Identification bracelet

A plastic bracelet with an identification number—the kind they give people during migrant landings.
Mamadou, a survivor of the hell of the desert and the Libyan detention camps.

For the authorities it is just a procedure: a circle of plastic tied around the wrist of those who step off rescue ships. For Mamadou, that bracelet was for years the only trace of himself he had left. He arrived from Mali, fleeing civil war and political persecution. He crossed the desert before falling into the hands of traffickers in Libya.

In Libya, a country where migrants are systematically tortured with the tacit complicity of international agreements, Mamadou remained imprisoned for twelve months, a victim of torture and systematic exploitation. When he finally managed to go out to sea, he watched his travelling companions swallowed by the waves before being rescued.

Once in Italy, he was placed in a CAS (Extraordinary Reception Centre) without any legal protection and he turned to our Sportello Diritti. He was still wearing that bracelet. He said he could not take it off: “It reminds me of where I come from and the friends the sea took from me.” That number was his only link to those who had not made it.

After three years of legal struggle fought side by side, Mamadou finally obtained international protection. Only then, freed from the fear of deportation, from the nightmare of being sent back and from unjust laws, did he decide to give us that bracelet. It was no longer a chain. It had become a testament to someone who had resisted death despite everything.

“I am no longer a number.”