The earthquake that struck the Turkish-Syrian border this Monday (6), Sunday night in Brazil, filled with blood and debris over a decade of endless calamities in this region. These tremors particularly hit Syrian refugees living between the two countries.
The world has grown accustomed to thinking of Syria as a scene of routine destruction, a place where residential buildings collapse and people are forced from their homes.
In this context, humanitarian agencies —which are struggling to support the Syrian population— will have difficulties in sensitizing governments and donors to help the victims, since there are already so many helpless people. In any case, the first campaigns for those affected by the earthquake are already live.
Most of the Syrian catastrophes are the result of human action, to which are now added the effects of nature, in a terrible coincidence. Since the population rose up against the dictator Bashar al-Assad, in early 2011, his regime has repressed demonstrations with violence. Sometimes by laying siege to rebel neighborhoods and starving them to death. Terrorist organizations, such as the Islamic State and branches of Al Qaeda, took advantage of the chaos to arm and import militants into the territory.
It is not known for sure how many people have died in this civil war. A report released by the UN last June speaks of at least 306,000 civilians, not including indirect deaths or those of combatants. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates the figure to be between 500,000 and 610,000 people.
The number of refugees, also according to the UN, is 5.4 million. Most of them — 64%, or 3.5 million — are sheltering in Turkey. The border, also hit by the earthquake, is one of the main concentration points, where Syrian refugees have been waiting for the possibility of returning home for a decade.
These are people who inhabit what the French filmmaker Anne Poiret calls a “refugee”. It is a complex of camps where refugees, including Syrians, live in exile. They are not in their homeland, nor have they been integrated into the host country. Thus, they have no access to public services or the labor market. Poor sanitary conditions in the camps facilitate outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.
If the situation already seems dramatic, and it is difficult to explain the seriousness to someone who has never been to one of these places, it is accentuated by a winter that has been devastating the fields. Many of those who crossed back into Syria ended up settling in the north of the country, creating a kind of new home – now collapsed.
It is in this context that Syrians abroad have shown disbelief when commenting on the news on social media. They are reports of those who do not admit that, after everything they’ve lived through, they still have to watch, helpless, videos of their destroyed hometowns. Who is amazed to think that their parents, who couldn’t flee the country, are in the streets, afraid to return home and be victims of another tremor.
In the first years of the civil war, photos of neighborhoods in the city of Homs destroyed by Assad’s bombings became popular. Now, those images are repeated—but now, by the action of the earthquake.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
