A “Postcard of Anguish” from Lebanon

Simone Campbell, SSS, Executive Director of NETWORK, a Catholic Social Justice Lobby, is traveling in Lebanon and Syria to meet with Iraqi refugees in migrant centers. She is part of a delegation of eight Catholic sisters sponsored by Catholic Relief Services. The goal of the ten-day trip is to learn about the refugees’ daily lives and their needs for shelter, health services and education. After the delegation returns to the U.S, the sisters will share their findings with members of Congress and other government and church representatives.

Simone Campbell shares these moving accounts of her trip.

A “Postcard of Anguish” from Lebanon

We need to tell you about the Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center and the amazing service that they provide. We went to the retention center where there are 13 cells, really cages that hold all of the people who are caught without legal status in the country. They include people who have been trafficked, Iraqi refugees and all of the others. I'll add my poem below about the reality. But they live for months at a time (average of 3 months) in a detention facility under the freeway, underground without natural light or air. They live 50 to 60 people in a 40 foot by 20 foot cage. There are only male guards. The women are separate from the men.

The Migrant Center has gained the trust of the guards and their leaders over the years and is able to care for them, provide a warm meal 3 times per week and get health care and social services for them. They live on foam mats on the floor and never see the sun. It has stunned us all. Yet in the midst of this there seems to be some community among the women. The men seem more angry and depressed. All of us will tell you more later, but this is a postcard of anguish!

We also met with Iraqi families where we were told of their desperation. The one that touched me most was a 30 year old woman with a master’s degree in nuclear engineering who was threatened by unknown people and saw her father assassinated. She left immediately after and now fears for her life. She jumped up and closed her door and windows in order to whisper to us her story. It is terrifying for them. The social workers from the migrant center try to provide all sorts of services to them, but the damage is profound.

We had a briefing from the UNHCR representative who told us that they have already processed 270 people for entry to the US, but the US is dragging its bureaucratic feet. In the U.S. we had heard that the slowness was because of UNHCR, he says that this is not true. May we pressure our government to provide a quick response to these terrified people?

Lives of Desperation in Syria

We arrived in cold Damascus having seen ice and snow on the way. We had a quick lunch a briefing on the situation here. There are at least 1.5 million Iraqis here in Syria. Rather than having a big government program to care for them, Syrians opened their houses to them and help them integrate into Syrian life even though they cannot legally work here. We met with two programs that are beginning to work with the refugees to provide needed health care and assistance for non-food items and education. These two program staff told us about the Iraqis who have run out of savings and are getting desperate. Some have decided to return to Iraq and have been killed. Others are trying to work in the underground economy here in Syria, but that is difficult because many of the men and women were highly educated and successful. This makes it difficult to do the menial jobs available in this economy.