Thier rubber craft sanked before reaching the European shores after a long journey of scary sea waves. They were about to die where some of them were missing probably deaths; scores fishing boats searched for the missing pointlessly; there was one survivor; a young lady who witnessed the unforgettable pain.
Saher who is a 20-year old young lady from Idlib city, narrated to us through “Whatsapp”
the incidents of her journey of seeking asylum to Europe on death boats; she said: “It was my first trip by sea, I did not know it is that big and it has scary horrifying waves”.
“The journey took 19 days, yet it was full of incidents and details which I will never ever forget for they have changed my life forever. In 2015 I was living along with my family in Istanbul after fleeing the Syrian war hoping of coming back at the end of the conflict, but with the insistance of my parent to further my studies in a European country encouraged me to consider seeking asylum so that I communicated with a smuggler through Facebook”, she proceeded.
” I prepared a small backpack and got a life jacket, then I had millions thoughts of what might happen to me in case the boat sanked; would I be food for sharks like what have happened to thousands Syrians who sanked in sea”, she added.
More than one hundred thousand refugees have reached Europe since last January, according to UN Migration Agency; but the organization reported more than 2200 deaths who were trying to reach Euprope.
Smugglers are taking advantage of the Syrian war to win big amounts of money; for death boats are sanking with poor people who are trying to flee the oppression, unemployment, hunger and dire circumstances in Syria.
The survivor Saher proceeded: “People on the boat were praying, but the bad weather sanked the terrible rubber boat amid screams of women and children as most of them were swallowed by the waves, while I was forced to swim for hours”.
Saher’s death boat was not the only one which sanked with the Syrians abroad; for how long this will continue to happen?
by Bayan al-Ahmad
translated by Sabah Najem
Syrian Press Center
Fleeing Syrians By Sea.. Facing Death, Unforgettable Pain
المقالات ذات الصلة
