A Syrian Refugee’s Information Superhighway journey to safety

A Syrian Refugee’s Information Superhighway journey to safety

Two years ago, Sami, made a long arduous and thought out decision to leaving the streets where he played and grew up, to escape the tragedies and suffering that come from an endless war and venture into the unknown to risk his life in hope of finding a safer life. The success or failure of which would come down to effective or ineffective planning.

The key element in Sami’s journey and life line was his phone. He scoured Google, mapping the geography of Europe, searched Facebook and Twitter for advice, contacts and routes and checked the news for the latest information on immigration and border controls.

Sami had often travelled abroad as a footballer for the Syrian national team, but always with knowledge of his destination and assurance he would return. However, this trip had no pre-booked flights or guarantees of where he would end up or whether he would survive. Sami was highly educated and successful; but his intelligence and strength had diminished as the wars and deaths increased in his home country.

When asked why he left, his answer was simple.

‘What would you do if your life was filled with screams of dying people and surrounded by gunshots and explosions? Here I am sure to die, but if I leave there is hope I might survive.’

Into his small backpack he put the bare essentials some spare clothes, mediocre savings and the instruments that would be his biggest resource, a fully charged phone and power bank.

His destination was the UK.

‘My fiancé was in the UK,’ he recalls, ‘she was waiting for me. That is where I had to go.’

From searching online, Sami booked a standard day trip ferry from the port of Tripoli in the north-west of Lebanon to the port of Mersin on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey. From Mersin it was a bus ride to Izmir in Turkey.  

Once in Izmir, Sami’s first priority was to get online. He bought and topped up a Turkish sim card.

‘I contacted my family immediately using What’s App. It’s our main way to communicate. I told my family I was OK. But I would only tell them key points. I didn’t want them to worry’.

The second and perilous leg of Sami’s journey was the voyage across the Aegean Sea, which separates Turkey and Greece.

‘I downloaded maps and apps about the closest Greek Islands, their names, their proximity to Turkish ports and coastlines, looking for safe routes.  From searching Facebook pages and speaking with other refugees, I was able to get in contact with smugglers.’

Using Google Translate by inputting Arabic into Turkish as the languages choice, Sami was able to communicate effectively with individuals.

‘Google translate asked my questions and answered them back to me. It was a tedious process between individuals, but without it, communications would have been hopeless.’

‘D’ Day finally came, at night. The smugglers gathered all the desperate fleeing passengers on the shore, and gave only two instructions Firstly, get into, the flimsy nine meter rubber boat, and head straight ahead. Secondly, switch off your phones, take out the sim cards and do not switch them back on until you have reached the Greek border. There was no advice on safety procedures, or guidance on how to navigate or what to do if they were caught.

Sami was reluctant to board the boat.

‘I had tried everything possible to find a safer way out of Syria but failed. I had no choice. What choice did any of us have? Who would take this route if they weren’t desperate or had exhausted every other option?’

Half way into their terrifying voyage they ran into problems. In the darkness they could see nothing but blinking lights on distant islands, but neither Sami nor his companion knew whether the islands were Greek or Turkish. They were completely lost.

‘My previous planning was vital, I knew if I was going to make it, I needed to do my research and have this knowledge. I wasn’t going to rely on smugglers.’

In his detailed research he came to understand that coastguards track phone signals and respond immediately to these detections.

‘I downloaded an app that blocks the proxy signal and changes the location of the user, so that it isn’t detected by tracking technology.’ 

Lost at sea, with panicking children and families on a dangerous vessel, Sami used his phone to discover their location, and re-route their path.

‘I opened the GPS and found that we were now in Greek waters. This was all executed within minutes and I quickly switched off my phone and took my sim out as an extra precaution.’

After exhausting and frightening hours at sea German coastguards picked up the boat and attempted to tow them back to Turkish waters by intimidation, gunshot and threats.

‘They tried to tug us back into Turkish waters several times, but we would cut the ropes whenever they tied the boats together. We pleaded and screamed, some of us even jumped over board. We were dead either way, so why not try to swim for it.’

But the desperate passengers endured and taken to Greece. Again, Sami topped up a Greek sim card and began a new plan to get him to the UK. After several failed attempts with smugglers Sami took matters into his own hands. Along with his previous methods of researching and plotting, Sami was also able to rely on other refugees who had fled.

‘If someone went on a specific path, they would take pictures and screen shots of their location on Google maps and text it to friends. Eventually, I gathered a series of locations and routes.’

Sami’s route took him from Greece to Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Calais and eventually the UK. He collected all available data and stored it on his phone, but he could not use his phone at all times; primarily to preserve battery and credit, but also to avoid signal detection, so he searched online about navigating at night 

In his journey to find safety, Sami endured harsh weather, illness, sleeplessness and depression. It took him months and months of trekking, trudging and sleeping in the woods and wilderness, even swimming in freezing rivers to finally reach Germany and then Calais.  

Online research told him that borders controls between Calais and Dover used highly sophisticated technology, such as X-ray scanners, sniffer dogs, infrared heat sensors and ground patrols. 

‘I researched how to avoid detection by scanners. For heat scanners it was holding or hiding my breath, hiding my fingers, closing my eyes. With X-ray scanners you need to mold your body to objects in the lorries and be completely still.’

For the crossing, Sami had to rely on smugglers, He commented on the dangers of this as they are vicious and lack conscience.

It took Sami two attempts to cross into Dover. Once they were clear of the borders, the lorry driver locked them inside and ran off, leaving them in the middle of nowhere.

‘After four hours, of trying to break our way out, I switched on my phone and dialed 999. We had been locked inside the fridge lorry for 14 hours. We were slowly freezing and were not going to survive unless I called the police. Luckily, the police arrived in time.’

There are hundreds of thousands of desperately fleeing refugees, who regrettably do not make it to any destination. Sami’s success depended not only on his determination and intelligence, but on technology, the Web, apps, maps, GPS programmes and Google.

‘This little contraption was key to my success, without it I would have been at the mercy of smugglers, at the mercy of nature, of gangs and robbers, like so many other refugees who did not make it to safety.’