The Illegal Travellers

How complicated is the world we live in? Thousands leave their homes every year in hopelessness that they will never see their lands again, not willingly but because it is a game of life and death. To acknowledge their sacrifice, this day is celebrated as World Refugee Day every year.

Displaced people; Source: Unifor

The smell of summers had started mixing in the air. The soft winds had started singing their sunny songs. In the middle of the world, amidst the merriness, a group of teenagers were arrested because they had sketched some anti-government graffitis on some walls. The public had come down on the streets to rise protest.

The government had led a crackdown on the demonstrations which had gone violently. The soft summer heat was turned into a boiling pot of war. Syria plunged into violence that would continue for several years to come. And the people? They were forced out of their homes, displaced, broken and tortured to leave their homes behind and flee their country to save their lives!

The Syrian refugee crisis resulted in the largest displacement of people from their homes. About 5.6 million people, half of which were children were registered as refugees who initially lived in Lebanon, Jordon, Egypt, Turkey and Iraq.

The pandemic has only increased the troubles of the refugees, people devastated from their homes got no shelter due to virus. Around 20.6 million people have been made homeless due to political tussles and civil wars.

Without any assistance and support, millions of men, women and children find it difficult to survive. Humanity, however, has two faces. The other rose high in the face of the dilemma. People across the globe lent their hands to those who were uprooted. The aid and the awareness are celebrated now in the form of World Refugee Day on 20th June every year.

The migrants and fugitives have no place to live nor are they citizens of any country. They roam from one place to another, country after country to find shelter and yet they find no place that can be called home and they don't belong to any nation.

The United Nations data says that around 20 people leave their homes every minute to escape the atrocities of persecution and war and all other kinds of terror. The countries where they take refuge consider them illegal migrants. Human beings are degraded to such a position that a few lines on the map of the world make them ineligible to live at any place in the world.

In India, thousands of Rohingyas migrate from Myanmar every year since their citizenship rights have been invoked. Around 40,000 Muslims live in camps in India since they have been displaced from their country. Of them, only 18000 are registered in UNHCR.

Indian authorities on the other hand are further planning to deport the refugees further who are currently residing in detention centres as undocumented migrants. Some 300 Rohingyas were detained in March 2021 in India.

As human beings, though it is the fundamental right of every being to be citizens of any country and that they should not be treated with torture, they have the right to freedom, thought, conscience and religion, just like others, they are however denied this because they can't call a land theirs.

With no hopes of their conditions to improve and no home to return to, the refugees are valued and remembered only on one day. Is this day enough or is it time for humanity to wake from deep sleep?