I am a freelance photo and videojournalist based in Donostia-San Sebastian (Basque Country). I´m a stringer of Anadolu Agency and RT in Basque Country and Spain. I have published in numerous national and international media, like The Guardian, NBC, El Pais, Telesur, Vice and others... I have covered news as the refugee crisis en Lesvos and Chios Grecee islands, the conflict in Ukraine like a videoJournalist for Telesur, the crisis of Syrian refugees in Jordan for the MSNBC, the protests of the crisis in Madrid and elections in Catalonia or basque journals or the Western Sahara refugee conflict in Algeria.
Lesbos is an island 8 kilometers from the Turkish coast, and during 2015, the main gateway for thousands of refugees arrived in small and rickety boats, risking their lives to escape the conflict in their countries. Syrians, Kurds, Afghans and Iraqis, for the most part, pay about 1,000 euros per ticket, although this is not a fixed amount, and may vary: if the sea is rough or night, the risk is higher, but it the price drops. Although there is no official figure because nobody counted arrivals is estimated that between 3000 and 4000 people arrived daily.
What few months ago was a quiet, with a strong tourist industry and region has become a war zone. The plight of civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk, with little international assistance, as well as other smaller towns, under constant fire from artillery Ukraine, made worse by the harsh winter conditions. Despite having declared a truce to facilitate the talks in Minsk, at times it seems that the only parts have stopped waiting for it to pass the winter. The bombings and shootings are still common, and civilians continue to suffer the consequences. Some of them spent months living in bomb shelters during the Soviet era, as their homes have been destroyed by bombing.
After the fall of Mosul in the hands of the troops of the Islamic State (ISIS), thousands of Iraqi Christians took refuge in Qaraqosh, known as the Vatican of the East, where up to a few months, Christians, Sunni and Shia had lived in peace as neighbors, without discriminating the different by the religious fact.