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FYROM / MIGRANTS
STORY: FYROM / MIGRANTS
TRT: 2:49
SOURCE: OHCHR
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ARABIC / ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 4-5 SEPTEMBER 2016, SKOPJE, FYR MACEDONIA
RECENT - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, UNHQ exterior
AUGUST 2016, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, migrant camp
3. Wide shot, 2. Muhammed Wasim walking into his container
4. Med shot, Muhammed Wasim holding daughter
5. Wide shot, Muhammed Wasim speaking to OHCHR team
6. SOUNDBITE (ARABIC) Muhammed Wasim, Syrian Migrant:
"Honestly we are wishing for death. I went to the organizations here several times and told them I don’t have the money to return to Syria. If you can, send me back to Syria to die like my brothers did. This would be more honourable than living the way we live here. “
7. Close up, writing
8. Wide shot, women walking in camp
9. Wide shot, woman and two children at container door
10. SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) Veronica Birga, Chief of Women's Rights and Gender Section, United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR):
“So there was a recognition that they were coming from war torn countries where they could not be returned. So they have already gone through that screening so they made it here to this point, and they really felt they were really close to reaching their final destination. But they got stopped here because the policy changed. All over sudden they are considered like any other irregular migrant in the territory of Macedonia and that sounds like an injustice to them and to me personally.”
11. Wide shot, OHCHR team walking
12. SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) Veronica Birga, Chief of Women's Rights and Gender Section, United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR):
“Giving them some form of clear legal status that would at least allow the children to go to school, to integrate to a certain extent at least with the local communities. This would allow women and men who are staying at the camps to engage in some form of paid activities. We think it would be very important. Otherwise these people are here wasting their days, wasting their lives, and the sense of desperation for them is really growing.”
13. Close up, Fawzia Abdulhamid
14. SOUNDBITE (ARABIC) Fawzia Abdulhamid, Syrian migrant:
“If they have mercy on us they would let us go, and if they don’t have mercy we will stay; as if we are prisoners. We are considering ourselves at the Guantanamo prison.”
15. Wide shot, Fawzia and two children in container
16. Close up, Fawzia hugging son
17. SOUNDBITE (ARABIC) Fawzia Abdulhamid, Syrian migrant:
“Our children are not getting any education. My daughter doesn’t know how to read or write and my son is the same. My other son who is four years old doesn’t know what an education is. Our kids were humiliated. We are crying and struggling for our children and we want peace for them. We don’t want anything else. We want them to have compassion on us and view us in a humanitarian way. We want them to let us out of here. Why are they punishing us? We were wronged and we did wrong anyone.”
18. Wide shot, Fawzia and two children in container
19. Close up, children using phone
A United Nations (UN) human rights team raised concerns about migrants’ conditions in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) after visiting "transit centres" in the countries where almost 100 migrant children were held with limited freedom of movement and were not attending school.
The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) called on states holding migrants indefinitely in transit points to allow them to integrate by providing education for the children and paid labour for adults.
Leading the team, OHCHR’s chief of Women's Rights and Gender Section Veronica Birga said giving the migrant some form of clear legal status would allow just that. She said, “Otherwise these people are here wasting their days, wasting their lives, and the sense of desperation for them is really growing.”
OHCHR said migrants had been travelling through FYROM as a transit path into Europe but policy changes during the past year reportedly led to pushbacks immediately following apprehension as well as arbitrary and often collective expulsion of migrants. It said this left some awaiting their fate indefinitely.
46-year old Muhammed Wasim left war-torn Syria with his three children and his wife. Wasim said he felt stuck in FYROM with no work and no school for his children. He said he asked humanitarian organization there to send him back to Syria to die like his brothers did.
Fawzia Abdulhamid, a Syrian mother, had hopes to join her young son in Germany but she could not leave the camp. She said her family was considering itself at “the Guantanamo prison.”
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