June 22, 2016

Former Syrian refugee rescues his own family in Greece

located:	Greece, Syria, Turkey
editor:	Vanessa Ellingham

"I told them not to go in the night because if you have an accident you are more likely to drown. To wear a raincoat and plastic bags on their feet, that most lifejackets were fake. And to try not to scream because it scares the children."

This is how Ghias Aljundi guided his family through their perilous boat trip from Turkey to Greece in December last year.

Aljundi fled Syria for the UK 18 years ago, and is now volunteering near Lesvos, Greece, rescuing migrants arriving by boat from Turkey.

On World Refugee Day this week he wrote for Amnesty International about his rare opportunity to greet his brother on the shores of Greece, who he hadn't seen for 17 years.

"The only person I recognised was Safi, even though we hadn’t seen each other in 18 years. My sister-in-law, Nina, was crying. She thought she had lost her baby because people had stepped on her belly in panic on the boat. My doctor colleagues checked her and found a heartbeat. I picked up so many children, including my three-year-old niece, Sirin – I didn’t know it was her until later."

The family has since moved on to Germany where they are beginning their new lives, safe from the violence that caused them to flee last year after the brother, Safi's, mobile phone shop was shot at.

Aljundi makes a solid case for resettlement solutions and creating safe, legal routes for refugee passage, rather than allowing people smugglers to keep profiting from desperate people fleeing violence, war and discrimination.

"For all of them, being able to travel safely and legally to a country that will protect them means giving their children a future. As a parent you wouldn’t want your children to be born in limbo – you’d want them to go to school, be safe and settled."

"Protection isn’t a gift for refugees: it’s a human right. On World Refugee Day, we need to tell our governments to work together to find solutions, now."

Read Aljundi's full story here.