Yusra Mardini: Immigrants used to “distract attention” from problems

A ambassador of the Goodwill of UNHCR, Olympic athlete Yusra Mardini, said today that refugees are used by European governments to “deviate the attention of other decisions” and advocated greater freedom of movement.

“It is always the refugees,” said the Ambassador of the Goodwill of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Yusra Mardini, a Syrian native and who was also a refugee, defending that these people are the first to be blamed for the internal problems of the countries hosting them.

“ They [refugees] don't come to steal your job, they don't come to steal anything: they just want an opportunity to improve their lives and they want to have a simple and quiet life. I think we need to demand more responsibility from our governments in relation to many things, and perhaps [refugees] are a way for them to divert attention from other decisions,” he continued, in statements outside the 10th edition of the Estoril Conferences, an event that began today on the Carcavelos campus of the New SBE (New University of Lisbon).

The Olympic activist and swimmer recommended European executives to focus on integration and “approach the real problems of societies”.

During his intervention at the event, Yusra Mardini recalled his amazing journey from a teenager in Damascus, Syria, where he fled from a devastating civil war (2011-2024), to Germany, where he fulfilled his dream of competing at the Olympic Games.

Yusra Mardini was celebrated when, along with her sister, also activist Sarah Mardini, she helped save the 18 refugees who tried to cross the Mediterranean with her on a precarious vessel.

As they crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece, the engine of the overcrowded speedboat broke down and Yusra, Sara and two other passengers who knew how to swim jumped into the water and pushed and pulled the boat for more than three hours until they reached the Greek island of Lesbos, saving everyone on board.

The journey that Sarah and Yusra made was the same as that of millions of other Syrians who want to escape the civil war and the story of both was adapted to the cinema in 2022, with the film "The Swimmers".

In Syria, according to the UN, about 1.7 million refugees and 1.9 million internally displaced people have returned to their communities since the end of the war in 2024.

However, 5.5 million people remain displaced within Syria and more than six million Syrian refugees remain abroad.

After two Olympic Games, in Rio de Janeiro (2016) and Tokyo (2020), Yusra now seeks to integrate others like her, through the foundation he created and other humanitarian initiatives.

The activist stressed that her work now is mainly to demonstrate that refugees are also people and to inform them of why they left their countries.

“Look at this amazing school where we are sitting right now. What's so special about it? There are students from all over the world,” Yusra argued, who became Ambassador of the Goodwill of UNHCR when she was only 19.

Yusra also argued that refugees should be more free to move.

“ Now that I have the German passport, I can live practically anywhere in the world I want. I'm free to move, right? So why don’t we give this freedom to refugees who actually need to move because of the war?” he questioned.

“ I can't believe life is black and white. I do not believe that we are all good or all bad”, he continued.

The Olympic athlete reiterated that the crucial thing is to integrate people and argued that European states should find more ways to make refugees feel part of society.

“ For me, my form was sport”, he recalled.

Sport “promotes unity and I think that is its beauty: we can integrate that and put it into practice. That's what we do as a foundation in Germany. We have projects, and they all come together, they all play together, and it's amazing. We never had any problem,” he said, referring to the foundation he created in Germany.

Germany was the country that received most refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria, especially during the government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who left power in 2021.

The current Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has hardened the immigration policy of Germany, much under pressure from the AfD, the far-right party which has become the main force of the German opposition and disputes the political leadership of the country with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, center-right) of the Chancellor.