Bukti Arab Saudi Turut Membantu Pelarian Syria

Sekarang ini hangat diperkatakan mengenai isu pelarian Syria, lebih-lebih lagi apabila kejadian sedih yang menimpa anak kecil berumur 3 tahun Aylan Kurdi baru-baru ini.

Kemelut dan krisis yang berlaku di negara itu mendapat perhatian daripada pelbagai negara, antara ialah Arab Saudi yang dikatakan tidak menerima masuk dan membantu pelarian Syria ke negaranya.

Oleh itu, Mohammed Khalid Alyahya yang merupakan Associate Fellow At the Saudi Arabian King Faisal Centre For Research And Islam Studies merungkai bahawa mengapa Arab Saudi ‘tidak membantu’ mereka.

"Zero is a very inaccurate number because Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a refugee policy. There are 500,000 Syrians in Saudi Arabia that have been given visas, 3000 of which, based on a recent royal decree, have been given scholarships to attend university inside the kingdom. They are also given healthcare for themselves and their families but they are called visitors, they are not called refugees. Many of them are there to visit their families, who already live in Saudi Arabia. I can’t speak to other Gulf countries but the number in Saudi Arabia is 500,000. We can argue that this number is LOW but I would say the entire international community has done very little to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people."

" This week we have seen a lot of focus on the refugee crisis after there was a spike in the number of refugees coming into Europe and after we saw these heart-breaking photographs of drowned civilian children and civilians but the refugee crisis has been going on for 4 years. It’s as if people have forgotten Syria until that one picture of the child surfaced. 25 million refugees, that’s where we are headed right now. There is no concreate plan of action to stop the root of the problem which is Bashar Al Assad."

Whole families have come in and they have been given visas and their statuses have been formalised in Saudi Arabia. Just the fact that they’re not called refugees doesn’t mean that they aren’t refugees.

"Putting the number at zero is extremely misleading. It just ignores the fact that there are 500,000 Syrians in Saudi Arabia as a result of this war that WEREN’T in Saudi Arabia before it."

-ohbulan