Going Nowhere

 

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/sebastiao-salgado?before=1331886064

The sweet face of the little boy in this picture caught my attention the second I turned the page. Taken in any other scenario this boy would seem like any other boy, but the background of the picture alludes to the boys true identity as a refugee at the Ivankovo camp in Croatia. The abandoned train behind him is his current home and possibly the only home he can remember.

The German humanitarian  organization Cap-Anamur set these railroad cars aside for the living of refugee families who had already fled from their homes. Of the 120 refugees, most of them were Bosnian Muslims, but Serbs and Croats were also included among them. These refugees were often forgotten in the chaos that existed back home. They chose to flee before the atrocities hit their home town and; therefore, were safe from the horrors of rape, torture, or ethnic cleansing. However, their current safety, in many cases, caused them to lose their right to migrate. Instead they sat in trains that went nowhere watching as other trains passed carrying passengers far more fortunate than them.

This story reminds me of my own experiences in evacuating from my home for both hurricane Katrina and Rita. My parents were among those that decided it would be safer for us to evacuate as we could not predict how the storm would affect our little spot in Houston, Texas. Many people stayed behind to weather the storm. Although I had a home to return to, this experience has helped me to understand on a small degree the uncertainty these refugees must have felt when they left their homes behind. It is harder for me to imagine the pain they now feel as they sit and wait for a way out. They do not know if they will be granted the opportunity to migrate and re-create their home in a foreign country or if they will be left there until they die.

Eighteen years after the picture was taken, I wonder where these refugees are now. Are they still waiting, going nowhere? What has become of this little boy?


Salgado, Sebastião. "Migrations: Humanity in Transition". New York: Aperture, 2000. Print.

Afghan Women: Stripped of Basic Human Rights

http://www.internationalist.org/afghanwomen1001.html

It's that time of the week again. I performed my usual ritual (going on 2 weeks) of stopping by the Harold B. Lee Library to flip through the pages of Sebastiao Salgado's Migrations wondering what else I could possibly learn about refugees. When I came to this picture, I froze in shock. "What?...But...Why?" I just couldn't understand. I had heard of woman being mistreated in other countries, but this just didn't make sense to me. Why should a woman have to cover her face and the rest of her body with such an uncomfortable and unattractive piece of fabric? What purpose does that serve for anybody? Although another photo of children hanging to the fence of a detention camp also struck at my heart, I just couldn't let go of the mystery of the lives of these women.

From my early research, I discovered that this picture was placed sometime after the Taliban seized Kabul. I learned that the piece of fabric, a state-mandated uniform, was called a chadri, that girls as young sometimes as young as 8 or 9 were forced to wear it, and that women wore the chadri, or burqa, out of fear of being whipped or stoned. I had to learn more. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan was seized by the Taliban, an extremist militia, on September 27, 1996. A totalitarian dictatorship and gender apartheid changed the lives of these people, especially the women. The strict rules placed against women included:

• banishment from the work force
• closing of all schools to girls and women
• prohibited to leave their home unless accompanied by a close male relative
• publicly visible windows must be painted black
• women forced to wear the chadri which covers the entire body leaving only a small mesh-covered opening in order to see
• women and girls could not see a male physician and females could not work in this occupation or any other 

Punishment for violating any of these restrictions included brutal beatings, public flogging, and even death. I can't imagine the pain of a mother holding her sick child in her arms facing her only two choices: losing her child to the illness or losing her own life trying to save her child. The love of a mother drove many women from their homes seeking mercy, but finding only indifferent cruelty.

But why? The Taliban claimed it was aiming to ensure a safe and dignified role for women in society. They claimed to follow a pure, fundamentalist Islamic ideology. But their ideals held no foundation in the Islamic religion and did they really believe that being threatened and forced into hiding would give women feelings of safety or dignity? My heart aches as I read about the tragedies of these women and I know that I am so blessed to live in America. I am grateful for the soldiers that fight every day to stop this cruelty towards women. Doesn't every girl deserve to know that she is beautiful, that she is intelligent and capable, and that she can make her own choices based on the pursuit of happiness?

Works Cited:

Salgado, Sebastião. "Migrations: Humanity in Transition". New York: Aperture, 2000. Print.

http://books.google.com/books/about/My_Forbidden_Face.html?id=gZIoAQAACAAJ

http://feminist.org/afghan/taliban_women.asp

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/6185.htm

From Russia to America

         I often find myself stunned at the realization that I have so much and take so much for granted. A particular question, "What if you woke up tomorrow with what you thanked God for yesterday?" has always made me question my faith: what if I didn't have my family? What if I woke up without freedom? What if I didn't know of the glory and majesty of Christ? What if I had nothing but the clothes on my back? What if I had to move to a foreign land? Would I be able to handle this? Would I stay strong? For refugees, much of this is a stark reality.
         The photo I choose to talk about today is one of a Russian Jewish family hugging goodbye for what may be the last time. It is not easy to get out of Russia as a migrant, one must prove that they feel obliged to leave and cannot remain where they currently live. They must be refugees by definition: someone who has fled (or is hoping to flee) to another country because of a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion. When a Jew was not granted approval from the Soviet Union to migrate to the United States or Israel, they were termed refuseniks and ultimately fired from their job. It often took several years for them to gain permission to leave and so it was necessary for them to take whatever jobs were available so that they could feed their family and not risk being arrested as "parasites" (a Soviet classification for any able-bodied person unemployed for two months). Benjamin Bogomolny actually made the Guinness Book of World Records as "most patient" refusenik having waited twenty and a half years to make the journey. Thanks to the Lautenberg Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress in 1989 all Soviet Jews and certain other religious communities were classified as persecuted groups, automatically qualifying them for refugee status and passage to freedom. A wave of immigrants began to flood the American shores and continued until the early 2000s some years bringing as many as 25,000 new émigrés to New York. Now, the number of Russian-speaking Jews living in the United States is estimated to be about 700,000.
          A Russian Jewish refugee named Katherine tells her story of immigrating to the U.S. with her husband, also a Russian Jew. She expresses her joy at hearing her son speak out "I am Jewish!" When she starts to cry, her daughter asks her why she is crying and the loving mother responds, "Because this is the reason that Papa and I moved to America, so you can announce proudly and freely—I am Jewish!"
         This photo stuck out to me because I cannot imagine the anguish one must feel leaving their family members behind in a country that is unsafe and prejudice against them. Likewise, I cannot imagine seeing someone of my family leave me to escape to another country where we don't know what to expect. Especially in a time when communication was a lot slower, this to me would be unbearable. As a first semester freshman in college, it is hard enough to not see my family for months even though they're only a simple phone call, text, email, or facebook chat away. It's hard enough to start out on your own in a new state and new school. I cannot fathom the fear I would feel at having to survive alone in a foreign country where I didn't know the language, the culture, or the every day customs necessary to get by. This is my aim for this semester: to learn to better understand people and their individual struggles, to help my readers understand the people that I write about, and to do my best to provide any relief that I can to those that struggle in whatever way.

Works Cited

http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/927393/jewish/Freedom-to-be-a-Jew.htm

http://www.ajcrussian.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=chLMK3PKLsF&b=7718799&ct=11713359

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Human_Rights/refuseniks.html