Read through all of your classmates posts about the refugee crisis.  Choose a post that seems to share something with your post and comment on it.  Your comment should respond to the content of your classmate’s original post, and it should describe the connection you see between it and your original post.  If you are responding to a post that contains an image, be sure that your post addresses the visual components of the post as well as the words! What do the photographs bring to the story that words alone might not convey? Be specific!

Homework must be completed by 12:00 on Wednesday!  If you did not complete the homework for Monday, you can still receive credit for Wednesday’s homework by commenting on one of your classmates’ posts.

The extent to which refugee children have been conditioned by their environment is heartbreaking. We wanted permission to take this young girl’s photograph, so we asked if her mother was nearby. Her eyes filled with the most uncontrollable fear that I’ve ever seen in a child. ‘Why do you want my mother?’ she asked. Later, her parents told us how the family had crouched in the woods while soldiers ransacked their house in Syria. More recently they’d been chased through the woods by Turkish police. After we’d spent a few minutes talking with her parents, she returned to being a child and could not stop hugging us, and laughing, and saying ‘I love you so much.’ But I went to sleep that night remembering the terror on her face when we first asked to speak to her mother.

(Lesvos, Greece)

I chose this picture because it shows one of the biggest issues of the refugee crisis which is the danger that the children are in. The children are being exposed to every facet of war and are losing family members at very young ages. I hate the fact that many of them will not have the opportunity to enjoy life as a kid and the fact that they may be traumatized for the rest of their lives.

“When I joined the Syrian army, there was no war yet. I just wanted to serve my country. But now everyone is forced to do horrible things. One time we were marching and a single bullet came from a village. Our commander told us to go into each house, one by one, and kill everyone inside. The village was a Sunni village, so our commander ordered all the Sunni soldiers to lead the attack. Anyone who disobeyed would be killed themselves. We did our best to aim over the heads of the people who were running away, but forty people were killed. A few nights later I fled in the middle of the night.” (Lesvos, Greece)

The story by this refugee demonstrates the reality that citizens face in their homes. This refugee fled from his country because he didn’t want to kill more people. He was part of the army that was killing many citizens. His story demonstrates that the army don’t intend on killing these people but are forced because they would have to die themselves if they don’t follow their commanders directions. This is a sad compelling story of a man that wanted to do good for his country and serve it, but had to leave his country in whole because he didn’t think he’d had to do horrible things when serving his country.

“Life had been going so well for me before the war came. I’m a driver, and I’d just saved enough money to buy a new car. I was starting a family. My father had given us a house and we’d bought all new furniture. But one day a mortar destroyed a wall of our house. It was too dangerous to stay. I left because of the children. The years we’ve spent as refugees have been very tough, but we’ve just learned that we’re going to Detroit, Michigan. I have a brother-in-law who says it’s very nice there. He says he is allowed to work legally and officially. So hopefully I can start driving again. He says there is heating in the houses and the water is warm when you shower. And he says that America cares about children. He tells me that there is a bus that picks them up and takes them to school.” (Amman, Jordan)

I chose this picture because it shows how not only adults in these countries are threatened but children too. Many people living in the United States take it for granted. As I am sitting in my house right now I am not worrying about a mortar destroying my house or anything to that but these people have to constantly worry about their homes being bombed or possibly destroyed or their lives at risk. Jordan Amman and his family had to go to another country and start all over again and put all his hope into what his brother in law told him but at the end of the day you can tell all he cared about was that America cares about children.

Posted on December 14,2015 by Humans of New York

“Our house in Baghdad was located near a military compound, and the militia officers wanted it for themselves. They sent three men to our house to order us to leave. When my father refused, they mailed us an envelope with bullets inside. My father was working as a library security guard during this time. The militia went to the library and murdered my father’s coworker—thinking it was him. My father became very scared when he heard this. He told us we had to pack all our clothes into bags and leave Iraq immediately. It was the middle of the night. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my bedroom or my school or my friends. I wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye to anyone. Nobody knew we were leaving. When the taxi arrived, I held onto the doorframe and screamed that I wasn’t going. My father pulled me away and told me that we were going to live in a better place. That night we drove to Syria.”

I chose to share this picture because it truely decribes the fear of what it is like living in one of these countries that are at war. In this story, the people that are supposed to protect the citizens of Baghdad instead theaten them to leave their homes. When they don’t, they attempt to murder them. This is unbelieveable as we can never imagine this happening in the United States. This narratives also shows how all of a sudden, you are forced to flee and leave everything behind. The worst part is that this is only one of the many tragedies that happen in these countries that are at war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/world/europe/turkey-forcibly-returned-refugees-to-syria-amnesty-report.html

The New York Times Article “Turkey Has Forcibly Returned Thousands of Refugees to Syria, Amnesty International Says”, caught my interest because of the crisis happening in and to the border countries of Syria that take in the most refugees. We spoke in class about the fact that if something is not happening in our country we just pass by it and ignore it, but this may or may not actually be true depending on the risks a nation could take to help the Syrians become safe. Turkey and Jordan have taken in the most refugees and have shot and sent some of them back because they can not deal with the mass refugees and how they negatively affect the economy. In saying this, I believe it is worth passing on because it is not easy to help a country in a dangerous and risky situation. Yes, we should help and it is wrong for a country to send you back to your home country knowing you will die, but we know the mindset of the people in our world. If the U.S. decides to take in a mass amount of refugees, what could happen to the rest of us personally and as a nation?