Desperate Syrian refugees risk all in bid to reach Europe
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Version 0 of 1. Moataz, a Syrian who fled to Egypt a year ago, has since tried to cross the Mediterranean 11 times. His first attempt failed after smugglers robbed him at knife-point shortly before he reached the water. Another ended when his boat was stopped by Egyptian coastguards, who jailed him and his family of five for several days. During a third attempt, they spent a week at sea. Then, after squabbling with each other about money, their smugglers turned back. Yet despite the risks, Moataz kept trying to reach Europe. “What else could we do?” asks Moataz, a 40-year-old driver who fled a massacre at home to find Egypt almost as inhospitable. “The sea is in front of you, the enemy is behind you,” he says, quoting an Arabic proverb, “and either option brings death.” Moataz’s fears are well-founded. On Monday, within hours of his warning, more than 500 refugees reportedly drowned while trying to reach Italy from Egypt’s north coast, bringing the total this year to about 2,900, according to the Swiss-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Many more have been caught and detained by Egyptian police – more than 6,800 since the start of last year, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a group that helps refugees and monitors their numbers. About 375 of them remained in Egyptian jails at the beginning of this week. Whatever the danger, tens of thousands of Syrians and other refugees in Alexandria and elsewhere along Egypt’s northern shore are still attempting to leave. “I can’t go back to Syria, and I cannot stay here,” explains Umm Mohamed, a mother of four. She has tried to cross more than 30 times. “We don’t have a choice,” she says. The process of illegally crossing the Mediterranean is frightening and bewildering. The cost varies between $2,000 (£1,225) and $3,500 per person. The money is kept with a third party, trusted by both passenger and smuggler, until the former sends confirmation of their safe passage. But beyond this, passengers have little control. Mehyar, 23, who successfully made the trip with his mother and brothers this summer, remembers simply being told to arrive at a pick-up point in Cairo. No one in his party knew their final departure point – not even the driver. “At each stage you go in a different bus with a different driver, and none of them knows exactly where he’s going,” says Mehyar, via Skype from Europe. “He just goes to a particular point, then he’s told the next point so that if the police catch him he can’t tell them the whole route.” Several hours, cars and safe houses later, refugees arrive at their allotted beach, under the cover of the pre-dawn darkness. At this point, refugees like Umm Mohamed – who sold her jewellery to pay for the journey – have often found there is either no boat, or no room. At other times, they have been robbed – like when smugglers took Moataz’s savings, his phone and his diabetes medication. But the lucky ones are told simply to walk into the sea – up to their necks until they reach a set of dinghies. These take the refugees to motorboats that deliver them to the larger ship that will – hopefully – ferry them to Italy. Doing this in darkness is an act of faith, says Mehyar. “You have to run into the sea without even seeing the boat.” For Umm Mohamed’s oldest son, 22-year-old Abdo, it was too much. Brain-damaged since the age of four, he could not handle the water. So the family struggled back to the shore – and into the hands of the coastguards, who jailed them for four days. Unlike many prisoners in Egyptian jails, they were not tortured. But it was a traumatic experience, particularly for Abdo, who was threatened and abused by officers who did not understand that he had mental health problems. For Umm Mohamed’s nephew, Ziad, it is a trauma that has not yet ended. Officially registered as refugees, the rest of the family were released, since the Egyptian government had no legal right to detain them. But Ziad lost his passport, and is an orphan with no first-degree relatives in Egypt. According to Egyptian regulations, these two factors mean he must either stay in jail or voluntarily leave for Syria. Ziad is staying put for now, but 10 others in his position have chosen the risk of a Syrian jail cell over the certainty of an Egyptian one. Given the many potential pitfalls of braving the sea, the route’s continued popularity may seem surprising. But the refugees say they are desperate, and that life is very bad for Syrians in Egypt. Where jobs are offered, they are often exploitative. Subsidies from UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, have been slashed. And xenophobia is a problem. Last year, Egyptian television presenters claimed that Syrians all supported the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, prompting a nationalist backlash against them that still has an effect today. “The fingers on a hand are not all the same, but some Egyptians are very disgusted by us,” says Moataz. “One time I had a job interview at a factory and when the manager saw my passport he threw it in my face. Another time I was in an office with copies of my passport, and the employee threw them back at me, saying: ‘these are so disgusting. You came to ruin the country’.” Umm Mohamed has encountered less xenophobia. But she wants to leave Egypt so that Abdo can finally receive due attention. There are alternatives to Europe: Turkey, Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan. But Yemen is itself on the edge, Lebanon is close to it and Sudan is another oppressive regime. “Turkey is better,” says Umm Mohamed, “but it’s too expensive: rent there is $500 a month and we can’t pay that. And the language is hard, so you can’t get a job.” Western governments are also to blame for forcing Syrians to risk their lives in the Mediterranean. Many countries, including the UK, promise asylum – but only if refugees apply from within the borders of those countries. “And because the refugees don’t have a legal way to get there, they have to go by sea,” says Muhammad Kashef, an Alexandria-based EIPR campaigner who works with refugees. Migrants can technically apply from the Middle East, but in practice this is not a realistic option for the 3 million Syrian refugees who are still in the region. By late June, the UK had granted only 24 Syrians visas. Solutions are not easy to implement but they exist, says Kashef. Western governments need to provide more legal routes to asylum. The Egyptian government should stop ignoring the issue, and provide residencies to the 250,000 Syrians inside Egypt until Syria’s war ends. And aid groups like the overstretched UNHCR, which have been criticised for a disorganised approach, should devote more resources to supporting refugees in Egypt. But all of this is far easier said than done and any improvement may come too late for families like Umm Mohamed’s. Living in a tiny flat in a forest of tower blocks on the edge of Alexandria, she has enough money for one more month’s rent, so she has to leave soon. But with Abdo in tow, she doesn’t dare try the sea again. Her only hope is that her two youngest sons, who managed to reach Italy last month on their own, are granted asylum in Europe. That might allow Umm Mohamed, as their guardian, and Abdo, as her dependent, the legal right to follow them. But it would also leave her third son – Mohamed, 21, who stayed behind to help care for Abdo – in limbo in Egypt. As a self-sufficient adult, he would not be allowed to accompany her. So for Mohamed, another boat trip awaits, and having heard about his brothers’ journey, he knows how hellish it will be. “They called us and said their boat broke down, and they ran out of food and water,” says Mohamed. “Whoever called it the death-trip was right.” Some names and details have been changed. Additional reporting by Manu Abdo |