olympics © EPA/Kerim Okten


YOLANDE MABIKA, 28, BORN IN DRC, JUDO, 70 KG


Yolande Mabika has been forced to run twice in her 28 years. When she was very young, fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of


the Congo separated her from her parents. She


remembers little except running alone and being picked up by a helicopter, which took her to Kinshasa, the capital. Living in a home for displaced children, she discovered judo and it became her life. “I got separated from my family and used to cry a lot. I started with judo to have a better life,” she says.


But there was no happy ending. Despite the fact that she went on to represent the country at the 2013 World Judo Championships in Rio de Janeiro, she and fellow teammate Popole Misenga fled the hotel and applied for asylum. They said that team officials had treated them as badly there as they were at home, where they were locked up if they lost a match, and were sometimes denied food and water.


Now as a Brazilian refugee she trains at a judo school founded by Flávio Canto, a Brazilian Olympic bronze medalist. “I hope my story will be an example for everybody, and perhaps my family will see me and we will reunite.”


Yolande bowed out after a tough first match in her 70 kg weight class, but told BBC News, “I’m representing many nations and my victory is a victory for all refugees in the world. I lost, but I’m here. The fight did not end today. The fight is not only judo, the fight is life.”


HOW DID AN OLYMPIAN BECOME A REFUGEE?


Chronicling the tragic life of Samia Yusaf Omar


Samia Yusaf Omar was the young Somali sprinter who captured hearts


at the


2008 Beijing Olympics. With little formal training, and wearing a baggy T-shirt and leggings, she competed in the 200-metre event, but came in last. The cheering crowds could not have known at the time what Samia had endured to get there, including war, persecution and death threats. Four years later, determined to compete in the 2012 London Olympics, and in search of a better life, she embarked on


the “THIS IS AN


OPPORTUNITY THAT CAN


CHANGE MY LIFE.” © UNHCR/Kim Badawi dangerous journey


made by thousands of asylum seekers. On April 2, 2012, she drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, crossing from Libya.


The tragic story of how an Olympian became a refugee is the subject of a recently


published graphic narrative


by German illustrator Reinhard Kleist. An Olympic Dream focuses on Omar’s remarkable life, giving both a personal account and an indictment of the world’s treatment of refugees.


UNHCR / 11


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