Ah, Timor… the mafias that try to silence them – Portugal
In the last two months, thousands of Timorese arrived in Portugal, deluded by the European Eldorado. They found hunger, unsanitary housing and precariousness. Many stayed on the street.
It is in East Timor that human trafficking and illegal labor networks operating in the Alentejo camps, both in Alqueva and Odemira, now have their interests focused. The High Commission for Migration declares in the next two months 650 newly arrived Timorese citizens. But the terrain as an organization of social solidarity that acts in believes it must be two thousand. The poor, in the overwhelming, blackmailed and main conditions, are hostages of the “bosses” who were ready to give them the greatest importance in Portugal, almost always deplorable. Many end up homeless.
It is on the first floor of a little house on the corner between Largo da Cruz Nova and Rua de Mértola, in Serpa, that Anjo and Ângela are located. Are boyfriends. He is 22, she is 23. He did his second year of Economics, while “earning a few crowns” as a taxi driver in Dili. She gave up her secondary education in exchange for a job as a cashier in a store in the Timorese capital. “Life there is hell, there is little money, there are no conditions, there is no future”, they say, overlapping each other. Last July, head to Portugal. “It was a mistake”, they lament now.