Aid Worker Recounts Refugee Crisis

By Kacem Jlildi

March 9th, 2011

Ras Jdir, a Tunisian town on the border with Libya, has become home for thousands of migrant workers who have sought refuge from the fighting in a vast transit camp. Interviewed Ahmad Baratli, 21, is a Tunisian Red Crescent volunteer assisting with aid efforts to help refugees on the Tunisian-Libyan borders recounts the refugee crisis .

“There were about five military checkpoints to pass on the way to Ras Jedir. At these checkpoints the army verifies the identities of people and the purpose of their visit; in any case only international organisations and local aid caravans organised by Tunisians are allowed to pass.

The area is deserted, there is no clear infrastructure, no agriculture; it is like a lonely spot in the middle of nowhere, except now inhabited by some thousands of refugees waiting for a flight.

Besides Ras Jdir there is the Choucha camp, nine kilometres from Ras Jedir with 30 000 refugees living in 3000 tents that covers over a five kilometre square area, and there have been efforts to maintain balance between these two camps in terms of attention and supplies.
There was plenty to do in Ras Jdir and I was mainly involved in helping with the food preparation and distribution. I also assisted in registering the refugees, collecting data and providing them with phone calls, as well as helping with the rubbish collection, setting up the tents, unloading trucks and storing the donations in the warehouses.

I didn’t see any fights over tents or over food supplies but there is some tension between the Africans, mainly Nigerians, Ghanaians and the other nationalities. There are a lot of organisations in the area that distribute food and drinks, mainly the Tunisian Red Crescent, which provides food for over 12,000 refugees a day via several distribution points.

Regarding hygiene, some showers have been set up and there are 10 toilet blocks – but they aren’t yet working. We haven’t faced any problems with lack of water, and health care is provided by the military.

There are four mobile operating rooms and the Tunisian Red Crescent has also been joined by a team of eight members from the Emirati Red Crescent, a Moroccan delegation and several volunteer doctors who came to help, all equipped with first aid materials and drugs. Not too far away, there is also a local hospital.

There are about six trucks arriving everyday to Ras Jdir full of food, water, drugs and different supplies for women, babies and elderly people. More than 150 Red Crescent volunteers are here, not counting volunteer doctors, nurses and ordinary people.

The Tunisian Red Crescent and the customs agents receive the refugees, help them fill out a form -no visa or passport are required – then classify them based on their nationalities.

Those who can be flown home get sent directly to Djerba airport and the others get transferred to Choucha camp till the next available flight.

Most refugees had to spend three days in average before getting a trip back to their countries but there are many who been here for a week, mainly Somalis and Sudanese.
Many refugees have personal stories to tell but the language barriers are sometimes enormous. It’s hard to communicate effectively in proper French or English because of the different accents, or sometimes because of a low level of education.

A lot of workers from Bangladesh told me that their money and mobile phones were stolen at the borders. They told me that they had not received fair treatment; they were cursed, punched and hit with sticks and threatened with knives.

Volunteers have so much to do all day long, we have little time to sit and listen to the refugees, many of whom had had to leave their families behind. Yet we tried to gather as much information as possible about their condition and the level of danger they might face, and we arranged phone calls for over a thousand refugees every day to check up on their relatives.
From my perspective, the media’s first interest was to capture the bad things. They were looking for any signs of trouble, for fights or a lack of food. They neglected covering the Tunisian aid convoys, voluntary work and so on.

To be objective, the presence of the international organisations is negligible; the main two actors who collaborate best together are the Tunisian Red Crescent and the army.

Some representatives from the UN and refugees organisations showed up for couple of hours, surrounded by journalists to record the visit. No clear support was granted but the situation is largely under control.”

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Another crime against truth transmitters!

As Libyans and many worldwide supporters of the Libyan revolution came to celebrate today March 12^th the good news of The Arab League backing up the idea of a no-fly zone over Libya by voting for the UN Security Council to impose the policy as rebels continue to be pushed back by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces; such measurement is to be imposed until the current crisis end. A choking news stroke the atmosphere announcing the fall of Ali Hassan Al-Jaber, Aljazeera’s 56 years old head of photography in an ambush that the team of channel faced in Hawari area south western the city of Benghazi. Nasser al-Hadar Al-Jazeera correspondent reported to be wounded in the heavy shooting on them.

Bibah wild Omhadi, Aljazeera correspondent said he was sitting next to the martyr Ali Al-Jaber in the car when the shooting started resulting in 3 bullets to hit the photographer. Doctors announced that he was already dead when they arrived at the hospital.

Wadhah Khanfar, the General Director of Aljazeera channel made it clear that they will not tolerate this crime and will hunt down the responsible perpetrators legally and criminally. He also stated that his colleague was assassinated as a result of an unprecedented campaign of incitement by the Libyan regime on the Aljazeera and its staff.

Aljazeera correspondent had revealed that they been questioned constantly about their address, where do they stay and also asked for their phone numbers. The hotel where the Aljazeera team was staying had increased his security level but that didn’t prevent the loss for an eye on field transmitting footages of the bloody truth taking place on the Libyan territory.

It is noteworthy that Al Jaber Ali is a Qatari citizen who was born in1955, and holds a BA and MA in Cinematography at the Arts Academy in Cairo.

He served as Director of the Office of the CNBC Arabian Doha, and supervisor of the National Olympic Committee from 2002 to 2005. He also served as the head of the photography department at the Qatar television for more than twenty years.

The martyr photographer had accomplished during his career, several documentary films, including a film about Qatar and Kuwait, entitled ”The plight of the afflicted.

The loss of Ali Al-Jabir isn’t the first in the line of attacks on journalists and photographers in battle fields; Aljazeera had lost other journalists and been attacked before, may be the most recent attack happened during the Egyptian revolution and let’s not forget that they were banned from Tunisia and also from Morocco. Operations by governments to stop their Nile-Sat broadcast took place during the Egyptian and Libyan revolution and their website was censored in Tunisia for quite a long time.

Attacks, arrests and even torture of journalists been largely applied by corrupt governments; such a measurement meant to hide the truth yet it does only prove their evil implications.

Body of Aljazeera cameraman ali Jaber draped in Libya’s flag taken thru crowds in Benghazi.