AUG 3 — While the Paris 2024 Olympics is streamed live, please look out for the Refugee Olympic athletes. Cheer the loudest for them.
They deserve a standing ovation for surviving harrowing and life-threatening journeys, while escaping bombs, persecution and violence in their home countries to make it to the Olympics.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates there were a record 117.3 million forcibly displaced people mainly from — Ukraine, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and beyond — because of greedy, selfish and evil leaders who flag and fuel wars.
Millions of these are children who have fled by foot and by sea in dangerous expeditions to seek asylum, with no guidance on where to go. Many didn’t make it. They had been killed, tortured or had simply disappeared along the way.
Some were fortunate to have sought asylum in foreign countries as refugees and 36 members from all over the world are participating in the Paris 2024 Olympics. They are refugees from 11 countries participating in badminton, boxing, break dancing, canoe slalom, canoe sprint, cycling, judo, shooting, swimming, taekwondo, weightlifting and wrestling.
Some of their public narratives are heart rendering and yet so inspirational.
In 2015, Yusra Mardini and her sister Sarah fled the Syrian Civil War, travelled through Lebanon and Turkey, and were smuggled with 18 refugees into a tiny boat meant for six. Along the Aegean Sea to Greece their dinghy capsized. The Mardini sisters jumped into the water and pushed the wrecked dinghy for three hours to the shores while saving everyone’s life.
In May 2017, Mardini became the youngest-ever goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR. Mardini, who carried the Olympic Flag during the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony, achieved third place in the 100m swimming butterfly.
In the year 2010 teenager Jamal Abdelmaji walked through the Sinai Desert as he fled ethnic violence in Darfur, Sudan. He sought asylum in Israel and took part in Tokyo Olympics 2020 where he set a personal best in the 5,000-meter run. He is now competing in the 10,000-meter race in Paris.
In 2011, long jumper Mohammad Alsalami, a Syrian refugee in the war-torn hometown of Aleppo, fled to Turkey. He crossed the Mediterranean sea in a rubber boat to Greece. From there he trekked by foot to Berlin where he was eventually granted asylum in 2015. He is competing in the Paris Games, 2024, after a long marathon struggle.
How did this happen?
In 2016, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach provided a pathway to identify refugee athletes and fund them throughout their training, participation in competitions and travel preparation. Each of these programs are managed by the Olympic Refugee Foundation.
Identifying these talents among refugees was a daunting task. For instance, the Sudanese athletes were spotted in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, during trials held by the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation.
Tegla Roupe herself is an inspiration.
In 1994, she ran barefoot and won the 10,000m at the 1994 and 1998 Goodwill Games. She notched three world half-marathon titles between 1997 and 1999, and held world records for 20,000m, 25,000m, and 30,000m on the track. In the 2000 Sydney Olympics, she was fifth place in the 10,000m marathon.
Now, Loroupe crusades the world tracking talents for sports. She staged a 10km race in Kakuma, a UNHCR refugee camp of 170,000 refugees, and chose 10 refugees for the Rio Olympics in 2016.
Many of them, like Loroupe, ran barefoot. Once selected these refuges have to compete with elite participants who had trained for years on state-of-the-art tracks.
In spite of daunting memories of their journeys and grieving for the families they have lost in the wars, they have trained within limited facilities to arrive at the Olympics.
Tachlowini Gabriyesos, a marathon runner in the Paris Olympics, was only 12 when he escaped escalating violence in Eritrea. He walked through the Savanna Desert to Ethiopia with a friend and landed in Israel eventually.
Cindy Ngamba from Cameroon has won 75kg Women’s boxing medal and is one foot away from clinching the Olympic medal. Ngamba had to flee Cameroon because she is homosexual, which remains a criminal offence in the country.
There are others worth mentioning here — Manizha Talash (break dancing) Dorsa Yavarivafa (badminton) and Ramiro Mora (weightlifting) Alaa Maso(swimming) and Kavan Majidi (judo).
For them gruelling training schedules and exacting diets, and overcoming injuries so that they can sprint faster, swim longer, and push harder is intensified and a much bigger challenge because of their circumstances.
Nonetheless, this is not about medals for athletic excellence but to re-tell the world, the stories of brutal violation where the innocent civilians were robbed off their families and their lands. It is also a message to all other refugees that they feel they are being represented, and that they have a voice ... and they matter.
Forced displacement is soaring to historic new heights globally, driven by conflict, persecution and has reached 120 million as of May 2024 (UNHCR). It is common sense that while deadly wars for supremacy have absolutely no global value.
On the contrary, the world of sports beautifully brings the world together to one stage. The participants may have different backgrounds and different journeys but they compete with each other with mutual respect.
For the rest of us, watching every sports event has been a sense of pride, respect and excitement.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
