In the midst of the refugee crisis, with thousands of misplaced immigrants coming over from countries like Syria, a lot has been said by world leaders and political figures as to what to do to solve this crisis while the Islamic State is being defeated. And because of this crisis, a student group on campus called No Lost Generation (at UMD) hosted a talk about this issue.
The meeting started off with everyone gathering in a room in the student union where a significant number of students gathered to hear No Lost Generation’s speech on the refugee crisis. They began their speech by telling people to go to an online poll that asked people exactly what they knew about Syria, the Syrian refugee crisis, or the area around Syria for that matter. After everyone took the poll, it was time to announce the night's first guest, Mostafa Hassoun. Hassoun left Syria in 2015 when militants trying to suppress the civilian rebellion started to take over his hometown. Hassoun fled to America and now is living in Annapolis, Maryland, by himself. Hassoun started his speech by explaining to everyone who he is and where he came from. He said his town used to be peaceful until the president of Syria’s guard started to come from town to town and take people for no reason and kill people for no reason. All of this was because the rebellion was happening around him, and he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Luckily, Hassoun had prepared for this kind of chaos, so he started planning his route out of Syria when the civil war rampaged his hometown. Hassoun says that some of his close friends and colleagues never made it out of Syria and never got a chance to change things like he wants to. Hassoun also said that the main fight that’s causing the Syrian crisis is not the terrorist group Islamic State at all, it is Syria’s president, or in this case more like a dictator, Bashar al-Assad’s own fault. Bashar has stayed in power, but the Syrian people wanted him out for various reasons including crimes he has committed. So, when the rebels started to push him out of office, his guards that remained loyal to him started to crush the revolt. This civil war, along with problems from the Islamic State, is what created the crisis in the first place. The thing Hassoun says he misses the most is not being able to talk with his family or see them because he does not have a valid United States passport.
The next speaker was Dr. Hisham Naji, who presented a PowerPoint to explain to the audience how the refugee crisis got started on a national level. During the crisis, Naji worked as a doctor aiding patients at random hospitals in whatever way he could. Naji said that once the terrorists heard about injured people being sent to hospitals after they survived a terrorist attack, the terrorist would be waiting inside the hospitals to finish the surviving victims off. Not only is this brutal, but it was just the peak of what the Syrian civilians are dealing with at this time. Naji said anyone who speaks out against al-Assad is either tortured, jailed or just shot on sight. The streets are always barren and empty as everyone is afraid to go out and step into the open.
More importantly, however, is the effect this crisis had on Naji’s profession. Because people who were hurt couldn’t go to hospitals in broad daylight for fear of being shot by terrorists, the rebellion started creating underground hospitals in the bottom of tall buildings. The reason the buildings had to be tall is because the terrorists would drop bombs onto the Syrian streets to repress rebels, and the tall buildings provided enough cover for the hospital to function. When the patients could not come to the underground hospitals themselves, Naji said they switched to mobile hospitals in white vans that went around and picked up injured civilians to treat their injuries sooner than what they would normally go through at the underground hospital.
Naji said he himself and one other doctor were the only trained medical professionals on site in the region the crises were taking place in. He said the work was tough, but begs the United States for aid to stop to al-Assad’s bombings that are tearing the region apart and only resulting in more conflict.
Dr. Naji is now the D.C. chapter president of the Syrian American Medical Society and continues to work in medicine as well as give talks to people in the United States like this so he can combat the crisis with funds to get necessary supplies to keep aiding the civilians.
The presentation ended with the No Lost Generation Club asking the questions they asked the crowd before the presentation was started in regards to the information about Syria. This time they went over the answers to make sure people had been paying attention during the speech.
Without a doubt, this really opened my eyes to how big the situation is over in Syria and how easy it is to take what we have here for granted. People’s livelihoods were destroyed and lives are on the line every single day in Syria. The least we could do to show we care about it is spread awareness about the situation to prevent things like it happening in the future.
