Hello readers! Here is part two of our collaboration with Narrative Collections! This is an amazing read; words, full of thought and heart and powerful reminder to us all "why we need to give refugees a voice."
Image courtesy of Massimo Sestini
Barely able to keep her head above the water, Doaa watched as the propeller of their boat cut a child into pieces. Her fiancé Bassem, held her hand while they treaded water for days, the ocean around them littered with corpses and coloured red. Those fortunate enough to have life vests took them off, willingly drowning. A few days later, Bassem too joined the sea of bodies, drowning right before Doaa’s eyes.
It was 2014 and Doaa Al Zamel was just 19. The war had forced her out of her home in Syria, so she fled to Egypt, doing poorly paid hard labour to make ends meet. Despite the hardship, she found hope, falling in love with a fellow refugee, Bassem, who promised to help her find safety. Knowing they would die in Egypt, Bassem had no choice but to give away his entire life savings to smugglers, who would bring them to Europe.
Armed with a Mickey Mouse backpack containing all their belongings, the two of them boarded a small fishing boat along with 500 other refugees, all of whom had paid the hefty price of $2500 per person for a space on the boat. Soon, they met with catastrophe – another boat, driven by Egyptian men with a deep hatred for refugees. Announcing that it was time to “send these filthy dogs to the bottom of the sea”, the men rammed a hole into the fishing boat.
Of the 500 passengers, only 11 survived.
Doaa was one of them, which is why she’s able to tell her story. But there are 26 million other refugees in the world, half of whom are children. 26 million people who have been forced out of their homes due to circumstances they had zero control over. 26 million human beings, each with their own unique story to tell. And here’s why we need to listen to them.
Image courtesy of Elena Dorfman
Recently, I read an article where someone posed the argument that we don’t see refugees as human beings. Their justification? It isn’t possible to hear about the tragic deaths of innocent people over and over again, and still tolerate it. When I first heard that, I didn’t think I could be guilty of it – every time I read articles about refugees, I feel something – sadness, anger, guilt – whatever it is, I thought that just feeling something for them made them human enough. I was wrong. I’ve read a lot of stories – stories of bombing attacks in Idlib killing innocent civilians by the thousands. Stories of refugees who hoped for a brighter future but ended up drowning in faraway oceans. Stories of horrific refugee camps and their inhumane conditions. When I read them, my heart breaks. But what next? A deep sigh, maybe a quick prayer, and then I move on with my life. There’s too much of a disconnect between us and so somewhere along the way, I forget their stories.
Now, I realise that ‘refugee’ has become a dehumanised word. When I hear it, I think of faraway people with problems I could never relate to. Because I know I could never understand what it feels like to have a war in my backyard, I don’t bother trying to empathise. Their lives are too intangible, their situations too horrific.
Most of you can probably relate with me. 19-year-olds who have experienced tragedies like Doaa, seem worlds apart from people like us. It seems almost ludicrous to imagine a 16-year-old girl from Syria, who lives each day in fear of her life, worrying about her hair or her clothes in the same way that I do. The difference between us is stark – she faces terrorist attacks and civil wars, while the closest I’ve come to that is on a large television screen in the comfort of my home.
But despite the chasm that seems to lie between us, there is one thing that is for sure. My life is no more valuable than hers. She is just as human as I am, and equally deserving of justice and protection.
The truth is that most of us fail to see these refugees as humans. At worst, some view them like a plague – a resource-consuming disease that needs to be kept out of our countries at all costs. At best, they are tragic statistics. Pitiful, yet faraway and intangible. The problem is, statistics alone aren’t enough to humanise refugees. Every single day, 37,000 people are forcibly displaced. That’s 1 person every 2 seconds, and 150 by the time you get to the end of this article. It’s not like these numbers mean nothing to us, but the problem arises when we let individuals become mere numbers. The person who dies every 2 seconds is not just a statistic. They are human too. Mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. Real people with unique personalities, ambitions and worries. -
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Now more than ever, in the climate of a global pandemic, we need to give these refugees a voice. International focus has been diverted away from the crisis – a cruise ship got much more attention than the refugee crisis ever has. While we’ve all heard about Donald Trump’s suggestion to inject disinfectant to cure Covid-19, I doubt you knew that right now, 3 million people are being bombed in Idlib, a city in Syria. But a problem swept under the rug is not a problem solved.
Refugees are incredibly vulnerable – their overcrowded living conditions and lack of access to sanitation facilities and healthcare makes them one of the groups hardest hit by the disease. The increasing global sentiment of xenophobia is exploited by politicians, who paint refugees as deadly virus-carriers in order to push forth their hard-line migration policies. In April this year, a boat with close to 400 Rohingya refugees was heading towards Malaysia. But, citing the pandemic as an excuse, they were turned away and forced to remain drifting at sea for almost 2 months, during which over 2 dozen died. Malaysia is not alone – many European countries have also closed their ports to refugees, while the USA has quietly suspended their asylum system, automatically forcing all asylum seekers to Mexico.
Though this pandemic may soon end, its effects will last. After a long era of globalisation, countries will begin to grow more inward-looking, and xenophobia towards foreigners will be easier to justify. But it would be wrong to sit around in our first-world countries and watch with pity as our governments turn away those in need. We must do what we can to fight this, whether it is through supporting charities, pressuring governments, or reaching out to migrants within our own communities. To quote author Daniel Trilling, “this is a planetary crisis, not a national one, and it is vital that we do not allow our respect for human life to end at the border.”
Humanising refugees starts with telling their stories. We are naturally empathetic, and it is only when we strip the humanity from people that we stop empathising with them. Humanising refugees is essential, yet too easily overlooked. So, where we can, let’s put names to numbers, and stories to statistics. Tell the stories of innocent people in horrible circumstances they had no control over. The stories of our fellow humans.
Kristen Arisa Chiaranussati of Narrative Collections @NarrativeCollections_ on instagram
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Hope you all enjoyed this article swap between Words For Welcome and Narrative Collections as we both thoroughly enjoyed writing about the important issue on the Refugee Crisis!
Sources
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/LBN/lebanon/refugee-statistics https://www.unhcr.org/asylum-in-the-uk.html https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/28/migrants-humans-drowning-suffocatingsafety-statistics https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/02/27/Coronavirus-Iran-refugees-IDPs-Italy-Europedisease https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/26/coronavirus-close-borders-pandemic https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52305931 https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a24655/i-survived-a-week-at-sea/