Ondokuz Mayıs University (OMU) Human Rights and Freedom Club called attention to the problems and traumas experienced by war weary children through a panel that they organized under the name of “Being a Child in the Middle East”.
The panel was held in Atatürk Culture and Congress Center at OMU with the participation of Head of Samsun Branch of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation Ömer İdris Akdin, Specialist Psychologist from International Physicians Union Tuğba Öztürk, İbrahim Ergin from International Refugee Rights Association, academicians, and students.
Head of OMU Human Rights and Freedom Club Harun Reşit Aksoy made the opening speech, and he remarked: “we organized this panel in order to bring up the process of immigration in the Middle East from the perspective of children to the agenda of our university”. At the beginning of the panel, a video was shown to the audience about war weary children.
Chairman of the Panel and Head of Samsun Branch of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation Ömer İdris Akdin emphasized that humanitarian foundations were not the first groups arriving in the regions where disasters such as flood, earthquake or wars occurred, and he stated: “Contrary to popular belief, human smugglers go to those regions in the first place. We, IHH, have repeatedly witnessed this reality. Human smugglers perform their actions within enormous organizations throughout the world. They analyze the region in detail from east to west, and they realize the conditions quite effectively. Then they start to collect the children losing their families after the disasters in the region. Most of those children are sold to organ mafias.”
Head of Branch Akdin underlined that such criminal organizations were cartelized, and he continued as follows: “there is no other organization than organ mafia which was cartelized to such extent. Prostitution gangs have been regarded as second cartelized mafia. Hundreds of thousands children have been sold to those gangs. War barons also take part among those cartelized organizations; those malevolent people train victim children and use them in wars. Unfortunately, militant children have started to appear in our country, as well. For example, the suicide bomber in Ankara was kidnapped by the terrorist organization 10 years ago, and she was raised on the mountain. Today, those kidnapped children are the most important potential power of the terrorist organization called DAESH.”
Panelist İbrahim Ergin stated that they have been carrying out activities under the name of International Association of Refugee Rights for the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in order to ensure legal framework in the refugee crises experienced in national and international scales. In this sense, Ergin remarked: “we strive to keep our finger on the pulse of legal regulations and to maintain the balance between the public authorities and the society in order to prevent the victimization of refugees during migration especially in Turkey. In this regard, we try to find solutions to the legal problems in micro and macro levels.”
The other panel speaker, Tuğba Öztürk, gave different examples demonstrating psychological problems and traumatic events experienced by the victim children of wars and disasters by sharing visual elements and details from the “Zeytin Dalı” project prepared for victim children.
At the end of the panel, the speakers were awarded with plaques for their participation.
LISTEN