Anonymous city donor gives $700,000 to rescue refugees By: Carol Sanders Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 13, 2019 Last Modified: 10:14 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 13, 2019 Updates

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This article was published 13/06/2019 (2059 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The delivery of her first baby in a sweltering storage facility with women who stepped up to help — equipped with nothing but plastic shopping bags to receive the baby — became a social media meme in parts of Africa.

“There were no medical supplies, no health services, no police service. There was no one except refugees,” Luam Yebiyom, 21, said through an interpreter.

She, the baby, and her husband arrived in Winnipeg May 30 thanks to an anonymous donor who put up $700,000 so local volunteers could resettle them and more than 100 refugees from several countries including Eritrea and Somalia.

The Good Samaritan with deep pockets is described as non-denominational, is not from Africa and knew nothing about the refugees other than they needed help — and that volunteers like Gelila Hailu were ready to do the heavy lifting and hand holding required for refugee resettlement.

“He said ‘you’re the engine, I’m the fuel,'” said Hailu. The Eritrean-Canadian woman, who works for the Archdiocese of St. Boniface, provides information and orientation sessions for newly-arrived refugees. She said the Winnipeg donor is a private person with strong convictions and a favourite saying: “What we do for ourselves dies with us — what we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

The donor will be at a celebration Sunday evening organized by Hidmona, the Eritrean-Canadian Human Rights Group of Manitoba. The advocacy organization fighting for human rights in Eritrea is hosting the dinner for supporters and the recent arrivals, including the young parents, whose baby arrived in less than grand fashion at a packed refugee detention centre in Libya.

“Two ladies had some knowledge, and they used plastic bags,” Yebiyom said of the impromptu midwives trying to help her deliver her first baby. “It was difficult. There was a lot of pain.”

She and her baby, Etram Abdurahman, who survived her harrowing birth unscathed, and the baby’s father Abdurahman Saleh, 21, are among 22 Eritrean refugees who arrived in Winnipeg at the end of May.

The young couple who fled despotic Eritrea in 2012 paid smugglers in Libya USD$6,000 each and were waiting to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. He was scooped up by Libyan forces during a sweep of migrants and refugees and taken to the crammed detention centre in Abu Selim, a suburb of Tripoli.

“You couldn’t lie down to sleep, it was so crowded,” Saleh said through an interpreter. “You had to sleep in a sitting position, and you had to hold your shoes while you slept sitting down so they don’t get stolen.” It was so hot and humid in the unvented area, that sweat from the 1,000 men packed into the place would condense on the ceiling and drip on their heads “like it was raining.”

His wife was pregnant at the time and and scooped up by human traffickers who held her as a hostage for three months. During her captivity, the expectant mom was fed only plain macaroni until her release when relatives overseas raised the money for her ransom. She was then taken to the woman’s detention centre in Tripoli, where their baby was unceremoniously brought into the world.

The young family made it onto the “urgent list” of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and was taken to Niger before Canadian immigration officials arranged for them to come to Winnipeg. They arrived under the blended visa office-referral program that matches refugees identified for resettlement by the UN refugee agency with private sponsors in Canada. The federal government pays part of their resettlement costs with sponsors paying the rest and helping them resettle.

The young couple says they’re relieved and grateful to be in Canada but worry about the refugees stuck in Libya, who have no human rights and are treated like human refuse: “We’re a dime a dozen,” said Saleh.

“We hope that our story will encourage the government of Canada to keep some more people from dying.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

After 20 years of reporting on the growing diversity of people calling Manitoba home, Carol moved to the legislature bureau in early 2020.

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