Published : 25-09-2017
Action Group – Fayez Abu Eid
The story of Palestinian-Syrian refugee “Abu Muhammad” (40 years old), is one of hundreds of stories of the Palestinian camps’ residents who suffered the horrors of the siege, dying of starvation, disease and displacement as a result of the ongoing war in Syria, which forced them to risk the lives of their families, by taking the “death boats” to find peace.
“Abu Mohammed’s” tragic story began with the deterioration of the security situation in his neighborhood, “Al-Taqadom,” located in Yarmouk refugee camp, south of the Syrian capital Damascus. In October 2012, he and his family were forced to leave to another house inside the camp. However, on 16/12/2012, Syrian government warplanes raided the camp, leading to many deaths and injuries and the entry of armed Syrian opposition groups. “Abu Muhammed” and his family were forced to leave the camp.
“Abu Muhammad” began a new astray journey, after finding himself in the outdoors when he left Yarmouk. He spent his first days in a shelter, before deciding to send his Jordanian wife and five children to Jordan and returning to Yarmouk to lend a hand to those who remained inside the camp.
Yarmouk’s siege… a genocide to the soul
Speaking of the siege, “Abu Muhammed” said, “The Syrian regime forces bombed Abdul-Qader al-Husseini Mosque and Al-Fallujah school, and the armed Syrian opposition groups entered Yarmouk camp, then the Syrian regime forces and its affiliated Palestinian factions imposed a partial siege on Yarmouk”. Initially, the regime allowed the passage of citizens to and from the camp through Al-Bashir Mosque’s checkpoint, carrying limited amounts of food. However, the people would face all types of humiliation, insults, and torture. Later, a total siege was imposed on Yarmouk and as a result, food, medical supplies, and fuel were banned from entering the camp. This was accompanied by cutting off water and electricity completely from all the neighborhoods and houses of Yarmouk. “Abu Mohammed” continued: "With the total siege imposed on the camp, the humanitarian tragedy began to emerge. After the food gradually disappeared from the camp and its prices rose significantly, residents no longer had the money to buy and no other choices than water and trees. Dozens of people died”.
“Abu Mohammed” adds that the ugliest thing he saw in Yarmouk camp was an attempt to destroy people's spirits. The siege always destroys the body, but it has also become a tool to exterminate the soul. This is what happened with many of the camp’s residents, who helplessly witnessed their children die of starvation. Many would travel long distances in search of food for them and their children. They fed on grass, cactus trees, and the poisonous birds-foot-trefoil plant that only donkeys eat. They drank spices soup and sometimes it reached the extent that they would feed on cats and dogs.
Most of the people were starving and ate only half or one meal a day, thinking only about the food of the day they’re living on. They lost tens of kilograms, slept without talking to each other. Children who cry from hunger were told by their parents to sleep so that they can get food in the morning, as in all cases of famine.
Before the siege was imposed on Yarmouk, “Abu Muhammed” weighed 105 kilograms. Today, he weighs 60 kilograms, his ribcage now visible. He couldn’t sleep of hunger and he would enter the kitchen to find anything to eat without success. One day, his joy was indescribable because he found a piece of bread forgotten in the vegetable basket. Although it was covered with a layer of mold, he rushed to eat it.
“Abu Mohammed” pointed out that the phenomenon of removing doors of the houses abandoned by their residents and stealing them spread in Yarmouk camp, in order to search for food. No one could be blamed.
The situation wasn’t clear of theft in order to sell. Robbery was a widespread phenomenon in Yarmouk because of the poor financial conditions. However, devastating enough was that people were forced to steal food. Those who exempted from theft went out masked at night to gather what they could eat from the garbage.
Heart-breaking horrific stories
“Abu Muhammed” lived all the painful events that hit Yarmouk camp from bombardment, siege, and starvation. He was also a witness because of his job as an ambulance driver and a worker in the relief field for dozens of human cases that were painful to the eyes, he said.
“Abu Muhammed” spoke of the plight of hunger in pain and despair saying, “I felt hunger... hunger that tears the intestines, hunger that made a bowl of spices soup and grass the most delicious meal I tasted until now. The hunger that I had read about in stories and legends I was now living. The hunger that makes a person walking in the streets look down to the ground instead of looking ahead, hoping to find breadcrumbs.
He added that he witnessed a number of horrific stories that made him cry and feel helpless, hoping to die better than live. He tells the story of a mother who put her two-year-old daughter in the garbage bin and left her on the pavement because she could not afford to feed her. I saw the body of a man who died of starvation and rats feeding on it. Another day, I saw a number of children gathering near a sweets shop. The price of one piece was 700 Syrian pounds. They stared down at a number of armed men eating the sweets in agony, but the sight that shook my chest was when I saw the children running to catch lick the remains of the empty wrappers the gunmen had thrown.
For the rest of his life, “Abu Muhammed” will never forget the long lines of people in the camp waiting to receive a small portion of the spices soup. Most of the people drank the soup before they even got home, from the severity of hunger they were feeling.
One of the most heart-wrenching scenes “Abu Muhammad” witnessed was of a number of residents skinning a cat in order to eat its meat. He commented, "If everyone heard of the fatwa issued about the possibility of resorting cats’ meat if, under siege, I saw it with my own eyes.
Abu Mohammed explains that this is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be told of the tragic stories happening in Yarmouk camp, which turned out to be worse than hell. He added that even the animals did not get out of starvation alive.
Leaving Yarmouk and the new stray journey
Despite “Abu Muhammed’s” suffering from hunger and siege and the many assassination attempts he survived due to his relief work and ambulance driving, he never thought of leaving Yarmouk camp, until ISIS broke into the camp and took control on April 1, 2015, with the aid of Fath Al-Sham members (previously known as Al-Nusra Front). He was forced to leave the camp to the town of Qudsaya in the suburb of Damascus after fearing for his life, especially after the massacres committed by ISIS against the activists and the people of Yarmouk camp. He considered heading to Turkey then migrating to a European country for security and safety, because life has become intolerable in Syria, and life and death are now equal to me. I made a deal with one of the smugglers and left Qudsaya, unaware of the dangers ahead of me on this trip. The members of armed groups arrested me in Idlib and I was under their detention for ten days, where I suffered the most horrific means of torture until they released me after making sure that I wasn’t a member of the Syrian army.
I then continued my route to the Turkish city of Izmir. There I stayed in a place near to the sea for four days, until the time came for my journey in one of the nights. I rode the inflatable boat which was about 8 meters long, with 40 other people and we started out journey to Greece. We were in danger of sinking several times, due to the rough sea and overloaded boat. The women and children were crying of fear, while the men read Quraan and prayed to God. “After we arrived at the Greek beaches, we walked down the island until we reached the first checkpoint. The police took us to a camp on the island to register our names and gave us an expulsion paper from Greece within a 3 month period”.
After receiving the paper, I headed to Athens by boat and took a bus to the borders of Macedonia and then to the Serbian borders. In some cases, I would cross the borders on foot or in buses. “The main problems we faced were in Hungary,” added “Abu Muhammed,” since it had completely closed its borders in front of refugees. However, he was one of the fortunate immigrants who managed to cross the border before the ban was imposed and took the bus to Austria and from there to Germany.
“Abu Muhammed” spent 8000 Euros ($9000) for the whole trip to Germany that enabled him to flee from Syria to Idlib and then transit from Turkey to Germany, which hosted them properly, he says.
Access to safety did not end the journey of suffering
After a long and painful journey, “Abu Muhammed” finally arrived in Germany on November 22, 2015. Upon his arrival, he stayed at one of his friends’ house for several days in order to regain his health, before handing himself over to the German police. There, the normal procedures for registering as a refugee and to a refugee shelter took place, and after he began to sense the stability in Germany, “Abu Muhammed” felt a sense of comfort and that he reached a safe land. However, this feeling didn’t last for long because of the distance between him and his family. He said, “I haven’t seen my wife or children for six years. They’re living a horrific life, under severe living conditions in Jordan as a result of my absence”. He spoke of the agony he felt after his six-year-old daughter refused to talk to him over Skype after not recognizing him, since the last time he saw her she was only 10 months. This negatively affected his emotions, because of the tight procedures imposed on refugees by German law. These restrictions came through a series of amendments to the German law regarding the treatment of asylum seekers, which were recently concluded and culminated in a decision issued on November 23, 2016, by the Supreme Administrative Court in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. "Syrian refugees have the right to grant secondary protection - temporary, and it is not necessary to provide them with full protection - refugee status”.
What “Abu Muhammed” had feared happened. After more than a year in Germany, he was granted a one-year stay, meaning he would not reunite with his family living in Jordan, who he is desperate to see and hold his five daughters to his chest and sit with them. In a state of despair and loss between two strenuous decisions, either to stay in Germany and wait for many years to reunite his family or return to Syria, which means endangering his life and facing certain death there.
There are no official statistics on the number of Palestinian-Syrian refugees in Germany, who were classified as stateless according to German law. Germany is bound by the Geneva Convention to facilitate the nationalization of stateless people, based on the German Citizenship Act 2000. It is clear, however, that Germany is turning a blind eye to the implementation of these laws.
Action Group – Fayez Abu Eid
The story of Palestinian-Syrian refugee “Abu Muhammad” (40 years old), is one of hundreds of stories of the Palestinian camps’ residents who suffered the horrors of the siege, dying of starvation, disease and displacement as a result of the ongoing war in Syria, which forced them to risk the lives of their families, by taking the “death boats” to find peace.
“Abu Mohammed’s” tragic story began with the deterioration of the security situation in his neighborhood, “Al-Taqadom,” located in Yarmouk refugee camp, south of the Syrian capital Damascus. In October 2012, he and his family were forced to leave to another house inside the camp. However, on 16/12/2012, Syrian government warplanes raided the camp, leading to many deaths and injuries and the entry of armed Syrian opposition groups. “Abu Muhammed” and his family were forced to leave the camp.
“Abu Muhammad” began a new astray journey, after finding himself in the outdoors when he left Yarmouk. He spent his first days in a shelter, before deciding to send his Jordanian wife and five children to Jordan and returning to Yarmouk to lend a hand to those who remained inside the camp.
Yarmouk’s siege… a genocide to the soul
Speaking of the siege, “Abu Muhammed” said, “The Syrian regime forces bombed Abdul-Qader al-Husseini Mosque and Al-Fallujah school, and the armed Syrian opposition groups entered Yarmouk camp, then the Syrian regime forces and its affiliated Palestinian factions imposed a partial siege on Yarmouk”. Initially, the regime allowed the passage of citizens to and from the camp through Al-Bashir Mosque’s checkpoint, carrying limited amounts of food. However, the people would face all types of humiliation, insults, and torture. Later, a total siege was imposed on Yarmouk and as a result, food, medical supplies, and fuel were banned from entering the camp. This was accompanied by cutting off water and electricity completely from all the neighborhoods and houses of Yarmouk. “Abu Mohammed” continued: "With the total siege imposed on the camp, the humanitarian tragedy began to emerge. After the food gradually disappeared from the camp and its prices rose significantly, residents no longer had the money to buy and no other choices than water and trees. Dozens of people died”.
“Abu Mohammed” adds that the ugliest thing he saw in Yarmouk camp was an attempt to destroy people's spirits. The siege always destroys the body, but it has also become a tool to exterminate the soul. This is what happened with many of the camp’s residents, who helplessly witnessed their children die of starvation. Many would travel long distances in search of food for them and their children. They fed on grass, cactus trees, and the poisonous birds-foot-trefoil plant that only donkeys eat. They drank spices soup and sometimes it reached the extent that they would feed on cats and dogs.
Most of the people were starving and ate only half or one meal a day, thinking only about the food of the day they’re living on. They lost tens of kilograms, slept without talking to each other. Children who cry from hunger were told by their parents to sleep so that they can get food in the morning, as in all cases of famine.
Before the siege was imposed on Yarmouk, “Abu Muhammed” weighed 105 kilograms. Today, he weighs 60 kilograms, his ribcage now visible. He couldn’t sleep of hunger and he would enter the kitchen to find anything to eat without success. One day, his joy was indescribable because he found a piece of bread forgotten in the vegetable basket. Although it was covered with a layer of mold, he rushed to eat it.
“Abu Mohammed” pointed out that the phenomenon of removing doors of the houses abandoned by their residents and stealing them spread in Yarmouk camp, in order to search for food. No one could be blamed.
The situation wasn’t clear of theft in order to sell. Robbery was a widespread phenomenon in Yarmouk because of the poor financial conditions. However, devastating enough was that people were forced to steal food. Those who exempted from theft went out masked at night to gather what they could eat from the garbage.
Heart-breaking horrific stories
“Abu Muhammed” lived all the painful events that hit Yarmouk camp from bombardment, siege, and starvation. He was also a witness because of his job as an ambulance driver and a worker in the relief field for dozens of human cases that were painful to the eyes, he said.
“Abu Muhammed” spoke of the plight of hunger in pain and despair saying, “I felt hunger... hunger that tears the intestines, hunger that made a bowl of spices soup and grass the most delicious meal I tasted until now. The hunger that I had read about in stories and legends I was now living. The hunger that makes a person walking in the streets look down to the ground instead of looking ahead, hoping to find breadcrumbs.
He added that he witnessed a number of horrific stories that made him cry and feel helpless, hoping to die better than live. He tells the story of a mother who put her two-year-old daughter in the garbage bin and left her on the pavement because she could not afford to feed her. I saw the body of a man who died of starvation and rats feeding on it. Another day, I saw a number of children gathering near a sweets shop. The price of one piece was 700 Syrian pounds. They stared down at a number of armed men eating the sweets in agony, but the sight that shook my chest was when I saw the children running to catch lick the remains of the empty wrappers the gunmen had thrown.
For the rest of his life, “Abu Muhammed” will never forget the long lines of people in the camp waiting to receive a small portion of the spices soup. Most of the people drank the soup before they even got home, from the severity of hunger they were feeling.
One of the most heart-wrenching scenes “Abu Muhammad” witnessed was of a number of residents skinning a cat in order to eat its meat. He commented, "If everyone heard of the fatwa issued about the possibility of resorting cats’ meat if, under siege, I saw it with my own eyes.
Abu Mohammed explains that this is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be told of the tragic stories happening in Yarmouk camp, which turned out to be worse than hell. He added that even the animals did not get out of starvation alive.
Leaving Yarmouk and the new stray journey
Despite “Abu Muhammed’s” suffering from hunger and siege and the many assassination attempts he survived due to his relief work and ambulance driving, he never thought of leaving Yarmouk camp, until ISIS broke into the camp and took control on April 1, 2015, with the aid of Fath Al-Sham members (previously known as Al-Nusra Front). He was forced to leave the camp to the town of Qudsaya in the suburb of Damascus after fearing for his life, especially after the massacres committed by ISIS against the activists and the people of Yarmouk camp. He considered heading to Turkey then migrating to a European country for security and safety, because life has become intolerable in Syria, and life and death are now equal to me. I made a deal with one of the smugglers and left Qudsaya, unaware of the dangers ahead of me on this trip. The members of armed groups arrested me in Idlib and I was under their detention for ten days, where I suffered the most horrific means of torture until they released me after making sure that I wasn’t a member of the Syrian army.
I then continued my route to the Turkish city of Izmir. There I stayed in a place near to the sea for four days, until the time came for my journey in one of the nights. I rode the inflatable boat which was about 8 meters long, with 40 other people and we started out journey to Greece. We were in danger of sinking several times, due to the rough sea and overloaded boat. The women and children were crying of fear, while the men read Quraan and prayed to God. “After we arrived at the Greek beaches, we walked down the island until we reached the first checkpoint. The police took us to a camp on the island to register our names and gave us an expulsion paper from Greece within a 3 month period”.
After receiving the paper, I headed to Athens by boat and took a bus to the borders of Macedonia and then to the Serbian borders. In some cases, I would cross the borders on foot or in buses. “The main problems we faced were in Hungary,” added “Abu Muhammed,” since it had completely closed its borders in front of refugees. However, he was one of the fortunate immigrants who managed to cross the border before the ban was imposed and took the bus to Austria and from there to Germany.
“Abu Muhammed” spent 8000 Euros ($9000) for the whole trip to Germany that enabled him to flee from Syria to Idlib and then transit from Turkey to Germany, which hosted them properly, he says.
Access to safety did not end the journey of suffering
After a long and painful journey, “Abu Muhammed” finally arrived in Germany on November 22, 2015. Upon his arrival, he stayed at one of his friends’ house for several days in order to regain his health, before handing himself over to the German police. There, the normal procedures for registering as a refugee and to a refugee shelter took place, and after he began to sense the stability in Germany, “Abu Muhammed” felt a sense of comfort and that he reached a safe land. However, this feeling didn’t last for long because of the distance between him and his family. He said, “I haven’t seen my wife or children for six years. They’re living a horrific life, under severe living conditions in Jordan as a result of my absence”. He spoke of the agony he felt after his six-year-old daughter refused to talk to him over Skype after not recognizing him, since the last time he saw her she was only 10 months. This negatively affected his emotions, because of the tight procedures imposed on refugees by German law. These restrictions came through a series of amendments to the German law regarding the treatment of asylum seekers, which were recently concluded and culminated in a decision issued on November 23, 2016, by the Supreme Administrative Court in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. "Syrian refugees have the right to grant secondary protection - temporary, and it is not necessary to provide them with full protection - refugee status”.
What “Abu Muhammed” had feared happened. After more than a year in Germany, he was granted a one-year stay, meaning he would not reunite with his family living in Jordan, who he is desperate to see and hold his five daughters to his chest and sit with them. In a state of despair and loss between two strenuous decisions, either to stay in Germany and wait for many years to reunite his family or return to Syria, which means endangering his life and facing certain death there.
There are no official statistics on the number of Palestinian-Syrian refugees in Germany, who were classified as stateless according to German law. Germany is bound by the Geneva Convention to facilitate the nationalization of stateless people, based on the German Citizenship Act 2000. It is clear, however, that Germany is turning a blind eye to the implementation of these laws.
