Please help us start a new life!

Aisha’s family is among 3,400 war-ravaged Iraqis in Britain seeking asylum in Britain and she is terrified that her claim will be rejected and her war traumatized babies will be forced to return to a country that has been devastated by war.

"It is not myself that I care about," says Aisha, "it is my children who have seen terrible things that no little child should see."

"They have nightmares every night and my husband and I are exhausted. We are not well ourselves -- I cry all the time and I am in constant pain, and my husband suffers deep depression, too  -- and I worry all the time about what will happen to my babies if we die here, or if we are forcibly returned to Iraq."

"How can we help our babies overcome the terrible things they have seen and been through when we are victimized in this way?"

"Our misery is seen by them every day and because they never see us happy they are not happy themselves," cries Aisha. "But how can I pretend to be happy when I am crushed with sadness about the terrible life we left and have been given no hope for the future?"

"Is it that your country hates Iraqis or hates Muslims so much that you would send two little babies back to Iraq to get killed?"

"Everyone helps tsunami and earthquake victims," sighs Aisha. "Why is nobody helping the terribly traumatized people of Iraq -- especially the little children?"

"We are here; please help us start a new life."

Read more by Aisha on this issue:

• Go back where you came from?
• limbo immigrants
  

Go back where you came from?

Non-Anglo Saxon asylum seekers in western countries are often told to go back where they came from, but Aisha makes the point that few foreigners would be seeking asylum if the West kept its nose out of other country’s affairs and stopped killing their children.

"We were warned before we came here that most British were racists and bigots, but we did not believe these warnings," says Aisha. "Now, I am willing to believe. But at the time it was too late for us to seek asylum in Syria or Jordan like so many thousands of Iraqis had."

"We were here and we were here to stay until our refugee claim was finally accepted -- as it was, in time," says Aisha. "The British government's involvement in the invasion and ruination of Iraq meant that Britain had an obligation to accept refugees from that country."

"Indeed, I think the asylum claims of Iraqis and Afghans are more valid than others," says Aisha. "It surprises me that there are so many asylum seekers here from other parts of the world which have no ties whatsoever with Britain. Why are so many Congolese, for instance, seeking asylum in Britain?"

"Yes, I know, Britain is overwhelmed with asylum seekers and EU immigrants and everyone just wants us to go away -- but where are we to go away to?"

"It is a matter of chance where anyone is born, natural disasters are happening all over the place, even Britain, and everyone's life, so to speak, is just a lightning strike away," says Aisha. "So, why make life more unbearable for poor people by invading their country and starting a war?"

“We were told by the racists to go back where we came from,” says Aisha, “but we had no reason to seek asylum before your country invaded Iraq.”

“We are here because your country ruined ours.”

Read more by Aisha on this issue:

Please help us start a new life!

limbo immigrants

limbo immigrants

More than 3,400 war-ravaged Iraqis whose claims for asylum in Britain have been rejected are now in a limbo situation on section 4 support, and Aisha's family is among them, all of whom are suffering from disabling post-traumatic stress.

"I don't understand why our asylum claim failed," cries Aisha. "Our country is finished, most of our relatives have been killed, all that we worked hard to achieve is no more and we came to Britain because it is where we expected to be treated well."

"Yes, we have been treated well -- we have accommodation and food vouchers and some people have been kind to us – but we are in limbo because as failed asylum seekers we cannot stay here yet have no home to go back to."

"We have very little money left and when that goes we will not be able to go anywhere, even catch a bus to go shopping," sighs Aisha. "It is humiliating for us to become beggars. All we want is a chance to start a new life is this country. Is that too much to ask after this country was instrumental in destroying my country?"

"My husband has skills and would like to get a good job and be able to support his family -- as he once did in Iraq," says Aisha, "but he is not allowed to work. What sort of torture is this?"

"Why are we being victimized when so many Eastern Europeans are allowed into this country to work and get rich?"

Read more by Aisha on this issue:

Go back where you came from?

Please help us start a new life!

desperate iraqi refugees

Ashley's grandparents escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the stories they tell her about the terrible effects of war on civil populations have made her a champion of refugees everywhere. She is appalled by the way Iraqi refugees were treated by Australia in 2001, and now Greece is doing the same thing in 2007 -- turning away boat people to sink or starve on deserted islands.

"As soon as George W. Bush came to power the movement of refugees out of the Middle East became obvious to everyone," says Ashley. "People in those countries knew his focus was going to be his daddy's unfinished business in Iraq and they were getting out as fast as they could by whatever means they could."

"The most spectacular of these refugee movements occurred in September 2001 when a sinking boatload of Middle Eastern refugees heading for a save haven in Australia was rescued by the Norwegian container ship, the Tampa."

"The Australian authorities requested the captain of the Tampa to return the refugees to their port of origin, Indonesia, but instead he headed for Australian territory because the refugees were agitated and did not want to go back."

"A stand-off for a considerable length of time occurred while Australian, Norwegian and Indonesian authorities passed the buck, during which distraught refugees, some sick, some pregnant, some very old, some very young, were trapped in the scorching heat on the deck of the Tampa."

"The Australian authorities claimed that the refugees were queue jumpers -- illegals who forced their way into a country ahead of those who waited for official processing of their claim for refugee status -- and eventually the refugees were offloaded at Nauru, a tiny Pacific island, where they were processed by United Nations officials and then either farmed out to whatever country would take them or returned to the misery of the country from which they had fled."

"A short while later, another sinking boatload of Middle Eastern refugees heading for save haven in Australia was not so lucky," sighs Ashley. "Every person on board, an estimated 350 people, lost their lives."

"The whole scene was reminiscent of my grandparents' story," says Ashley. "Thousands of people tried to flee Germany in the early 1930s when Hitler came to power, but they were refused entry by country after country because they they did not enter with official permits."

"As a result of the world's indifference to refugees, millions of people were exterminated in Europe, mostly Jews but also people who were considered undesirable by the Nazis -- gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and political dissenters."

"In Australia, not even the demise of the second boatload of refugees, softened the black hearts." says Ashley. "On the contrary, the feeling at the time was that their watery end was their own fault."

"Apart from the simple fact that everybody in Australia who is not aboriginal is either a boat person themselves -- or a plane person, illegal or otherwise -- or descended from such a person or, worse, a convicted felon," says Ashley, "the lack of compassion for the Middle Eastern refugees was shocking."

"It was difficult to comprehend that the self-proclaimed 'lucky country' could treat refugees so badly," says Ashley. "Only a year before, in 2000, Australia had hosted the Olympic Games in Sydney and the world was applauding the warm hearted Australians."

"It's difficult to imagine how the black hearted people responsible for this so-called War on Terror crime go to sleep soundly at night," sighs Ashley. "How can they look at a future full of splendid opportunities for their children when they have effectively diminished their own humanity by treating the Middle Eastern refugees so inhumanely?"

"And now Greece is going the same thing!" sighs Ashley. "Is there something about holding the Olympic Games that makes nations heartless?"

Ashley's story first apppeared as boat people and is reprinted with permission.

did the sumerians come from hungary?

The earliest truly urban civilization, predating the ancient Egyptians, emerged about 3200 BC in the Fertile Crescent between and around the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in ancient Mesopotamia (modern day southeastern Iraq). This civilization spawned a host of urban centers towards the Indus River valley -- from southeastern Iran to India and Pakistan -- trading commodities, technologies, architectures, and ideas.

Mesopotamia is a Greek word, literally meaning 'between the rivers', and the land was originally called Sumer by the Sumerian speaking people who settled there, possibly as early as 5000 BC or much earlier. Over time, the Sumer culture was followed by the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian cultures, and cities such as Uruk, Ur, Babylon, Nimrud, and Nineveh became immortalized.

The Sumer civilization produced the earliest writing (in cuneiform script on clay tablets), and some of the first sciences, mathematics, laws and philosophies of the world. The Sumerians developed extensive trade networks and structured social hierarchies -- sedentary and agricultural communities -- that gave birth to the first kingdoms and empires. They used a highly sophisticated system of irrigation and agriculture, taking full advantage of the waters of the two rivers, and established magnificent cities.

So, who were the Sumerians and where did they come from?

The first tablets of the ancient Sumerian language were re-discovered in the nineteenth century and deciphering them was very difficult because the language was unrelated to ancient Arabic, Assyrian, Canaanite, Egyptian, Indian, Jewish, Persian and Phoenician, and did not appear to be related to any language from contemporaneous African, Asian or European dialects.

However, there were significant similarities between the ancient Sumerian language and those of the Mongolian, Turkic, and Hungarian languages (Hungarian being a non Indo-European language) to make headway in the deciphering process.

Of the 53 characteristics of Sumerian grammar, there are 51 matching characteristics in the Hungarian language compared to only 29 in the Turkic languages, 24 in the Caucasian languages, 21 in the Uralic languages, 5 in the Semitic languages and 4 in the Indo-European languages.

That the grammatical structure of the Hungarian language was found to be the closest to that of the Sumerian language, gives rise to the belief that the first civilization in Sumer may have been developed by immigrants from Eastern Europe escaping from the Ice Age.

Tens of thousands of clay tablets and cylinder-seals exist containing Sumerian texts describing everything from taxation and administrative records to essays, literature and ethics on kingship, priesthood, the art of love making, kindness, song, the crafts of scribes, builders, leather makers, woodworkers, copper workers and beer makers. The Sumerians appear to have arrived in Mesopotamia with the attributes of civilization already formulated!

Fundamental to everything in the Sumerian civilization were the gods and goddesses whom the Sumerians called the Anunnaki -- those who came from heaven to earth -- and the Sumerian Family Tree differentiates between those Gods and Goddesses who were born on earth (the new generation) and those born in heaven according to their clashing personalities.

The Sumerian texts also describe the Epic of Creation -- on which Genesis is based --and when Abraham fled from Ur in Iraq to found the new religion of Judaism, he took all of the Sumerian ideas with him.

moving out of africa

500,000 BC is the earliest dating of fossil remains of early man found outside of Africa. This was Sinanthropus lantianensis and surprisingly these fossils were found in China!

From 1,000,000 BC (the dating of Transvaal Man in southern Africa) to 500,000 BC (the dating of China Man and other hominid fossils) - there is a startling gap of 500,000 years in the human fossil record that indicates that this was the period of the greatest migration that has ever taken place.

Early man was on the move - to all corners of the Earth - using land mass bridges that just don't exist any more.

We know from DNA evidence that we are all related to the earliest African hominid fossils, so if our ancestors migrated from Africa to China - either crossing to Spain from Morocco in Northwest Africa and trekking through Europe; or crossing to the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt in the Northeast and trekking through the Middle East - why is there no record of their existence in the lands they traversed?

We know that there was a massive Ice Age in the northern lands that did not recede until 12,000 BC - after which human enterprise in that part of the world developed by leaps and bounds - so it would appear to be unlikely, but not impossible, that our ancestors made the trek to China through Spain.

Assuming that they trekked to Asia through the Middle Eastern lands, what happened to their remains along the way?

The earliest human fossil in the Middle Eastern lands was Neanderthaloid Man, dated 120,000 BC, and discovered in Israel. This is thousands of years later than what one might expect to account for the migration out of Africa towards Asia.

Interestingly, the earliest human fossil found in Europe was Caucasoid Heidelberg Man - Homo heidelbergensis - discovered in Germany and dated 450,000 BC. This, too, is much later than what one might expect to account for the migration out of Africa towards Asia - we are looking for human fossils dated between 1,000,000 BC and 500,000 BC - but it does indicate that migration did take place through Europe, and that it was the northwest coast Africans who led the migration out of Africa through Spain (just like they do in modern times, but without the need for boats).

Assuming that they trekked to Asia through Spain and Europe, we are still left with the question: what happened to their remains along the way?

The easiest solution to this problem is to assume that because that part of the world became the most heavily vegetated - and populated - in later years, the remains of our earliest ancestors are totally inaccessible, buried under mountainous layers of forests and debris.

To speculate that the wild animals consumed all of their remains, leaving none for us to find, raises the question why they would do this outside Africa, but not in African itself?

Did they throw their dead into the sea? Although customs about what to do with the dead did not emerge until much later in our evolution - the oldest known human burial site being in the Shanidar cave, northern Iraq, c. 60,000 BC - it is possible that those who trekked to China took the bones of their dead with them to the new land as some sort of primitive ancestor rite pre-dating a later Chinese custom.

However, considering the scarcity of food, a more likely explanation is that hunger forced them to eat their dead and break their bones into pieces - as many cultures still do today in respect of animal bones - in order to obtain nourishment from marrow. In desperate times, even modern man resorts to cannibalism.

Like most questions in history - especially concerning ancient times - there are no easy answers.