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Top Google Search Terms From Syria Show Just How Desperate Refugees Are

Top Google Search Terms In Syria Show Just How Desperate People Are
Kathryn Snowdon
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Syrians are scouring the internet for the nearest hospitals and routes out of the war-torn country, the top Google search terms reveal.

In the past two weeks, the most searched terms show that people are looking for medical attention and are even trying to treat horrific injuries, such as burns, themselves.

Al Jazeera's video (above) also reveals that the most popular search topics are all related to finding ways to Europe - with particular emphasis on Germany.

News that refugees are making their way to Germany will come as no surprise after chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany would not turn away any Syrian asylum seekers.

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The European country is expected to take in 800,000 refugees this year. The top two searches coming out of Syria are "immigration to Germany" and "asylum in Germany".

Routes to Germany are also some of the most searched terms.

Violent scenes at the Hungarian border have dominated the news this month after the government gave permission to the army to use rubber bullets and tear gas at the Croatian border as barbed wire fences were erected.

This will undoubtedly have led many in Syria to search on Google such terms as "Hungary Syrian refugees" and "news of Hungary".

Article continues below slideshow:

5 reasons migrants are desperate to leave Hungary
It's treating them "inhumanely"(01 of05)
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A father of a migrants family is arrested by local police near the village of Roszke on the Hungarian-Serbian border

Hungary has built a 4-meter high, 110-mile long razor-wire barrier along its border with Serbia, one of the key points of entry to Europe, in a bid to deter and keep out desperate migrants.

Police there have been accused of treating refugees inhumanely, launching tear gas at them, refusing to administer aid to fainting parents who have trecked for 12 hours or more with their children and detaining those entering the country in cramped, uncomfortable conditions.

“This is just unacceptable. You have people collapsing at the door of Europe without receiving any help. It’s a desperate situation,” Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the UNHCR, told The Telegraph at the Hungarian border crossing. (credit:Getty Images)
Citizens are hostile towards refugees(02 of05)
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A state-funded poster that reads: "If you come to Hungary, you cannot take the jobs of Hungarians!"

While as little as 3% of Hungarians considered immigration a 'key issue' in a survey commissioned at the end of 2014 – a year when Hungary received over 40,000 asylum applications – the Republikon Institute just this week found that 66% of the country's population believe that “the refugees pose a danger to Hungary and therefore they shouldn’t be allowed” into the country.

A mere 19% agreed that “it is the duty of Hungary to accept migrants”. (credit:AFP Photo/Attila Kisbenedek)
And the politicians aren't much better either(03 of05)
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Pictured: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

“Would we like our children to grow up in a United European Caliphate?” Antal Rogan, parliament caucus leader for the ruling Fidesz party, is on record asking Hungarian press this week. “My answer to that is no.”

His is just one of many voices in Hungary's governing political party to employ vehment anti-refugee rhetoric. Viktor Orbán, the country's prime minister, recently launched a powerful anti-immigration manifesto which equated desperate migrants with terrorists, said that immigrants were taking the jobs of native citizens and recommends putting them in so-called 'internment work camps' to extract forced labour.

“This refugee crisis very much plays into the xenophobic politics of the governing Fidesz party, and the even more xenophobic politics of its right-wing challenger, the Jobbik party,” Mitchell Orenstein, a professor of Central and Eastern European Politics at the University of Pennsylvania told Al Jazeera. (credit:KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images)
One far-right group is yapping at their heels(04 of05)
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Protesters demonstrate outside Holborn Tube station in central London, where Gabor Vona, leader of Hungary's far-right Jobbik party, had planned to speak at a rally.

By the end of 2014 governing Fidesz lost almost one-third of its voters, handing the reigns of official opposition to far-right party Jobbik. They achieved 20% of the popular vote in that year's parliamentary election and would reach up to 28% if another ballot were called tomorrow, according to opinion polls. (credit:JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images)
Other European countries are much more welcoming(05 of05)
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Volunteers distribute food to migrants coming from Budapest at the main station in Munich

In light of the anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric employed by some Hungarian politicians, many would rather head to places like Germany, where the Chancellor there, Angela Merkel, has been far more forthcoming in her welcoming of those fleeing destitution.

Though eggs were thrown by anti-refugee demonstrators when she visited a shelter attacked by far-right protesters in eastern Germany, Merkel stood in front of people holding placards calling her the "people's traitor".

“There can be no tolerance of those who question the dignity of other people,” she said on 26 August. “There is no tolerance of those who are not ready to help, where, for legal and humanitarian reasons, help is due.” (credit:Matthias Schrader/AP)

Humanitarian charities say they are not surprised that people are looking for health centres, as well as ways out of the war-stricken state.

Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, Ben Webster, head of emergencies at British Red Cross, said: "People are just living day-to-day, so obviously in a conflict situation they are going to be desperate, just trying to access health care and things while there is fighting going on around them.

"They are probably unable to access the health facilities so they are going to take matters into their own hands.

"You can completely understand why people want to leave that situation."

He added: "You look at the Syrian crisis, it's one of the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world - of this generation - so of course [our] resources are stretched, especially after four and a half years, but we do what we can."

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