The Refugee Drama: In No Man’s Land

There has been an attack. A mother holds the hand of her little one. This is how he expired his last breath, in the same arms of that person who saw him born. Today a boy is also separated from his family, he does not know when he will see them again. He says goodbye with tears that harbor hopes for a better future. Refugees.

The refugee drama speaks of the pain of thousands of people. People who dream, yearn for the same as you. Children who no longer know how to laugh by dint of suffering.

Who are the refugees?

They can be called forced immigrants because in their country of origin they are persecuted for reasons of race or ideology. Also, because their country does not assure them a sufficient supply or security guarantees for a decent life.

Refugees don’t come to take our jobs. They do not come on a whim. They are not terrorists.

What are the psychological consequences of living as a refugee?

Living as a refugee is living in no man’s land. The impossibility of developing a normal life in that place that was usually your home and finding, at the same time, firm opposition by many of the possible countries of asylum, causes exorbitant levels of anxiety or depression … at the same time that it ignites feelings of revenge.

To this must be added the constant bombardments. Thus, a state of hypervigilance develops, chronic stress. Which many times is the trigger for disorders of a greater nature and severity such as: schizophrenia or post-traumatic stress disorder.

It is not surprising, then, that a person with social and psychological instability performs acts that deviate from the legal and ethical or that they join that group that claims to provide security, salvation and justice for their loved ones. Who wouldn’t look for an ally when everything collapses?

However, it misses us. How quickly we appreciate the straw in another’s eye, but how little the beam in our own! The latest news shows an increase in the extreme right, especially in Europe. Are they not also people in a social and psychological context of uncertainty who seek security?

What is our role in the refugee drama?

When the tiny possibility of overcoming a hellish journey in a boat, through a desert or after years of pilgrimage in the hands of mafias is better than staying in one’s own territory … neither the fences, nor the borders, nor the decrees, policemen, concertinas, not even the Mediterranean itself will be enough to stop a family looking for a better life, a dignified life.

Looking the other way is not going to solve the problem. Financing the conflict will not solve the problem either. Are we not very solvent to welcome but not to provide weapons? This double standard is incumbent upon us.

Why? Because it is a round trip; the further we launch the boomeran, the greater the blow on its return. If we deny the harsh reality of the existence of this mass exodus. Or if we do not deny its existence, but its acceptance in our countries, as is the case in the United States. Or later, we accept the drama and its embracement, but we do not include it in our society.

If there is one of all of them, only one, we will be building walking time bombs. What would you do if your house was demolished, your son kidnapped or your family bombed? What would you do if you had lost everything and didn’t have the slightest chance to improve? What would you do if impotence can and you have the feeling that everything happens to you with the complicity of those who can avoid it.

The answer is pretty straightforward. At the point where your life is meaningless: you destroy yourself, seek revenge or salvation. It is at this point that our intervention is transcendental.

It has been shown that most of the attacks have not been perpetrated by “terrible Syrians who have come to kill us all”, but by native inhabitants. Second generations who have not felt welcomed by their adopted country. Doubly rejected for not being recognized as French or German by right, but not Syrian or Iraqi either. For not being more than friends than those who are interested in using them as weapons.

We are not more than anyone … and sometimes we forget

It seems that we no longer remember. Only 76 years ago, 465,000 Spaniards crossed the French border seeking asylum while escaping the civil war. Of these, 220,000 would never return.

As Neruda wrote: “Love is so short, and oblivion is so long.”

But it is even more striking if we stop to observe ourselves a little. Our young people are leaving. They go to the US, China, France, Ireland … they go in search of a better future. The fragments at the beginning of this could be about them, about you or about or any of us.

It is up to us to raise our voices for those who have drowned their cries in tears. To the more than 10,000 missing children in European lands, with the hope of their families to be reunited one day. And many others who sell their bodies in refugee camps in exchange for life.

During 2015, UNICEF recognized almost 1,500 serious violations against minors, including murder, mutilation, recruitment or kidnapping, among others. Of these, 400 cases were of dead children and almost 500 of mutilated ones. And two years have passed. Are they terrorists too? Allow me the benefit of the doubt.