Persecution of Refugees

NARRATOR:

Who would ever want to be left in a position to have to immigrate taking their wives, their children, their elderly parents with them, leaving behind their homes, their furniture, their works, their schools, relatives, the country they were born and raised in, in short leaving behind all their past and their dreams, taking only a duffle bag and sometimes even without one, to places they know nothing about never to return to their countries again?

There is only one reason for millions to quit their countries; they are obliged to do so.

On August 28^th, 2015, the world woke up to a truly heart-wrenching human tragedy. A total of 71 Syrian refugees - 59 men, eight women and four children - including a one-year-old girl among them – were found dead in a truck abandoned on an Austrian motorway. 

SECOND VOICE-OVER:

            71 dead bodies were taken out of the back of a truck found abandoned on the roadside of a motorway in Burgerland, Austria. Hans Peter Doskozil, the local Chief of police, stated that there were eight women and four children among the dead.

 

NARRATOR:

 

All the sufferings they've been through ended with their death in an air-tight truck used for transporting frozen chicken.

This was not the first news report we received about the misery of the refugees and it would certainly not be the last. Later on we heard the reports of two capsized boats carrying refugees trying to pass to Greece from Bodrum; eleven people including little Aylan and his brother,  lost their lives. Aylan's small body created a great impact all around the world. As a matter of fact, Aylan was a very familiar image for Syrians. When we asked a Syrian who is living in war in Syria how he was affected by the pictures of Aylan, he said;

 

 

NARRATOR:

Another news report coming from Hungary after Aylan pricked everyone's conscience once more. Osama Abdul Mohsen, a father who was tripped up and knocked down while holding his son Zaid in his arms in Hungary by a journalist while trying to flee, stirred up Muslims.  

Right now there are millions of people who've had to immigrate from a number of countries primarily from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Myanmar, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and the Central African Republic.

These people prefer to risk death and set off with the hope of finding a solution, instead of remaining in their countries and living in terror every single day. Scores of people in tiny rubber boats sail to open seas by risking their lives. Risking death they travel in the coolers of trucks or dangling from train doors. Risking death, they dig beneath barbed wire fences and try to flee to neighboring countries with their children.  

VTR

-         We don't sleep, we don't sleep. Look at my eyes. They are red. We don't eat, just walking, just walking.

 

NARRATOR:

When the rubber boat Alaa Houd boarded in Izmir started to take on water and he had to swim for three hours towards the Greek Islands until he was found by the Greek coast guards, Alaa Houd said that he never felt fear of death because of the things he experienced. "I didn't fear much. That is because I faced death every single day in Syria during the last three years of my life. When compared with the things I've seen there, swimming in the sea is nothing. People in Syria are walking on the streets and bombs are raining down on them from the sky." 

NARRATOR:

While the number of refugees who'd lost their lives only in the Mediterranean in 2011 when the Arab Spring first started was 1,500 to 1,900; this number reached 3,500 in 2014. As of April, the number of deaths in the Mediterranean reached 1,500, in 2015. 

 

NARRATOR:

In the reports prepared about this issue it is emphasized that the number of deaths is actually likely higher than this number and since there were no records about the boats the refugees traveled in, the actual number of deaths may never be known. Other than the refugees whose identities could be determined, there were thousands of lost refugees. Taking into consideration that the odds of these people reaching to European shores was slim to none, it is thought that more than 20,000  people known to be missing were also dead. 

On the other hand the policies of the governments of some countries are strictly "inhumane". The Hungarian police attempted to contain the refugees trying to get into European countries with tear-gas bombs. On the island of Kos  in Greece, police clubbed and attacked refugees with fire extinguishers.

About 2,500 immigrants were locked up in a stadium for 24 hours being given little- if any- water or food. Riot squads used stun grenades against mothers, children and elderly people waiting to get their immigration papers inside that stadium. International NGO Doctors without Borders confirmed that the basic hygienic necessities of the great majority of these refugees were not being met and that they were mistreated by the police. 

NARRATOR:

What will they say about those mothers, fathers, grandfathers and babies who've had to leave everything they have behind and flee to other countries while they too had the right to live an honorable and safe life like everyone else in the world? 

 

VTR (- (Antichrist) He appears when there will be immense disorders and commotion among people, while there will be commotion among Muslims, in the Muslim world. Such times have not yet come, Alhamdulillah. Wherever you go, Muslims are still respectable.

 Such times have not yet come, Alhamdulillah. Wherever you go, Muslims are still respectable.)

 

NARRATOR:

If the antichrist has not yet appeared, who is perpetrating all this persecution on Muslims all over the world?  

VTR

 (- (Antichrist) He appears when there will be immense disorders and commotion among people, while there will be commotion among Muslims, in the Muslim world. These are disastrous days; those are days that everyone will look for a place to hide. Look, Alhamdulillah, we are talking here, we are reading hadiths,  performing our prayers. So such days are not yet imminent.

(Antichrist) He appears when there will be immense disorders and commotion among people, while there will be commotion among Muslims, in the Muslim world. These are disastrous days; those are days that everyone will look for a place to hide. Look, Alhamdulillah, we are talking here, we are reading hadiths,  performing our prayers. So such days are not yet imminent.)

NARRATOR:

WHAT MORE SHOULD HAPPEN FOR THOSE DAYS TO BE CLOSE? 

NARRATOR:

With wars going on primarily in Middle East, the Caucuses and Central Asia and the widespread human rights violations of those governments, people are left with no other choice other than setting out on such dangerous journeys at the risk of their lives.  Muslims of the world are being crushed, persecuted and  annihilated in Palestine, Syria, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzigova, Algeria, Tunisia, Erithrea, Egypt, Kashmir, East Turkestan, Chechnya, Thailand, Philippines, Burma and Sudan.  

In short, the Muslim world is in deep sorrow.

Those who turn a blind eye to the sorrows befalling a Muslim brother simply because they are not affected personally should not forget that the same sorrows might befall them tomorrow. 

There is only one solution God shows people in the face of this situation and that is the system of the Mahdi an