Feature: Runners race from Greece to Belgium sending message of solidarity with refugees

In the footsteps of thousands of refugees, 15 runners from Belgium set out in early April on a different relay race of 3,000 km on the Balkan Route.

Bearing a message of solidarity and aiming to raise awareness of the rights of immigrant populations, the citizens' association "Humans Welcome" started its journey on April 5 from the Greek island of Lesvos, where they visited Kara Tepe camp, met with the Greek authorities and NGOs and raced from the camp to the island's main port.

Their next stop was Athens, where, under the auspices of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, the runners symbolically raced inside the Panathenaic Stadium.

Engineer Valter Iurlaro, the founder of the initiative, came up with the idea a year ago, when Hungary decided to close its borders for thousands of refugees who had fled war zones.

"As a European citizen, closing the borders of Europe didn't make sense to me. Especially since this resulted in closing the Balkan Route and thus increasing deaths in the Mediterranean Sea," Iurlaro told Xinhua, at Elefsina, 20 km west of Athens, where the continental relay started from.

"So the idea was to bring down these borders in a symbolic way and that's how this humanitarian project was born," he added.

Iurlaro's idea, spread across the internet, was immediately welcomed among communities of runners. "The same thing that was in my mind, was also in the other people's minds. We thought the same thing, although we didn't know each other," Iurlaro said.

Leaving behind the comfort of their homes for the two weeks of Easter holidays, 15 determined runners of different nationalities, supported by a team of doctors, drivers and a crew of filmmakers who will tell the tale in a documentary, signed up for this mission, all inspired by the same idea.

"We do not want to declare war on anyone, we simply want to say 'Humans Welcome': we are all identical human beings," Iurlaro explained.

"We are people of all ages, coming from all sorts of backgrounds, and what brings us together is that we all think we can do a little something so that people view these human beings who came from far away not only as numbers or fluxes, but as the human beings that they are,"Sandra Ungemach, who was the first runner to start the relay from Elefsina, told Xinhua.

For Ungemach, who lives in Toulouse, France and loves running in the Pyrenees Mountains, the athletic challenge was naturally the first - but not the only thing that caught her attention.

"I met with extraordinary people, and an extraordinary cause. Personally I didn't know much about the refugee crisis. Like everybody I was listening to the news, I heard that there were people dying, but I didn't know what to do about it. They gave me the idea to do this and I find it amazing," Ungemach stressed.

"Humans Welcome" project serves a double purpose: alert the peoples of Europe not only to the refugee crisis, but also to the suffering Greek people.

"The second stage of our move has to do with Greek people, the forsaken people of Europe, which is something we don't understand either," said Iurlaro, who has organized several events and film-screenings back in Belgium in order to contribute to a more profound understanding of the Greek crisis.

Crossing eight countries, each runner will take turns in racing an average of 15 km per day accompanied by a cyclist and each followed by one of the three caravan vehicles that carry all the mission's equipment. The convoy was expected to cross the Greek-Macedonian border on April 8.

All along their race, "Humans Welcome" collect postcards from people who wish to send their message to the European Parliament where the mission is expected to arrive on April 16.

There, in the administrative heart of the EU, the initiative plans to build a paper bridge made of the postcards and install an inflatable boat full of life vests collected from Lesvos in a symbolic gesture.

"Humans Welcome" have also launched an open call for people, who live near Brussels and wish to support their cause, to accompany the runners for the last kilometers of their race, aspiring to a more powerful finale at the Belgian capital. Endit