Hawa survives: A woman’s fight against violence and oppression
Sea-EyeTRIGGER WARNING: This text deals with sexual and sexualised violence and experiences of discrimination.
Nearly four years ago, I embarked on one of the most memorable experiences of my journalism career: I sailed off aboard the SEA-EYE 4 to join its very first rescue mission in the Mediterranean.
It was a large, busy and dramatic operation, during which Sea-Eye rescued 408 souls, including 150 children. Most of them were distressed and deprived of social contact after spending months in detention centres in Libya.
We also rescued five pregnant women, three of whom fell pregnant as a result of rape in Libya. As a journalist documenting human rights violations, I paid particular attention to their stories, wondering how the stress of the mothers might impact the babies who would be born in a continent that rejected them and left them to drown.
When we disembarked in Sicily in June 2021, it was a hot summer day and we were euphoric after a rescue operation that everyone survived in good health. Only a month later, I decided I would travel to France, where some of the French-speaking rescued persons decided to seek shelter. I wanted to document how their stories would unfold in Europe.
I first met Hawa (not her real name), an outspoken 21-year old woman from Mali who was 3 months pregnant when we rescued her. She travelled alone, hoping she could find a job in Europe, allowing her to support her mother, who was suffering from a grave illness and living in poverty.
Hawa’s pregnancy was a result of brutal rape in a Libyan detention centre, she told me. “When the men in the detention centre rape you, there’s usually three of them,” she told us on the ship. “One is raping you while the second points a gun at you. And the third one films the scene.”
We decided we would meet in Paris, where she told me she lived after she left a refugee centre in Sicily where she and the other refugees had disembarked at first. But when I called her the day of the meeting, she refused to give me her new address. Surprised, I asked her why. After a long phone conversation, her voice finally broke and she told me the truth – after she had left Italy, she ended up homeless in the streets of Paris. “I had nowhere to go and I called my mother in the Parisian metro, crying,” she told me. “Another man from Mali overheard me speaking in Bambara, and offered to house me for the night,” she said.
When we finally met, I understood she was not only looking for accommodation, but also for urgent medical help. She had five euros in her pocket, and complained about gynaecological problems accompanied by excruciating pain and bleeding. She was confused and lightheaded, probably as a result of the pain. She hadn’t eaten in days.
I immediately took her to a charity providing medical aid to refugees. After the medical exam, it became clear she had had a miscarriage shortly after she had been rescued by the SEA-EYE 4; in addition to that, she was likely suffering from an infection that exacerbated her female genital mutilation, probably linked to the multiple brutal rapes she had been subjected to in Mali (she gave the permission to write about the topic of female genital mutilation in order to raise awareness of this awful practice, still common in many African countries). And, as it turned out, she also had diabetes.
The doctor at the charity told me to take her to the emergency room immediately because of the severely low blood sugar levels. She wrote us a referral letter and urged me to run to the nearest hospital that would accept persons with no recourse to public funds. When we arrived at the hospital, I had to fight with the staff to make sure they treated her. “If she has no ID, there is nothing we can do for her,” the person at the reception barked at me. Hawa was terrified and could not say a word, even though she was fluent in French. “I was a volunteer on the ship that rescued her as she was drowning in the middle of the Mediterranean and she is sick,” I had to shout. That’s what it took to reach the moment when the doctors’ empathy finally switched on and they decided to take her in.
I waited with Hawa in the emergency room for hours. The doctors treated her for diabetes, but did not take any actions to treat her miscarriage, her bleeding or her female genital mutilation, even though I told them she was likely in danger. (To this day, I remain shocked: as a white European woman, I cannot imagine the same would happen to me. If I came to the emergency room bleeding after a miscarriage, I would never be ignored or told it is not a matter of urgency. But Hawa was treated for her blood sugar levels only.)
When she stepped out of the exam room, she seemed like a different person: she was no longer dizzy, shy and confused. The diabetes medication kicked in. The doctor asked her when the last time she had access to insulin was – she recalled it was back in Mali, some 5 or 6 months ago. It was hard to imagine how much physical pain she had to undergo. I accompanied her to the house of the man who helped her in the Parisian metro. She told me she would stay with him for the time being. She did not want me to worry about her.
A month after our encounter at the emergency service, I traveled to France again, to meet with her, this time in Lyon. She had been transferred to a public accommodation centre for asylum seekers while she was waiting for her asylum application to be processed. That day, we had pizza together and then we talked about her life in France. I noticed she had bought some fake eyelashes.
I never found out if she was granted asylum in France. Even though she sporadically kept in touch with me, that day in Lyon was the last time I saw her, before she deleted her social media accounts and changed her phone number.
Hawa’s story is one of surviving. We thank her deeply for sharing her story with us.
About Sara Cincurova
Sara Cincurova is a freelance human rights journalist. She was born in Slovakia and currently lives in Ukraine. Her main areas of expertise are migration, conflict, human rights, foreign policy, humanitarian issues and women’s rights. Sara’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC News and Der Spiegel, among others. In 2021, she was a journalist on board the rescue ship SEA-EYE 4 in the Mediterranean. During the mission, the crew saved 408 people from drowning.
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Maria Giulia Trombini (Sea-Watch)