The Citizen e-edition

‘We watched the migrants drown’

PRIEST, WOMAN TRY TO RELIEVE HELL OF DISPLACED ‘We’re defending lives, where there is life, it must be protected.’

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

It was witnessing a tragedy that would change the course of Jose Antonio Benitez’s life, prompting him to leave a lifetime of teaching to throw himself into full-time work with migrants.

A Catholic priest living in Seville, Benitez used to take teenagers to Tangiers in Morocco where they would spend 10 to 15 days working alongside migrants to learn about the problems facing this marginalised community.

“I realised there was quite a lot of prejudice about the issue of migrants and prejudices only change when you come face-toface with reality and meet these people,” said Benitez, 57.

At the end of the trip, they were taking the boat back to Spain when they suddenly spotted five people in a flimsy rubber dinghy in trouble in very choppy water.

“The catamaran approached to try and help but couldn’t stop the engines because the sea was so rough. It hit the dinghy and they all fell in,” he said.

“On deck, we were all screaming but nobody could hear and we watched them drown.”

Two of them were saved but a crew member who jumped in to help was sucked under the catamaran and also died.

“It was a horrendous tragedy, one which will stay with me forever. That experience changed me because I realised what people were living through just wasn’t normal,” he said.

Within a few years, he began working full-time with migrants, first in Malaga, then in the Canary Islands, where he helps families search for loved ones who have gone missing en route to the Atlantic archipelago. For Adelina Abdola, a 56-yearold resident of port neighbourhood Las Palmas, a protest pushed her to make the life-changing decision to open her home to migrants living rough on the beach.

“When I saw on the news about all these migrants arriving in Arguineguin port, I really wondered what I could do,” she said.

It was at a pro-migrant rally in April that she realised how. “At the demonstration, we were all white people and suddenly the migrants came up from the beach with banners reading: ‘We just want a chance’ – I broke down in tears.

“That’s when I decided to take some of these kids in.”

Although many have helped migrants, there have been several weeks of anti-immigration rallies and sporadic protests, after a year in which more than 20 000 people reached the Canary Islands.

But as rights activist Helena Maleno said: “We are defending lives, and where there is life, it must be protected.”

WORLD

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2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-04T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://thecitizen.pressreader.com/article/281852941854552

The Citizen