the weekly planet Extraordinary articles for ordinary people. DECEMBER
2015
refuge stories and reports of the refugees of Syria
1
The headline story
Can a Divided Europe Handle the Refugee Crisis? Deaths at sea and a chaotic refugee influx reflect the failure of European Union leaders to settle on a common immigration policy one of Italy’s top elected officials tells ProPublica. by Sebastian Rotella
L
aura Boldrini, the president of Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, has unusually strong credentials to discuss the immigration crisis gripping Europe. She worked for a quarter century at United Nations humanitarian agencies, serving as spokeswoman in southern Europe for the U.N. High Commission on Refugees. The Roots, Rhetoric and Remedies of Europe’s Migrant Crisis, Explained Sebastian Rotella and Pia Dangelmayer give context behind the headlines on the refugee crisis gripping Europe.Listen to the podcast. Boldrini, 54, saw global migration at the front lines: the Italian island of Lampedusa, where seagoing migrants and refugees wash up, dead and alive, on the tides of despair and poverty; the refugee centers in Sicily where human traffickers exploit teenage Nigerian
girls forced into prostitution; and the Greek coasts that are beachheads for an unprecedented wave of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan. In 2013, she was elected to Italy’s Parliament as a candidate of today’s governing center-left coalition. Two days after she took office, she was catapulted into the presidency of lower house of the Legislature, the equivalent of the U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives. Boldrini recently was in New York City and spoke with ProPublica about the immigration drama. European Union leaders have since moved closer to approving a plan to accept 160,000 refugees, though many see it as insufficient. This interview has been translated from Italian and edited for brevity.
Laura Boldrini in her office, January 2014. (Photograph: Courtesy Laura Boldrini) Q. What are the roots of Europe’s immigration crisis and what are the solutions?
I am not surprised that these migratory flows have increased. Last year, we attained the terrible record of 60 million refugees in the world, the highest number since World War II, because conflicts have increased. Sadly, solutions are not in sight. There is intense donor fatigue, which reduces the level of aid in the refugee camps, and this pushes people to travel further and risk their lives. There are protracted crises such as Syria. In the refugee camps, whoever has some savings left decides to attempt the big leap. We have to understand that during these past five years, nations such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon have accepted millions of refugees in their nations. Immigration is the offspring of unresolved crises, the first collateral effect and the most visible one. In Europe, we are surrounded
by instability. We have a nation like Libya a hundred miles away from us. A nation divided with a government in Tobruk, another in Tripoli, and then the tribes. We also have Syria, Iraq, the Horn of Africa. Somalia, still a hostage to al-Shabaab (the Islamic terrorist group). Eritrea, which has a dictator named Afwerki who forces young men and women to do indefinite military service and does not permit any freedom of expression. Europe right now is not succeeding in responding to the challenges it confronts. We have to take advantage of this moment of difficulty and the opportunity it presents. In 70 years we have done a lot to construct our European identity. In a short time, we have undertaken an extraordinary journey. We have freedom of movement. When I was a girl, there were internal European borders. Our young people can study in any country. We have judicial cooperation. So this is positive, but
it is no longer enough. Now we have gone halfway, we have reached a ford in the river. Because today without a strong Europe, we don’t count for anything compared to the rising global giants. We have to cross the ford and restart the motor of European integration, a motor that has stopped. But that means we have to give up something. We have to give up power to the European institutions. We have to share sovereignty. We need a single economic policy. A single European industrial policy. And an immigration policy. It’s not possible that only Italy and Greece receive migrants and that Germany is the only place where people go to request asylum. Or Sweden. If we are a union, we have to cooperate.
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The headline story Q. What are some concrete responses to the migration crisis that Europe should implement?
We have to develop a coordinated asylum system. And have the same standard in all countries: European teams that manage the asylum issue. The same thing in Greece as in Norway as in Sweden as in other nations. If an Eritrean comes and asks me for asylum in Italy, he gets the same treatment as he would in Sweden. Today, on the other hand, if the same person requests asylum in one country he gets a certain response; if that person makes the request in another country, he gets a different response. So it’s clear that they all want to go where they have the best chance of getting asylum. This leads to asylumshopping in the EU.
Migrants, seen through the window of a police car, wait at the Greek-Macedonian border for Macedonian police to allow them to cross. (Photograph: Santi Palacios/AP, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Migrants disembark from the Italian Coast Guard ship Peluso, on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, in May. (Photograph: Mauro Buccarello/AP, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
We have to act on several levels. We have to continue to save human lives at sea. Not everyone agrees with this. But it’s inhuman to think that if you have a passport, you get saved, and if you don’t, you drown. But there are people who say that. I am proud that my country has taken the lead on this issue. We did Mare Nostrum (an Italian rescue operation in the Mediterranean) alone for a year at a cost of 9 million euros a month. Then it became European. Today we have Operation Triton. Next: How do we reduce the number of people who risk human life at sea? We have to give an alternative, because if people know there is an alternative they won’t risk their lives. The most concrete idea is to act in transit countries with a certain level of stability. You could create centers where international agencies do work – which, in fact, they are doing now, but with very limited resources. They do the screening of asylum requests and then offer quotas to nations that adhere to the program. You can do this in Tunisia, Egypt. It could be done by EU offices, not just UNHCR.
Q. Today’s Islamic terrorists are less likely to arrive by sea as illegal immigrants than they are to be born in Paris or London or Rome. But there is at least some risk of bad people taking advantage of the chaotic immigration flows to reach Europe. Can Europe absorb and integrate so many people from wartorn Muslim countries?
We can’t lower our guard. We have to be alert. We have to know who these people are. Of course, often they don’t have documents. So you have to work with fingerprints. I also would say that if you want to carry out a terrorist act, you don’t want to risk not making it. You want to be certain that you will arrive in Europe, and you can’t have that certainty if you try to come illegally by sea. As for the second point you raise – radicalization – that is one of the most serious problems. And it gets worse if people are excluded. If they are made to feel that they don’t belong to a community. So I think we have to invest great effort and resources in policies of social inclusion. Because if a youth doesn’t have any future and feels excluded, cut-off, pushed aside, marginalized, he wants something to believe in. And there are these merchants of terror who peddle dreams. Q. You call for a “United States of Europe” with stronger EU institutions and more political integration. But the climate in Europe seems to defy profound change. Is it really possible to reform the EU to make it more effective and cohesive on fronts such as immigration, security and justice?
How does the European system work now? The strongest entity is the European Council, which is comprised of heads of state.
Decisions are made by heads of state and heads of governments, and each seeks to defend their own national interest. And therefore they are not dealing with how this reduces the power of the European institutions. Instead, they concern themselves with their own immediate consensus. They follow the poll results, the dictatorship of the opinion polls. We can’t abandon the European dream. This is the critical moment to push harder. If there is fear, those who want to destroy the dream will win. Q: On the day you entered politics, you had an experience that was emblematic of Europe’s crisis.
A: I decided to run for office in response to a request. It was a surprise. I was working in Greece. It was on a very rough day. I was in Athens at a center run by Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World). There was a long line of people at the medical center, but I noticed many of them were Greek (rather than immigrants). The director of the center told me yes, the number of Greeks continued to increase. The economic situation was so tough they couldn’t go to the hospital because they had to buy medicines there, and they didn’t have enough money. So already in 2013, the Greek crisis was manifesting itself. And while I was talking to the director, a group of people arrived who were shouting. There was an African youth who was weeping desperately. We went outside and saw that this African youth’s face was all bloody and swollen. He had been beaten up by an extremist group. In Greece, these far-right groups form gangs, and when they see a person of color, they beat them up to make an example of them. He was just walking by. This happened in broad daylight.
Migrants, seen through the window of a police car, wait at the GreekMacedonian border for Macedonian police to allow them to cross. (Santi Palacios/AP) What affected me the most was what the victim’s African friends said. They were saying, in French: “That’s enough, put an end to it, what do you want? They beat you up, that’s what happens in Greece. You’re black, it’s normal that people beat you up.” There was an acceptance of this brutality. That evening, I was writing about this incident on my blog for the La Repubblica newspaper when Nichi Vendola called. (Vendola was the President of the Puglia region at the time and leader of the Left Ecology Liberty party.) I didn’t know what he wanted. I burst out talking and told him about the whole horrible day. Then he said: “In fact, you have prepared the terrain for me. Today we are experiencing this situation in the entire Mediterranean. We want to give a new emphasis to the issue of rights. And since that’s what you have always worked on during these years, we want to present you as a candidate for political office.” I told myself: I’ve worked for 25 years for the U.N. I have seen so many humanitarian crises in the world, from the Balkans to Afghanistan to Sudan. Pakistan. Iraq. I have seen the best and worst of the human race. Today, I have the possibility of doing something with all this experience, of using it in my country at the time when my country is living a difficult moment.
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Stories from the refugees: Orellana
My Mom Fled War Too:
Finding Compassion for Syrian Refugees
Like refugees everywhere, my mom gave her children the gift of a better life—and an understanding of what it means to risk everything for it. By Yessenia Funes Nov 20, 2015
Sonia Orellana gets lost in her thoughts as she struggles to find the words to explain her journey to the United States. (Photo by: Yessenia Funes. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Sonia Orellana stepped into the musty van, unsure of what awaited her. The then-17-year-old, a mere cipota, Salvadoran slang for little girl, had heard stories of what happens to young Salvadoreñas during their nearly 3,000-mile trek to the United States: kidnappings, rape, death. She had already crossed over from El Salvador to Guatemala unscathed, but the road to Mexico was the one to fear. Luckily for her, Orellana wasn’t traveling alone. She was joined by two others, Evangelina Funes and Efrain Funes, who would eventually become her in-laws—and my aunt and uncle.
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Stories from the refugees: Orellana
“My mother and grandmother remember all too clearly the gruesome sights of decapitated bodies.”
T
his cipota is my mother. Now 45, she lives in Uniondale, New York, the same town where her American life began 28 years ago and where I grew up. It’s my home, and my mother has made it her home too.
around the Web in September, everyone rose up in solidarity. Now, following the Paris attacks, many are cowering in fear. The House passed a bill yesterday to limit refugee entrance to the United States.
“I didn’t want to come,” my mom told me in Spanish. “I came for my mother. She wanted me to have a better life, to live better; many things that one’s mother wants for them, just like I want for you guys.”
We need more people like the governors in Utah and Connecticut, who have pledged to welcome refugees, because the refugees aren’t the ones to fear. They are afraid too. They are escaping the very terror that wreaked havoc in Paris last week. And this fear toward outsiders? This fear that they can hurt us? It reminds me of the xenophobic rhetoric that targets Latin immigrants like my mother.
My mother’s story reminds me of those in Syria. Most immigrants and refugees flee to find a better life. Syrians are no different. Their opportunity, however, is being attacked. When the image of the drowned 3-year-old child circulated
The truth is that like Syrian
Sonia Orellana flips through an old photo album, pointing to a picture of herself and her sisters taken in El Salvador when they were children. (Photo by: Yessenia Funes. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
refugees, many of whom have chosen to risk death at sea rather than facing constant threat at home, my mother would have preferred to stay in El Salvador. Twenty-eight years later, she still feels that way. “Perhaps I should have lived my life there,” she tells me. “I miss those little moments when I lived there. I was happy.”
after. A bomb and machine gun killed between 27 to 40 people and wounded another 200 at his funeral.
My mother fled in November 1987, arriving in New York just in time for the holidays, her first away from home. She longed to return, even with all the madness taking the country over. Just seven years earlier, people in the United States had heard about mutilated bodies appearing on roadsides. The murder of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero followed just a month
The Salvadoran Civil War, which lasted from 1980 to 1991, left more than 75,000 Salvadorans, primarily civilians, dead. The United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador in 1992-93 attributed 85 percent of these deaths to state agents. Only 5 percent of the deaths were attributed to the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the guerilla group rebelling against
The Civil War was at full throttle. My mother and grandmother remember all too clearly the gruesome sights of decapitated bodies.
the military-led government. My mother and grandmother remember all too clearly the gruesome sight of decapitated bodies. “They’d leave the heads stuck, hanging on the fences, the hogs eating the people,” my abuelita went on to tell me. The bodies belonged to people from elsewhere. San Pedro Nonualco, where my mother lived and my grandmother still does, was merely a drop-off spot, a display of terror. Once, my mother says she saw a little boy kicking around a head, playing with it.
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“Refugees aren’t the ones to fear. They are afraid too.”
Rosa Adaluz Orellana sits in the backyard of her daughter’s home, listening to her tale. (Photo by: Yessenia Funes. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
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Sonia and Rosa share laughs as they reminisce about their time together in El Salvador. (Photo by: Yessenia Funes. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
This sort of scene is not too different than what many have described in Syria’s current civil war. Theirs started four years ago. In these four short years, more than 200,000 people have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a nonpartisan organization documenting the situation. That’s almost three times more than El Salvador’s 10-year war.
beg for food and clothes. “I suffered when I came,” she told me with a pained expression. “I suffered.”
Even after experiencing such trauma, these survivors come to the United States with little welcome. My mother says she felt strange when she got here. She had never met her aunt, with whom she stayed. She would go to church and
I try to imagine what my life would be like if my mother hadn’t hid in the brisk brush of the midnight desert, risking her safety for a fresh start—and I can’t. My home is here. I can’t imagine being somewhere else.
She remembers picking up shifts as a mall janitor and receiving strange looks from people when she couldn’t communicate her thoughts. She experienced hints of racism then, but she felt it most with her meager pay. “You’ve got to accept the work they give.”
Stories from the refugees: Orellana
understand both sides. They’ll be, well, sort of like me.
I imagine that Syrian refugees can. Their minds must be filled with dreams of homes where they’re safe. Maybe they first dreamed of a Syria without war, but now they’re forced to wake up and realize a safe home means a new home. Eventually, these Syrian refugees will have children. They will be born in Sweden or Greece. Maybe even in Washington if President Obama’s veto of the House bill succeeds. They’ll learn the tongues of their grandparents and parents, but they’ll also speak the language of their native country: Swedish, Greek, English. They’ll be products of two worlds, human beings with compassion because they
These children will have a better chance to survive and succeed than in Syria’s current state. And like El Salvador, which still feels the ill effects of a civil war that ended more than 20 years ago, Syria won’t recover easily. El Salvador isn’t a war zone anymore, but gangs have taken over. My grandma says it’s worse now than before. We don’t know how Syria will end up. We will have to wait and see. What we do know is the possibilities that await these families if they are allowed peace.
“Their minds must be filled with dreams of homes where they’re safe.”
As my mother and I sit in our cluttered backyard, I ask her how she feels about my siblings and me being born here. “I give thanks to God because if I would have made my life over there, I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe I wouldn’t have all of you with me. Maybe you’d all be in gangs or involved in something. You wouldn’t be what you are: prepared, alive, and with me.” I scribble what she’s said and then pause. I realize she’s right.
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Reports show
Syrian refugees living in dire conditions in Lebanon
A Syrian child flees with her family to Qaa in Lebanon )Photo: Freedom House, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
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Understanding refugees: Lebanon
By early September, tens of thousands of Syrians had crossed the border into Lebanon in search of safety. Over 40,000 have now been registered by UNHCR. About half of them are children. (Photo: D.Khamissy / UNHCR, CC BY-SA 2.0)
March 13, 2012 by Angie Zambarakji
S
yrian refugees are enduring cramped, freezing conditions in an abandoned school on the border of Syria and Lebanon, according to a special report by Lebanese TV channel MTV.
UNHCR. Up to 2,000 are reported to have fled across the border in the past week alone, following the shelling by Assad’s forces of Homs. Wadi Khaled has become one of the key routes from Syria into Lebanon.
In the report the school, in the village of Wadi Khaled, was shown to have no electricity or heating, the refugees living there complained of not having enough blankets for everybody, and the refugees claimed they had no food or milk for their children.
A little boy described in the report how he had been abducted with his family by armed forces in his home village: ‘They blindfolded us and took us away in big trucks. They drove for about 45 minutes, then came down and started beating us with sticks and electrocuting us. When I lost consciousness, they removed my fingernail. But we managed to run away and cross illegally into Lebanon.’
Thousands of Syrians have crossed the Lebanese border since April 2011, fleeing the persecution of President Assad’s regime, according to the UN’s refugee agency,
Footage from the report was quite
stark. The refugees sleep on threadbare mattresses on the floor, in classrooms that are divided into sections using curtains. A tiny space in the corner is used as both toilet and shower. In the absence of medical attention, some refugees were starting to show signs of infectious skin diseases. In Tripoli, the largest city in the north of Lebanon, doctors say they cannot cope with the numbers of injured people arriving at their hospitals, and they are unable to provide support to the refugees. There are 12,000 refugees in Lebanon, according to a recent report by the UNHCR, of whom over 7,000 are officially registered
Radwan is a Syrian teacher who is now a refugee living in Jordan's Zaatari camp. He volunteers as a teacher in a Relief International school in Zaatari, and met with some of the British, Jordanian and Lebanese teachers who are taking part in the Connecting Classrooms scheme. He also participated in group discussions between the teachers, where they agreed ways in which they could keep in touch and support each other. (Photo: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development, CC BY 2.0)
Amani*, aged 24, is a teacher from Syria. When the conflict started her school had to shut as it wasn't safe. She taught students in her home for a while but over time that became unsafe too. Eventually she fled to Lebanon with her husband and young child. *Name has been changed for protection. (Photo: Russell Watkins/DFID, CC BY 2.0)
in the north of Lebanon. An estimated 4,000 unregistered Syrians are in the Bekaa Valley, and a further 1,000 are in other parts of Lebanon. ‘Last weekend more Syrians crossed with some 50 families arriving in Arsal, and 170 families in Fakha village. According to the mayor of Arsal, there are an additional 75 families in Mashariia Al Qaa,’ the UNHCR report says, adding: ‘the majority of displaced Syrians are residing in houses, rooms, barns and huts made available by the local communities’. Many refugees who enter Lebanon through the Bekaa Valley have been reportedly stopped and searched by
the Lebanese Army. Up to 40 were recently arrested and returned to Syria. Syrian refugees are not allowed to get jobs or to travel around Lebanon. Many enter Lebanon illegally and refuse to register their details with the UNHCR, because they are afraid that their details will be passed on to the Lebanese security services. Not all Lebanese welcome the arrival of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. While Lebanon’s Sunni communities have acknowledged the Syrian refugees and attempted to help them, Lebanese Shias – who include many supporters of Hezbollah – explicitly discourage
them. The current Hezbollah-led government supports the Assad regime and doesn’t officially recognise the Syrian refugees, calling them ‘Syrian citizens fleeing the unrest in Syria’. It seems unlikely these refugees will receive much help from the Lebanese government – but if the international community is unable to help the Syrians in the city of Homs, it should at least help those fleeing Homs and other cities under attack, giving them the chance to survive in Lebanon in dignity.
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Understanding refugees: Iraq
Iraqi Refugees Fear For Future
(Photo: DFID - UK Department for International Development, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
in Syria e Reluctant to return to Iraq asylum-seekers worry sectarian violence will ruin their safe haven. By Khalid Waleed – Iraq IWPR Jan 13, 2012 Politics, World
M
any Iraqi refugees who fled to Syria following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 once again fear for their future as the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad continues. More than 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since unrest began in March 2011, according to the United Nations, as street protests have met with violence from the regime. Um Nur, an Iraqi refugee who has lived in Syria since 2007, said her family no longer felt safe in Syria. “We don’t know where to go if the fighting continues here”, said the 34-year-old mother of three. “It’s as if we are reliving the conditions from which we once escaped.” Syria is home to more than one
million Iraqis who left their country in the wake of the United States-led invasion and the ensuing conflict. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, half of all Iraqis seeking asylum abroad went to Syria, and 93 per cent of the refugees in that country are from Iraq. Amid deepening ethnic and sectarian divisions, with much of the ruling elite and military belonging to the Alawite minority in a mostly Sunni country, the harsh crackdown and army defections have brought the country to what many fear is the brink of civil war. Iraq’s Shia majority was ruled by the Sunni minority led by Saddam, and experts say the similarities between the two countries has heightened concerns among Iraqis in Syria. 19
“The two countries are ethnically divided,” social scientist Abdul Khaleq al-Shemmari said. “Before 2003, Iraq was also ruled by its minority, and Syria is ruled by its minority.” After the fall of Saddam’s regime, Iraq endured a vicious sectarian war, and refugees in Syria anticipate a similar turn of events. “This makes them fearful,” Shemmari said. Added to that is the breakdown in the rule of law that accompanies widespread unrest. Majid, a young Iraqi who refused to disclose his full name for security reasons, said a Syrian friend of his was kidnapped last month and his kidnappers were now demanding for a ransom. “It makes me feel like I am in Iraq again,” he said. “We are going to experience the same terrible circumstances that we lived through there.” The Iraqi government has a programme to help the more than two million refugees come back home. ‘Iraq is their home and we welcome their return at any time,” deputy government spokesman Tahsin alSheikhli. “Iraq is their country, and it is a secure country now.” However, many of the refugees in Syria are uncertain about returning to face continuing instability in Iraq, especially since the withdrawal of US troops in December and an escalation in attacks on civilians. Shukria Jamal, who lives in the Sayyida Zainab neighbourhood of Damascus, said that if the Syrian situation worsens, she will take the risk and return. “At least I will be among my people,” the 40-year-old said. Ammar Ali, 38, said he was
considering leaving Syria with his parents and two sisters, either for Lebanon or for the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Other parts of Iraq, he said, were out of the question because “security there seems to be deteriorating”. Samir Hatam, a 36-year-old Iraqi who owns a cafe in Syria, said he was torn between leaving and staying. Friends in Baghdad have
told him the city is secure, but news reports of bomb blasts seem to belie their claims. “I can’t deny that I miss my country, my home, my neighbours and friends, but if returning means losing my life or one of my relatives’ lives, I will never go back,” he said. “It looks like we will have to spend our lives running from place to place”. Majid has ruled out going back to
Iraq, despite the apparent dangers of remaining in Syria.
Iraqi refugees earning a living at the Seyyida Zeinab market in Damascus. Picture from 2007. (Photo: UNHCR, CC BY 2.0)
“Just thinking about the idea makes me recall bitter memories. I lost lots of loved ones there in Iraq,” Majid said. “Going back would be suicide.”
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