Parviz Yousefi

I’ll never become Danish. I am Iranian and proud of it, but someone has deprived me of being able to live in my home country, and now I am also foreign there. Many of my family members are still in Iran, and it is hard to live without one’s family, since a family is not a family only due to blood ties or surnames, but because of the experiences you have together.

What is happening right now is not a refugee crisis. It is a global inequality crisis, for which the West carries a large responsibility, but will not discuss. Western interests in oil have ruined many things in the Middle East, and when life becomes a veritable hell hole, people can only flee.

They are not stupid. They don’t just leave their homes because they want to live off benefits in the West. They flee because they have no other options, and they flee to where life is.
In the media they talk about the number of refugees coming to Europe, how many Denmark can take, and how you can keep them away. Why doesn’t anyone ask why there are so many refugees? Why doesn’t anybody look for the reasons? The politicians live of what comes out of their mouths, and the journalists make PR for them, but it shouldn’t be like that. The ones holding the microphone have a duty to search for the truth, not to promote themselves.

64 years / male / in a relationship / children / trained teacher / retired bus driver / Copenhagen SV / from Iran / came to Denmark in 1988 / residence permit in 1989