Havana/The Cuban Yasmany Moreno denounces the “inhumane” conditions in which he is in one of the six detention centers staffed by the UN and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic. The 32-year-old man was deported two months ago by the United States and tells the network Univision that “every day the mood is worse. Everything is horrible: the food, the treatment… I can’t take it anymore.” Moreno says that “deported people have continued to arrive” and estimates that “there will be a total of about 80 or 90 people.”
Last May, Central Africa agreed to host migrants expelled by Donald Trump’s government in exchange for $81 million. The pact was questioned by the president of the opposition party Comprehensive Development Movement for Social Progress, Raymond Adouma, who considered it “dishonorable,” in addition to turning the country into a “human dumping ground to which the powerful” send “the unwanted.”
According to the Cuban, 11 women are in one of these detention centers. For the deportees who arrive, “they are distributed.”
They all live in precarious conditions. “There is no food, they only give us one a day.” Migrants must get bread, sugar, meat, milk, soap, which they purchase locally with “the money that families send us and the fundraising we have online.”
They all live in precarious conditions. “There is no food, they only give us one a day.” Migrants must get bread, sugar, meat, milk, soap
Furthermore, they are only allowed out two hours a day, but within the complex. “Here we cannot go out into the street,” emphasizes Moreno, who asserts: “There are no guarantees or security.”
He has been able to leave the place to record some videos that he shares on his social networks, but those escapades have turned out to be counterproductive, since, he claims, he has been “kidnapped twice.” According to the migrant, local security forces detain deportees. “When they see you on the street and you don’t present any identification, they put you in a kind of cell and ask you for money” to be released.
According to the Cuban, his family has twice had to shell out $85.5, the equivalent of 50,000 CFA francs, the currency that circulates in Central Africa.
Moreno trusts that “the situation will not worsen, nor will we get sick” with the arrival of more deportees. He assures that after the US Supreme Court gave the green light to continue with Trump’s expulsions to third countries, “what awaits these people is going to be terrifying. The truth is that no one expected that decision, it is something very strong for everyone.”
“The cruelest thing is that there is no warning that they are taking us to these countries,” he laments. They put him on the plane and he didn’t know where he was going. “Imagine the shock of knowing that you land in a country in Africa, without a passport, without documentation. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
