Saturday, April 11, 2015

The deepest circle of hell

Yarmouk refugee camp was a thriving community just near city center of Damascus, Syria. After the civil war started, it was surrounded, besieged and bombed. Those who could leave, left, and those who were too late or who did not have anywhere else to go, became the prisoners of this perhaps the largest de facto prison in the world.
The situation is so bad, that the UN Secretary General said recently: "In the horror that is Syria, the Yarmouk refugee camp is the deepest circle of hell".  According to UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of humanitarian assistance to the camp, as an average, in 2014 camp residents received 400 calories in food aid. Just for the record, minimum for emergencies for an adult person is 2,100 calories. This situation is nothing less than starvation. From an initial population of over 160,000 Palestinians, about 18,000, among them 3,500 children, remain stranded, with no way out and no safety inside.

When starvation and violence is the beginning of the end of every day, life becomes hell. Not just difficult,  but hell. This situation is brilliantly and accurately in a video "Please, please take me out here", done by BBC´s Lyse Doucet, who at one point (watch at 2.40) needs to cross the line as a journalist, and comforts the person she is interviewing.
I have nothing much more to say. Watch it for yourselves. And share it widely among your networks. And remember, at the sunset of today, this will be the end of another day of hell at Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria.