Little Pieces in an Enormous Puzzle
It was March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and Javied Aslam was in his run-down office in downtown Athens, getting ready for the day ahead. As we headed out to Omonia square for the protest, I noticed some graffiti scrawled on the front door of his office and I asked him about it. As President of the Migrant Workers’ Association and leader of the Pakistani community in Greece, Javied fights for the rights of migrant workers and seeks justice for victims of racially motivated violence. I joined Javied for two weeks in 2018 to make a film as part of ‘This is Europe,’ a 6-part series of standalone, character-led observational documentary films based in immigrant communities in major capital cities across Europe. The series sought to challenge damaging perceptions of Europe’s migrant communities, at a time when far- right rhetoric was emerging as ‘the new normal’. Coincidentally, our shoot dates would overlap with a high-profile court hearing relating to the murder of Pakistani migrant worker Shehzad Luqman. Luqman was only 27 years old when he was stabbed to death by suspected Golden Drawn members, as he cycled to work in 2013. Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi political party that rose to prominence amid Greece’s economic crisis, and Luqman’s murder was amongst numerous crimes
Little Pieces in an Enormous Puzzle Horia El Hadad | Producer, Al Jazeera English
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