Trigger Warning. This article includes photographic images that are shocking and devastating for the communities involved. We do not share these lightly, but have decided to honour the request from a member of our beloved global community. I try to find a balance in all of our humanKINDER communications between sharing the realities - the horrors that continue across the world - and amplifying the voices of the revolutionaries, the silenced communities who are co-creating ‘Recipes of HOPE’ amidst such despair.
Please consider contributing to our work this Refugee Week via our PayPal link HERE. We will endeavour to get funds to those facing emergencies like Chico and his community, while continuing to invest in the infrastructure of our organisation so that we can continue to amplify truths from independent sources and support the creative dreams of our global Happiness All Around community.
We first met Chico in 2015 and spent many hours preparing and cooking food together in our humanitarian project The Welcome Tent. He was one of the original members of the Happiness All Around crew. He worked with us to report back to a conference of Student Social Workers in Stockton and a Peace Conference in the city of London.
After a gruelling journey from Sudan, across Europe, he first presented himself to the authorities in the UK in 2016 after crossing the English Channel holding on to the underside of a lorry. At that point he was a minor, and was thus placed in supported accommodation in Appledore Reception centre for unaccompanied asylum seeking children in Kent, UK.
After several challenging years in the UK, first in England then Ireland, without having the permission to work and waiting for the results of his application for asylum, he was refused Refugee status. He eventually returned to Sudan to reunite with family and found employment on the borders with Egypt.
Chico’s story is not an unusual one. But it is one we know to be true and accurate. Over the years we have got to know this young gentleman well, his humility, sense of humour and kindness.
When he got in touch a few days ago and asked for help for his family, friends and community in Northern Sudan, we knew to take him seriously. He wanted me to share this update - this Refugee Week 2023 - as an accurate account of what is happening on the ground in Northern Sudan as we speak. The following details are from his messages to me on Messenger during the last few days. I have chosen not to share the distressing images of bodies shared with me - I truly hope their souls find peace. I am also not able to give accurate sources for each photo at this point, but will add them at a later point if I can.
“In June 2023, the Janjwat - also known as the Rapid Support Forces - are burning the cities of Al Junaynah and Kutum in Northern Sudan. It is happening all around Darfur and the capital of Sudan. There are now only militia and Janjwat left in Al Junaynah because they have slaughtered all the civilians. It is worse than it was in 2003 - it is only dead people in the streets. People are escaping across the border to Chad.” [Chico Zubiar]
“This is what the corpses look like in the city of El Geneina, and they have all decomposed. And this is only in a small street, an alley in the Al Madares neighbourhood, the street from the N’Djamena mill to the police headquarters… The Sultanate of Dar Endoca must activate the Gilani Document through France and Britain with an urgent US/French military intervention to save the remaining innocent lives and stop the ethnic cleansing, displacing and emptying the civilian population from their lands.” [message from a friend, Name unknown]
There is now no internet, only cellphone. Chico describes he is in touch with his family who are now moving from Kutum to the Chad border. As an example as what we would describe at humanKINDER as a Recipe of HOPE, I end this article with a screen shot from a video shared by Chico of the welcome that greets the Sudanese communities as they arrive across the Chad border, with food, shelter and kindness.
Please consider this Refugee Week 2023 of supporting our work to amplify silenced voices for systems change here at PAYPAL.
For all other enquiries, please contact me Emma Barrett Palmer, the Founder of humanKINDER Ltd directly at Emma@humanKINDER.UK
