We may not have a Shakespeare to record the epic
journeys of our day but we have devoted and courageous journalists and camera
operators who themselves go to great danger to set before us the epic journeys
undertaken by refugees as they try to flee the horrors they face in their
homelands and to reach Europe. But our attention
is often on other matters, especially in recent weeks when the Referendum
campaign was reaching its conclusion and claiming so much of our
attention. Last September there was a
global outcry when the body of a Syrian toddler, Alan Kurdi, was washed up on a
Turkish beach and graphic pictures of the utter horror of the scene were viewed
in millions of homes world-wide. I fear we are not so easily shocked today – a
mere ten months later.
Many of you may have seen recently the brilliant
BBC programme on three consecutive evening entitled ‘Exodus: Our Journey to
Europe’. It put faces on the vast crowds
we have seen for several months crossing Europe’s borders and fields. The three-part documentary was filmed over a
year. There was a mixture of professional
footage and footage from the camera phones of the refugees themselves, as the
desperate journey of several people, mostly Syrians, was played out before us
as we viewed the terrifying steps they took to attempt to reach safety.
We saw at close hand these desperate human beings
in dangerously overcrowded dinghies and in cross-Channel lorries. We saw them walking for miles carrying
babies, helping old people and pushing wheelchairs while they carried their
entire belongings on their backs. It is
clear from the interviews that these are people who could never have imagined
themselves leaving their homes and forced to huddle under tents in refugee
camps or to sleep in Greek parks. Behind
every story there is an unseen human trafficker. A profitable and shameful industry has grown
up from the human desperation in the greatest movement of people in Europe
since the Second World War.
We heard a softly spoken twenty-seven year old
English teacher from Syria – Hassan – who paid 2,000 Euros for a dinghy crossing
from Turkey to Greece. A tourist would
pay 22 Euros to make the journey on a ferry.
But the dinghy was overloaded.
They were promised that the number would be confines to thirty
people. Instead the traffickers had
allowed on sixty-five people and it soon began to sink. Hassan’s camera phone records the panic as
they attempt to bail out the boat with water bottles. It sinks anyway in Turkish waters and they
are brought back to Izmir. Hassan is
alive but his bag has gone. All he has
left are the clothes he is wearing – and his camera-phone! All the refugees rely heavily on mobile
phones.
In Izmir we see a plucky optimistic eleven year
old, Isra’a, who is selling contraband cigarettes from a stall with her father
in order to get money for the crossing.
Isra’a proudly shows the pink plastic pouch around her neck. She says that it will protect her mobile
phone in case the dinghy sinks. There
are sixteen in her family group ranging over a number of generations. The boat trip will cost them 12,000 Euros. Her father’s shop was destroyed along with
their house in a bombing. They have
heard the stories of deaths at sea and the father is reluctant to put the
family at risk from drowning. Some of
the life-jackets for sale from stalls in Izmir are fake, destined to sink. A teenage cousin of Isra’a says that shells
fell on them all the time in Syria so ‘how can we be scared of the waves?’ Isra’a is always smiling as she talks of the
family ‘building a new life’. We meet
her again after she has travelled hundreds of miles on foot and by bus. Her family has spent days huddled in the rain
and mud without shelter. She has seen
two children die of cold in a chaotic refugee camp on the Macedonian
border. Her father worries how she will
be able to cope with all she has seen and endured.
A million refugees made the journey to Europe in
2015. The documentary follows Anas who
is twenty-four as he starts his journey in the destroyed city of Aleppo. We see what he and many others have left
behind. As he makes his way to the
airport, snipers shoot at his taxi all along the route. He jokes about the poor aim, underlining how
accustomed he has become to his situation.
This programme may very well win many documentary awards. But no one can predict what will happen to
all the refugees, when – or if – after the long, harrowing journey they reach
their goal.
In response to the Syrian refugee crisis a group of
Christians from several Worthing churches have come together to see what can be
done at local level. They have chosen
the title ‘Worthing 4 Refugees’. We are
represented on this body by Dermot Casey and I am confident that English
Martyrs Church will not be found lacking.
