the Swedish Migration Board Podcasts
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The poet Caalaa was sitting in the cell next to the journalist Martin Schibbye at the police station in Addis Ababa. He is tortured daily. Caalaa escapes for her life and ends up alone in a wintry Hälsingland.
During Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson's time in a cell at the police station in Addis Ababa, they could for several days see how prisoners were picked up at the rest yard from an underground part of the police station. The prisoners squinted at the bright light and were in poor condition. At night, screams were heard from the neighboring cells.One of those who shouted was Caalaa Hayiluu Abaataa, a young poet from the Oromo people who was imprisoned and tortured for his regime-critical poems. Martin threw a pack of Ethiopian "Nyala" cigarettes at him at one point and communicated via hand signals when the guards did not see them.
When Martin was released, he never thought he would see Caalaa again. But in December 2012, he received a friend request on Facebook from a refugee camp in Sudan. It was Caalaa who had fled.
The situation in the camp was terrible, friends of his had been killed by Ethiopian security services and gangs of traffickers operated in the camps. He feared for his life and felt that he had escaped from the ashes of the fire.
"I am coming to Sweden" he suddenly writes to Martin one spring day in May. He has been accepted as a quota refugee and he will take a course under the auspices of the Swedish Migration Board and then fly to Sweden. When he lands at Arlanda, Martin meets him and has since followed Caalaa's life as a quota refugee in Färila in Hälsingland. Now begins his real challenge.
#Obs:
The documentary The Boy in the Cell Next door is made by Martin Schibbye in 2015Support the show
