Unfortunately, it’s been seven years during which time we have been repeating the same words every day, demanding the same rights, defending the same people. But we have become stronger and have more belief in the words we speak and the values we fight for. I am older, of course, and I have more experience, but I am still the same person who left Syria seven years ago, and that goes for my sister too. and your sister, Yusra, met Barack Obama. Your story and that of your sister have inspired two films. They made up the story about refugees arriving because of the help provided by volunteers, when in fact they came because in 2015, the borders opened, but that too has changed. They claimed that they were at maximum capacity, so they closed the borders. The other side of this story is that the European Union and various governments failed to take in the migrants they had promised to take. In fact, there was no one at all when my sister and I, together with others, were shipwrecked in Lesbos. When I swam my way here in 2015, I had no idea if I would find anyone on the coast. Governments want to put an end to the rescuing of migrants, claiming that volunteers, activists, and NGOs encourage illegal crossings, which is simply not true. Yet NGOs on rescue missions are criminalized. Recently bodies washed up on the shore of the seaside village of Cutro. We see stories of castaways off the Italian coast all the time in the media. Sara Mardini spoke with THR Roma in Berlin, the city that welcomed her five years ago, and where she waits while a 25-year sentence still hangs over her head. “I believe that everything we have done is right.” “There is nothing wrong with pulling drowning people out of water or trying to save families from freezing, or ensuring pregnant women don’t go into labor on a rock, or even showing children that they can actually be children,” says Sean Binder, a volunteer, like Sara, who was arrested with her back in 2018 and who Feldman interviewed for the documentary. Earlier this year, Time magazine put Sara and Yusra on their list of the 100 most influential people of 2023, with a commentary written by Cate Blanchett. A documentary focused on Sara, Long Distance Swimmer - Sara Mardini, from director Charly Wai Feldman bowed at Toronto’s Hot Docs fest in April. Sara and Yusra’s story, fictionalized, was told by Sally El Hoseini in the Netflix drama The Swimmers, which starred Nathalie and Manal Issa and premiered in Toronto last year. She spent 106 days in a maximum security prison in Athens, before being released on bail and allowed to return to Berlin. In 2018, at the age of 23, she was arrested by Greek authorities, accused of aiding illegal immigration. It reassured them to know that I was a refugee, just like them.”īut Sara’s commitment would cost her. “I’d tell them: ‘I know how you feel’ because I’d had the same experience and I survived,” she recalls. There she welcomed migrants and distributed blankets while also working as a translator, listening and providing comfort where she could. Sara decided to return to Lesbos and began work as a volunteer in the Moria refugee camp, an “open-air prison” in the words of Human Rights Watch. Yusra realized her dream and competed in the 20 Olympics as a member of the refugee athletics team. They traveled, by foot, by train, and by bus, across Greece, the Balkans, Hungary, and Austria, finally arriving in Berlin. That night was just the beginning of the sisters’ odyssey. Paul McCartney Clarifies Use of AI in Upcoming Beatles Song: "Nothing Has Been Artificially or Synthetically Created"
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