2000 meters underground
1,300- 1,900 Turkish pounds
1 door
301 lives
72 hours
76 million broken hearts
and a nation united right across the world…
These are the figures that will always stick in our minds as the town of Soma, Manisa, Turkey was struck by the worst mine disaster in its history last Tuesday. Hundreds of rescue workers were fighting against time, as they worked to recover bodies from one of the biggest and busiest mines in their country.
I watched with a heavy heart and tears rolling down my cheeks three mornings in a row, the pain and sorrow was awful for me, so I cannot begin to imagine those families.
A wife who’s now a widower.
A child left fatherless.
A sister without a brother
And a mother now in agony and empty at the loss of her son.
The pain is one you would not even wish on your worst enemy, as each person was carried out from the mine on a stretcher, no longer breathing, another traumatizing scream followed..
Should the cost of a life be this cheap? Should it be so meaningless that Turkey’s prime minister addresses the disaster by saying; “These are things that happen, it’s destiny?” Really?! Well please forgive me if I’m being crude, but having only one door in such a huge mine is an invitation to risk your life not ‘destiny!’
When I sat and watched back footage of Turkey’s Prime minister’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Soma, these were a few of the things I saw: three rows of protection between him and the public (his security guards, police officers and military police), the jeers from the crowd was responded to with “Let them come and jeer next to me..” and “If you jeer, you’ll be slapped..”. Each time I’m surprised at his outbursts of how he treats the people of his country, just when I think it won’t get any worse, it does..
When two young girls were killed in Egypt, both at different times, the Turkish Prime minister was first to give his condolences in tears and even write a poem for one of them, but Soma was truly left abandoned. I didn’t see any emotion for the families torn apart, the hundreds of people who risked their lives everyday to earn money for food and support their families, I didn’t see one facial expression of sorrow or sadness, I didn’t even see any empathy and that just added to the pain and anger.
301 graves.
250,000 dollars wasted on a water cannon machine and not spent on a survival room.
24 people arrested.
301 families destroyed and a nation of people who will not ever forget the 13th May 2014, the day when a disaster waiting to happen could have been prevented yet instead was named Black Day.
We will not forget.
My thoughts and prayers are with Turkey and Bosnia Herzegovina who are going through disastrous times as I write.
