An Afghan refugee faced online harassment after tweeting out a photo showing his meager food rations at Fort Bliss in El Paso.
Hamed Ahmadi, 28, a Fulbright semi-finalist, tweeted the photo showing some anemic chicken slices and fruit to highlight the unglamorous life he now faced as a refugee.
“The point of that tweet was not … to be complaining, to be very critical,” Mr. Ahmadi told The Independent. “I was just describing a situation of Afghan refugees that are in the situation that they never really wanted to be in.”
Unfortunately, Twitter isn’t the place for nuance and he found himself quickly inundated by trolls telling him to “go back to Afghanistan.”
“If I had more space [on Twitter], I would have added more explanation – because I wanted to say that this is the refugee life. And we need to be patient,” Ahmadi said.
“Not complaining but this is what I got last night for dinner and the next meal is 12 hours later,” Ahmadi tweeted.
The refugee enjoyed a good life in the Afghan capital Kabul, though his family has suffered tragedy. His brother was killed two months ago fighting the Taliban and his sister died of coronavirus. Another sister still lives in Afghanistan but is now in hiding as a result of her prior service in the Afghan police force.