Monday, April 27, 2009

Illegal imigrants ( des clandestins..)

B4 i start this post... I wanna ask all of you a question... What do you think about illegal imigrants (PTI)? For me... This 1st thing tat came to my mind was crimes... Malaysia's oways having problem with PTI... N most malaysians assume that most of the PTIs commit crime in our country and bring us lots of problems...

Today in civilisation class, we watched a documentary film by a french reporter... It was diveded into 3 parts about how the PTIs from Africa "travel" to europeen countries... He went through the journey just as how the PTIs and so the documentary film is 100% reality...

Right at the beginning of the film, we saw the reporter negotiating with the "travel agent" ( we couldn see the face...) The reporter has to pay 1000 euro = RM 5000 for the journey... It's the same price as those PTIs had to pay... One of the PTI was interviewed and asked why he decided to imigrat illegally...
He said : " There's nothg left in our country... There's no work and a lot of unemployed ppl around... We had to get out of our country.. So that we can live on..."

The 1st part of the journey was by a car... There were 18 of them inside... everyone had to squeeze in... feared from getting caught by the police.. They had to move fast... During the whole journey.. They had no food, no water... once in awhile ( a long while...) they were given 1.5 litre of water to share among 18 of them... That's not all... They were also threaten by the driver... with a long knife... to take everythg from them... money, handphones... everythg tat is valuable... N after a few days, they were left in a dessert with nothg around, to wait for the next part of the journey... They spend 12 days in the dessert... with only 1 baguettes ( bread ) and 1 bottle of water...

After 12 days, the "travel agent" came bak with a boat... The boat was in a very bad condition... with lots of holes.. They had to repair themselves... When the boat was mended, the "travel agent" brought 18 more ppl to join their journey... 36 ppl in a small boat is too dangerous... but they had no other choice... N so, given just a compass, they set out to europe by themsleves... when they nearly arrived... The boat finally gave in and turned over... struggling to survive, they swam with the fatigue body... But there were some who did not make it... yes... some of them died....

The video stopped here cz we ran out of time... After watchin juz two parts, I had to fight back tears... There's a lot going in my mind... Who would like to migrat illegaly and be called as PTI if they had a choice... Paying RM5000 for such an inhuman journey? No food.. no water... fear for police... fear for the threats ... or even death...?

In those kind of condition... They still neve complain about it.. N somtimes we can even see a smile on their face... If you were they... can you do it? We on the other hand are having comfortable lives... getting high education... travelling by airplanes with welcoming air stewardess... N we stil complaining...

My lecturer said : " Our lives are not real... Their lives are real.. Life is cruel... We are just lucky to be born in such comfortable life... "
I knw that the impact of wat i'm saying will not be as strong as when you are really watching it... But think again... Are you still complaining.. Or are you starting to appreciate the life you're having??

This documentary film had make me change my point of view towards them... But there's nothing we can do about it... C'est la vie...

1 comment:

Joanne W said...

This is an eye-opener... Thanks for the great post and i guess after all the hardships that they went and are going through, that is what made them so raw and bad because they are the one who knows that life is unkind!