The refugee crisis has become a significant issue over the last few months. The volunteers who travel to Greece all have their own stories to tell about the situations they faced during their service.
When people think about the volunteers they always imagine them taking part in rescue missions, risking their lives to save the unfortunate souls traveling through the dangerous waters between Turkey and Greece. There are also hundreds of people giving out clothes and food and doctors located on every Greek island affected by the crisis.
However, there are also volunteers who have far more difficult jobs. For example, British volunteer Sakeeb Khan, traveled to the Greek island of Lesvos to offer his services and in the end he was the one who had to dig the graves for the refugees that did not survive the dangerous journey.
Channel 4, interviewed the young man from Huddersfield, asking about his experience. Sakeeb noted that at first he was working with the rescue teams, however, later he had to take on the hard job of digging graves for the deceased.
When talking about his job he noted that on several occasions he had to step into the graves in order to position the body to face Mecca. He also had to wash the bodies of migrants and refugees in a tent that had been set up for this purpose. Sakeeb stressed how strange it was to look at the faces and bodies of all these dead people. “I was very emotional, it was weird. I can’t explain the feeling,” he said. “I’m trying to imagine what this person went through.”
Furthermore, he added that he never had time to think about the policies regarding the crisis, because of the chaos in the area.
When asked if he decided to become a volunteer because the people drowning were Muslims, Sakeeb, whose family emigrated to the UK from Pakistan in 1961, answered negatively. “To be honest, I went there because they were just people,” he said.
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