From top: Ghias Aljundi and Razan Ibraheem
Will you be there Saturday afternoon?
Maybe stop by the Leviathan tent and meet Ghias and Razan, from Syria.
Amnesty International Ireland writes:
As Europe drags its heels on providing solutions to move refugees and asylum-seekers from Greece, thousands of men, women and children are living in filthy unsafe warehouses or tents, or sleeping rough under the relentless summer heat.
At Electric Picnic 2016, Amnesty International is raising awareness of the plight of refugees and asking festival-goers to join our campaign for change.
Amnesty Hour at Leviathan will highlight the experiences of Razan Ibraheem and Ghias Aljundi, both originally from Syria now living in Ireland and the UK.
When Razan came to Ireland to study in 2011, she never imagined that brutal conflict would mean she could not return home to Syria. She recently returned from volunteering on the Greek island of Samos.
“The hardest thing about being a refugee is when people make you feel unwanted,” Ghias says. He was imprisoned for four years and tortured for his journalism and human rights work, before fleeing to the UK in 1999. Today, he volunteers to help refugees arriving in Greece. He never expected that one day he would help rescue his own family.
Today, Europe is facing the biggest refugee and migrant crisis since the Second World War. Join us for Amnesty Hour at Leviathan to hear these powerful personal stories and to learn about how you can be part of our campaign for change.
Amnesty will be collecting signatures calling on the Greek Government to act swiftly to improve their living conditions and wellbeing.
Festival-goers will also have an opportunity to participate in our thumbprint action. Fingerprinting is the method used to identify asylum-seekers and migrants within the EU. Often, people are forced to giving fingerprints without their consent.
Amnesty International has found cases were children as young as three were forced to give their finger print as ‘proof’ of their consent to be returned from Turkey to Syria.
To express solidarity with refugees we are building a two-metre solidarity wall where festival-goers can leave their own thumbprint.
Join us for Amnesty Hour at Leviathan, at 3.45pm on Saturday September 3rd. Or follow the conversation online using the hashtag #IWelcome refugees.
More information on Amnesty’s campaign for refugee rights is available here
Ghias’s powerful personal story is available here
Pics: Flickr/Jodi Hilton/IRIN
6,500 people were saved in the Mediterranean on Sunday.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37216881
Soros must be so proud.
he waits to rob them just like at dachau back in the day
Why should anyone at EP care about this?
Party On!
ha ha come on now…even from me (and I like trolling) that is way too poor!
PS Human stick ithat in thejournal.ie comments section and watch for the laugh!!!
“Why do people think what I don’t want them to think?”
Yeah I’ll go along with my gourmet falafel in one hand and my craft ale in the other and feel engaged for a few minutes before spotting Al Porter in the laughing tent and sprint over.
Weird buzz of them minions.
‘thousands of men, women and children living in filthy unsafe warehouses or tents, or sleeping rough under the relentless summer heat, featuring ‘LCD Soundsystem, the Chemical Brothers and Lana Del Ray!’
If we can get all the yellow and blue minions in one room with Sarah Murphy…. then, I’ll see….
I’m not seeing Amnesty’s proposed solution to the immigrant crisis in this 11 paragraph piece.
Any thoughts?
It won’t be the direction of any migrants to the Emirates, Saudi etc.
I don’t see any solution in your post. Thoughts?
“Amnesty will be collecting signatures calling on the Greek Government to act swiftly to improve their living conditions and wellbeing. – I think money would be more useful than signatures Amnesty – just a thought.
My thoughts are: it’s only 16.07? What’ll I have for dinner? Hmm.
“I’m not seeing Amnesty’s proposed solution”
Yeah because it’s their job to solve a problem caused by governments.
“…refugees and asylum-seekers from Greece”.
Er, they’re not from Greece.