This story might give you courage in times of Corona. You could act from Carmen Parra, a young Doctor from Venezuela, who lives since two years in Peru. Like so many - now there are over five million people - their homeland has left to search abroad, your luck. And it's found in Lima, 3000 kilometers away from her home town of Guárico,.

"two years Ago I left my home to Venezuela due to the economic crisis, alone with my three children. My husband was died, my mother, my father, too. In Venezuela I had to study medicine, but me as a receptionist, operator and cashier punched through," she says. The refugee Agency of the United Nations, UNHCR helped Parra, to leave your degree in Peru recognise. "Now I work in a hospital in Lima and at a private emergency service."

The 35-Year-old is one of the Doctors on the Front lines, who take care of the Corona-ill. Try tirelessly that Peru gets, literally, the curve and the number of almost 8000 dead not even increase.

gratitude and xenophobia

Sometimes, she manages to contribute: "I have dealt with here for three days, a 65-Year-old Corona symptoms. He was very sick, at some point he was transferred. I was convinced that he had not survived until he was a few days later, suddenly in front of me and gave thanks that I saved his life."

That Peru is affected despite one of the toughest lock downs in the Region as a Coronavirus, have to do with it, that the people were not to the distance rules, explained Parra.

at some point wants you to Venezuela, but not in the near future. Because only here in Lima, you could bring currently, their three children, Sophia (13 years old), Fidel (six) and Isabella (three) by.

the need to bite, often on the tongue, because you will face hostility because of their origin, it adopts, in the meantime, shoulder shrugging in purchasing: "Some say to me: 'You're a Venezuelan and a Doctor? This can't be impossible!' But all the same, Many change their opinion about us, after you were with us Venezuelans in treatment."

a state of emergency in the emergency

But stories like that of Carmen Parra, or other Venezuelan refugees, helping out as Doctors, for example, in the most remote villages in the jungle and the highlands, where there is no Peruvian hinwill cher doctor voluntarily, are the exception and not the rule.

The sad reality of most of the Venezuelan refugees in Peru is different, and no one knows this better than Federico Augusti. The Argentine is the representative of the UN refugee Agency UNHCR in Lima. Agusti says: "Many of the Venezuelans are telling us that you eat just Once per day, you sleep more, to have less Hunger and nothing to eat, so that at least their children will get something between the teeth."

830.000 Venezuelans living in Peru, they are now the largest foreign Community in the country. There were 480,000 of them have applied for asylum. Peru is, after Colombia, point number two for Venezuelans who have fled the political and humanitarian crisis in their homeland. The corona crisis hits you doubly hard, Agusti, it is called a state of emergency within the emergency.

"Nine out of ten Venezuelans work in the informal sector, and in the process, they also earn, on average, 40 percent less than the Peruvians. Most of them had no Chance to or somehow to the strict quarantine measures taken by the government from mid-March to prepare. We expect that approximately 270,000 Venezuelans from the corona of a crisis are extremely affected: no food, no medicine and no roof over your head."

more Dangerous way back to Venezuela

Federico Agusti slept little lately. Feverishly he tries, the refugees, the most of all necessary, to distribute to the 650 bed places offered by the UNHCR in Peru. But every day, people call him, have been infected with COVID-19. Because the Virus hit there the hardest, where the social inequality is the greatest. But how is the Infected isolate? Like the distance rules in a confined space? And how is the infection track chains?

Due to Corona, are now tens of thousands on the way home, explains Agusti: "Many go back to Venezuela, because they are afraid that their parents and grandparents have left them there, to die of Corona. Also, you say to us: 'If we perish due to a Virus, but then please in our home.'"

The corona crisis has triggered in Peru, so a second wave of refugees: But this time, it spills over Colombia and Ecuador, over the Andes. And is incomparably more dangerous for the Venezuelans than when you came, says Federico Agusti: "The borders are all tight. The people go walking and Hiking illegally across the border. On the way you are at the mercy of criminal gangs and sexual exploitation unprotected."

author: Oliver Pieper

*The post "Peru: corona crisis hits refugee crisis" is published by Deutsche Welle. Contact with the executives here.

Deutsche Welle

Date Of Update: 23 June 2020, 19:27