ARCHIVE What is the refugee 'crisis'? Plus: Media Storm Series 5 announcement
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The only thing anybody's getting done the day after the big game is curing a hangover. At Carl's Jr., we've got what you need to cure that post-party bug. A free Carl's Jr. Hangover Burger. Yeah, free. Jar-boiled and cheesy. Eggs, four strips of bacon, and tripping with sauce. A burger that gets you back in the game.

the game secure the cure get the carl senior app join my rewards and get the free carl senior hangover burger all day on february 10th limit one for my rewards member only at participating restaurants on february 10th while supplies last visit carlsenior.com free burger day for terms hi media stormers it's helena here just coming on here to say that media storm is returning next week and you're getting two for the price of one meaning there will now be two episodes of media storm every week

Every Thursday, we'll be dropping MediaStorm's News Watch, where Matilda and I will run through the main stories of the week, picking apart the most unhinged headlines to help you make sense of the mainstream media. And boy, do we need that now more than ever.

Then every Friday, we'll release our regular episodes, our deep dives into a topic that we think has been misrepresented in the mainstream media. And we'll do that, of course, with the most important and most overlooked people in the story, the ones living it.

We also wanted to tell you that Matilda has taken part in a four-part Channel 4 documentary that begins on Monday, February 3rd. It's a series about immigration and understanding the lives of refugees. It's exploring the topic that made us start this podcast.

On our first episode back next week, I'll be asking Matilda about the show and why she decided to take part in it. Until then, we thought we'd republish MediaStorm's first ever investigation about the so-called refugee crisis, followed by a conversation recorded on World Refugee Day last year.

You'll hear Matilda and I do a little quiz in this introduction. Now, this was recorded in late 2021, so the numbers have changed a bit since then. And since we recorded this first episode, the world has been battered by new wars and millions more have been made refugees. But the UK still remains at the bottom of the pile of our opening quiz.

When it comes to how many asylum seekers we take in compared to our population, in 2024 we were 19th on the wider EU rankings. The vast majority of refugees stay close to home and the poorest countries take the highest shares.

So to welcome new listeners and re-welcome loyal listeners, here's our first ever investigation. And we can't wait to begin MediaStorm Series 5 from next week, Thursday 6th and Friday 7th of February. Put it in your diaries.

Have you ever seen Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Multiple times. You know, to get into the chair, contestants have to race to put items of a certain category into order. Mm-hmm. Fastest finger first. Is that what it's called? Why am I coming off like a huge Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? You really are. Oh, can I have the music? Do you know how the music goes? Obviously, you know how the music goes. Obviously, it's my favourite show. Why are we singing it? We'd have to pay for it. Da, da, da, da, da.

Yes, very dramatic. Today we are talking about immigration. People entering countries without papers in order to claim asylum. So asylum seekers. I'm going to give you five European countries and I want you to put them in the order of who annually is getting the most asylum seekers. And I'm basing this off the most recent annual figures. In no particular order, your countries are...

The UK, France, Germany, Spain and Greece. Okay, Greece gets the most, then the UK, then Germany, then Spain, then France. No. Am I close in any way? Almost the exact opposite. What?!

Okay, Germany gets the most, followed by Spain, then France, Greece, the UK. Wow. The UK is actually getting significantly fewer than half of what France is, which is quite surprising, right? Very surprising. If you were to believe everything you read or see or hear in the media, you would get the impression that the UK is completely overwhelmed with asylum seekers. I used to work in,

the jungle, which is the refugee camp in Calais. And one of the things everyone would always ask me is why is everyone coming to the UK? The truth is they're not. I mean, try this, okay? Try to put those countries in order of who is getting the most annual asylum seekers relative to their population. So I'm going to put the UK a little bit lower down because of what I've just heard. So I'm going to go for Germany, France, the UK, Spain, and then Greece.

Okay, I'm trying to think if you got any of those right. Greece goes straight to the top. Wow. Then you have Spain, Germany, France, and way down you have the UK. How come that is not reflected in what we read and what we see? People talk about the UK as if it's El Dorado, but it's more like a last resort. I get the question, why come here?

But maybe what we should be asking isn't why does everyone want to come here? What we should be asking and what papers aren't really asking is what is preventing them from seeking asylum somewhere easier? Well, let's find out.

I'm off to Calais to ask asylum seekers what is pushing them to make that crossing. And I'll see you back in the studio with a special guest to discuss everything around this media storm. We will be taking back control. Our asylum system is fundamentally broken. How have we been able to do this?

Welcome to MediaStorm, a news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's investigation. El Dorado. Why do refugees love the UK?

Headlines about channel migrants often start on our horizon, but the real news story lies beyond. On the outskirts of France's coastal towns, like Calais and Dunkirk, lie ramshackle refugee camps. If you want to understand why people are coming, there's one place to start. The jungle. Oh, shit. Oh, my God.

I'm just heading very off-road to meet a Kurdish man who's going to take us to his campsite. If I'm struggling to drive on this road, imagine what it's like sleeping on it. Okay, salam alaikum. Salam.

It's muddy. He introduces himself by his full name, Jamer Ali Mahmoud, then tells me everything I see will soon be destroyed by police. People are cold, he says. They cannot have less than they have now. But he insists he's happy because he's out of Kurdistan, his home nation, which falls within Iraqi territory and where he fears he'll be killed for political dissent. Now I can't see my picture on my back.

Kurdistan. He's just showing me photos of his back with clear torture injuries. This is in Kurdistan, you were jailed. Yeah. Would you claim asylum in France? Never. Why not? I think police Kurdistan with police France not different. If 10 years I am in jungle I don't want asylum in France. If 10 years I am I live in jungle. But

One tent in the jungle is better than a villa in Kurdistan. A tent in the jungle is better than a villa in Kurdistan? Yes, of course. Because in Kurdistan I am near dying. I don't like to leave you sad. No problem. Sometimes my mother says that I can go back to Kurdistan.

my son, I need your love. If change government, I go back to Kurdistan. If not change, I can't. I am dying.

Jaume's not alone in his fear of French police. Over in Calais, I meet a group of Sudanese refugees, both men and boys, making a fire for the night. Yesterday, there was a group of Sudanese refugees who went to this lorry service station near the jungle. They call it the station of the devil. A security guard let his dog loose and he chased them.

bit someone and drew blood, while another man fell and broke his leg running away. I ask the UK to take all the Sudanese and refugees from the jungle. Being here is an unbearable struggle. We need rest. Please, with whatever way possible, save us from this situation. From these unleashed dogs, these unsanitary conditions, the police brutality. Please, please, please, save us from this injustice.

It seems the UK's hostile border policy may not simply be keeping people out, but in some cases, kettling them in. You see, it's the UK that pays for most of this, spending nearly a quarter of a billion since 2014. I sit down with Chloe Schmidt-Nielsen from Human Rights Observers to understand this policy.

The French official policy is one of daily violence to exhaust violence.

What kind of violence are we talking about? What has your organisation documented? Beatings inside police custody, tear gas leading to hospitalisation, dislocated shoulders, their clothes stolen, their phones smashed, their shoes stolen often as well. Just a horrific level of police brutality and cruelty. These are, you say, being perpetrated by...

by state officials. Yeah, it's not just individual racist police officers. It's because there is a general system of impunity at the border. As long as the goal at the border is to stop people from going where they need to go, then it will be done through violence.

So what do you think the solution should be if not this militarized response? The solution that I can think of, at least, is to open the border in the same way that, I mean, we don't see any camps between France and Germany. And why is that? Because there's no border controls.

so it's that simple. but by 'open the border on the channel' what does that mean? it means allow people to take the ferry like everyone else. so for a lot of listeners this would seem like a very radical policy but maybe when you've seen the extreme violence that you have as a result of securitized borders you will be led to more extreme conclusions.

Exactly. Backlogs at the border affect locals too. While we're here, let's see how they feel. I want to help these people because all of us could be in the same situation. But they still have to respect the country in which they are staying. Sometimes they just break the window of abandoned buildings and go inside it. You tell me, is it good?

My name is Pascal. My heart is with these people who are in pain and are starving. I'm here to support them. My name is Stéphanie Dumont. It's a bit annoying when the migrants block the port on the motorway, which has happened in the past. Some are kind, some are not, but that's like the French. As a country, I do think we're becoming more and more racist.

Of course, some people do apply in France and then they get rejected. Either they're fake refugees, as some politicians and media claim, or safe countries simply aren't offering enough spaces for everybody. The consequence? Overspill. My name is Ali Reza. I'm 28 years old and I'm Iranian. I've been to Germany and I applied for asylum in Germany.

It's so amazing. I don't know why. In nine months, they sent me a letter. You must go back to Iran. We understand that there isn't any reason for you to stay in Germany. While I know my life is in danger in Iran. After that, I applied for asylum in France. They said, no, you must go back to Germany. Everybody in English citizen, I see in some Twitter pages,

Your economical migrants or something like this, but we don't have any other way I'm not idiot to cross the channel while I know it's dangerous. I know it's dangerous But when I don't have any other ways, how can I do? You know being homeless being homeless while you had a place in your country you had you had a normal life we had respect we had everything and

You just are thinking about go, go, go, go. Greece, go. Germany, go. France, go. Here is not your place. Can I ask, when did you learn to speak English? My mother told me, you must learn a second language. For the moment, English is the most important language in the world. Do you speak any French?

Yes, a bit. And do you speak any German? Yes, I do. And do you speak any Greek? Yes. That's very impressive. Yeah. Actually, I don't know if you know about Prophet Solomon. There is a story in Quran about Prophet Solomon. He could speak all of the languages and also even with the bears, with the animal. I would like to learn all of the languages. It's so fun. Oh, bonjour. Comment allez-vous? Blah, blah, blah.

Hello, how are you? Everything good? Very good, I'm happy.

France isn't the only safe country in Europe that people are coming from. Ezra and Bahir, who are using pseudonyms to protect their children, are seeking refuge from Iraq. They're at square zero of the UK's asylum process. For them, it's a huge step back. They were in Austria for five years, and they had hope, Ezra tells me. Going to school, learning German, making friends.

They stayed through xenophobic abuse through years of limbo. They stayed even when something really tragic happened. The accident happened, this mistake happened, 26th of December 2017. Ezra had to go to hospital for a chronic illness. They didn't let Bahir in the ambulance with her and at this time Ezra spoke no German.

And then they performed an emergency operation, a warning that this interview is distressing. Ezra was left paralysed. I'm sorry.

I needed the bathroom. They told me to go myself, but I couldn't move, and they didn't believe that I couldn't move. They said I was lying. My hijab fell off, and I asked for it to be put back, but no one responded. No one did it. They just didn't care.

They took off all my clothes to run tests. Then they left the room and I asked them to cover me or to put my clothes back on and they didn't. They just left me like that until the morning. Two and a half years later, Austria rejected their asylum claim. We lost her health. We lost her rights. Some people, they say, political decision.

And other people, they say they have just enough number from asylum people, but they not care about the human rights. This is the point. That's how they ended up in a dinghy on the channel. You move country to Austria, from Austria to Germany, from Germany to France, from France on the sea to UK. This is hard. We thought about healthy of my wife and future for my children.

We don't have rights in our country. We need to build our life. We're not waiting to take something. No, no, never. I need to build the future of my children. I need to make my wife healthy. If it's possible, I can work and that's it.

May not ask about something impossible, just a human right for people. To turn the page of Austria and open a new chapter here and live here in safety, God willing.

There's one more story I want to tell you, and I'm sorry for the overload, but understanding what is really meant by a broken asylum system is a lot more complicated than many media imply. This is the story of two Afghan sisters, separated by borders.

Sonia, a British citizen brought to the UK by her husband long ago. And Atiye, a 16-year-old girl. She is fleeing forced marriage to a 70-year-old man. She said to me, they sold me and I will kill myself on the wedding day. We're using their first names only to avoid attracting their family's attention.

Sonia has tried everything to bring Atiye over, but the Afghan resettlement scheme hasn't responded to her appeal and the UK's child resettlement scheme ceased last year. I sit down with Sonia to call her sister, who's in hiding. Please answer my phone. When was the last time you heard from her? This morning. Honestly, if anything happened to her, I won't be alive anymore. The guilt that I haven't done enough for her.

Finally, we got through. She's saying the reason that I don't want to go out of my room, I'm scared that the people that I've been sold to them, they find me. She's saying I don't know what else to do. Just my only hope is to be with you.

Etia mutes herself so we don't hear her crying. She's just turning 16, but deep down of her side she's very depressed. And also in Islam, the girl should not die virgin. So what they do first, they take your virginity and then they kill you. Just help my child. I am not going to call her my sister. She has only me.

I think there are three things to understand. Firstly, few are making beelines for the UK. For many, it's a last resort. Secondly, to apply for asylum, you almost always have to get here first, illegally. And thirdly, compared to other wealthy European countries, not that many people are coming. So why do we think they are? And is the media responsible for this myth? So the rest of the world is fine.

Perfect. One man who thinks so is Professor Joseph Teye, calling us now from the University of Ghana. So this is a belief that is heard by many people in the global north. The media has then put out that narrative, as if there is a mass exodus to Europe. And people are thinking that if

we are allowed, everybody will move to Europe. But this is not true. It's coming from the fact that they are seeing only just a small side of the issue, only those arriving. They don't see the other side, where other people are moving to. These are some of the things that need to be decolonized or need to be reformulated. That brings us to part two of our podcast. Thanks for sticking around.

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Welcome to the MediaStorm studio. We're so thrilled to be joined today by two special guests. Our first guest is a journalist and TV anchor based in London. He has written for The Guardian, Newsweek, Middle East Eye and The African Arguments. He's the editor-in-chief at Egypt Watch and host of the podcast Untold Stories.

He is a refugee, a former dentist and an advocate for refugees' and asylum seekers' rights.

Welcome to the studio, Osama Gouish. Thank you for having me. Our second guest is a journalist and newsreader who worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade. Following the Taliban's rise to power in August 2021, she fled to the UK where she has volunteered and worked with the Refugee Council, BBC Afghan, the International Rescue Committee and more. She is also a former Refugee Week ambassador at IMICS,

the charity which offers training, coaching and mentoring to those with both lived and learnt experience of migration. Welcome to the studio, Zahra Shahir. Thank you for having me. Happy World Refugee Day and thank you both for joining us. The first topic we want to discuss is language. A word that so often follows refugee or migrant in our media is the word crisis.

A humanitarian crisis is typically defined as an event that critically threatens the health, safety, security or well-being of a community. We find it telling that in most cases when our media describes the refugee crisis, the crisis they seem to be referring to is not the hundreds of millions of people who have been displaced from their homes, but the tens of thousands trying to come to ours. Is the term crisis actual?

accurate when we talk about the UK's refugee crisis or what do you think crisis should refer to in this context? This term is definitely a good term that we can use for refugee crisis because

Because it highlights the urgency, it highlights the need that refugees need help, they need support. Like the same as we have economic crisis. When there's some problem, all governments think how to find a solution through diplomatic relations with other countries. It's the same with refugee crisis.

they need to think why the refugees forced to flee what was in their country. They must stop the war and conflict in the countries that the people had to flee and come for safety. So the term crisis is accurate when we're describing the refugees who are forced to flee their home. But unfortunately, I guess in our media, they often use the word crisis about the amount of refugees killed.

coming to the UK. To be honest, I disagree with Zahra because describing people as crisis is not fair. We can talk about economic crisis. We can talk about border crisis. We can talk about inflation crisis. But we can label people as crisis. I describe this as racist.

Because people are not crisis. People force it to flee. People force it to have this horrible journey. The media here in this country and in Western media, to be honest, they use this crisis to label refugee as they are a threat. So I think we need to reconsider describing people as crisis. Mm-hmm.

Well, I think actually while we're speaking about language, I think we should move one step further and actually talk about some of the terms that are used so frequently in the media, but often really like never thought about with any kind of detail. As mentioned in the introduction, we celebrate World Refugee Day today, and it's the anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention, which laid out an international definition for refugees. This definition is...

Someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

But this is not the definition used by media outlets who reserve the term refugees for people whose request for asylum has been approved by a host country. Instead, we use terms like migrant, asylum seeker, illegal immigrant.

What is the problem with this differentiation in language between the legal and the literal meaning of refugee? Sometimes walls can make us confused. It brings confusion to the audience. I'm against illegal migration. There is no illegal migration because people are forced to flee. They don't choose to come for a better life. They come for safety. Some people choose to come through safe routes. Some people, there's not

safe routes for them to come. It's in the media job. They should use the proper terms to make it clear for the audience and for the people to understand. And they can imagine themselves as a refugee. If we call it like

Illegal migration, it's not fair for a person who forced to flee and lost everything, and we call them illegal migration. It is, in my idea, it's not something fair with refugees. I totally agree with Zahra, and we both had prominent job in our country of origin. She was a prominent speaker, and I was a prominent dentist. I was a manager of a hospital, so...

If you asked us a few years ago, do you think you need to move to the UK to seek asylum and to be a refugee? I said, what? No, I'm happy with my country. I'm happy with my job. I'm happy with everything here. We didn't look or think about a better life. We're just looking for safety. We had an military coup and they didn't start targeting every activist in the country. So we forced it to leave. The only place we got is here. And we...

try and struggle to find a new life, a new job. And we pay a tax buyer. And we are, as any British citizen in this country, we're not overloading this country. No, we're adding value to this society. So this should be the way the media treat with us. When the Western countries experience a war in 2022, when Russia invade Ukraine,

I didn't remember any ministry media or any outlet, even with the deployed or the other, labeled Ukrainian as illegal immigrants. It was asylum seekers. No, no, no. It's Ukrainian refugee and this is our commitment in the country and there is safe roads for Ukrainian. So there is safe road and we are respecting the white refugee.

I think this is another hypocrisy. Do you think that we as a society are almost scared to call it racism? Do you think we call out the fact that it is racism enough? I think it is racism and it's intentionally doing this. The covering of media of refugee stories like Victims or Criminals.

There is no midpoint between both. You are a victim and we sympathize with you. Oh, my God. And that's it. And the other thing, you are a criminal. You are illegal. You come from Nabot. We will send you to Rwanda. So there is a midpoint between two. He is a human being. He is a human being. Just treat with him like this. Yes.

And this brings us, I think, very neatly onto what we want to talk about next, which is this kind of disproportionate distribution of positive refugee stories in our media and negative refugee stories in our media.

Now, we did some searching and we did find some positive, but vastly more negative stories about refugees in general. Most of the stories were about the poor conditions that refugees live in, the record number of displaced people or the number of so-called channel migrants. What is the impact of this coverage, this consistent negative coverage about refugees? There's a lot of negative news about refugees.

and show the refugees how dangerous they are in the host country. Like nowadays in Germany, there's all news about Afghan refugees. One Afghan refugee killed a police officer and a lot of Afghan refugees deported back in Afghanistan in this situation.

Because what happened, they never thought about the other angles of the accident or how it happened. I'm not going to support that Afghan man. He's a criminal. But the government's changed their policies against refugees and they become stricter to make a strict law against refugees. Yeah, I think this coverage, this negative coverage, is like a collective punishment.

for the whole refugee in this country. You know, you are a refugee, so we will punish you by negative coverage. In the early days of 2020, we had very sad news. The three members of the frontline NHS doctors have died. And the surprise was that they were refugees from Sudan and Somalia. Yes. So this was a good example for everyone in the ministry media. These are the refugee in this country. The other one is the brilliant Hassan Akkad.

The Syrian refugee who won BAFTA, who crossed the border, who came from Syria, and then he volunteered as a worker in the NHS in the first wave of COVID.

This is what the refugee can do to this country. They are a part of this country. They want to be a part of this country. They want to feel belonging to this country because they can't look back. They can't go back. There is no Syria. There is no Egypt. There is no Afghanistan for many of us now because we can't go back. We can't return to our homeland. So if we have a chance, we will do.

But we can't. So this is our new country and we are belonging to this society. We want to add values to this society.

When we were searching to find, you know, how many positive versus negative stories there were, it was very interesting because when we were searching the term refugee on individual news sites, we'd find a varied selection of stories. When we searched migrant, almost all of the coverage was negative or about party manifestos, so about policies. We've mentioned a few times about positive stories and one story we did see this week was this. Former refugee becomes Northern Ireland's first black mayor.

This is, of course, a really great story. It's a success story. However, often we see kind of two extremes with refugee stories. Either they're kind of, you know, faceless, nameless people crossing the channel or they're successful refugees that beat the odds. You know, they're the first mayor. They're an Olympic gold medalist. They're a BAFTA winner. What does this say about how we value refugees?

I think we need in the mainstream media to focus not on the successful stories only or in the refugee as victims and so on. No, we need to focus on the job, the history, the positive points of this man or woman or girl or whatever in his homeland or her homeland. Just raise this, highlight this.

telling the people in the UK that we have a good man, we have a good girl, we have a good woman. They were brilliant in their homeland and they will do the same in this country. We need to deal with these people proudly. Sometimes refugees can be changemakers in other countries, in the host country, why they don't think like positive about it. They only think about like some people think in the UK. Refugees are coming here, taking our jobs.

They also do work hard. They bring changes in this country. They pay tax, everything. So they are also working as a human, as a citizen of this country.

You've mentioned Rwanda a couple of times, and I just want to ask about that quickly. When the government's Rwanda deportation scheme was announced, there was outrage about how callous and dangerous the whole idea to send refugees to another country and an unsafe, potentially unsafe country was. I want to know that, first of all, were you surprised when the government

government created the Rwanda deportation scheme? Did it surprise or shock you in any way? Both. Surprised and shocked me because

I came from this continent. I came from Africa. I know well Kagame presidents. He's like Egyptian presidents. He's like Libyan late presidents, Gaddafi. And they are authoritarian leaders. And we all know what authoritarian leaders do to its people, to their people. Persecution, injustice, and every single topic the media here advocates against. And we need to respect the human rights. There is no human rights in this country. We all...

We all know this. But the government here is proud to do this. And this is something even against the British values. When I arrived in the UK, I was new in this country and they said they were going to send refugees in Rwanda. And I was thinking, if they send me in Rwanda with my two children, is there any kind of good facilities for my children to learn? Is there any rights as a refugee that I have in the UK? It is impossible.

The plan is wasting the people's life. We don't value your time. We don't value your life. I think we move from dealing, mistreating the refugees in this country to export our racism coverage to other countries. For example, I'm originally from Egypt. And you know, in Egypt, the national media are fully owned and controlled by the general intelligence where the president's son is working.

And when people start to advocate for refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt, the national media owned and controlled by the General Intelligence said, look to Britain. They are sending refugees to Rwanda. This is a country of democracy. This is a country of human rights. This is the idol of you. So we need to do the same as UK. So congratulations to the government. You are exporting this racism and this mistreat to refugee to authoritarian leaders in the Middle East.

That's a very incredible point. Thank you. How much do you think the decisions to ramp up immigration control are made in response to media pressure or media negativity? A lot. It's not only the media's job that they just cover the news. It has a lot of impact. Whatever we say today, when people hear these words, they keep in mind and they think about it.

It's the same with policymakers. When they listen to the news, they see the impacts and they make their decision. Yeah. And I think here there is a good statement I've learned the first week I arrived to the country. Refugee is not your enemy. Your enemy is the regime that make this refugee. Mm-hmm.

The ministry media here need to understand this. Refugees didn't cause the inflation to increase. Refugees didn't make the NHS salary low. Refugees didn't force Britain to leave the European Union. Refugees are not the problem of any of this. The government here in this country and some political parties with their pathetic policies and their support and backing authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, they are the problem.

They are making these refugees and they are making this problem to this society. Just please understand this, we are not the problem. Solutions-focused positive reporting does exist and we found an increase in this recently, likely because it is Refugee Week. In the BBC This Week: Refugee Week aims to bring communities together Council calls for volunteers to help refugees Cathedral given new status for supporting refugees

However, a lot of these stories still don't speak to actual refugees. World Refugee Day is specifically focused on the inclusion of refugees, and yet our media sets a terrible example by failing to include them in the coverage.

Research from 2021's London College of Communications Refugee Journalism Project shows 64% of news broadcasts about refugees, migrants and asylum seekers do not feature a refugee, migrant or asylum seeker voice.

You are both journalists. To start, Osama, could you tell us about the importance of hiring refugees as journalists? Yeah, I need to highlight the importance of the Refugee Journalism Project. I owe this initiative and I say thank you to Vivian and all the staff in the Refugee Journalism Project because they helped me a lot. They put me on the right start in this country to just start.

Be a freelancer to write training for one year, attending many workshops with Bloomberg, The Guardian, BBC, and then a fellowship for six months in two media news outlets in the country. So a huge experience. It's helped you to build your self-confidence as a journalist in this country, to help you to improve your language so you can overcome the language barrier,

and to introduce you probably to the industry here. And does the language barrier contribute to a lack of refugee voices in UK media? It needs much work from us to just learn language and then learn how to write. But it needs a lot of work to be done from the industry as well.

Just help these people to integrate with you. Help these people to overcome this language barrier. Because we are talking here in the industry about the diversity, the inclusion. Okay, these topics are brilliant. But please do these topics on the ground. Hire more refugee journalists and be patient with their language. Train them and develop their skills. And you will get a lot of things because we have an area of experience.

No one in this country, even a correspondent, can write about Afghanistan better than Zahra or about Egypt better than me. Even a correspondent who lived in Egypt or Afghanistan for many years knows I've spent 28 years in Egypt. So I know every single angle of this society. Absolutely. Zahra, I wonder what helped you maintain your journalism career when you had to flee to the UK?

When first I come in the UK, I was in the hotel for six months and spending trauma, stress, anxiety, and everyone was teasing me. A journalist is coming from Afghanistan and they were saying, oh, you can go to McDonald's and wash the dishes because you can't do anything with the language barrier, first of all. And I was thinking the same, okay, if I want to live in this country, what job should I do? And I was only thinking about washing the dishes or just walking a dog.

Nothing else. But Refugee Journalism Project helped me. It's very difficult for a journalist to throw away her pen, don't write anymore. It's very important to hire them and they have better experience and also they have better understanding with lived experience.

I can cover about Afghan women very easy, very easy. If I want to interview an Afghan woman about a thousand days that the schools are closed in Afghanistan, millions of women are ready to come and to be interviewed by me. But if an English journalist wants, she will find it very difficult to find even one person for an interview. It's very difficult.

it's better to support refugee journalists as well. Experience is the mother of the knowledge.

You raise such an important point and, you know, probably the key theme of MediaStorm because sometimes at MediaStorm we get called up by outlets like BBC Today programme looking for refugees that they can interview. And this would be great, except that their line of interviewing often puts refugees off from wanting to speak because they are only asked about their trauma. And we believe that

refugees should be invited to not share their trauma, but their expertise, their expertise by experience. Clearly, you know, you've seen that this happens in the media. Have either of you had experience of this? Yeah, I collaborated in 2021 with the European Centre of Journalism. We put together a toolkit for refugee journalists, how to cover refugee stories. We put some advice that just consider the mental health.

Because these people have been through a horrible experience. Maybe they experienced death many times, threats. Maybe they had nightmares. And for myself, I myself spent many years with the same nightmare that I've been arrested in the airport, I've been deported to Egypt, I'm in jail. So considering mental health for these people...

It's a crucial point for them in the early stage in any new country. I think it's a fatal mistake for any journalist to go deeply with this point. If the refugee wants to tell this story, OK, respect his willing and go ahead. But rather than just don't go to these issues a lot. And also sometimes we can put others at risk.

Like I have my family back in Afghanistan. When I share my story, I know it has a big risk for them. Maybe Taliban come and arrest my family because it happened with me. It happened with me because I was sharing my story. And when they had the house searching, they find out about the house, whose house is this and what's she doing. She said that she's British spy.

Not a journalist. Welcome to the team. They said the same thing. It's very important when we want to share our story, be careful to think about others' life as well. One of the Egyptian mouthpieces, he always called me shamefully refugee. The shameful refugee, Osama Gawish. And I'm taking this opportunity to say I'm proudly a refugee.

And I respect every single refugee in this country or in the world because they are human beings. It is not a shame to be a refugee or asylum seekers. You are looking for your safety because these authoritarian leaders made your life in danger and put your life in danger. So you would be a stupid man to stay and let them kill you or jail you. No.

We are here, Zahra mentioned at the beginning, we need to be alive. And here we go. We are alive in the country. And yes, we are refugees and we are proud. And even if we are alone, we don't think about only ourselves. We think about our family. Everyone has a family. Like myself, I have two children. I need to look after them. They need me. I know it hurts me. It's painful.

How I left my life behind and I had a good life. I was so happy with my life in Afghanistan. And I'm trying my best to break down the language barrier, to learn, to improve my language and to work. As Osama mentioned, just be patient with their language barrier.

Give them chance. We can support them. If I have a lot of English community to speak with them every day as a job or somewhere as friends, I can improve it soon. We are human. When humans want to do something, they can do. Everything is possible, but they need time.