BALTIM, Egypt — A grieving Syrian father told Amnesty International about the death of his eight-year-old daughter during an attempt to escape Egypt last month. After being caught with smugglers who were attempting to take the family to Europe, soldiers shot the girl then ignored pleas for help as she lay dying.
According to the August report from Amnesty, about 300,000 refugees from Syria are currently living in Egypt, where they’ve faced repeated “discrimination and human rights violations.” Amnesty reported:
“They have been subjected to verbal attacks and threats in the media and by public figures, to arbitrary arrests and detention and, in some cases, to forcible deportation to Syria or other neighbouring countries in the region.”
The United Nations reported last year that cuts to aid have had a “devastating impact” on over a million displaced Syrians living throughout the Middle East, prompting many to attempt to reach Europe no matter the consequences. Although the death of a three-year-old refugee whose body was photographed after washing ashore in Turkey, stirred international outcry and brought renewed attention to the massive scope of the Syrian refugee crisis, some tragedies occur before these migrants ever board the smugglers’ dangerous boats.
The girl had been living with her parents and six siblings in Alexandria, Egypt for the past three years. Her father, who goes unnamed in the report, told Amnesty that his “unbearable” life as a refugee forced him to take extreme measures:
“I cannot afford to live in Egypt with almost no employment and limited access to education and health care. So I paid smugglers to take me and my family to Europe.”
The family met the smugglers in Baltim, a coastal resort town near the Mediterranean Sea, where they joined a group of almost 100 migrants from Syria, Sudan and Eritrea. But security was unusually tight due to an unrelated event at the Suez Canal. “No insect could have crossed the Mediterranean on that day,” the father reported.
Instead, the smugglers apparently abandoned the group near the shore around 2 a.m., where they were caught by soldiers. As the family took cover on the ground, other refugees attempted to escape and the soldiers opened fire. He continued:
“Once the shooting stopped, I heard my eight-year-old girl, Safaa, screaming ‘my heart, my heart.’
I did not know what was happening. I removed the life jacket she was wearing. She had been shot through her stomach from the right side and [the bullet] came out her other side. I screamed and begged the soldiers to bring an ambulance to help my daughter.”
The soldiers not only refused medical assistance, he said, but at one point threatened his wife, the girl’s mother, with a gun. Yet the humiliation was far from over:
“The soldiers kept cursing us, insulting the children and women with words like ‘whores.’ … one soldier approached me and prodded her with his foot to see whether she was alive or dead. My daughter was dying and yet he was prodding her with his foot!’”
According to the report, an ambulance did not arrive until hours later, and Safaa died in a hospital later that morning. The father said the surviving family members are permanently scarred by the loss:
“Now my wife is either crying or sleeping all the time. She is traumatized and cannot face the reality of having lost her daughter. I cannot remove from my mind the image of my daughter dying in my hands while the soldiers left her bleeding for three hours without bringing an ambulance. I will never forget it.”
Read the full report by Amnesty International, Syria: Voices In Crises: