Recognized refugee and then what ? – Piece four
Through a series of short pieces, the GFR wishes to relate the story of Anwar, who decided to enter into hunger strike more than one month ago to protest against his treatment and living conditions since he arrived in Europe 2 years ago. With his testimony, divided in several topics, we want to bring attention to his claims, but also disclose out loud the major issues he experienced, as well as too many of recognized refugees in Greece.
The present piece is the last of the serie.
Piece 4: “Run to the desert to do your War Olympics”
Anwar talks about the tragic events people have to suffer from and the reasons leading them to take dangerous journeys to seek international protection.
“Big problems are happening to people like me. Every day, every week. Just last week many people died in Aegean Sea. Why? Refugees are dying mainly because of major power’s political conflicts of interests. Human lives are equal. It doesn’t matter if you’re French, British, Turk, Arab. Whoever you are, whatever your nationality is your life in not above anyone else’s life. There is war in the Middle East and many other places. I fled persecution, twice or three times. I need a place of refuge, I need to be among human beings. I had a migration plan. It didn’t work out. I was forced to make this dangerous decision, everything was beyond my control. I was on a boat for more than 10 hours. I could be among those innocent people who died in the Aegean or Mediterranean Sea. There is also a river between Greece and Turkey, in the North. Many also continually perishing there, some of them are recovered from the river and buried in a graveyard in the Greek side of the river. With no names, no identity like they are absolutely nobody. All of these catastrophes are causing trauma, sorrow to so many people, to those who lost their loved ones and even to survivors. The true question is why so many people are dying, yet nobody is talking about them?
Nobody can keep people in the war-torn areas. Let’s just take Greece as an example of people’s movement. You don’t have war in this country. Yet, you see many people are leaving the country. There is no war here, but people are leaving, Why? Because they cannot earn a living. They don’t have a life here. And if we take a look at a Refugee’s situation there are so much more pushing factors among them war, persecution, tyranny, injustice, etc. Right now, 20 millions people are starving in Africa and millions elsewhere and you also have Syrian civil war. It is the product of politics, politicians.” Honestly, what good any politicians ever did for anybody, except so many never-ending wars in so many places. We, this generation of the peoples of Earth just inherited wars, miseries. Why they are so good is creating wars in almost every corner of the Globe, but not capable of giving people legal and safe pathways to safety?
We are civilians, don’t kill civilians. If these wars are just between governments there must be other ways to resolve these problems, but if war is the only way to go forward, then honestly, there are so many desserts on this Earth, in Africa, in the Middle East and so many other places. Run to the desert, take the wars there, don’t ruin civilian lives. You can call it War Olympics. And let everybody watch it from their television screens in their safe houses. But now they do all the wars inside cities where they can kill civilian or use them a political leverage. When you take your war to the cities, people will leave, because mostly they don’t believe it’s their war, yet safe countries shut all the doors on them, let people drown in the seas. When one European dies from a terrorist attack. It’s ugly of course and all the televisions, politicians and almost everyone else speak about it every day They introduce new measures immediately. But, when hundreds of refugees are dying in the sea, there is no attention! Do they think refugee lives don’t matter? Instead of helping, they pass legislations which makes conditions so much worse for them. They just look for excuses or create excuses to inflict more pain and suffering on refugees.
Refugee have to pay smugglers to get to safety. The money which could be used for their resettlement, is now just going to the smugglers. If a refugee is lucky enough, he will possibly survive crossing the sea. If not, then that would be the end of a life. But even if they survive, it’s just the beginning of a discovery which lead them to become familiar with the intentional and bias indifference and ignorance of the so called civilization towards other fellow human beings. The beginning of a struggle which confronts them with so many entanglements, physical and legal barriers all with the aim of trapping them where they are. Why? What’s wrong with you?”
