Today as I drove past some busy crowded areas in the city I saw what appeared to be Syrian refugees. After taking a closer look and listening to them I realised these people are Moroccans pretending to be Syrian so they can beg and receive money.
In Morocco there is a lot of professional beggars and also those who are actually very poor or suffering financial hardship due to surgery, debts, medical costs etc.
I have seen many cons when it comes to begging and people claiming to be poor but I have also witnessed the severity of many people’s struggles to the point most of those who don’t even know what they will eat for dinner today are quietly praying and going through the correct channels hoping for help. Where as others who are out there with kids sleeping in a pram while they drugged them up on pharmaceutical medicine or walking around with 5 kids many times they aren’t even all hers and making them remain in the hot midday sun or at night in the bone cold winter months.
The Syrian refugees are currently protected against deportation in Morocco… the government is offering its territory as a haven for Syrians, even if they have entered or are staying on Moroccan soil illegally
– Marc Fawe, UNHCR spokesperson
I’m not sure to date how many Syrian Refugees are in Morocco but what I know is that they have been told they are welcome to stay here no matter how they entered the country they have been told they are welcome to remain. Unfortunately Morocco having such few jobs as it is for its own people and the majority of the nation are trying to just sell fruit or make ways with other basic work to provide for their family, I ask you the public, the general people in the world, what can we do for these refugees that have come here?
Khadija, a 50-year-old woman from Homs, arrived in Morocco three months ago and now lives with her family in one of Rabat’s poor suburbs, sharing a house with other three Syrian families. “There is nothing left to say. Our suffering is not going to come to an end soon,”
I’m not saying who is to blame or what a government policy should say or what should have happened but what can we actively do for these families who have come here to a country that isn’t theirs and have nothing, no a home, no extended family, no work and only the clothes on their back. They came searching for safety and a hope for a new life but today I was informed of some young Syrian girls who sold their honour for some money to tourists because they didn’t have money to eat then they shared the food among themselves. The story of these 2 girls would absolutely horrify you, how they have gone from country to country and what people have said and done to them, what they themselves have allowed because they told me ,’ inside we are so dead we don’t feel we are alive to be held to account for our actions’
This form of exploitation is disgusting, while prostitution is something some women chose for themselves because of the love of money, drugs or whatever else, making that decision because of the pain of hunger isn’t ever something anyone should face and then live with that scar their entire life.
“My family members were killed before my own eyes. Our heritage, our past has been completely destroyed and there is no future for us,” Khadija said. “The only thing that is going on full-steam in Syria for the moment is the killing machine. Our country is gone forever.”
As pleased as I’m these Syrian refugees don’t have to hide and can walk freely in Morocco, I’m sad to see people shun helping them because they think they are fraudulent and I myself have come across the liars and frauds. But the problem isn’t the Refugees or frauds, the problem is us, we as a nation are responsible to help these Refugees since it was our countries who contributed to the war of destroying their homes and lives regardless if we flew the plane that dropped the bomb or not the fact that we sat idle watching a war on a nation while the objective was to kill a few thousand terrorists. Our nations invaded their nation and killed indiscriminately men, women and children. If we are upright people we wouldn’t turn away from a kind hug or a helping hand.
Ajnabiyah 