Page 87 - Self-Sacrifice in the Qur'an's Moral Teachings
P. 87

Harun Yahya - Adnan Oktar


                           The Problems of Refugees

                 War-induced poverty has forced many people from their lands.
            Although the whole world knows what these people suffered during
            the war, many countries do not accept refugees. These people walk for
            days and weeks in the cold in search of a secure place to live and are
            often forced to go from one country to another. Today, there are ap-
            proximately 21 million refugees in the world. A few examples will be
            enough to explain their need for help.
                 Since March 1998, because of the war in Kosovo, many of the
            area's cities have been almost emptied. Due to harsh winter conditions,
            more than 300,000 Kosovans were driven from their homes and forced

            to walk for days, perished.
                 In November 1999, no country accepted those Chechens fleeing
            on foot from Russian attacks. Many women, children, and elderly peo-
            ple died before reaching the borders of Turkey, which did accept them.
                 Of the world's 9 million Palestinians, 4 million live in Palestine
            and 5 million live beyond its borders, mostly in refugee camps. More
            than half of those who live inside Palestine have been displaced and
            forced to live in refugee camps. In other words, nearly 75% of the
            Palestinian people have been forced out of their homes by armed vio-
            lence and continue to live under extremely harsh conditions in these
            camps.
                 As Palestinians were expelled from their homes, 531 villages were
            totally evacuated and 90% of them were completely destroyed by the
            occupying state. The Palestinians forced from their homes could not

            live in peace in the places they migrated to. The refugees who settled in
            the as-yet unoccupied West Bank and Gaza were subjected to frequent
            aggression and slaughter, after the June 1967 war, by air and land at-




                                            85
   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92