A Somalian blogger has picked up The Thomson Foundation’s Mobile Journalist of the Year Award after her video highlighting the poor treatment of refugees in Malta beat over 80 entries to win the annual competition.
Farah Abdi’s video, which was filmed on an iPhone 5s, drew attention to the poor living conditions refugees in Malta were being subjected to.
Farah Abdi - Mobile Jounalist of the Year! #MoJoCon @thomfound @rte pic.twitter.com/JDwXHPW7i0
— RTÉ Mojocon 360 (@MojoConIRL) May 6, 2017
Abdi felt that the Maltese government were deliberately making it difficult for refugees to settle in an effort to make them move on to other parts of Europe.
‘’They realised that they could frustrate people from getting services like identity cards and without those you can’t rent houses, you can’t find work, you can’t open a bank account and that’s how they were trying to frustrate the refugee community into moving off the island into Europe,’’ she said
‘’They decided to delegate one day to more than 8,000 refugees who wanted services, and the other four days were for Europeans which was a racist situation, like apartheid in South Africa, that’s how it functioned.’’
‘’I took up my iPhone 5s and went to the streets to document how refugees were sleeping there (outside government buildings) in the hopes of being served come Friday morning. They would go there on Wednesday afternoon and sleep there for two nights," she added.
Abdi’s video prompted a backlash from a worldwide audience and Maltese officials subsequently changed their regulations within 24 hours.
Identity is a "human right" #mojocon competition winner Farah Abdi tells @MojoConIRL https://t.co/MHXIhqFbOF pic.twitter.com/3KSRL6ubZd
— Thomson Foundation (@thomfound) May 8, 2017
‘’The video came out on a Sunday with my blog which was with the largest newspaper on the island, it was noticed all over the world but mainly in Europe and other Western countries. Malta was very very ashamed and the home office minister opened a new office that Monday.’’
Abdi wrote and published a book in 2012 entitled Never Arrive telling of how she fled Kenya in an effort to avoid being persecution for being transgender. The book was a huge success selling over 18,000 copies in 24 countries but despite this, she says she still does all of her work from her phone.
‘’I wrote the book on my iPhone 5s, I don’t own a computer. I work on my phone, I write my blog from my phone and do my videos from my phone. It has changed my life.’’
‘’It did a lot of social change for my community whether it’s the LGBT community or the refugee community. It’s not just a device that you watch movies on.’’ She said.
Abdi has since left Malta and now lives in Berlin where she wants to pursue a career writing and vlogging about make-up and fashion.
Gavin O'Callaghan
