.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Refugees are also People

Anonymous said…
Thank you for showing these people are human beings. Are some of them terrorist? Maybe, just like some people born here are terrorists. Are some of them criminals? Maybe, just like some born here are criminals.
Fernando, you are putting a human face on these refugees. Many preppers are right wing and will disagree with you. Thanks for your effort.





Thanks. Your messages gives me hope. Lately I’ve been bombarded by some pretty hateful comments about refugees and immigrants in general. It seems that many of those commenting don’t understand that I’m also an immigrant and I have exactly zero tolerance for those displaying any degree of racism and xenophobia. Plenty of other websites where that poorly veiled racism is accepted and even encouraged but this would not be one of them.
Not sure how many immigrants and refugees people that call for their extermination have actually met, but I’ve met several these last few days. It was just yesterday that I was waiting in line with my wife for her ID here at a local police station in Spain. Syrian people were waiting in line there as well among other immigrants from all over, everywhere from Germany to Africa and Ukraine. Everyone was waiting patiently, very polite. One Syrian man was right next to us, pretty cheerful guy. I was there holding an umbrella for my wife and I. We had been waiting in line for several hours and I had the idea of bringing the umbrella for shade given that well, costa Del Sol can be pretty sunny. Sure enough a few hours after waiting everyone was desperate for a bit of shade. So I bring out my umbrella and my wife and I take to the shade under it. I look back and to my surprise see that the Syrian guy was smiling right back at me: a bit of shade got to him as well, which he was obviously thankful for. I just wish some of the people out there full of hate could have seen that moment. I couldn’t help but to smile and the guy said out loud with his so/so Spanish “thank you, brother!”. I’m not kidding it sent shivers down my spine. This guy was truly thankful for nothing but a bit of shade that by chance fell on him.
Refugees are people, some better educated, some with more money than others. Are some of them bad? Probably a small minority are, just like with any other group of people but the majority are good people escaping an awful reality. As for the comment I’ve seen a few times about many of them being young, fighting are men that should stay and fight, well , its easy enough to say that while sitting in your la-Z-boy sipping a cold beer or can of coke. First, whenever you have widespread war and destruction, you will always have millions of refugees from that given country. Happened in Syria, happens in Ukraine and happens in any other war torn country. If these men could have their families in some safe location while they go off to train, get well armed and organized and later shipped overseas to fight they probably would. But its different when all of a sudden your house is blown up and you have to run for your lives along with whatever family you still have alive, all while having no way of effectively fighting back at that moment.
You have two kinds of people.
These:

And these:



No, I’m not some “bleeding heart liberal”. I’ve simply been on the other side of the fence enough time to know better than many folks out there on the interwebs that have answers for everything, talk pretty big, and probably would bring ISIS down all by themselves if they weren’t so busy posting online.
FerFAL

4 comments:

Paul Bonneau said...

Fernando I agree. The people making these vicious comments are just being manipulated by the ruling class. It's always Divide and Conquer. I hope they remember what they said if they ever end up in the same situation.

By the way, fuck the US government for causing this problem.

German said...

The problem with the Syrian guys is that they took a large credit for the transfer to Germany.
At home in Syria the rest of the family is taken as a kind of hostage for this credit.
So these guys are looking desperateley for money to protect especially the female family members. And now, what do you think, they are doing?

Anonymous said...

I understand being afraid. It is a human emotion.

The rampant xenophobia still angers me. Especially that of my countrymen (I am US American). Certainly I am not so stupid as to believe that ISIS will not hide themselves among refugees. Do we not understand that, for every terrorist we might admit by taking in refugees, we radicalize two sympathetic citizens by slamming the door???

I wonder what the same xenophobes would be saying (will be saying) if (when) the feces contacts the fan blade here. You get what you give.

When people put their kids into a leaky rubber raft and set out across the sea, they're not lazy or cowardly. They're DESPERATE.

Don't let the hatemongers stop you from speaking out.

Who said...

Thank you for this post. I am a conservative 64 yr old Southerner whose family has been in the USA for generations (English and French). We do not need overwhelming numbers of people destabilizing any country but demonizing people is NOT the solution. Constructive careful policy is needed. Governments are not especially good at formulating good policy at this time in history. Your principled stand is needed to remind us all we are humans together.