Iraqi Refugees in Their Own Voices

The plight of Iraqi refugees is finally making headlines in US papers, with Lebanon offering the choice between "rot[ting] in jail" there or returning "to Iraq [to] face death" and Syria closing its borders to new arrivals. As waves of Iraqis refugees return, the American military says that the Iraqi government lacks "a plan to absorb the influx and prevent it from setting off a new round of sectarian violence." (You know things are bad when the U.S. military accuses you of lacking a plan for Iraq's future.) But amidst all of the debate, one voice is sorely lacking -- that of the Iraqi refugees themselves. My friend Kalyanee Mam (pictured at right), a Cambodian refugee herself, has created a documentary, Between Earth & Sky, presenting the stories of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced. (You can view the trailer here.) To raise awareness around this vitally important issue, she is organizing panel discussions and presenting clips from the documentary at law schools around the country, most recently the University of Michigan. (You can contact her here if you'd like to bring the documentary to your school.) While we're on the topic of good causes, the Iraqi Student Project is working to obtain tuition waivers at U.S. undergraduate institutions for Iraqi students and The List Project, started by Kirk Johnson (whose story George Packer described in the New Yorker) seeks to identify "the Iraqis whose lives were imperiled because they believed in us enough to come help in our state-building effort" and bring them to the U.S. as refugees. So what are you waiting for? Even if our government is woefully slow to protect Iraqis, you can take action now. (Photo credits to Kalyanee Mam).