Sara Mardini was born in 1995 in a village near Damascus, the first born of three sisters, Yusra two years younger and the little Shahed. Her father, Ezzat, was a competitive swimmer and trained his daughters from a young age, transmitting the passion for this sport to them.
They lived happily and normally until the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, when everything changed.
They were forced to leave their home and suddenly every little daily task they were used to became a terrible danger. In an interview in 2023, Sara expresses the general feeling of this period as an underlying sentiment of not having a place to consider home anymore and the constant sense of peril when going anywhere.
With this feeling, in August 2015, after four years of civil war, Sara and her sister Yusra, took the difficult decision to try to reach Germany, knowing that there was no future in Syria for them.
They left in search of a better future, like more than 800,000 others that year. They decided to embark on a long journey that would take them from Syria to Turkey, then across the open sea to reach the European coast of Greece and finally Germany.
This journey, which cost many lives, could have been fatal for the Mardini sisters. During the crossing from Turkey to Greece, the sisters’ boat, with 18 other companions on board, suddenly broke down. Realising that the weight of the passengers was endangering the boat, the sisters, driven by the need to survive, decided to jump into the water, grabbed the ropes with two other passengers and used their lifelong swimming skills to pull everyone to safety. They swam for three and a half hours in the dark and cold waters of the Mediterranean. Sara was 20 at the time and her sister Yusra was just 18. Thanks to the heroic efforts of the sisters, the boat made it to shore and their journey continued through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria, finally arriving in Germany.
There they lived in a refugee camp for eight months before successfully applying for asylum. The process, which was certainly arduous, could have been more rigorous had it not been for former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open the border in 2015, facilitating the entry of one million Syrian refugees.
Up to this point, Sara Mardini’s story was already noteworthy, as the stories of many others who bravely undertook this terrible journey during those years, and who continue to do so today.
However, it was not yet time for her to settle down and live behind the struggle of the refugee reality. After a period in Berlin, Sara was contacted by the Emergency Response Center International (ERCI). ERCI is an NGO that regularly works with the Greek authorities, including the Greek Coast Guard, on rescue operations. The volunteer who had been in contact with her explained how her and her sister’s story had become an inspiration to the refugee on Lesbos. He went on to say that the volunteers would be telling their story to children on the island to give them courage. So, Sara, deeply moved by the story, decided to go back, this time to help those arriving through the struggle she certainly knew well.
Her initial intention was to stay for just a few weeks, helping with boat landings and giving swimming lessons to the children. But as the weeks went by, she realised she wasn’t ready to leave. Motivated by a desire to continue helping, she decided to extend her stay and contribute as much as she could. Nevertheless, over the next two years of volunteering, the situation became increasingly difficult. She found herself reliving the traumatic experiences of the arriving refugees and the emotional strain, combined with the harsh conditions, began to take a serious toll on her health. Eventually, she made the difficult decision to take a break and return to Germany to recuperate.
However, on August, 21st, 2018, the day of her return flight, she was stopped at Lesbos airport by five plainclothes police officers and taken to Lesbos prison. She was arrested on charges of “espionage”, “smuggling migrants” and “money laundering”, when her actual occupation in Lesbos was given blankets and water to the refugees.
Following these accusations, she spent two weeks in Lesbos and was then transferred to the high-security prison of Korydallós, near Athens, where she spent a further 107 days in pre-trial detention before being released on bail of 5,000 euros.
This arrest, among others 24 concerning humanitarian activists in that period, was recognised by Amnesty International as part of a wider trend of European governments taking a harder line on immigration and using anti-smuggling laws to de-legitimise humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants. Additionally, the organization accused the Greek government of not only basing its charges on an abusive interpretation of anti-smuggling legislation, but also of having no evidence to back up its allegations.
Finally, the process began on the 10th of January 2023 and, on the 13th, the Greek Court of Appeal in Mytilene officially dropped the charges.
Although the experience has affected her deeply, she expresses her desire to return to the field, recognising that it is where she belongs. As she told Global Citizen in an interview in February 2023, she didn’t often think about her own future, but she was sure she would continue to fight for a world without borders – a world where a person’s background, colour or religion would no longer matter. She believed in the fundamental equality of all people and emphasised the importance of embracing this idea. She added that she would always work for a world where everyone is treated equally.
Sara is someone who has not let adversity define her role in this world, but has taken her place, loudly and boldly. She decided to not be blind form others suffering and was unjustly punished for it. At a time when many countries respond to human misery by closing their borders and making it harder to deliver humanitarian aid, recognizing our shared humanity remains the strongest defense against indifference.
As said by Edward Said, a Palestinian-American writer:
“Humanism is the only – I would go as far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practice and injustices that disfigure human history”
Sources:
https://www.oneyoungworld.com/speaker/sara-mardini
https://time.com/6236203/the-swimmers-true-story-netflix
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/how-sarah-mardini-saved-lives-of-fellow-refugees
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/sara-mardini
https://www.letstalkdurham.com/lets-talk-magazine/sarah-mardini