[ad_1]
Sokolka, Poland – On the night of Friday, November 12, Baravan Huzni Murad took his sick wife, Avin Irfan Zahir, to a forest road in northeastern Poland and asked for help.
Murad, his wife, and their five children roamed the woods for four days after secretly crossing into Poland from Belarus, where they arrived almost three weeks earlier in search of a better life.
When they were trying to travel more to Poland through the woods, they were also trying to hide from the Polish authorities for fear that they would be killed. He was returned to Belarus.
But Zahir became seriously ill, and the Polish humanitarian group Grupa Granica called an ambulance on Murad’s behalf after seeing his plight.
The ambulance was a vehicle of the Polish border authorities.
While he and his children were being taken in a vehicle to a nearby police station, Murad saw his wife being taken to a local hospital.
“At the time, my only concern, all my attention, was with my wife,” Murad told Al Jazeera. “All I could think about was whether they would be able to help him. Would he be able to get up again? ‘
Murad and Zahir did not know she was pregnant.
He died three weeks later, on December 3rd.
Halikari Dhaker, as he was named, was born dead on November 14th.
Murad’s family paid a higher price than most of those who traveled from Belarus to Poland border crisis began in August.
Western pro-Poland powers say Belarus has led the situation – thousands of people tried to join the European Union – in exchange for sanctions imposed on Minsk by President Alexander Lukashenko for his repression of dissent.
Despite the incalculable loss, Murad still wants his family to live in Poland.
He said that after years of daily humiliation in Iraq, the European country had given him basic human rights for the first time in his life.
Murad left his hometown on October 3 in Zakho, a Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
“I sold everything, literally everything I had in my life, to save my kids,” Murad said. “Because there is no life and no future [in Kurdistan]”.
Lack of employment, corruption and extreme water and electricity shortages in the Kurdish region some of the reasons why Murad and others like him went.
Murad says he also had a more personal reason: Kurdish authorities falsely imprisoned him for murder for six months before the real perpetrator was found. He complained that he had never received an apology.
At the time of publication, Kurdish regional officials had not responded to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment on the accusation.
Arriving in Belarus, Murad’s family crossed into Poland on November 8 from a tunnel dug by other refugees and migrants under the border fence.
Once in Poland, the days went by without knowing where they were going. Then Zahir fell ill.
According to Arsalan Azzaddin, a Kurdish doctor from northeastern Poland who was involved in Zahir’s case, there was little chance of a cure.
“There was no hope from the beginning,” said Azaddin, who works at a hospital in Bielsk Podlaskie, a town hundreds of kilometers from the Belarusian border. “But in medicine we can’t say that everything is lost. So you fight. ”
After all, Azzadin said Zahir died as a result of the combined effects of hypothermia and sepsis caused by the loss of her pregnancy, as she failed three weeks before she arrived at the hospital.
“However, I don’t believe it,” Murad said of Zahir’s loss. “It’s hard to take.”
When they learned of his wife’s death, Murad and his family were in a refugee and migrant shelter in Białystok, run by Fundacja Dialog.
Murad’s friend Aras Palani, a Kurdish volunteer translator working with Grupa Granica, was with him at the time.
“I hugged her,” Palani said. “Everyone was crying in the middle.”
Katarzyna Zdanowicz, a spokeswoman for the Polish Border Guard in Podlaskie Province, said Zahir was one of nine people confirmed dead on Polish soil since the border crisis began.
Entrepreneurs believe that the real number is significantly higher. As temperatures have dropped in recent weeks, victims say they may have been lying in the woods without being found yet.
“It’s likely to be a real number [of the dead] it’s bigger, ”said Elak, a volunteer in the Grupa Granica area. “If there were no basic support, surely that amount would be much higher.”
Another Iraqi at the shelter, who asked for anonymity, said he regretted his choice to flee in view of the dangers of his travels so far.
“They have to close this route,” said a man who is a member of the persecuted Yazidi minority in Iraq.
“If I had known the road would be like this, I wouldn’t have come.”
Palani, a friend of Murad, said that migrants who want to reach Europe are driven by economic factors.
“It’s not about the money,” he said. “[Murad] he feels that everyone here is being taken care of. It’s a feeling he never knew. ‘
Murad and his family are convinced of the kindness they received from Grupa Granica, the hospital staff and the local Poles, and try to stay.
“I buried my son here,” Murad said. “I will serve this people until I die.”
Her other children, meanwhile, are struggling to make sense of the loss.
Her young son often cries or just lies on the floor for no reason. Murad said he is trying his best to be a father and mother to his children.
According to the wishes of the parents, Zahir’s body is expected to be returned next month for burial in the Kurdish region.
Murad wears one of his rings as a way to keep his memory close. She said with tears in her eyes that she meant “everything” to him.
“Every time I look at this ring,” Murad said, “I’ll see.”
Murad wears one of his wife’s rings as a memento of their happy marriage [Michal Kranz/Al Jazeera]
[ad_2]
Source link
