Bana Alabed asks Trump to help Syrian children: ‘If you can, I will be your best friend’
Bana Alabed, the 7-year-old girl whose tweets about life in Aleppo touched hearts around the world, penned an open letter to President Trump beseeching him to do something to help children still suffering in Syria.
“I know you will be the President of America so can you please save the children and people of Syria? You must do something for the children of Syria because they are like your children and deserve peace like you,” she wrote. “If you promise you will do something for the children of Syria I am already your friend.”
The complete handwritten letter, which was written shortly before Trump’s inauguration, opens with Bana introducing herself as a girl who fled eastern Aleppo in December and is now finally enjoying peace in Turkey. She said that her Syrian school has been bombed and that several of her friends had died.
“I am very sad about them and wish they were with me because we would play together by (sic) right now. I could not play in Aleppo. It was a city of death,” Bana wrote.
Although she now lives in peace and attends a new school, she continued, millions of Syrian children are still suffering throughout Syria and need help.
Bana uploaded a picture of the full letter to Twitter on Wednesday, with a caption directed at Trump: “I beg you, can you do something for the children of Syria? If you can, I will be your best friend. Thank you.”
Bana’s mother, Fatemah Alabed, helped her launch and manage the Twitter account while they were still stranded in rebel-controlled eastern Aleppo. They gained hundreds of thousands of followers (362,000 as of Wednesday afternoon) while documenting the horrors of daily life in Syria.
Followers would see Bana’s routine as a regular 7-year-old — playing with her siblings, reading “Harry Potter” novels, etc. — repeatedly disrupted by bombardments and chaos of Syria’s civil war. For many, Bana became an international symbol for the toll that modern warfare takes on children, and her tweets were likened to Anne Frank’s diary entries while she was hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Trump has spoken out against the United States relocating more refugees in the United States. He is expected to sign executive orders Wednesday imposing a temporary ban on most refugees, as well as a suspension of visas for people from Syria and several other countries in the Middle East and Africa.
In a follow-up tweet, Bana told Trump “banning refugees is very bad.”
To @realdonaldtrump: Dear Trump, banning refugees is very bad. Ok, if it's good, I have an idea for you. Make other countries peaceful.
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) January 25, 2017
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