Author: kanoazapata

Not only did the prisoners undergo communist indoctrination, beatings, and mental abuse; prisoners had medical experiments performed on them. One account claims that 50 women were forced to eat poisoned cabbage leaves “ All of the women were required to eat the cabbage, despite cries of distress from those who had already eaten.” After 20 minutes all the women were dead. Prisoners were used for operation practice for apprentice doctors “ practice surgery on prisoners without anesthesia. A former prisoner camp head of security recalls a family being held in a sealed gas chamber waiting to be exposed to unknown gases “equipped with gas chambers and suffocation gas experiments, in which three or four people, normally a family, are the experimental subjects.” Once poison was released in the chamber, the son and daughter of the couple died first. What they did to their own citizens is truly disgusting.

The individual cost of every refugee. Countries raise taxes to cover the expenses of a refugees.

I had never really thought of the individual cost of each individual. It is an interesting concept but putting a dollar value on a persons life and then justifying why its not worth it is very unethical from my point of view. I guess the same people would argue about abolishing social services and infrastructure. Everybody has a dollar value in that sense.

By far my favorite character in the book. He was orphaned at a young age and lived with his brother in an orphanage. The only reason they survived is because they had to steal food to eat. There was barely any food around at the time they were growing up due to the North Korean famine. When Kim-Hyuk became a young adult he would cross the Tumen River and sold anything he could find to his Shinese neighbors. He would sell metal scrap usually. He was eventually caught and beaten. His story fascinates me because he had to overcome such hardships at a young age. He is as strong of a man as they come.

Offer them asylum and help alleviate the crisis in their home countries. The US and Western Europe have the capacity to fix the crisis. If the support level is low and the problem is not addressed, the cost in the long run would be astronomical compared to the costs of resolving this problem now. Resolving this crisis now ensures that Syria would be stabilized and that no worse crisis happen.

There are four major smuggling groups in Alexandria. “The Doctor”, “Hanafi”, Abu Ahmed, and Abu Hassan. The group is currently using the services of Abu Hassan. The groups sabotage each other in order to to boost their own reputation. They rat out each other to the police or even bribe the police to bust their smuggling operations. It is hard to Get across the sea with smuggler warfare.

Alexandria is a corrupt city in a corrupt country. At night everything is worse though. The baltagiya control Alexandria at night. They deal drugs and run the prostitution rings. The baltagiya kidnapped the refugees on their way to the boat. They are put inside an even smaller aparrment while the kidnappers await ransom money from the smugglers.

Amar becomes the defacto leader of the group of 13 refugees in the apartment. He negotiates and speaks for the group. The group talks about the countries they want to live in. Most people want to live in sweden and germany, mostly scandinavian countries. This is hard to achieve with the Dublin Regulation…

Refugees have to meetup in a location and are then picked up by the smuggling organization. Amar arrives in Alexandria with several other immigrants. They are dropped off at an apartment complex where the smugglers pay the homeowner 3x normal rent and are told to stay the night there.

Amar Obaid is in Cairo with his family. They are originally fron Syria. He used to figbt for the resistance against Assad but he chose life with his family and started a small furniture import business in Cairo. Public opinion took a turn against Syrians after the military junta took control. Amars family cannot go back to Syria so he decided to search for a new home in Europe.

Usually the men of a family undertake the journey for asylum. They try to reach the desired country and get their families there with them through other means. Its hard for refugees to reach their desired countries due to the Dublin Regulation which decrees that asylum seekers have their asylum claim registered in the first country they arrive in.