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CNS Story:
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SUDANESE-ROME Dec-22-2004 (600 words) xxxi
In Rome, Sudanese refugees caught in frustrating waiting game
By Kristine Crane
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- As dusk settles, the smell of fuel permeates an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Rome.
The smell emanates from a generator revving up for the night to give a bit of warmth and light to the Sudanese who call this home.
"Our greatest preoccupation is our future," said Nur Khamis, as he removed the hood of his down coat to answer questions.
"All of us want to construct a future and get out of the tunnel that we are in here," he said in mid-December.
Sudanese asylum seekers occupied the warehouse four years ago when the city failed to provide housing for them, said Abdelazim Ali Adam Koko, a social worker at the Jesuit Refugee Service's Pedro Arrupe Center in Rome.
"This is a violation of human rights. At least let them live in dignity with shelter and food," said Koko, who is also a consultant for the Italian Council on Refugees.
In the occupied warehouse, sheets have been stuffed into the cracks where the walls and ceiling meet to keep out the wind, but there are some unprotected spots.
Like most of the 200 Sudanese here, Khamis is from the Darfur region of Sudan. The 25-year old shepherd arrived in Italy more than two years ago and immediately applied for political asylum. After being denied, he appealed the state's decision and is still awaiting the verdict.
"How could I go back to Sudan? The people in Darfur are suffering more every day, and my family is in an increasingly dangerous situation," Khamis said.
He gets news on Darfur from Internet printouts taped to the warehouse walls and by talking by mobile phone with family members spread across refugee camps in Sudan and Chad.
There are an estimated 1.2 million internally displaced people within the Darfur region and 200,000 refugees in Chad, according to experts at a press conference held at Vatican Radio Dec. 15.
Although there are no precise figures, most Sudanese who now arrive in Italy are likely from the Darfur region, Koko said.
Like all asylum seekers, they often wait a year for the verdict on their asylum applications, he said.
With a proposed asylum law failing to pass in Parliament, Italy continues dealing with asylum procedures in a slow and often unjust way, Koko said.
"My impression is that they do not want people to ask for political asylum," Koko said. "Italy has the instinct of copying. Now they see other European Union countries' policies for refugees are getting worse, and they do the same."
James Stapleton, communications officer at the Jesuit Refugee Service in Rome, blames incompetence at the helm of the Italian commission in charge of granting asylum.
"When in doubt, lawyers would give candidates the benefit of the doubt. This is not in the mind-set of decision-makers in Italy," Stapleton said.
The commission includes representatives from the Foreign and Internal Ministries, the provincial prefect, and one U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees consultant without voting rights, Koko said.
Asylum seekers are not entitled to work; some sell things on the streets or pump gas illegally, Koko said.
Bahredim Bashir, a 35-year-old farmer from Darfur, is trying to learn Italian. "Without any light, it's hard to study," Bashir said.
"I did not think that in Europe you live as you live in the worst villages in Africa," Bashir said.
Khamis said he is shocked by the living conditions in Italy for refugees or asylum seekers.
"I never thought that Italy was a country where you could live in an undignified way," he said.
END
Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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