it couldn’t go on like this. I thought to myself “It’s better to leave this country.”
That’s what made me want to leave Mali and come to Europe.
I went through Niger, Algeria, Libya before taking the sea. While crossing the desert, we were attacked several times by mafias, especially in the North of Mali. Some people in my group were killed.
We say slavery ended a long time ago. But when I started my journey, I realised it’s far from being over.
What’s happening is worse than before, especially in Algeria and Libya.
Some people still consider black skin to be something else, something that isn’t human.”
