A Kurdish asylum-seeking couple from Marivan, Iran’s northwestern Kurdistan province, lost their lives after drowning in a river in Greece on 13 January.
Somayyeh Jamkhaneh, 28, and her husband Jalil Ravangard, 34, were hoping to reach Europe and seek asylum.
Jamkhaneh’s brother, Abdollah Jamkhaneh, 15, was also travelling with the couple. He survived after the incident but was arrested by the Greek police in a poor condition.
The bodies of the couple were found along the river a few hours later.
Many asylum seekers from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria etc., whose lives were in danger in their home countries for various political, social, economic and other reasons and have been forced to leave their countries in the hope of a better and safer life, are displaced and wandering in different countries such as Turkey and Greece.
Many of these people, losing hope in the United Nations to help them move to a safer country, are forced to pay large sums of money to take “illegal” high-risk routes, which could lead to their deaths, to reach European countries.
