São Paulo – Hanan Daqqah, a 12-year-old Syrian refugee, will be one of the first people to carry the Olympic torch in its arrival in Brazil. She will run nearly 200 meters with the symbol of the Olympic Games in the Esplanade of Ministries in Brasília. Hanan was chosen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) out of a group of 12 refugees presented to the body by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). A refugee from Guinea will also carry the torch in Brazil, but no date was set yet.
“I’m really happy to carry the torch, but also very anxious”, said Hanan to ANBA this Monday (2). Hanan used to live with her parents and a brother in Idlib, a city in the northeast of Syria, when the civil war escalated. The family then went to Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. They lived there for two years and six months before coming to Brazil. “It was awful”, recalled Hanan.
In the beginning of 2015, the Family moved to Brazil through a visa program created by the Ministry of Justice specifically for the victims of the Syrian conflict. First came her dad, Khaled. His wife, pregnant at the time, and his kids only arrived in Brazil when the baby, a girl, was already born. Now, she is pregnant of another girl, set to be born in the next month. “I already feel like a Brazilian. I really like it in here, because in Brazil there’s a lot of freedom and there’s no war”, said Hanan, who lives with her family in the city of São Paulo.
The UNHCR said that the Syrian girl’s participation among those chosen to carry the Olympic torch in Brazil is a way of showing solidarity with the victims of the Syrian conflict, especially the children victims of war. The UNHCR sent to the IOC the profile of 12 refugees. Hanan was the one chosen by the Olympic body, which also took into consideration the fact the she speaks Portuguese fluently.
The Olympic torch was lit on April 21 in the Greek city of Olympia. From there, it passed through other cities of Greece and the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. The symbol of the Olympic Games will be flown to Brazil this Monday evening and should arrive in the federal capital on Tuesday.
In a ceremony that will take place at government seat Palácio do Planalto, the president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB), Carlos Artur Nuzman, will pass the torch to president Dilma Rousseff. Then, an athlete will walk down the Planalto ramp with the torch and will pass through some of Brasília’s buildings, when the relay actually starts. The torch should pass through more than 300 Brazilian cities at the hands of thousands of people before it arrives at the host city of the Summer Olympic Games, Rio de Janeiro, for the opening of competitions on August 5.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
