I fled Uganda in 2014 Because I am bisexual. This, like homosexuality, is forbidden in Uganda. The Ugandan parliament adopted anti-gay legislation in 2013. An openly gay or bisexual person now risks a life sentence in prison. Simply talking about homosexuality is punishable. I lived in fear every day, faced a lot of danger. I […]

I fled Somalia in 1991 Because of the Somali civil war. It was a dirty war between clans. I had never really paid attention to that – who belonged to which clan. We’re all Somali, and that’s it. I left when there was yet nothing to worry about. I was 19 years old and a […]

I fled Rwanda in 1994 Because mass murders started taking place in Rwanda in 1994. About 800 thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in just hundred days. My son Remy was 2 at the time, my daughter Eliza was 6. My wife, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, happened to be visiting a Rwandan friend in The […]

I fled Iran in 2010 Because problems arose when my mother converted from Islam to Christianity. For a while, my father also felt like he did not belong in Islam anymore. But he did not dare say that out loud, until my mother did. It turned out they felt the same way. My mother’s name […]

I fled Syria in 2013 Because the Syrian civil war was becoming too dangerous for us. My husband and I lived in Damascus. He was a doctor, I worked as a teacher. We had a good life together and wanted to start a family. We saved up, had a nice house, some land, money and […]

I fled  Sudan in 2013 Because  I worked as a chauffeur for the Dutch branch of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders [ed.]) in Sudan. They provided aid in conflict areas such as in the Darfur and Blue Nile regions. The President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, is responsible for many atrocities. He is wanted by […]

I fled  Syria in 2012 Because  I defected from the Syrian army, and it was starting to get really dangerous for me during the Syrian war. If I didn’t come back to Syria, they would take everything from him From 2001 to 2007, I studied in France for my Master and PhD, and worked as […]

I fled  Iraq as an artist in 1998. Because  I am from Kurdistan in northern Iraq. I lived through two intense wars there. Iraq and Iran were engaged in a fierce war for eight years, from 1980 to 1988. Then the Gulf War against Kuwait started. We lived under an embargo for 14 years. My […]

I fled  Mauritania in 2003 Because  all the power was in the hands of the Arabs. The other part of the population – the blacks, to whom I belonged – was discriminated and treated as second-class citizens. Many people were murdered under this regime, and many others fled. I was 20 years old and wanted […]

Due to personal reasons and recent developments in her asylum procedure, unfortunately we are unable to publish the story of Claudine at the moment. As part of the Belgium street art route ‘Sorry, Not Sorry’, our Moving People were placed in different locations in Ghent. On April 26 (2016), thousands of miniature refugees (Tourad, Kassem, […]