Threatened with deportation, a Syrian refugee charmed millions of Dutch with her voice in “The Voice”

It did not occur to the young Syrian woman, Haneen Kodmani, when she was singing a few months ago on television for millions of Dutch people, that she and her family would face soon after that date the risk of deportation from the Netherlands due to problems with the law, despite the fact that she has been living in the European country for 4 years. .

The 18-year-old revealed, in an interview with Dutch TV recently shown, that her family’s asylum treatment in the Netherlands had been stopped, and that they might be deported to Venezuela because they were living there before they came to the Netherlands.
Dutch law prohibits granting political asylum to individuals who were in a safe country before they arrived in the Netherlands to seek asylum, and sometimes these are deported to the last safe country they were in or passed through before the Netherlands.

Haneen – who participated in the program “The Voice” to discover singing talents months ago, and achieved wide fame in the Netherlands because of her voice and distinguished performance – revealed that her family had made a grave mistake when she hid from the competent Dutch authorities her residency in Venezuela.

She stated that the family holds the Dutch lawyer who handled their file responsible for this error, because he is the one who advised them to hide their years of residence in Venezuela.

The Kodmani family comes from the village of Shaqqa in the Syrian governorate of As-Suwayda, and 8,000 people live in it. The family left the village during the Syrian revolution and headed to Venezuela, where it lived for 3 years, before being forced to return to Syria due to the illness of one of the family’s sons (Omar), then Asylum in the Netherlands because of the dangers of living in the village, which was close to the fighting sites.

Omar needs advanced medical care that was not available in Venezuela, a South American country that was also going through major economic problems.

The Kodmani family, consisting of parents and 3 children, has been living in the refugee shelter since they came to the Netherlands 4 years ago, awaiting the latest Dutch government decision.

Hanin describes the family’s waiting for the Dutch judicial authorities’ decision as very difficult, especially after they found themselves in the Netherlands, and hoped to work on their musical future in the European country.

The sick son of the Kodmani family lives in a private medical center, and his case is dealt with separately from his family, and he may obtain residency for humanitarian rather than political reasons, as is the case with most Syrian refugees in the Netherlands.

Nederland was onder de indruk van de 18-jarige Hanin al Kadamani vorig seizoen bij @RTL_TVOH. Nu wordt de Syrische zangeres mogelijk met haar familie het land uitgezet. Er is een petitie gestart. Bij #Op1 zingt ze haar eerste single, ‘Alright’. pic.twitter.com/sMCLGMCKhS

— Op1 (@op1npo) May 28, 2021

The Dutch press’s interest in Hanin’s case prompted a fan to start an initiative to pressure the Dutch government, by signing an electronic petition calling for the young singer to stay.

15,000 signatures have been collected so far, and the number of signatories is expected to reach 50,000, to formally submit the petition to the Dutch parliament, according to the text of the law in the country.
The beginning of a promising future

Hanin had attracted attention since her first appearance on the “Voice” program, where one of the judges on the program described her as representing the so-called promising new voices in the Netherlands.

The Syrian singer, who was 17 when she appeared on Dutch television, also watched nearly 3 million Dutch people, when she sang one of the songs of the Lebanese singer Fairuz.

https://youtu.be/6a3Kv6nFL-A

The Freedom Music Festival – which was organized on May 5, with the commemoration of the end of World War II and the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation – chose the young Syrian singer to sing in it, where Hanin chose the famous song “Imagine” for the British Beatles, to sing it at the festival. Because it has a great message of peace.

The Syrian young woman also recently released a single song, her first on streaming music platforms, titled “I’m fine”, and she co-authored it herself, after she sang a few weeks ago with Dutch singer Danny van Veltoven a song that was also launched on music sites on the Internet.
Syrians are suspended

This is not the first time that Syrian refugees have received the Dutch media’s attention. Just two months ago, the crisis of another Syrian family, who was threatened with deportation to Armenia because of having an Armenian passport, ended, as is the case for many Syrians of Armenian origin.

After widespread public and media pressure, and an electronic petition signed by tens of thousands, the deportation of this family was prevented, and its affairs were settled.

Although Dutch law is very tolerant of Syrian refugees, it requires the refugee not to have passed through a safe country or hold its passport, in order to obtain Dutch residency.
Source: Al Jazeera + websites