Eritreans search for asylum

An Eritrean man in Rome. Eritreans make up the second largest group of migrants -- after Syrians -- reaching the shores of Europe.

Eritreans are not fleeing war, they are refugees from open-ended military service -- a system that human rights activists describe as official slavery.

CNN International correspondent Ben Wedeman (L) with Benjamin, an Eritrean migrant in a park in Ponte Mammolo in northern Rome. He was one of a very few migrants in park who would agree to an interview.

Benjamin had been in Italy for about eight days after making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean from Tripoli in Libya to Lampudesa, Italy. "I was vomiting from the time I got onto the boat," he remembers.

The day before the interview Italian police had come to the park with bulldozers and demolished a small shanty town of plywood and corrugated iron shacks that had housed around 200 migrants.

An Eritrean man stares at a cell phone. According to European Union regulations, migrants must be registered in the country they arrive in, and cannot go on to request asylum elsewhere. But many who arrive in Italy flee before they are registered hoping to make it to other European countries.