Bangkok--Apr 8--Francom Asia
Airtimes: Saturday, April 9 at 17:00
Sunday, April 10 at 11:00 and 17.00 (replay)
Saturday, April 23 at 17:00 (replay)
Sunday April 24 at 11:00 and 17.00 (replay)
The extraordinary hardship of life as a refugee is witnessed on CNN in April, as multi award-winning journalist Sorious Samura explores in his latest hard hitting, hour-long CNN PRESENTS documentary LIVING WITH REFUGEES.
Samura travels to Chad to spend a month with a family in a refugee camp, living under exactly the same conditions. He immerses himself into the situation, building close relationships with the refugees, sharing their hopes and fears and providing a unique insight into what their life is really like.
Adam is one such refugee with two wives and eight children. He is penniless and recounts how all his friends have been murdered in the Darfur conflict. Samura meets Adam at the Chad/Sudan border where he has been living on handouts. Although he does not know how far it is, he is heading for a UN refugee camp further to the west in Chad and agrees that Samura can follow his family on the journey. "You have come all this way to tell our story, you are our brother."
Samura is however quickly exhausted and has trouble keeping up, before following the refugees’ methods of survival, digging dry riverbeds for water and eating only once. When he speaks to Adam about what happened in Darfur, Adam breaks down, saying, “Please do not make me remember what happened, it is just too much."
After the epic three day journey the family finally reaches the camp, although it is not what they were expecting as, with no food or shelter, they are forced to fend for themselves. Staggeringly, even amongst this group of desperate people, Samura learns there are still the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, even when the only aid available comes from other refugees.
LIVING WITH REFUGEES then follows Adam’s family as they try to make some sort of home. Fatima, Adam and their six children sleep under a small piece of tarpaulin. Fatima, Adams's wife, is a strong, elegant, tough woman who is holding the family together. For Adam, although tough and resolute, the situation is almost too much to bear: "There's no respect for us in our own country and here they treat us like animals."
For Samura too, the time he is spending in the camp is starting to have an effect: "Refugee — I hate the word. I hate the word now more than ever because it robs a man of his identity, his status, his respect — everything."
As we see through Adam and his family, the bureaucracy of the aid business sometimes leaves those most vulnerable behind. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) tells Samura that "the situation here is a mess" and as the film draws to a close, Samura points out that, yet again, situations like this are a damming indictment on all of us. "Too often, too little is done too late."
*Programming is subject to change
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