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During our events in schools and at evenings where we talked about our project and the trip that Syrians within Europe have to make, you have asked us many questions, you have expressed your doubts, perplexities and outrage. Starting from this one question that has left us feeling proud of being part of a world that stills gets shocked, we decided to create this short column in order to create a dialogue with you, our followers, and to keep feeling outraged ourselves without eventually getting used to injustice.

Le Vostre Domane (Your Questions) will come out every Thursday at 2p.m. If you have any other question to ask us, please feel free to contact us at info@sirianintransito.com or on our facebook page.

Why, instead of promoting beautiful but illegal initiatives, why don’t we take concrete actions at international and European levels?

When hundreds of Syrians a day were arriving in Milan in October 2013, we started asking ourselves, as citizens, what was the difference between legality and justice. We started wondering why there could not be a legal way for these people to get to where they were and for us to help them as they needed. Many of us chose justice and solidarity: we did not want to turn our heads when such an exodus was passing right in front of us. People decided to do something. Some, against Italian law, went to train stations and ports to bring help and aid to the people who were arriving, others opened their homes to them. Some people decided to disobey giving information or a ride to whom wanted to illegally pass the European borders. The Municipality of Milan opened some sheltering centres that do not comply with European regulations.

We from Siriani in Transito, as many others, started asking ourselves if this could be enough: we asked ourselves this same exact question. Aid and shelters, as necessary and just, only staunch a problem that is born within the European regulations. A problem that starts with the absence of humanitarian corridors for war refugees and of a uniform European asylum system for refugee or the denial of asking for the refugee status from any European embassy.

We decided that European laws and regulations need to be challenged and changed. Because we strongly believe in democracy we decided to start by making information bringing in sight the stories that we had heard and that needed to be listened to. We hoped that, by making these stories scream, they could have an impact on the political conscience of who hears them. We want to increase the attention to this issue in order to be able to ask more to the people we vote, locally and at the European level. Building together a better Europe, of human rights.

You will find at this link the names of more organizations that struggle in the same direction.