Africa: Human smugglers profit as tragedies multiply

When Abdo Giro*, a 55-year-old evangelist minister and political dissident from southern Ethiopia, paid smugglers 55,000 birr (US$3,095) to take him from the Kenyan border town of Moyale to Johannesburg in South Africa, he was completely unprepared for the ordeal that lay ahead. Instead of the promised 'nice car', he was lucky to end up in a packed mini-bus for the first leg of the journey through Kenya and Tanzania. Smugglers are capitalizing on the demand for their services and the relative impunity with which they operate by making increasing financial demands on desperate migrants while showing little regard for their safety.