At least 55 people feared drowned off Yemen after being forced from boat
Source: The Guardian
At least 55 people are feared to have drowned off the coast of Yemen after being forced from a migrant boat by smugglers in the second such incident in two days, the UN migration agency has said.
Five bodies were recovered during an International Organisation for Migration (IOM) beach patrol in Shabwa province, and about 50 more people were missing.
On Wednesday the IOM said 51 people had been deliberately drowned in a similar incident. Survivors told the IOM that the smuggler pushed about 120 people into the sea after he thought he had seen some authority-type figures off the Yemeni coast. The passengers average age was about 16, the IOM said.
...
The IOM says about 55,000 people have left Horn of Africa countries for Yemen since January, with most coming from Somalia and Ethiopia. A third of them are estimated to be women.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/yemen-55-people-feared-drowned-after-being-forced-from-boat
Imagine how desperate you are to risk going to a war zone in the hope of being able to get to a better country beyond.
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home wont let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
its not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldnt be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what ive become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
Codeine
(25,586 posts)Thank you for that.
Some dust in my eyes, I think. *sniff*
Scariest saddest poem I've read in years.