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MEDIART

2023

January 24th, 2017

24/1/2017

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A WONDERFUL LUNCH

The other day Charlotte and I went to have a lunch with Sirwan’s family. In their hostel in Asprovalta.
We had no idea what to expect but as my mom always told me, always bring chocolate cake with you. Everybody loves it and if the food is not good, well at least you can always count on it.
 
We entered the room and for the first time met his parents, his father speaks a little of English and was a taxi driver back in Iraq. His mother raised 6 kids and does not speak much but smiles a lot. She waited until her son left the room to turn to me and ask “is Sirwan good?”
 
Typical mother concern.

 
To show us that they are the best family they made us eat tons of pasta, rice, chicken, vegetables and chickpies, while asking every minute: “Why don’t you eat this, why don’t you eat that.” We only ate with Sirwan and his brother Sahlem in a room on the ground. The rest of the family ate in another room.
In between Pauline an I started to feel uncomfortable because we thought all the food was for the whole family and while we were eating all the other members were waiting for us to eat the leftovers in the end. But after a while Sirwan could explain that they had more food.
As well Pauline and I were confused because Sirwan and Sahlem barely ate anything. They didn’t like chicken they said and they were not hungry. But we had to eat. And we did appreciate their hospitality. But honestly I had no problems at all to eat because it was so delicious!
Picture
Why the best family, huh? Well because we think there is a friendly competition between Sirwan’s and Zaid’s families, which both live on the same floor, and both have two sons that went everyday to the office, back in Serres.
 
The meal itself was so nice but the talks we had were even better. First of all, we asked them if they knew how to cook, as only the women seemed to be active in the preparation of the meal. They laughed and did not seem to fully understand the purpose of the question. So I asked again: “Do you know how to cook”? Sirwan answered “No, of course, if I cooked my friends would make fun of me”.
So I added “do you know that in France and in Germany, both men and women cooks from themselves and their families?”. They seemed pretty amused by it.
We continued asking them if women were allowed to work in Iraq, they answered that there are not even jobs for men there, so why should women have one? Besides, they are too busy having babies and raising huge families anyway.
 
Sirwan added that men, if they want, can marry several women “of course, no problems” he said. But of course its problematic for woman who would like to marry several men…
As for the next question “Do you think men and women should be equal in rights?” it will stay without answer as translation issues still get in the way of very specifics topics…

 
But what they were sure about was that they both only want to marry one woman. Their dad only has one wife too. Sahlems “big Love” is already waiting in Germany for him he told us.
After having this great lunch, we really needed to go to the family of Zaid to finally start our real project, which was why we actually came to visit them. But – it is not as easy as you might think to escape out of the  “empire of family Sirwan”. Before leaving, we could not say "no" to another Tsai with the family and a cigarette they wanted to offer us and to talk about the religion of Yazidis with the father. Of course we just could have said no to it, but they were already so nice to us, so I didn’t want them to be sad if we directly would leave…
We stayed more time talking about the Yazidis, Lalesh and had to drink some juices until it really was time to move to Zaids room. When we went outside the mom of Sirwan came inside to bring us plastic bags filled with a lot of stuff. She pointed to us saying one bag was for Pauline and the other me. We first started to discuss with her asking why they as refugees should give us presents, and in addition to that so many…we didn’t know yet what was inside of them, but it looked like a lot. But quickly we understood that this must be part of their culture, giving guests presents and not the other way round like we would do it in Europe. So, a little bit confused, we took the two bags and we left the room promising to come back to say goodbye later.

 
The work we did with Zaid’s family is another story we will tell you another day. And concerning what was inside the bags, well lets just say we do not need to tell you everything, do we?
 
A text by Pauline C. and Charlotte S.
And a big thanks to Sirwan and Zaid families

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January 15th, 2017

15/1/2017

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Yazidis history

PictureL'archange yezidi Taous Malek. CC BY-SA 3.0

In our Human rights broadcast we wanted to take some time to talk about the migrants and refugees that left their home and country, looking for better life, and safeness for the families and told you the story of the refugee community that arrived in august in Camp Serres… The Yezidis Community


We, in Serres are hosting a very special refugee community from Northern Iraq: the Yezidis, most known in the rest of the world as sectarian community whICH worshipped Satan.
This community has been persecuted for decades for their astonishing beliefs and recently attacked by ISIS in their main city: Singal, the 3rd of august 2014. 35 000 of them run away to the mountains of Singal and stayed there for 7 seven days without food or water.
We know there are between 100 000 and 800 000 Yezidis in the world, it is quite hard to estimate because they do not really claim their religion to the world these days. But their population is one of the most ancient we have, appeared more then 4 000 years ago. They mainly were located in the Irakian Kurdistan, but you can also find them in Syria, Turquia, Armenia and Georgia.
As for Europe, the main community is in Germany, which gathered 40 000 Yezidis so far. And maybe more in the years to come if you take into consideration 90% of camp Serres has for ultimate goal to go build a new life in Germany.
But anyway, lets go back to the History of this community…
We, volunteers of Praxis, have met them, talk to them everyday for the past 2 months and we believed their culture and religion is very different from what the world seems to know about them, at least from the ones who actually already have heard of them before.
The first time I talk about their beliefs with them was because I just had made some tea and one of them did not want to drink some because he was fasting, when on the other hand another boy was eating all the cookies we had…
They both told me they were fasting but they choose how long and how many days according to some rules we could not understand with my very limited Kurmanci and their approximate mixt English/greek.
From our first talk we understood
  • That they have one god that they compare to Muslims and Christian andJewish gods
  • They also have 7 angels and the main one is often represented as a peacock angel called Malek Taaus.
  • They believed they come from Adam but they don’t believe in Eve,
  • They cannot wear blue clothes or eat cabbage.
  • They cannot marry outside of the Yezidis community but in the meantime its not completely forbidden, but if you do you are not considered Yezidis anymore if you do it.
  • Which also led to the fact that You cannot convert to Yezidis, you have to be born Yezidis
  • They don’t believe in Hell, because the main angel, who detrayed god, cry for 40 000 years and with his tears he flooded Hell
  • They believed in rebirth, and as it is a community made of different casts, the better they did in their previous life the higher they get in the next one.
 
After this talk, their religion was even more mysterious and also they are supposed to an older religion than Christianity or Judaïsm but they seems to have taken a lot from them.
 
After some more research we discovered that
According to Yezidi myth, God created seven angelic beings, the chief of whom was named Tawus Malik, the Peacock Angel.  Tawus Malik, like Lucifer in Jewish and Christian belief, rebelled against God.  However, in Yezidism, when God cast Tawus into the fire because of this rebellion, Tawus spent 40,000 years weeping.  His tears put out the flames of hell and demonstrated his repentance.  Reconciling with God, Tawus was placed in charge of the daily affairs of the world.  
 
As God’s underboss, Tawus contains both good and evil, light and darkness.  It is this relationship with Tawus, whom Christians, Jews and Muslims identify with Lucifer that has led to the accusations that Yezidis worship the devil.  
 
We though it was important to have a first overview of this community that is both a religion and a culture that could be threatened to disappeared into the culture and religions of their hosted countries.

A text by Pauline C. and Charlotte S.


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January 11th, 2017

11/1/2017

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Picture

Worldwide most of the HIV infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa. About two thirds of the disease is registered in this region. Right now in the world there are 36.7 million infected people, 40% don’t know their status. But the fight against AIDS makes progress.

Meanwhile in Europe since the last years AIDS increased. The number of new HIV- diagnoses reached a record in 2014. We have to be aware that not only in developing countries AIDS is a problem. But also in Europe especially in the eastern part of Europe AIDS has great impacts. In some countries of the east the cases of AIDS are doubled since 2005. After research in countries like turkey, Russia, Usbekistan or Israel it was found out that in every 100.000 people 16.4 people are new infected by HIV. AIDS is normally passed on by Sex of heterosexuals or dirty drug instruments.
The WHO (world health organisation) calls upon the European countries to take part and take action for the fight against AIDS.
Only who knows that he has AIDS can prevent other people from being infected by the virus. Nowadays having AIDS doesn’t mean you have to die soon. Today the medicaments help you to have a pretty normal life. There is no need to be scared to get a result. It is important to talk open and with responsibility about AIDS and HIV to fight against fears and prejudices.
The UN set as a goal to care about 30 million HIV infected persons. The chief of the “Unaids” programme Michel Sidibe explains that they reached immense success in the past 15 years. If they and everybody continues to fight against AIDS like this it could happen that in 2030 AIDS is not a “global epidemic” anymore.
 
But for this it is important for everybody to raise awareness of AIDS to stop fears and prejudices. That’s what the international Day of AIDS of the UN is for. On this day PRAXIS went out on the streets of Serres to make people aware of the global issue of AIDS and encourage the local community to fight against it.

http://www.avert.org/global-hiv-and-aids-statistics
https://www.welt.de/gesundheit/article149300528/So-viele-Europaeer-wie-nie-infizieren-sich-mit-HIV.html
http://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/diagnose/who-bericht-hiv-infektionen-in-europa-steigen-a-1064709.html


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January 09th, 2017

9/1/2017

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ZAID

I met Zaid 3 months ago,
and I remember that I told to myself,
he looks exactly like my little bro
they got the same eyes, the same smile but mostly they have the same way to walk into a room.
 
So you can picture it, imagine that something in the way they walk that says “I’m a cool kid and I know it, nothing will reach me, I’m unreachable”
 
My little brother walks like he owns the world and everything is worth laughing at.
Zaid walks like that too.
He walks like that into the camp, he laughs like this into
the office
But the scars on Zaid’s body scream: I’ve been reached already.
 
if all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,
How come my brother and Zaid’s lives
Are so different that one has almost every rights,
When the other
just spend 2 years of his life parked into one camp or another
 
While Everyone should have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,
Zaid family and friends have been persecuted for their beliefs and opinions,
 
And when if everybody has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
How come Zaid had to leave his homeland and have been moved again against his will already?
 
Zaid is gone, he left yesterday
But not before he came to the office to say,
Goodbye my friend, I’m not sure we will see each other again,
 
Oh,I wish I had just one more minute to tell him…
 
I’m not sure which part of Greece, he will “visit” this time,
But I’m sure there is no mountain he would not climb,
To finally achieve his goal and lead all his family
to the promise land of Germany…

Pauline Coiffard

Extract of our broadcast on Humans Rights - 10th of December 2016
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