Refugees don't want to leave Iraq...Refugees say they didn't want to leave Iraq Nine year old Ramaza says:
"I like Iraq, she said. "I like school. I like reading. I like my friends."
Last Updated Fri, 21 Mar 2003 22:22:30
cbc.ca
JORDAN-IRAQ BORDER - Among the first people to leave Iraq for the safety of Jordan are hundreds of Sudanese nationals who were bussed out of Baghdad by their embassy and are now awaiting hastily arranged rides out of the country.
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Most of the Sudanese arrived in the middle of the night. Many wouldn't get out of the buses when they arrived at a desert refugee camp. They were afraid if they moved into the tents they would be forced to stay in the desert for good.
But the children left the buses first to play. They eventually drew out their parents who are labourers, doctors, taxi drivers and mothers, forced from their homes because of the war.
"I thank God (the children) pretty much don't know politics, and they just see this as a big playground," said Sami Diglass, a volunteer for the Arab Red Crescent Society. "I don't have to explain war to them," Rehab Adveb says of her children. "They know war, they understand."
Nine-year-old Ramaza
But nine-year-old Ramaza and her younger sisters are convinced this is just an adventure, that they'll go home to Iraq soon. "I like Iraq, she said. "I like school. I like reading. I like my friends."
In front of the TV cameras, these people say they didn't ask to be saved from Saddam Hussein and they didn't want to leave Iraq. "Americans are the ones trying to hurt us," said Ramaza.
Soon after they arrive at the refugee camp, they are loaded back on the buses and sent to the airport and then back to Sudan.
Aid workers in Jordan say not a single Iraqi citizen has turned up at the camps and no one is quite sure why.
Written by CBC News Online staff |
