6.6 million people have been internally displaced in Syria. It is the worst humanitarian crisis of all time. Half of the population has either been killed or forced to flee their homeland. This leaves hundreds of thousands of families forced to make risky trips in dangerous and often deadly circumstances to fight their way to safety. They're either washed up on shore after drowning (like 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi), or in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Greece and Turkey, struggling to find stability. The children of Syria are forced to stop attending school as bombs have demolished majority of them and the very few who do attend, have found it extremely difficult to study or focus. More than half of Syrian refugees are under the age of 18. As schools, homes and hospitals are left in rubbish and the longing threat of ISIS making their lives hell, they aren't just facing bodily harm, but psychological trauma.
These people are innocent victims. They're innocent human beings who have been oppressed, violated, and attacked by a terrorist group that is unanimously declared deadly. But for some reason the global discourse that surrounds refugees paints them as violent, vile, immoral, anti-American, malicious and, of course, terrorists. Suddenly the world that fights for justice and humanity turns a blind eye and a cold heart to those in desperate need of asylum. Suddenly every nation (including our own) that wastes no time forcing themselves into international relations and foreign policy, wants no part in Syria and welcoming refugees.
Everyone around the world has their minds set on these refugees coming to bring the world harm. They believe these people only have one thing on their mind and its to carry out the violent acts of ISIS. The world seems to repeatedly ignore that Syrians are trying to escape ISIS. When they're walking hundred of miles in the middle of the night trying to enter a new country while avoiding snipers, they are trying to escape ISIS. When they are crammed in a faulty life boat with 100 other people as its sinking, they are trying to escape ISIS. These refugees don't have hate in their hearts, only freedom. It's either reach Europe or die to them, and the world seems to want to just let them die because they're scared of them being terrorists. But refugees only have the desire of freedom and safety for themselves and their families, in their heart.
The world doesn't seem to understand the reality of Syrian refugees. The reality is, in Syria school children are in refugee camps recounting the stories of watching their friends die as their school exploded. Parents are having to say goodbye to their home and the only country they've ever known. Husbands and wives are holding tight to photographs of their spouse because that's all they have left. Syrian refugees are not ISIS. Syrians have witnessed the horrors of ISIS with their very own eyes, as we only watched it on a television screen. They don't have the time to hate or want to bring harm to you, they're too busy trying to escape harm.
These people aren't terrorists they're survivors.
