By Sirwan Abaas
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region— Hundreds of Kurdish migrants have been relocated to temporary refugee camps in Bulgaria where thousands of other asylum seekers are held with restricted access to the outside world, Kurdish migrants told Rudaw in a phone interview Sunday.
The migrants, some of with families and children, said they were held against their will in facilities with poor conditions and insufficient resources.
“The food rations are not enough and we have to drink from the same place where we go to bathroom, which is unhealthy especially for the children,” said Sarhang Tahir, a Kurdish migrant from the city of Sulaimani, who described the camp as an “actual prison.”
Tahir, who is at the camp together with his wife and four children, said the family was arrested by Hungarian police at the Serbian border and were returned to the Bulgarian city of Slivnista, some 150 km northwest of the capital Sofia.
“There are more than 5,000 migrants here and at least 2,000 of them are Kurds,” Tahir said, as he complained about limited access to the outside.
“We are allowed to go out once a day and for half an hour,” Tahir said.
There is no reliable data available in the Kurdistan region about how many people have left as migrants in search of better opportunities in the West. Unofficial reports suggest as many as 300 people, mostly young men, depart on a daily bases, according to Erbil branch of the Iraqi migration office.
Soran Sewkani, a Kurdish social researcher, told Rudaw most migrants from Kurdistan region are often very young with little life experiences and have unrealistic perceptions about life in the West.
“They have an image of the West as paradise where their dreams will come true which is often not the case,” Sewkani said during a live debate on Rudaw TV on Saturday.
He said many of the migrants did not leave Kurdistan region for lack of economic opportunities alone, but to chase “utopian dreams of West as the ultimate place.”
Yadgar Hussein, another Kurdish migrant in the Bulgarian camp, said they were crossing the country towards Germany where they hoped to be included in the list of asylum seekers who will receive permanent residence this year as promised by the German government.
“There are hundreds of migrants in the same room with not enough places to sleep or eat,” Hussein said of the Bulgarian camp, adding they had been unable to hire attorneys to help them out of Bulgaria.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last month her country would grant asylum to 800,000 migrants this year. Merkel has said other European countries should take in “their fair share of the refugees.”
Kurdish author Jamal Hussein told Rudaw “the never-ending war” in Iraq is a main reason why young people tend to prefer Europe. Hussein said many believed the war with the Islamic State would be over soon so thousands joined the Peshmarga in the beginning, “but the war still goes on.”
“People are tired of military conflicts and are not confident enough that wars will ever end in this part of the world. That’s why they choose the safer option which is migration,” Hussein told Rudaw TV.
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