The Dutch Christian Democratic party voted to work towards a more humane policy on young refugees, but that does not mean 18-year-old Angolan boy Mauro can stay, party officials said on Saturday. (DutchNews.nl)
Abigail R. Esman is appalled. she writes this because she finds it unfathomable that a Western, civilized country that dares to boast of its “tolerance” (a fable, but people still believe it) and its “openness” (ditto), a country that professes to believe in human rights and human dignity, can be committing this kind of sin against an innocent young man. She write this because she thinks the world should know.
Mauro Manuel arrived in the Netherlands as a child of nine – frightened, alone, sent off by his parents who feared for his safety in their war-torn homeland of Angola. Their son, they knew, would face a better future in the West.
And so he came to live in the Netherlands, where he has, in the nine years since, learned to speak the language fluently, with the unmistakeable drawl of the province of Limburg, where he now lives with a foster family. He has been a good student. He plays soccer with the best of them. His foster parents gave birth two years ago to a son Mauro calls his brother, and loves as if they had been born to the same family.
But Mauro is now 18 years old. And the Dutch government wants to send him back to Africa. Mauro no longer speaks his native language. He no longer knows the cultural mores of his homeland. He has been raised a Westerner, a Dutchman, and this is the culture of which he feels a part.