More than a million people have been displaced from Sudan

Text/Reporter Qi Xu

After the expiration of the short-term ceasefire agreement between the two sides of the Sudanese conflict on the 3rd, the conflict in some areas intensified. Since the outbreak of armed clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Force in the capital, Khartoum, on 15 April, it seems increasingly unlikely that the end of the conflict will end.

Fleeing the flames of war is the wish of many Sudanese at present. But how difficult the road to escape was.

If the gold and silver are gone, just leave

When the conflict broke out, Raja Makavi, who was already a British citizen and was working in Oxford, had just returned to Sudan on a business trip. Her experience working for the United Nations had taught her that she had to leave the land of right and wrong as soon as possible. However, after struggling to persuade her family to leave, she discovered that it was not easy to escape.

Since he was the only British citizen, Makawi could not leave through the channels of the British embassy with his family, so he was ready to go through Egypt. It usually takes a day to travel from the capital Khartoum to Aswan, the southern city of neighboring Egypt. She originally wanted to drive away with her family, but after some understanding, she knew that the risk of self-driving robbery may be relatively high, and it is not as safe as chartering a bus for a family. But the charter was expensive, and she might need to do some work along the way, and she had to "confiscate" the dollar cash she had given to her family, a total of $7,000.

However, the cost of a chartered bus to Aswan for a family is $13,000, far more than Makavi's budget, and even the price is rising every hour. After several phone calls, she managed to find a few refugees who were willing to share a car with her family, and barely filled the gap in the chartered bus fare.

When the driver of Altyn, one of Sudan's two main border crossings with Egypt, pulled the car here, he temporarily released the Makawi family's pigeons. "I can't send you to Aswan, you'll have to figure it out yourself." Despite Makawi and his family's pleas, the driver refused to agree to take them to their original destination.

Fortunately, Makawi's sister-in-law hid some gold in the two-year-old's diaper, giving the family room to maneuver. Eventually, they found a driver willing to take them to Aswan, 170 kilometers away. Although the asking price was as high as $8,000, the family had no choice, although the car was in terrible condition.

In order to save money, the Isa family had to choose to flee by refrigerated truck.

With five children, hiding in a freezer without vents in the heat of 45°C, barely surviving for 4 days with a small amount of food with him, Isa knew that the children were uncomfortable. "But there is no choice. We had to run for our lives, and that was the only means of transport we could afford. ”

More than 1 million people have been displaced in the long-suffering country in just over a month from the outbreak of conflict in Sudan on April 15 to May 23, according to the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. As of 26 May, 345,000 people had fled Sudan, with neighbouring countries such as Egypt, Chad and Ethiopia as their main destinations. In addition to riding buses and hiding in refrigerated cabinets, there are also people leading exhausted donkeys that may collapse at any time, fleeing with a large number of luggage.

Abandon their families and they can't do it

The road was difficult, but at least they escaped Sudan and found a glimmer of hope, and too many people are struggling to survive.

A London-based British doctor calls herself Dr A, and her 67-year-old father, B, is a retired doctor who has worked hard for the NHS for more than 30 years. When B returned to Sudan to visit his 87-year-old mother, he was unexpectedly caught in the outbreak of conflict. In order to ensure the safety of his mother, B separated his car and crossed the city at dawn, hoping to transfer the old mother to safety, but unfortunately was shot on the way.

After all this, B hopes to leave Sudan with his elderly and sickly old man. However, the UK government says only British passport holders and their immediate family members with UK entry clearances are eligible to board evacuation flights in the UK. This means that an elderly mother who is not a British citizen cannot be evacuated with B. "My father can't leave my grandmother behind." A said sadly, "She is an elderly lady who needs to be taken care of, and she is still sick. He is gone, who will take care of her? For this, B could only make one difficult decision: stay.

Because his wife Galia, who is five months pregnant, is not a British citizen, Mohammed Elassi, a 27-year-old car dealer from Birmingham, England, also had to stay in Sudan. "Obviously, if my wife can't leave with me, I have to stay here, because no one will leave my pregnant wife behind in this situation." However, water and power cuts, high temperatures, and food shortages made it difficult for the couple to survive. They had to go to a friend's house on the outskirts of Khartoum to take shelter from the fire.

Although he was by his wife's side, Elassie also missed his 5-year-old son in Birmingham. "It's the hardest thing for me." Ellasi originally wanted to open a café in downtown Khartoum, "I came here to create a better future for him, but now, in a sense, I feel like I've abandoned him a bit." ”

Passports are "trapped" and trap them

Others, although they got visas, were stuck in Sudan because their passports were "trapped".

Heba Elsk, a 34-year-old Sudanese citizen who specializes in immigration issues, can't help herself.

Soon after the conflict began, Elsk sent an email to the British Visa Application Centre in Khartoum, Sudan, hoping to get his passport and visa to the UK as soon as possible. A few days later, she received a reply, and the other person simply said "please bear with me". Now that the Visa Application Centre is closed, even the British embassy is closed, Elsk can't get his passport and can't leave.

"They have to think about us." Mustafa, 45, is an engineer stranded in Khartoum, and his wife and children are British citizens living in the UK, so he often travels between Britain and Sudan. Before the conflict, he had handed in his passport to apply for a spouse visa in the UK, and now he can't get it back. He tried to board a plane for the British evacuation but was refused because he did not have a passport and a valid visa. "I just want my passport." Mustafa was helpless, "I don't care if I go to England or hell, I just need my passport, it's simple." ”

In addition to the United Kingdom, the embassies of Western countries such as the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy are "trapped" in passports. Some embassies, including Italy, are finding ways to return passports as soon as possible after discovering the problem, giving some Sudanese a glimmer of hope.

However, the United States Embassy in the Sudan went so far as to destroy the passports of Sudanese and other third-country nationals who had applied for visas and passports held in the embassy on the grounds of "standard procedure". This meant that the bearers of the destroyed passports had to start from scratch.

Alhaj Sharaf, a software engineer in Sudan, was accepted to a U.S. university to pursue a master's degree in computer science. In order to travel to the United States in time for classes, he handed over his passport to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum for a visa. When the conflict broke out, Sharaf's visa had been issued, but the embassy had not yet returned his passport. He sent an email to the embassy saying he was going to Egypt first and from there to the United States, hoping to return his passport in time. But the embassy responded that it was temporarily closed and could not return passports.

It wasn't until May 17 that Sharaf discovered that his passport had been destroyed by the U.S. Embassy. In fact, the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum suspended operations on April 22, evacuating staff and destroying official documents and passports for U.S. visas. "I have nowhere else to go now, and I don't know if I can start classes in August." Sharaf was helpless, "After the passport was destroyed, I couldn't even leave my country and go to a safe place." ”

"The U.S. Embassy tied our hands and sent us to hell." Achim Alhaj, who has lived in Ohio for 5 years, originally planned to let his wife and children leave Sudan and go to the United States to reunite. However, the destruction of the passport completely shattered the family's dream of reunion. He said the embassy email's justification for destroying passports was "standard operating procedure to take precautions during the drawdown period and not leave any documents, materials and information that could fall into the wrong hands or be misused," but in his view, "I don't feel like we were treated as human beings." What saddened him the most was that the US embassy did not even offer any solution to this mess, but left them to their fate.

Source: Xinmin Evening News