Syrian refugees in the UK: ‘We will be good people. We will build this country’
Four million people have left their wartorn homeland – the UK has offered shelter to just 187, leaving more to risk their lives getting here on unsafe boats or smuggled in lorries. Two of those welcomed here recount their journey
Since the conflict in Syria began in 2011, around 12 million people have been displaced by the fighting and almost 4 million people, including 1.6 million children, have fled the country. Lebanon is now home to almost 1.2 million Syrian refugees (they make up over 20% of the country’s population); another 1.8 million have gone to Turkey, and Iraq has accomodated about a quarter of a million. Under a UN-backed government resettlement scheme, Britain has given homes to just 187.
Aid agencies and UN officials have called on the UK to be more generous in its approach to supporting those fleeing the conflict, in which between 200,000 and 300,000 people have been killed. So far, around 200,000 Syrians have sought asylum in Europe; Germany has opened its doors to 30,000 under a similar scheme, but the UK has resisted expanding its programme.
The experiences of the 187 who have been formally welcomed reflect an asylum system at its best, at its most humane. Last year, the government and the UN’s refugee agency launched the Vulnerable Persons Relocation (VPR) scheme to provide protection for particularly vulnerable refugees. Those who have been granted five years’ protection under the scheme express gratitude to the UK, but they also voice concern at the tiny numbers being given this help.
Since the scheme is so restricted, thousands of other Syrians have independently made their way to the UK, and at great personal cost – paying out huge sums to traffickers, smuggling themselves in lorries from Calais, or risking their lives in unseaworthy ships across the Mediterranean. The perils of this journey have been recently illustrated by boats that have sunk in the seas of southern Europe. Away from the UN scheme, 4,200 Syrian nationals who have taken this unofficial route have been granted asylum or humanitarian protection by the UK – prompting refugee groups to ask why the UK doesn’t help reduce how many people are exposed to such risk, by increasing the numbers of those eligible for formal resettlement.
‘Everyone in Bradford speaks in their own special accent’
Mohammed, a 20-year-old Syrian refugee who arrived in Britain a year ago, was housed with his family in Bradford. Although his experiences have been traumatic, his journey to Britain and relocation here have been entirely positive. He found out early in 2014 that he, his mother, and his two younger brothers, aged 11 and 17, were eligible to come to the UK under the VPR scheme.
In an interview in his new home, on the first anniversary of his arrival, he paid tribute to the programme. But he sees his own good fortune against the backdrop of what thousands of other refugees have had to go through. He cannot bear to watch footage of the refugee ships in trouble; it is the audio that he finds particularly upsetting, the voices that cry: “My child is in the water.”
His family fled from Syria to Cairo in 2013, shortly after Mohammed’s father was killed while he travelled from the family home in Damascus to collect his own mother from the countryside and bring her to the relative safety of the city. Two days after his father had left, a friend called Mohammed to tell him that he had been killed, but it remains unclear how he died.
“Before the war, our life was very good. My father was a carpet-seller, I was studying. Life was constant, without dangers. Then the war began. Within eight months everything changed,” Mohammed says.
They took their savings and moved to Egypt. Mohammed studied in the morning and took a night job in a restaurant kitchen to help pay the family’s living costs. Life was just about manageable until the youngest boy was diagnosed with leukaemia. Treatment was expensive, so they arranged for their father’s shop in Damascus to be sold, but their money rapidly disappeared into chemotherapy payments. When it became clear that more complex treatment was going to be necessary, a medical charity applied on the family’s behalf for resettlement under the UN scheme. They qualified because of the urgent medical problem; other families qualify if they are deemed particularly vulnerable after being subjected to torture or sexual violence.
Mohammed (who asked for his surname to be witheld) was sceptical that they would be able to leave; he remembers that, at that time, every refugee he met was full of similar hopes, which usually proved unrealistic. But, a few weeks later, they were interviewed in Cairo, told to get medical checks and finally informed they would be going to the UK. “When they told me: ‘You will travel to the UK,’ I was very surprised. I asked: ‘UK? The UK?’ I was very happy.”
The family didn’t have to pay for their visas, and plane tickets were provided. They then flew to Manchester, before officials from a housing association brought them to a house in Bradford. They were allocated a support worker who helped the children find school and college places, and who explained the benefit system.
Mohammed misses his home in Syria. “I have many memories: studying at my desk, watching films, evenings with my family, the tea we drank. Leaving my country … it is a bad feeling when it is not a choice.”
On the whole, he likes Bradford and is delighted at how things have turned out. But he knows other families who fled here, forced through the unofficial route because of the limited resettlement scheme. “I have a friend in Wakefield who travelled from Libya to Italy by boat a year ago. He arrived, but his sister died on the journey; she was left in the sea. I think it cost him about $1,200 to $1,500 to make that crossing. The boats are cheap and small and not safe. The person who manages the refugees puts about 1,000 people in the boat, when they are built for 200. For this reason, many are dead in the sea.
“The governments in Europe should help more,” Mohammed says. “If they helped more, then they wouldn’t decide to travel by boat.” The decision to take a boat is not taken lightly, he adds. “When somebody wants to travel in the sea, he has a special reason. There has to be a reason. When all other things are closed, he decides to open this door.”
Mohammed has become an informal community organiser for around 20 other families in Bradford that have arrived from Syria, 15 of them under the resettlement scheme. He knows people in the UK are confused about the issue of migration – that many don’t understand the difference between economic migrants and refugees – and that there can be hostility. That said, he has had a warm welcome from his new neighbours. “When they find out that I am from Syria, they smile,” he says, though he stresses that most of the refugees he knows are making a huge effort to be accepted.
“These families who live in Bradford, they are working. They are not staying at home, they are not taking money from child benefit and jobseekers’ allowance – they’ve found work as butchers, taxi drivers, or in restaurants,” he says. It is harder for those who come independently and claim asylum once they have arrived, because they have to wait until their application is approved before they can work – a very unsettling period, made harder to cope with by enforced unemployment.
Mohammed has made progress with his English, and is studying for his A-levels. He plans to apply to medical school. “I hope to be a doctor. When I am a doctor, I will help this country. Many of my Syrian friends, they are working hard – in business, engineering, pharmaceuticals – they want to work. We will be good people in this country; we won’t be drug dealers. We will build the country.”
Getting used to England can be hard for refugees, but Mohammed and his family have adopted strict techniques for improving their English. “My mother didn’t know any words in English – apart from ‘car’, ‘cat’, ‘house’, that kind of thing. At first, we didn’t speak any Arabic in the house, we spoke only English. If I want water, I say: ‘Excuse me, could I have a cup of water?’ If I’m thinking about going out, I say to my brothers: ‘What is your opinion to make a trip to the park?’
“They say: ‘Yes, we are happy with that.’”
He found the Yorkshire accent difficult to start with: “Everyone in Bradford speaks in their own special accent. I say: ‘Can you repeat? Can you repeat again?’ My rule is that I shouldn’t be shy.”
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called on governments to offer 100,000 resettlement places for Syria’s refugees in 2015/16. Canada has promised it will accommodate 10,000, and the US has committed to resettling several thousand.
Refugee Council chief executive Maurice Wren has criticised the UK government’s approach, commenting: “The commitment to the relief effort has been laudable, but it’s not enough. The question is, does David Cameron want to go down in history as the prime minister who rationed his compassion to a few hundred people when there was the opportunity to offer safety to so many more?”
The government’s position is that it has focused resources on the humanitarian crisis in the region, rather than on resettlement. “The UK has been at the forefront of the international response to the crisis in Syria. We have pledged £800m, making us the second-largest bilateral donor in the world, and our support has reached hundreds of thousands of people,” a Home Office spokesperson said. “The UK has a proud history of offering asylum to those who need it most – there is no quota for any nation and all applications are considered on their individual needs.” Under the VPR scheme, the government expects to resettle “several hundred people over three years”.
For the past year, the campaign group Citizens UK has been targeting councils across the UK, trying to persuade them to accept more Syrian refugees on a local level. The organisation wants each council to commit to resettling 50 refugees, convinced that getting local-authority support is more effective than getting political backing. They have had some success in recent months, with Glasgow agreeing to house another 100 Syrian refugees.
Rabbi Danny Rich, a community leader for Citizens UK, said: “As a country, we have a tremendous record of giving aid, but it is clear that the most vulnerable need to be resettled. The UK has accepted a pitiful number of UN refugees.
“[Our suggestion] isn’t an open-door immigration policy, but it is about reviving the proud British tradition of offering shelter and hope to those who are in dire need. We should look back to acts like the Kindertransport programme to give politicians the courage and support to do more now.”
‘I didn’t give names because, if I had, people would die’
In Coventry, 32-year-old Nor also expresses gratitude to the officials who took her from a refugee camp in Lebanon. Last July, they helped her travel to safety in the UK with her two teenage daughters and her 11-year-old son.
A designer with her own lingerie shop in Homs, Nor saw her life become complicated in 2011 when peaceful demonstrations against the president were repressed by the ruling party. Nor – who also asked for her real name not to be published, to protect relatives still in Syria – became involved after an unarmed demonstration near her shop was dispersed by government forces who shot and killed dozens of protestors.
“I was working at my shop when about 35 people came in wounded, among them children and women. It was a very painful day. I had a first-aid kit so I tried to help using that until the ambulance arrived,” she remembers, speaking through an interpreter.
“We were trapped inside for five hours. Tanks were outside. I couldn’t get back to my family. If the government had found out I helped wounded people, I would have been in big trouble, but I was just concerned about helping those who had been hurt. In the evening, my business partner contacted some doctors, and they came and let the injured people out, without anyone seeing. Ever since that day, I felt I had to do more to help people injured in the demonstrations.” Her husband was opposed to her actions, and their marriage broke down.
When the violence increased in Homs, Nor moved to Damascus and tried to get a passport to leave for Egypt with her children. But, because her name was on a list of anti-government activists, she was stopped at a checkpoint and arrested several times. After her third arrest, she was held for six months. For six weeks, she was kept underground and tortured.
“I was electrocuted, hung upside down and beaten with a cable. There was psychological torture and abuse. They wanted the names of the people we were working with in Homs to help trapped neighbourhoods,” she says. She reaches into a Moses basket to pick up her six-month-old daughter, the child of a man she met during her time in a refugee camp, in Lebanon. The baby plays with a plastic giraffe and laughs.
“I didn’t give names because, if I had, people would die.” When she was released, she was smuggled to Lebanon to rejoin her children, who had fled there while she was in prison. After a month, she was advised by friends to apply to the UN’s resettlement programme; she had to provide proof that she had been tortured – she still had the scars. Last June, she was issued with a UK visa.
“It wasn’t until I arrived in the UK that I felt safe. Ten days after I arrived, I was issued with a residency permit for five years. That was the best moment. I know I am secure now – me and my children are safe. They missed three years at school, but they are back now, and they are learning. In the beginning it was very difficult, but they are smart – they have integrated.”
Nor was initially confused by the self-service tills in supermarkets, the unfamiliar scenery and the weather, but she has been reassured by the welcome she has received from neighbours. “I haven’t witnessed any racism; not on the bus, not in the supermarket. I live in a mainly white area – neighbours visit, they are friendly, but there is a language barrier. They know I am Syrian and they are very compassionate.”
While she talks, a council official arrives to ask if a problem with mould in the kitchen has been sorted (it has). Nor wants to return to work at some point, and would like to run her own business again but, for the moment, she is focused on improving her English and supporting her children.
She, too, tempers her feelings of relief with concern for those unable to flee. “There are hundreds of people in the camps who have been wounded, or raped, or tortured, who need to be taken care of. The situation is so bad that people are risking their lives, drowning trying to get to Europe. This is only because the EU countries are reluctant to do more. Germany is doing better – people tell me support there is very good. I am shocked that the UK didn’t take more people like me.”
She knows people who have bought fake passports and come illegally on boats, and she finds it painful to watch news reports about people stuck on the sea. “The whole journey would cost about $10,000. It’s very dangerous. It’s very costly, and it’s not guaranteed. I always think I might have been one of those people. If I hadn’t been give this chance, I might have resorted to that.”
THE GUARDIAN