At the EU’s external border in Bulgaria, the refugee horror story continues

“She was about to die. The last time we dug a grave for a Syrian refugee in the forest, it took six hours. Should we have just started digging”? Tomas asked, &nbsp, desperately searching my face for an answer. He clearly needed to talk to someone the morning after this particularly harrowing encounter.

In Harmanli, a small Bulgarian town close to the Bulgaria-Turkiye border, Tomas and I were offering medical care to refugees and asylum seekers.

A sizable international NGO was supposed to provide medical care in the town’s refugee camp, but the doctor was rarely present and disinterested in anything but the most basic medical care.

The two NGOs Tomas and I volunteered with had set up a medical station in a nearby park because other groups were prohibited from entering the camp. We provided diagnosis and treatment for conditions like viral upper respiratory infections, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), pneumonia, scabies, and bedbug bites, but most of what we did was wound care.

Many of the refugees and asylum seekers had walked for days or weeks through thick forests, swift rivers, and dangerous mountain passes to reach Bulgaria, and as a result, had wounds all over their bodies. When they arrived, they were incarcerated in scabies and bed bugs-fest camps or detention facilities. Most wounds got infected in this environment. And with poor nutrition, few people had any hope for wound healing, as I’ve heard from many people who said the food was frequently writhing with maggots.

When refugees and asylum seekers had to cross the thick, dangerous forests that Turkiye and Bulgaria were en route, the NGO Tomas frequently conducted search and rescue missions there. Many died trying to make the crossing. Many of these refugees ended up being buried by strangers in a faraway land in unmarked graves because their families couldn’t be found and because Muslim burial customs dictate that bodies must be interred quickly. Even in death, there was little dignity.

The Syrian refugee woman Tomas encountered that night was able to walk for a brief period of time after a few hours of resuscitation efforts. A body that matched her description was discovered in the forest a few days later, according to what we heard.

Although I had almost ten years of experience with this type of work, Tomas and I realized that I had no words of wisdom for him as we discussed what he saw that night. On his face, I saw the same pain he had.

Refugees and asylum seekers who had fled some of the world’s most bloody wars in places like Syria and Afghanistan were treated by Frontex and European border police, who later committed even greater violence.

These are some of the things I heard while working in Bulgaria, which is a member of the European Union, in the summer of 2024.

In a park close to the refugee camp, I ran into Muhammad under a tree. He had wounds that looked suspicious. He had angry red welts all over his back, as if he had been whipped repeatedly. When I learned about the brutal transatlantic slave trade, I couldn’t help but think I had only seen these kinds of wounds in textbooks. I gently applied ointment to the wounds before cleaning them.

I contacted him to ask if he would testify, and I later gave it to the Border Violence Monitoring Network, a group of organizations that monitor human rights violations in border regions. He agreed.

I needed a translator. So I called a friend, Dr Nasir, an Afghan refugee who I had worked with when he and his family were living in the prison-like camps of Lesvos. He translated Muhammad’s story from Dari into English as I listened intently.

Muhammad was from Jalalabad. Decades of war, poverty, and famine had left his hometown in ravages. He fled in search of safety and the ability to return to Afghanistan so that his family wouldn’t be starved. He had to travel through Turkiye and Iran for weeks before crossing the Bulgarian border. In a place where “migrants leave now” and “swastikas” were prevalent, many refugee camps and detention facilities were present. graffiti, he felt there were few prospects for integration in Bulgaria. So he set off on foot for Serbia a few weeks before meeting us, hoping to travel to Germany along the Balkans.

At the Bulgaria-Serbia border, Serbian border police detained him and beat him up for hours, alternating brass knuckles with whips. After interacting with them, Muhammad found it difficult to walk. He was missing several toenails. They had been pulled out by Serbian border police one by one.

Muhammad had been stoic at the time, occasionally wailing when the iodine solution hurt. Dr. Nasir instructed him that on the day of the judgment, we would stand up for him as witnesses. At that moment, I looked up to assess the stitches on his forehead, where Serbian border police beat him repeatedly, and I saw his kind hazel eyes filled with tears upon hearing Dr Nasir’s words.

After attending to Muhammad’s wounds, I was greeted by Ahmed with a hand on his heart and a warm “salaam”. Ahmed was a volunteer Arabic translator for the camp. He was polite and had a soft smile. He worked as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Deir Az Zor’s worst-hit areas before he fled Syria.

He showed me photos of his life in Syria while teaching a group of eager students mechanical engineering. He quickly flipped through the videos and photos. One of his attempts to save a young child whose head had been severely damaged by a drone attack was captured. Given that he had already seen so much, I wondered what motivated him to help his fellow refugees. I’ve always been shocked by the refugees’ compassion for one another.

Soon, a young Syrian woman in a niqab approached the tent, where we diagnosed, treated, and conducted physical examinations that demanded more space than the park would permit. Halima, who was in her late 20s, told me she was feeling dizzy. At the time of her 28-week pregnancy, she and her husband made the decision to travel dangerously from Syria to Bulgaria via Turkiye. Despite her pregnancy, smugglers repeatedly beat her to make her walk more quickly. An NGO assisted her in getting to a hospital where she delivered three stillborn babies while she was still on Bulgarian soil.

I gave her a women’s multivitamin and some hygiene products after she received her vitals. It felt wholly inadequate. She had lost so much that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend it. She hugged me in gratitude and her lips moved silently in a dua (supplications) for me and my family.

Later I met Yasmeen, a 17-year-old from Syria, and her elderly father Ali. She had a few years prior to her strep throat episode that resulted in rheumatic heart disease. Strep throat is something that would, in ordinary circumstances, have been easily treatable with a course of antibiotics. However, years of conflict in Syria had destroyed the healthcare system, leaving many people without basic medical care and putting them in a chronically ill state. I had very little to offer. Bulgaria did not have the monthly penicillin injections she required for secondary prophylaxis.

I used donations from my family and friends to buy her father’s diabetes medications at a nearby pharmacy. After we met up to give him a few months ‘ worth of donated medications, Uncle Ali, as I called him, asked us to come over for tea. I’d previously been a guest of honor at a refugee’s home. Even in the most challenging circumstances, I was always taken aback by such warmth and hospitality.

My medical coordinators and I went back to Sofia the following day. Refugees and asylum seekers who had reached the capital city received free medical care there through a clinic there. During Friday prayers, I walked over to the Ottoman-era mosque in central Sofia where I met a Syrian Kurdish family: Auntie Fatima and Uncle Hamza.

They demanded that I come over for lunch because they heard I was a “guest” from Canada. On the ground of their sparsely furnished apartment, auntie Fatima prepared a feast of chicken, rice, and yoghurt salad for their 15-year-old son Hussein. I was so upset that they were putting money into their savings.

Due to degenerative disc disease that developed during years of labor intensive treatment in Sudan, Uncle Hamza was in his 60s and shifted awkwardly from side to side. He worked there for almost ten years as a construction worker to save money while his family in Syria fought in the civil war.

Soft-spoken Hussein traveled alone from Syria to Turkiye to Bulgaria when the conflict reached anarchy in his hometown. He was able to bring his parents from Syria nearly two years later as a part of a family reunification program as an unaccompanied minor.

I looked at my phone to try to figure out how to navigate the labyrinthine streets of old Sofia as our meal came to a close. Hussein hesitantly accepted my return. He told me he had a dream to teach English as we made our way back. He taught himself Bulgarian and English while awaiting a two-year reunion with his parents. If his circumstances had been different, if he had had access to a high school education like other kids his age, I wondered how much more he might have been able to achieve.

A week later, it was time to leave. Bulgarian border police repeatedly asked me for my “documents” as I waited at Sofia airport for my return flight to Canada. No other travelers were being similarly harassed, despite the fact that I was the only clearly Muslim woman in the airport.

In a nation where white supremacist groups regularly target and attack refugees and asylum seekers, the police frequently do the same around the Sofia mosque and countless other locations where they seek refuge.

I unconsciously adjusted my hijab, assuming that the police wouldn’t recognize me as a refugee or asylum seeker if I dressed appropriately. I caught myself in this thought process and realised something: I would count myself fortunate to be mistaken for Muhammad, Ahmed, Halima, Yasmeen, Ali, Hussein, or Fatima, for they are the greatest examples of kindness, courage, generosity, and unfailing humanity that I have known.

All of the refugees and asylum seekers whose identities are disclosed in this article have been changed.

Source: Aljazeera