THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1999

Refugee children express wishes

By Ingela Ringbjer

On-Line Forty-Niner

"I hope that one day I can go back and live in my homeland."

The homeland is Palestine, and this was one of many hopes and dreams expressed by Palestinian refugee children through a special photography and video exhibit presented Tuesday in the North Campus Library.

In celebration of Children's Rights Week, the event was sponsored by the Middle East/Near East Sub-Committee of the International Education Committee as part of Cal State Long Beach's Odyssey Project.

Open and free to the public, exhibit curator Peter Fryer displayed children's photographs using their own words when they lived at the Ein el Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon.

A special video produced by Palestinian filmmaker Mai Masri titled "The Children of Shatilla" was shown throughout the afternoon featuring children's stories about their lives at the refugee camp.

Freelance photo journalist Fryer taught a seven-day photography workshop in 1997 to 25 ten to 15-year-olds at a refugee camp in Lebanon.

Fryer works as a consultant for the "Save the Children" in England. The international children's charity works on creating a better world for children and is active in 70 countries.

To encourage the children's self expression, Fryer had the children go out and photograph their homes, friends, families, play, environment and their interviews with elders, he said.

"It's not about turning them into journalists or photographers, but to look at their lives, hopes and dreams, and to see what's happening there through their eyes" Fryer said.

These themes were also expressed in the children's diaries they wrote during the workshop, Fryer said, and which are used in the photo exhibit.

In conjunction with the photography workshop, a video workshop was held in 1998 at the Shatilla refugee camp through the support of the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts in Beirut.

The children worked with filmmaker Masri, who produced a video exploring the children's commentaries and talks about their lives and dreams, Fryer said.

CSULB interdisciplinary student and member of the sub-committee Elham Bayour helped organizing Tuesday's event. Having grown up and been raised in a similar refugee camp in Lebanon, she got tears in her eyes as she watched the video.

In recognition of Children's Rights Week, Bayour said this was a good time to remember and introduce the forgotten children to the rest of the world.

"People do not understand what it's like [living in a refugee camp]. They know of it sometimes, but they don't know what it's like and these pictures start showing what it is underneath the surface," Fryer said.

Other co-sponsors for the event were the Center for Humanities, Center for International Education, International Studies, Phi Beta Delta, Arab Students Association and the Associated Students Cultural Affairs Commission.