Syrian refugee back in Hungary
Two years on from sleeping rough in Budapest on a perilous trek from Syria to Germany, teenage refugee Yusra Mardini is back in the Hungarian capital competing in the world swimming championships.
“I promised myself I’d come back to Budapest another way,” the 19-year-old told reporters on Sunday after finishing her 100m butterfly heat. Now based in Berlin, Mardini gained international attention after almost drowning trying to reach Greece in 2015.
A year later she won her heat in the Rio Olympics as part of the Games’ first refugee team.
During a 25-day journey from her war-ravaged homeland, Mardini used her swimming skills to help drag a leaking dinghy carrying 16 people to the Greek shore, after the engine broke down.
“My sister Sara jumped into the water first, then I jumped in. With two men, we had one hand each on the boat and tried to swim and kick to shore.”
After more than three hours in the water they arrived on the island of Lesbos and trekked northwards before getting stuck in Budapest for a week.
Hungary became a hotspot of the migration crisis in mid-2015, after the authorities temporarily blocked onward travel to neighbouring Austria and Germany, which transformed Budapest’s railway stations into vast makeshift refugee camps.
“I slept on the floor, in the train stations. It was really horrible,” she said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is fiercely anti-immigration, later erected razor-wire fences along the southern borders to keep out migrants altogether.
“Then, I thought that people were really rude. My coach was afraid when I said I was going to go back [to Budapest] again, but now it’s completely different, so I changed my point of view about the people of Hungary. It’s really cool this week,” she said.
“I totally understand the people and their fears, I would have the same fears. I’m not saying the refugees are 100% amazing and angels. All over the world there are good and bad people. This is how we are also.”