German reportage from Italy

The child soldiers of the 'Ndrangheta
Status: 02.02.2020 02:28 a.m.

Children who learn to shoot, work as drug couriers or dismember the dead: the Calabrian mafia grows up with criminal activities. Few adults do anything about it.

By Christian Gramstadt, SWR, and Patrizia Venditti

The Bonaventura-Vrenna family belongs to the powerful and internationally operating clans of the Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta. Luigi Bonaventura had a bloody feud at the age of ten. A few years later, he shot himself. At 35, he became a key witness to the Italian public prosecutor's office.

"Clan girls are already mafiosi at the age of 13. They are supposed to take care of the mafia morals in the family," he says. "Boys learn to use weapons from an early age. They are used to blood and violence during animal slaughter. It's a childhood like jihadists."

Large family clans also active in Germany
Luigi Bonaventura has broken with his family. In 2019, he reported a constant drill to violence: "In Africa (...) children are kidnapped, mostly drugged and brought to the battlefield as child soldiers with a gun. At 'Ndrangheta, the offspring are raised from childhood to crime and killing "he compares. "They are prisoners of their families and the archaic mafia mentality."

According to a study by the Italian research institute Demoskopita in 2016, the 'Ndrangheta is organized into almost 400 family clans with many children, who can rely on more than 50,000 followers worldwide. Almost 300 'Ndranghetists are said to be active in Germany.

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Foster care is bearing fruit
An Italian law has been in place since 2013 that allows judges to preventively isolate acutely vulnerable girls, boys and mothers with their children from their mafia-like surroundings and to place them far away with foster families.

A legal milestone on which Roberto Di Bella sets his project "Liberi di scelgere" ("Free to choose"). Together with civil servants, educators and therapists, he tries to breathe life into the youth law: with communal tasks and games that are intended to convey a piece of carefree childhood to the children, and with a lesson that lets them feel that life is beyond "honor, blood" and violence "is quite normal and possible.

The Reggio Calabria Regional Youth Court has intervened 60 times since then. 70 minors were placed with foster parents in other provinces. 30 core families from 'Ndrangheta clans found a new home outside of Calabria.

https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/weltspiegel-ndrangheta-101.html