Noi culturi, noi antropologii - Humanitas

the first wave are the stories of the refugees themselves.
Between February and November 2010 I have interviewed
30 recognized refugees who are living in Bucharest. The
interviewed refugees came from Congo, Cameroon, Iran,
Rwanda, Kuwait, and Turkey. My field work aimed to gather
data about the integration of the refugees in Romania.
The secondary data, the only secondary source I could
find about the refugees who arrived in Romania before
2000, is the UNHCR study regarding the existent refugee
legislation in the Central and Eastern Europe between the
1991 – 1999 – Integration Rights and Practices with Regard
to Recognized Refugees in the Central European Countries,
Geneva (2000).
One of the persons who came in contact with the first
wave of refugees (before 2004) is the leader of the Muslim
community in Bucharest, Dr. Ahmed Mazar Nakechbandi, a
former student from Syria who received the Romanian citizenship
in 1992. He recounted that the first refugees in Romania
arrived in 1991: „They were 300 refugees coming
from Somalia who stayed at Baneasa airport centre in some
huts. They came from the desert directly to winter conditions.
Then they took them to a dorm where they had to live
five in a room. Some of them had a very good social position
back in their country. When they came here they thought
they will receive every social benefit that refugees received
in the West, but contrarily, Romania was back then in a situation
when it needed social help.“ 151
For many years, the Muslim community offered refugees
spiritual assistance, social assistance, and help with food
and clothes. Dr. Ahmed also remembers that between 1999
and 2003 waves of refugees arrived to the mosque where
together with the Muslim community he served around 100
meals per week for the refugees coming there.
Because Romania was in a situation when it needed social
and economic help itself, the refugees encountered a
poor country which could not offer them the assistance they
151. Interview with dr. Ahmed Mazar Nakechbandi, a leader of the
Muslim community in Bucharest, October 2010.
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