A DISTRAUGHT Milnthorpe woman with first-hand experience of the refugee crisis is on a mission to tell the world what is really happening.


Ann Davidson, who moved to Turkey five years ago, witnesses up to 300 desperate people being washed ashore on the country's Bodrum coastline every day.


The former nurse contacted The Gazette with harrowing tales of what life is really like as a refugee in a bid to hammer the reality home to the people of South Lakeland.


She said: "People have a totally incorrect idea of what refugees are. They think they are migrants trying to get to this country but on a day-to-day basis I see Syrians escaping from their daughters being raped.

"They're not trying to come to Britain to take benefits off people here. They tell me their choice in life is either to stay in Syria and face rape or torture, or to head into the sea."


Ann lives in the coastal town on Turgutreis, located 4km from the Greek island of Kos, which is on the route that hundreds of thousands of refugees are taking in an effort to flee the Middle Eastern conflict.


She takes clothes and food to the refugees every day and says that people smugglers operating across Syria, Turkey and Iraq force entire families onto makeshift rafts, many of which capsize out at sea.


She has spoken to people housed in camps along the Turkish coastline to discover the real reason behind their desperate bid to flee the Syrian conflict.


Ann said: "I spoke to three sisters. Their mother was killed by ISIS and they were all continually raped by President Assad's forces. Their father was with them and he was crying because he wasn't able to protect them.


"There was a grandmother I met whose daughter and son-in-law had their throats cut by ISIS. She fled with her two grandchildren and they had absolutely nothing - no possessions."


According to Ann, the Turkish coastguard rescues many refugees out at sea and brings them ashore.


If they are of Syrian origin they are moved to one of several rudimentary camps, often without being offered food, water or shelter from the sun.

 

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But if they are from another country they are often sent to another camp and scheduled to be deported back to where they came from, including many northern Pakistanis fleeing the Taliban.


Ann is keen for as many South Lakelanders to help with the refugee crisis in any way they can but her main mission is to make sure the public understands the full extent of what refugees are going through.


She said: "The message they've given to me is to please go and tell the world."