With his face underlined by the red tie that rarely leaves him, Khalid Slayman, a young 24-year-old Syrian refugee, stages his departure from Beirut on Tiktok on November 8, 2021. From the departure lounge of the Lebanese capital’s airport , films himself, passport in hand, and declares in Arabic: “I’m on my way to Minsk, in Belarus.”
Once on the plane that will take him 2,300 kilometers, he is even delighted with the place that has been assigned to him. “I am very lucky to be at the window, because I will be able to see Beirut at takeoff,” he says, installed on a plane chartered by the Belarusian company Belavia.
Aspiring model and actor
Refugee in Lebanon for seven years after refusing to do military service in Syria – a country torn apart by a civil war that has claimed almost 500,000 lives, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – Khalid finally decided to join Europe using the air. bridge built between Beirut and Minsk at the end of 2021.
At his expense, the young man will then become a pawn in the hybrid war that Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko decided to wage at that time against the European Union, massacring thousands of asylum seekers on his border with Poland, a few months before the Ukrainian refugee crisis.
But when he posts the videos of his departure on Tiktok, Khalid is still unaware that during his journey he will come close to death twice. Nor that his posts, documenting his journey from Beirut to Amsterdam, will lead him to build a strong community of 16,000 subscribers.
Contacted by BFMTV.com, the young man details the motivations behind his activity on this social network. From an outside perspective, his profile is above all an unprecedented testimony to the humanitarian crisis that rocked Eastern Europe in November 2021. But for Khalid, an aspiring actor and model, it is also a way of gaining notoriety.
“First, I want to become an actor, it’s my talent! And to be famous, I find that Tiktok is better than YouTube, because the algorithm allows better visibility. And then I also wanted to give advice to people who want to take the same trip as me, “he explains by phone from a refugee camp near Amsterdam.
“There are other videos that are not directly related to my refugee status. In some, I act as a model, to entertain my audience and show that I am open-minded,” he specifies.
“We Syrians are a civilized people”
Thus, in a video shot in the woods near the Belarusian-Polish border, we see him marching through the trees, black chapka wrapped around his head, dressed in a T-shirt and padded pants, against a background of electronic music. Pointing out at the same time the conditions in which your trip takes place.
“From where we are, I decided to make a fashion show of what the migrant who goes to the forests wears and what clothes can protect him from the cold,” he explains in the introduction.
As for his red tie, which he never takes off, he intends to “send a message to the European population and to the entire world”: “We Syrians are a civilized people. And wearing a tie symbolizes a minimum of civility and class.” We are not a barbaric people and we do not want to be a problem for the local populations and governments, ”she details in another video.
Broadcasting his migratory journey on Tiktok isn’t Khalid’s only feat. By exploring the platform, many users offer an immersion in their journey. This is the case of Azer, a Tunisian, whose profile was seen by our colleagues from Vice. By his account, videos of him first show him crammed into a makeshift boat across the sea, before his arrival in Italy, where he films the roads. A little further is Trocadero Square in Paris we find it, then in Essonne aboard the RER.
Other accounts are responsible for collecting and posting videos pulled from the web. Maxime* spent a year with Afghan refugees in Istanbul as part of university work. Allowing you to understand the key role that Tiktok plays with this population.
“Among Afghan refugees, Tiktok is above all a way to exchange images of the migratory journey, like crossing the desert to reach Iran. There are a lot of nationalistic sounds, symbols, images of the Afghan flag in these videos…” he notes. .
An analysis shared by Lee Komito, Associate Professor Emeritus of Information and Communication Sciences at University College Dublin: “With social networks like Tiktok, migrants can keep in touch with their loved ones, no matter where in the world they live. And the fact that it is based on visual content makes it possible to strongly affirm a community belonging”.
“Through these types of practices, migrants have the impression of always participating in the daily life of their loved ones that they have left behind,” he continues.
Platforms with very little supervision
But for the professor, who has worked for the European Commission on the role that social networks play in the integration of immigrants, platforms like Tiktok can also be dangerous due to their weak regulation.
“On Tiktok, migrants have access to information that is vital to them, but which can be about illegal issues, such as border crossing. However, these platforms do not provide simple means of verification that circulate, with no mechanism in place for prior validation.” warns Lee Komito.
In June 2021, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel pointed her finger directly at Tiktok, a platform on which she accused smugglers of “glamorizing” the Channel crossing, as reported then by the daily mail.
The Secretary of State mentioned in particular the case of a video, viewed more than 800,000 times before it was deleted, which showed migrants crossing the Canal crammed into a boat, the camera focusing on the sunset, with catchy music in the background.
Tips to “survive”
A situation that Khalid, the young migrant who documented his passage through Europe from Belarus, is aware of. And what he wants to remedy. “In Belarus, I almost died twice in the forest,” he says. “Once because I didn’t have anything to drink, the second time because I almost drowned in a river.”
“I don’t want the people who follow me to repeat my mistakes, that’s why I teach them to survive in the forest, without hiding from them that they risk losing their lives,” explains the Syrian.
“The conditions in the Belarusian camp were horrible,” he continues. “That is why I say in my videos that it is first and foremost about legal migration pathways, especially for families. And I also explain that smugglers should never be used.”
In France, the many associations contacted by BFMTV.com did not respond to requests for interviews on the subject, or indicated that they were unaware of the phenomenon. “We have no information on this subject,” writes France Terre d’Asile.
The dream of being an actor
On his account, Khalid now posts videos of his new life in the Netherlands. With the idea of explaining to his subscribers “how to behave in a new community, but also to break the image that some have of refugees, to show that we can be ‘normal’ citizens”.
He even plans to do short scenes, he who studied theater and dreams of being an actor. While waiting for glory, in his Dutch refugee camp, the young man put on a puppet show for children.
*First name has been changed
Source: BFM TV
