Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 8
After a night of selling roses in Tuscany, Mohammed* was cycling along a seaside road when someone in a passing car hit him on the back with a pole. He fell to the ground.
It was August 2013 and Mohammed was 22. He believes it was intentional and likely a racist attack. “I was already broken,” he said. “But after that, I was in pieces.” He suffered emotionally and still has back pain from the assault today. He had arrived in Italy a few months earlier following a harrowing seven-month journey via land and sea. He had no documents or money and owed 9,000 euros ($9,700) to the Bangladeshi agents who had arranged his trip. ohammed says he was guided by multiple people along the way. When he arrived in Tuscany, he was approached by men from his country who, he says, put him to work selling roses in busy city centres so he could pay for room and board at a house with nine other foreign workers.
Rose sellers are a common sight in Italy’s largest and most romantic cities, such as Rome, Milan or Turin. South Asian men wield bunches of red roses and approach hordes of tourists every night. During high season, you may see about 20 rose sellers a night spread across the city centre – and dozens more on Valentine’s Day weekend.
But hidden behind the universal symbol of love is a bleak story of hardship, labour exploitation and human trafficking.
In recent years, several attacks on rose sellers in various parts of the country have been reported in local news outlets; they are often carried out by young Italian men.
In November, a 50-year-old Bangladeshi rose seller described as a “well-known face” in Ivrea, Turin, was brutally beaten by a group of three men. Another Bangladeshi seller was randomly pushed into the Naviglio canal in Milan by two men in 2020. A year earlier, two young men in Nettuno reportedly beat and robbed a seller whose origin was unknown.
Fear, uncertainty and thankless work
South Asians who end up selling roses in Italy are predominantly from Bangladesh. Nearly all have crippling debts and rely on members of their communities to help them start life in a new country.
Mohammed says he was hosted in Tuscany by a man of Bangladeshi origin and another from Pakistan. On the first day Mohammed was to sell roses, his hosts gave him 30 euros ($32) and told him to go to a local flower vendor to buy them.
There is no going rate for a red rose. Vendors may ask for a few euros and accept between two and five ($2.16 to $5.40) depending on each sale.
In between selling flowers, he worked at a Bangladeshi grocery store in Genova, where he says his work was never compensated, sold artichokes at a Milan market and sold roses again in southern Italy, while toiling intermittently as a gardener, dishwasher and chef’s assistant. After about seven years, Mohammed was granted asylum in 2018 as a victim of human trafficking with the help of a local NGO, Comunità Progetto Sud. Mohammed believes his countrymen let him down.
“A Moroccan helped me to learn Italian and Italians helped me get documents,” Mohammed said. “I have only been exploited by my own people.”
Recognising exploitation
Uddin Md Mofiz, 55, who arrived in Rome in 1987, said he was among the first rose sellers in the country. He described his early years in Italy as “very hard”.
Siddique Nure Alam, the president of a Bangladeshi association in Rome called Dhuumcatu, said he worked with Mofiz and others as a rose vendor 35 years ago. Alam said every street seller who arrived in Italy was already indebted.
But Mofiz and Alam do not view their early hardship as exploitative.
According to experts, it is difficult to track exploitation among South Asian street vendors because they often do not consider themselves exploited. They rarely seek help, viewing their suffering as a necessary step towards a better future.
As things stand, undocumented workers like Mohammed can only be provided with assistance if they themselves identify as victims of trafficking to Italian authorities, Nicodemi said.
The case will then be examined to determine whether there is a “well-founded fear of persecution” – according to the 1951 Geneva Convention on the status of refugees.
Some rose sellers likely believe making 10 euros ($11) a day is better than making nothing, she added. To effectively help them, exploited migrants must be able to work and have a place to live.
NGOs like Liotti’s and Scopetti’s reach out to undocumented workers to help them recognise their own exploitation and seek asylum.
Mohammed eventually beat his fear and depression. Today, he is fluent in Italian and works as a beekeeper, caring for 300 hives.
*Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect identities. Source: Al Jazeera
