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The concept of sanctuary, in the meaning that a person who fled into a holy place could not be harmed without inviting divine retribution, was understood by the ancient Greeks and ancient Egyptians. However, the right to seek asylum in a church or other holy place, was first codified in law by King Ethelbert of Kent in about 600 A.D. Similar laws were implemented throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.
Source: Wikipedia
Augustus banished Ovid in 8 CE to Tomis on the Black Sea for reasons that remain mysterious, though it is largely speculated that something in the Metamorphoses offended him. Ovid himself wrote that it was because of carmen et error – "a poem and a mistake" (Tr. 2.207). The error itself is uncertain, but it is believed that Ovid may have had an affair with a female relative of Augustus, or withheld knowledge of such an affair (perhaps even the granddaughter of Augustus, Julia). The carmen is probably his Metamorphoses. While some speculate that the poem was one of Ovid's love poems which offered amorous advice to both sexes, this is almost certainly untrue. The Julian Marriage Laws of 18 BC were still fresh in the minds of Romans; these laws had promoted sexual relations (though monogamous, maritial ones) in Rome in order to promote population growth, and spurred a mass of advisory love poems upon their passage. It was during this period of exile – more properly known as a relegation – that Ovid wrote two more collections of poems, called Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, which illustrate his sadness and desolation. Being far away from Rome, Ovid had no chance to research in libraries and thus was forced to abandon his work Fasti. Even though he was friendly with the natives of Tomis and even wrote poems in their language, he still pined for Rome and his beloved third wife.
Source: Wikipedia
Boat People (1982): directed by Ann Hui and starring George Lam and Meiying Jia. Plot outline: A Japanese reporter arrives in Vietnam hoping to capture the essence the society under the rule of the Communist Party. With the help of a vietnamese girl, he eventually opens his eyes to the painful truth of postwar Vietnam
Source: IMDb
An estimated 80% of refugees are women and children. They often carry the heaviest burden of survival for themselves and their families. Women and adolescent girls in refugee settings are especially vulnerable to exploitation, rape, abuse and other forms of gender-based violence. Children and youth constitute approximately 50 percent of all refugees worldwide. They are the deliberate targets of abuse, and easy prey to military recruitment and abduction. They typically miss out on years of education. More than 43 million children living in conflict-affected areas don’t have a chance to go to school.
Source: Wikipedia
Nansen passports were internationally recognized identity cards first issued by the League of Nations to stateless refugees. Designed in 1922 by Fridtjof Nansen, in 1942 they were honored by governments in 52 countries and were the first refugee travel documents. Approximately 450,000 Nansen passports were issued, helping hundreds of thousands of stateless people to immigrate to a country that would have them. The Nansen International Office for Refugees was awarded the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to establish the Nansen passports. The Nansen passport was developed after the Russian Revolution, when 1.4 million Russians moved out of Russia due to ideological conflicts with the communist government. Hundreds of thousands of them stayed permanently abroad. It proved to be a great success, one of the few that could be attributed to the League of Nations.
Source: Wikipedia
Refugee by Tom Petty
See lyrics
The Refugees by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Of this work Conan Doyle wrote, "I take a New Englander, a Puritan, as one type of the seventeenth century, and a New Yorker, the woodman, as another, and I precipitate these two into the court of Louis XIV, and mix them up in the European history of that time - very much as Scott threw Quentin Durward, the young Scotchman, into the French court. I have taken a lot of pains to make these two types exact studies. Then I shift the scene back to America. It will be something new in the way of an American historical novel. You see it will be the story of the two continents. The woodman will use the phrases of the wood, and the New Englander is rather Biblical."
Source: fantasticfiction.co.uk
December 14, 1950: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), whose headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland), was established. Its aim is to protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the United Nations and to assist in their return or resettlement.
Source: Wikipedia
EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador. (Ambrose Bierce)
Source: Creative Quotations
The partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947 resulted in the largest human movement in history: an exchange of 18,000,000 Hindus and Sikhs (from Pakistan) for Muslims (from India).
Source: Wikipedia
Exile is the brother of death. (Berber)
Who lives in exile finds that spring has no charm. (Russian)
Source: Creative Proverbs
Afghanistan: from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 through the early 1990s, the Afghan War (1978–92) caused more than 6,000,000 refugees to flee to the neighboring countries of Pakistan and Iran, making Afghanistan the greatest refugee-producing country. The number of refugees fluctuated with the waves of the war, with thousands more fleeing after the Taliban takeover of 1996. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and continued ethnic cleansing and reprisals also caused additional displacement. Though there has been some repatriation sponsored by the U.N. from Iran and Pakistan, a 2007 UNHCR census identified over two million Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan alone.
Source: Wikipedia
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