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Japan: Kurd helps other refugees after own
trek to freedom
16.7.2006
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Japan, July 16,
-- When Simko Baran flew to Japan in 1996, it was
going to be nothing more than a business trip and he
planned to leave in three months. He had no way of
knowing that his plans would change permanently, and
that he would still be living in Japan 10 years
later.
Simko is a Kurdish refugee who was granted refugee
status by the Japanese government in 1998 and works
as an aid worker at a nongovernment organization. He
says he helps others now because he knows from
experience how much they need help.
His life is as dramatic as the stories recounted in
the movies on show at the Refugee Film Festival.
Born in 1970 in Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish city in
Kurdistan (northern Iraq), Simko majored in civil
engineering at a university in the nearby city of
Erbil.
Graduating from the university in 1990, he joined
the Iraqi Army. It was the year Iraq invaded Kuwait,
and it was a requirement for Iraqi men to join the
army.
"I was in the army for about six months, but I never
believed in the war," Simko recalls.
He tried to escape from the base he was assigned to
in Babylon, central Iraq, about three months after
he joined the army. But he was caught and brought
back to the base. He tried to get out of trouble by
saying he had just gone into town and was intending
to return, but he was jailed for two weeks. When he
was pulled out of his cell, he was forced to sign an
agreement to accept any sort of punishment the next
time he was caught running away, which essentially
meant he could be executed.
In spite of what had happened, he attempted to
escape again three months later. He was training in
heavy rain and was told to clean his clothes in a
nearby river. He jumped into the river and swam
across it. When he reached the other side of the
river, he headed toward the city of Babylon on foot
for five hours. Then he found a family who would
protect him. He stayed with the family for about a
week before heading for his hometown. He moved
around only after dark and went through numerous
checkpoints with a university ID card he had
modified to look valid.
He justified risking his life because he concluded
he was likely to die on the battlefield sooner or
later.
"Life was very cheap," Simko says.
He reached Sulaymaniyah after a tough journey, but
life was still far from relaxing. He had to conceal
himself in a tiny hiding place in the garden
whenever the authorities started raiding nearby
homes.
About a year later, Saddam Hussein's troops bombed
the Kurdish region to repress a Kurdish uprising, so
Simko and his family fled to Iran along with other
Kurds.
They stayed at a refugee camp for three months. When
the United States provided protection for the Kurds,
he returned home.
On his way back to his hometown, he met U.N. workers
and NGO members and started helping them. He worked
with a couple of NGOs and ended up with NPO Peace
Winds Japan, a nonprofit organization.
In 1996, he visited Japan accompanying a fellow
Iraqi who had lost his leg in a land mine explosion
and was coming to this country to get a prosthetic
leg. Simko was going to serve as a translator and do
some civil engineering research during his three
month visit.
However, during the stay, Saddam's troops attacked
the Kurdish region, so Simko felt unable to return.
He decided to seek refugee status. With the help of
the NPO, he was granted asylum in 1998 and
naturalized in Japan in 2005. Since then, he has
provided relief work in conflict areas including
Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. He has also
provided his civil engineering skills to build
prefab homes for earthquake-hit Pakistan.
Asked why he would help others when he still needed
help himself, he said: "I wanted somebody to help
me, and I wanted to help others when we were fleeing
the country, but there was little I could do at that
time. But now I can help people, so that's what I
do."
Simko says Japanese people have a fixed image of
refugees as people far away in Africa who are short
of food--an impression that fails to capture the
diverse nature of refugees.
He also paints pictures of refugees, some of which
were shown at a recent joint exhibition of Japanese,
Asian, African and Latin American artists. One was a
portrait colored in blue. In the picture, the
subject's face is distorted, but the expression is
calm and leaves a lasting impression. Another
features the abstract profile of a person, with a
key shining inside the head.
That's the key of hope, which Simko says he has
found.
yomiuri co.jp
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