10 million Syrians have left their homes since civil war began nearly five years ago. About 800,000 of them have sought refuge in Europe. Stuart Sia, a humanitarian worker with Fairfield, Connecticut-based Save the Children, visited a Syrian refugee camp in Serbia the day Hungary began to close off its borders to Syrian refugees.
In September, Sia handed out water and biscuits to families at the concrete strip of no-man’s land between Serbia’s border with Hungary. About 200 people had been stopped at a tall gate.
"These people had just missed the cutoff, and it was a very hot day and those that didn’t have tents, which was a vast majority of people, they were lying out on the pavement, out in the sun," he said. "And many of them looked so tired and so fatigued."
By that afternoon, Sia said 2 thousand more people arrived by bus, train, or on foot. One of them was a man with his a nephew, and three young children. Sia said they still feared the Islamic State, or ISIS.
“They were initially afraid to talk with me," he said. "ISIS makes heavy use of media, and so I think the fact that I had a camera, and a microphone, and, you know, I am dark skinned, he asked like he was very afraid, like 'Are you ISIS?'"
Then a plane rumbled overhead--a reminder of the airstrikes in Syria.
“They covered their heads. They were looking up at the sky," Sia said. "And I didn’t blink because we don’t think, 'oh plane! Might be something bad.' But for them, even though they were somewhere safe, they were in Serbia, that’s what they had in their minds. That’s how traumatized they were.”
Sia says the place these refugees wish they could be is Syria.
“But they’re fleeing out of necessity," he said. "And, really, they’ll go wherever they can just to keep themselves and their families safe.”
Sia said winter’s coming to Europe, and so are more Syrian refugees. Save the Children is giving out warm clothes and blankets to families living in makeshift shelters.
DISCLAIMER: Save the children is an underwriter with WSHU.
