Heartland

Yesterday a Ukrainian died

It didn’t make opening news.
It doesn’t matter.
“He should have never left his country in the first place�
Came from the cold.
Came from misery with the dream of a better life.
Came to die in a hot country.
He lived with other two in the town’s gazebo.
Everybody knew.
Two to go.
It doesn’t matter.
He worked. The boss didn’t pay.
The murderer is on the loose.
It doesn’t matter.
They drank alcohol. “The kind you put in wounds�
They drank with nothing to eat.
The night grew cold.
It was fatal.
He died in misery in dream Europe’s miserable country.
Came from the east to die by the sun set.
Two to go.
It doesn’t matter.



In the recent years, many citizens from Eastern European countries are coming to Portugal, as illegal immigrants, in hope of finding a better life. They believe Portugal is part of Europe because it belongs to the Union. They are bought and sold and threaten by eastern mobs and left to die once they’ve paid the “passport�.
Three Ukrainians were living in the street, specifically in an open gazebo of a town not so small. There was a story on the news about those three men. They were penniless. They couldn’t even afford go back home. The situation was well known by the authorities.
The day before yesterday one of them died. I wrote these lines about it. Spread them, especially you people near the Eastern front. Don’t let anyone fool them anymore.

Is the same situation in Spain... and I guess is also the same in most of the countries of the "union" .
In Spain most of the inmigrants are from Morocco or Argelia, every day a lot of them cross Gibraltar in small tumbledown boats thinking they are gonna find paradise. A lot of them die in the attempt but Tv news prefer to talk about Real Madrid and David Beckham... they think is more interesting.

What really shocked me this time is that people in town didn't help. They just let the man die. Doesn't seem like my country anymore.
I wonder if they are there still? Silence in the news is outrageous.
But why didn't the local folks help?... It scares me to think we're becoming a country too used to poverty to care.

dead inside wrote:Yesterday a Ukrainian died

And the others that were killed by skinheads in Porto, and also the 3 also found dead in Porto??
And nobody knew about that, or almost nobody.

moonchild wrote:

dead inside wrote:Yesterday a Ukrainian died

And the others that were killed by skinheads in Porto, and also the 3 also found dead in Porto??
And nobody knew about that, or almost nobody.

No, girl, that's totally different. Lots of people get killed everyday for inumerous reasons.
I mean people starving in the street in a so called european civilised country. I mean people letting people die and looking away.

We have that here too, espcially along the border with Mexico.

That is why the Mexican president is trying so hard to open the border between US and Mexico, something I am all in favor of.

I grew up in Arizona, and I actually worked with a lot of illegal immigrants when I went to Uni. All of them, were hard working good ppl. I was proud to call them my friends.

I dont' care where you are from, but when you go to a country in search of a betther life, you deserve to have that, and be treated with respect and dignity. And if you need help, you should have that too.

I am sorry to hear it's that way too , in EU. I actually thought it different.

I don't know about other countries in the Union.
I have a girl cousin. She never studied like me and the other cousins. She went to Switzerland and she's working in a clock factory (what else in Switzerland ) and she's probably making more than all of us that have been to university and stuff.

What shocks me is the way this country used to be and what it's becoming.
We wouldn't let a man die in the streets 10 years ago (when I was only 21).
Now I'm (only) 31 and I'm shocked.
Why didn't people help? Why didn't people around the gazebo fed him? Called an ambulance?... Gave them blankets?... Anything?
[Not to count the authorities, forget about them]

We used to be a country where these things didn't happen. Was this what Europe brought us?

OK, why didn't I help them myself? Because I don't even know where they are. They talked about it in the news so quickly, like it wasn't at all important... That's what shocks me the most.

Well reality can be chaos and hard to understand...

But the other side of this coin is, those illigal immigrants come with hope to get help... and at least they got nothing...

nowadays we cannot dream this dream from living in the streets and then finding help and later success...

Those ppl think that european countries are the paradise to survive with nothing, the reality is not like that... its cold and hard outside, everywhere, if came illigal into any country, mostly it was the last trip of this ppl...

Sad but true... must be terrible to give up home country and don´t find another... but aren´t they a bit too optimistical to think to enter an european country is the chance to live better? I know in germany they must help the ppl, to give em food and a place to sleep somewhere... but if they see those ppl didn´t need to escape their motherland they got send back... its like a neverending circle...