When Rahma Abukar Ali boarded a migrant ship in Libya on August 22, she knew the trip would mark the start of something new and hopeful or bring an end to her life
Ten hours after the boat left Libya, sailing north, it was intercepted by a British vessel. The crew then transferred Ali and 453 other migrants to a German navy ship known as the Schleswig-Holstein.
Ships were patrolling the area under the European Union’s program to search and seize vessels suspected of smuggling people across the Mediterranean.
The EU expanded the program this year in the wake of criticism it was forcing migrants to risk their lives in unsafe, rickety boats. The U.N. refugee agency says more than 3,100 migrants have died in the Mediterranean this year. Another 643,000 have successfully made the crossing.
Ali went into labor after spending one day and night aboard the rescue vessel, making her daughter, Sophia, likely the first migrant baby to be born on a German frigate.
“Two doctors on the German ship helped me and took care of me to deliver the baby,” she says. “God saved me, and thanks to the government of Germany.”
The ship docked in Italy, where mother and baby were given postnatal care coastal town of Trapani.
Now in Germany, Ali says she and her daughter are doing fine, and that immigration officers have told her Sophia is — figuratively speaking — a “German citizen,” if only because she was born aboard a ship sailing under their flag.
The future of baby Sophia is a bright one, Ali says.
“I am hopeful my daughter would get the full citizenship and will have a better life in Germany.”
SOURCE:VOA