Har­jin­der Singh Kukreja spreads love at Turkey’s Syr­ian Refugee camp

 -  -  589

WSN Ex­clu­sive Re­port and Tweet-Es­say of Har­jin­der Singh Kukre­ja’s jour­ney to Turkey’s Syr­ian Refugee camp at Nizip in Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria bor­der, to spread love and peace in the re­gion and the world.

WSN Exclusive Report and Tweet-Essay of Harjinder Singh Kukreja’s journey to Turkey’s Syrian Refugee camp at Nizip in Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border, to spread love and peace in the region and the world. With bountiful love in his heart, grace in his form, prayers on his lips and Sikh humanitarian organisation, Khalsa Aid on his sleeves, moved by the Sikh spirit of Sewa and travel, Harjinder Singh Kukreja goes from Ludhiana to Gaziantep -right on the Turkey-Syria border, barely […]

With boun­ti­ful love in his heart, grace in his form, prayers on his lips and Sikh hu­man­i­tar­ian or­gan­i­sa­tion, Khalsa Aid on his sleeves, moved by the Sikh spirit of Sewa and travel, Har­jin­der Singh Kukreja goes from Lud­hi­ana to Gaziantep -right on the Turkey-Syria bor­der, barely 100 kilo­me­tres from the the­atre of war at Aleppo, min­gles and em­pathises with refugees at the Nizip Syr­ian refugees camp and sets a new prece­dent for so­cial ac­tivism to fol­low.

As a par­tic­i­pant in the In­flow Sum­mit in Is­tan­bul, Har­jin­der was wel­comed to the his­toric Mu­seum city of Gaziantep in Turkey by its mayor, a for­mer min­is­ter in the Turk­ish cab­i­net -Fatma Şahin.  Of the few mil­lion refugees in Turkey, Gaziantep has seen a huge in­flux with more than a quar­ter of its pre­sent pop­u­la­tion now be­ing Syr­ian refugees, ob­vi­ously up­set­ting the so­cial de­mo­graph­ics, but the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment in sup­port­ing the Syr­ian refugees is well-known and has re­ceived in­ter­na­tional ap­plaud. This bold step at the cost of the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion re­quires huge in­ter­na­tional aid and it must come from all quar­ters.

 

Life goes on as usual for nearly 10 thou­sand refugees at Nizip-men, women and chil­dren. They have all the fa­cil­i­ties in the “con­tain­ers” where they live, in­clud­ing a com­puter train­ing cen­tre and play­ing fa­cil­i­ties for chil­dren.

““The whole idea is to spread hap­pi­ness, cheer and peace. I want to do more of this in the times to come”.”

Tweet­ing his pic­tures with kids from the refugee camp, Har­jin­der Singh Kukreja went nos­tal­gic shar­ing the same with WSN. He said, “Spend­ing a whole day at the refugee camp, I could not help but con­nect with true sto­ries shared with me about the life at refugee camps of my grand­fa­ther and great grand­fa­ther. I come from a fam­ily of refugees from the Indo-Pak par­ti­tion in 1947.” Lov­ingly hug­ging a child who lost an arm in the war, whilst talk­ing to the young and old there, he said, “Just as my fam­ily and I have grown out through those times and I want the best life for my chil­dren, I want the same for these Syr­ian refugee chil­dren too.

In a strife-torn world, so­cial ac­tivists, re­lief vol­un­teers, UN agen­cies, aid agen­cies like Khalsa Aid and dar­ing po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and ac­tivists have to play Robin­hood. Not in the lit­eral sense of rob­bing the rich and giv­ing to the poor, but in the sense of be­ing bold and dar­ing -go­ing where no man goes, do­ing what few peo­ple do and in­still­ing a sense of hu­man­ity whom­so­ever they touch in a world where love is at dis­count and in­fla­tion of hate. Har­jin­der Singh Kukreja has done just that and the Sikh com­mu­nity, nay the world com­mu­nity, should be proud of his achieve­ment.

“The whole idea is to spread hap­pi­ness, cheer and peace. Liv­ing the life of a refugee is no joke -away from home and hearth, at the mercy of the good­ness of coun­tries, UN and other aid agen­cies and of course or­di­nary peo­ple who have the heart in the right place. I want to do more of this in the times to come”, said Har­jin­der Singh Kukreja, while speak­ing to WSN on the phone line from Nizip, Turkey.

See­ing the cute chil­dren in­ter­act­ing with Khalsa Aid in­ter­na­tional vol­un­teer-ac­tivist Har­jin­der Singh Kukreja, let us hope and pray that the war ends, bet­ter sense pre­vails and we have a peace­ful world.

 

589 rec­om­mended
Print
4076 views

Write a com­ment...

Your email ad­dress will not be pub­lished. Re­quired fields are marked *