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Dateline: Nov 1

What happens to refugee children when their parents die? Dateline talks to migrant kids stranded in Europe without their parents.

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What happens to refugee children when their parents die?

Tonight on SBS Dateline talks to migrant kids dealing with the daily struggle of survival, including two young siblings living in a derelict petrol station in Greece. They are among tens of thousands of refugee children stranded in Europe without their parents.

The last time 13-year-old Mohamed and his 12-year-old sister Nagham saw their father was five years ago.

He was taken away at gunpoint by a group fighting in the Syrian conflict, their mother screaming and begging for him to be let go.

For Mohamed, his fate of his father is still a mystery; “we think about whether they killed him, or whether the regime took him, or whether he’s still alive,”

Two years later the siblings’ mother was killed in an air strike in the Syrian city of Aleppo, where the family lived. Their home was destroyed.

Mohamed and Nagham are no longer in a war zone, but their lives remain dangerous and insecure.

Having fled with their aunt and uncle to Europe, surviving a treacherous boat journey on the way, they are now living in an old petrol station in the Northern Greek town of Polykastro. Inside, the building is littered with tents and crowded with other refugee families and children. There are no showers or toilets.

“Everything changed and we ended up here,” says Mohamed, as he plays with his hands.

But the petrol station is respite from their previous location – a state run camp for refugees where fights regularly broke out.

In one scuffle, someone was stabbed.

The family attempted to flee the camp shortly after this incident, but were confronted by Greek riot police. Mohamed says he was thrown on the floor and beaten, fracturing his arm.

“I felt that had we stayed there, we would have all died,” he says. “I was in a really bad mood and felt I couldn’t stand life any more, I still feel the same now.”

Mohamad and Nagham’s story is not unique.

Of the more than 325,000 migrants that have arrived in Europe by sea through the Mediterranean this year, 28 per cent are children. And of the 169,000 migrants that have arrived in Greece by sea this year, children make up 37 per cent.

But many of these arrivals, are now unaccounted for. In January, Europe’s law enforcement agency Europol estimated that at least 10,000 refugee children are missing since arriving in Europe, and raised concerns that many may have been targeted for sexual or labour exploitation.

9.30pm Tuesday on SBS.

One Response

  1. Terribly sad…awful…they have nothing and are allowed nothing…cannot go to school..they feel like people are oblivious to them….
    Countries are swamped and do not know how to deal with it all…equals a nightmare…

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