Searching for the Truth in the Story of One Refugee Family
foreign
last night i was recording on the
beaches alongside our famous
white cliffs of dover in the darkness
and far out at sea you could just about
make out small flickers of light
they were coming from mobile phones in
the hands of migrants
people making the perilous crossing
to england from france they were using
their phones to guide them
as they huddled together in tightly
packed dinghies
when they reached these shores they were
cold and frightened
but also happy and relieved they’d
survived a journey across one of the
world’s
busiest shipping lanes a journey that
could have killed them
and once in britain they should be safe
and have the chance of a better life
but what do we really know about these
people how can we
as journalists do more to make sure that
we’re not being taken in
it’s a question i wouldn’t have even
asked myself a year or so ago
and the reason i’m sitting here talking
to you now
is to reflect on a search for the truth
in one particular case that i’ve covered
that case has taken me around the globe
and i’d like to share it with you
the stories about an afghan family in
iran and a former british soldier
but we’ll come to him later at the heart
of it
is a mother goalie one of the
bravest and most determined women i’ve
ever met
and it’s about what she did when her
daughter was
taken from the family home
you might be sitting there wondering
what
child abduction has to do with migrants
heading to britain
the story starts in the calais jungle a
huge makeshift camp that stretched out
along sand dunes near the french border
back in 2016 thousands of refugees were
living there in tents
it was a kind of unauthorized holding
camp for migrants
determined to cross illegally into
britain by l’oreal boat
people could be there for months years
even
there were shops and food stores even a
makeshift mosque
i went there as a reporter for the bbc
to cover the story of one little girl in
that
sea of refugees
journalists have a responsibility to
tell the world what’s happening in these
camps
what i learned is that it’s hard to
remain impartial
and even harder to get to the truth
the migrants interviewed by reporters
are usually men
their stories about wars and persecution
get cut down into sound bites for the
news
as journalists we easily miss the voices
of women
who come from cultures where they’re
often not allowed to speak
up i think it’s a flaw in our journalism
but if you’d asked me about that back in
calais in 2016
i’d probably have told you that my
instincts were good
i was an experienced reporter when i
first met goalie’s missing daughter brew
and her ex-husband reza i was
taken in and deceived by him
some good eventually came from our
meeting
it’s taught me how nigh on impossible
it is to tell an economic migrant from
an asylum seeker
to make out the truth from the lies
and it certainly made me understand from
bitter experience what i once knew only
in theory
that in many parts of the world women
are abused
and denied justice first let me tell you
about the little girl brew
when i met her in that calais camp she
was instantly captivating
she was wearing bright pink wellington
boots
she was four and she had the biggest
brown eyes and an impish grin
she didn’t speak much english but she
was a great mimic
she’d listen and take a few phrases in
and then run them together in a funny
voice
then she’d laugh and i did too
i noticed that her dad didn’t pay her
much attention
i assumed he was just preoccupied trying
to get through each day in that camp
it wasn’t right that brew and so many
other kids were living there
playing in filthy mud it was bitterly
cold
the wind swept off the sea and across
the dunes
the camp stank from an open sewer that
ran along the back of bruce
ten when it rained this effluent
overflowed and snaked between the
shelters
bru and her dad reza spent their days
surrounded by the noise of different
voices in different languages
people packed in together talking about
the lives they hoped to have in britain
as nights set in they’d make campfires
and share what little food they had
they talked about the countries they
traveled through to get this far
and the countries they’d fled there were
many more men in calais than women
at first i was a bit apprehensive
approaching people in the camp
but the longer you’re there the more you
relax
people tell you their stories willingly
how the smugglers operate
how much it costs to reach the uk
reza said he didn’t have enough money to
pay smugglers
he’d need thousands to get a place on a
lorry for himself
and the price for brew was much higher
children are risky
you never know when they might wake up
and cry
i came into this story and met reza and
brew
because an attempt to smuggle brew and
send her on a head
to britain from the camp had just gone
very badly wrong
it was a big news story at the time it
made headlines around the world
you might remember it it involved the
former british soldier i mentioned at
the start
his name’s rob laurie rob had put his
own life in the uk on hold
to go to work as a volunteer in the
calais camp
he’d been moved by images of a little
syrian boy
who died out at sea rob
started driving his van back and forth
from his home in the uk to calais
bringing supplies and that’s how he’d
met brew
she followed him around as he was
putting up shelters
her father reza told rob
that they were fleeing the taliban in
afghanistan
that his wife had been killed and that
they needed to reach relatives in the uk
the story touched robb’s heart
in a moment of madness rob did something
completely out of character
he agreed to smuggle them both across
the french border into britain in his
van
on a bleak cold night rob
pulled his van into a deserted side
street near the camp
the van had a small compartment in the
roof above the driver’s seat
by torchlight reza tried to squeeze
himself
in he couldn’t
but there was enough room for brew
as a mother i’d never have handed my
daughter to a man i barely knew
but reza didn’t hesitate he said he’d
follow later
and he gave rob the address of an aunt
in the uk who’d take brew in
but they never got that far when rob
pulled up at the french border in calais
sniffer dogs picked up a scent from the
van
brew was discovered and rob was charged
with smuggling
he faced up to 10 years in jail he’d
done something
really stupid on an impulse
out of pity for a refugee
it was rob’s poor skills at smuggling
but his big heart at trying that caught
the attention of the world’s media
lots of journalists including me
descended on the calais camp
everyone wanted to meet brew and find
out why robert taken
such a risk to help her every one of us
was taken in
i did question reza about fleeing
afghanistan and his dead wife
he showed me a letter he said was from
the taliban
and the translator confirmed it was a
death threat
reza also said he had another child
a baby son that he’d had to leave behind
with relatives
he hadn’t left brew he said because
afghanistan was so
dangerous for girls i’ve often discussed
with rob
since then why we didn’t nail down the
details
but there wasn’t really any way to do
that
reza said he’d had documents and family
photos
but they were washed away at sea as he
was crossing from turkey to greece
at the time it didn’t strike me as
strange
that that letter from the taliban had
survived
hands up we were had
in a small library in the calais camp
there was a map of the world refugees
were asked to place a pin by the
countries that they’d come from
bruce penn was in the wrong place but it
was only two years later
that rob and i found out that reza had
not been fleeing the taliban
he’d taken his little girl from the
family home in iran
his wife wasn’t dead there was no baby
son with relatives
but there was another daughter baron
that he’d abandoned
along with his wife when he decided to
head for britain
reza took brew because a child makes it
easier to claim asylum in the uk
the refugee crisis was a cover for reza
who was an economic migrant brew was his
ticket to a better life that doesn’t
mean that all migrants are liars of
course not
some would argue that immigration laws
are so strict
that people are forced to embellish
their stories to fit the rules
some people would allow much freer
access by economic migrants to wealthier
countries
but the difficulty in proving the truth
individual accounts
means there may often be room for doubt
it
places a much greater duty of
impartiality on journalists
a duty to stand back a little to allow
for the possibility of lies
if we don’t we’re telling something
complicated
much too simply we’re drafting
a very superficial history ignoring
hidden injustices
different problems that need different
solutions
when i first reported from the calais
jungle
i didn’t imagine what i wrote would ever
be read by goalie
would bring a mother the hope she’d been
longing for that her
child was alive goalie hadn’t been able
to contact resident brew
since he left the family home in tehran
she’d been out with the baby
that day and came back to find her
husband and daughter gone
at first reza’s family had taken her and
baron in
but over the weeks that followed goalie
realized
they’d known about his plan to try to
join relatives in britain
she overheard them speaking to reza on
the phone
but when goalie begged to hear her
little girl’s voice
they refused goalie feared
that they’d take her youngest child from
her as well
that they’d one day shot their daughter
leaving her with nothing
she went to the police and tried to take
a case through the courts in iran
accusing reza of abduction eventually
her own family raised the money to pay
smugglers
to help her go after brew taking her
baby baron in her arms
she traveled for weeks by foot across
mountains and rivers
through forests and moving between safe
houses but never feeling
safe always terrified she might be raped
or attacked by smugglers
when she got to turkey she was reunited
with her own mom
who’d gone there as a migrant many years
before
her mom wanted her to stay but goldie
knew she needed to carry on searching
for brew
that journey was cut short in denmark
when baron got sick
they were given asylum there but the
police and the red cross
told goalie there was little hope of
ever finding brew
then one day quite by chance
goalie read the story of rob laurie brew
and reza a story i’d written for the bbc
news website
there was a link to radio documentaries
i’d made
and goalie heard my recordings of her
husband and more importantly
her daughter a danish refugee worker
helped her to get in touch with me and
rob
goalie had documents to prove her
version of events
there were lots of them birth
certificates police statements court
records
and identity cards we eventually offered
to help her
find her little girl and that wasn’t
easy
by this time the calais camp had been
demolished and resident brew had
disappeared
how we found them both is a story in
itself
i recorded it with rob laurie and you
can hear it on our podcast skill taken
how goalie and brew were reunited after
five years apart
how we confronted reza with the lies he
told us in the calais jungle
and in those recordings there’s also
parts of the migrant experience that
seldom get covered by journalists
what happens to people who arrive
illegally and disappear into life in the
west
we use social media to find migrants
we’d met in calais
ziggy who’d been smuggled to the uk on
the back of a lorry
and was now getting the education he
dreamed of
solomon with his new flat in glasgow
and mustafa who was too busy even to
speak to us
he was now the manager of a car wash in
preston and was branching out into motor
repairs
looking back we were struck by how many
men in the calais camp
had had a single child with them we
spoke to an international human rights
lawyer
who’d noticed exactly the same thing
herself scanning their faces in the
camps
and boats so many men with a single
child
where were the mothers reza
presented himself in brew as refugees
from war
but his life was never in danger
he’d left a wife and child to carve out
a more prosperous future for himself
and he’d taken brew to make things
easier
goalie had had an arranged marriage to a
man
who eventually took her daughter left
her behind
she and reza were from afghan families
their parents had made it as refugees
into iran
and she says she’s far from alone in
what’s happened to her
so i felt the last word should come from
goalie
in these covered times she can’t be here
with me
so instead i asked goalie how can we do
better when it comes to reporting the
truth
goalie said we should try to remember
that the first voices we hear
the loudest voices are not always the
most truthful
sometimes we have to try harder
dig deeper and hope that we can
pick up the voices of the distant women
women who are made to whisper or to
bottle up injustices
i’m proud to have been able to give
voice to goalie’s story
and to have played my part in finally
tracing
her little girl
you