Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service, where we report the world, however difficult the issue, however hard to reach podcasts from the BBC World Service are supported by advertising.

Thanks for making time for assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm a journalist and I really care about uncovering wrongdoing. But the truth is, I've never really had to risk everything in order to expose corruption or harm.

If push came to shove, would I still pursue a story if it meant me and my husband and my children had to leave our whole lives behind and become refugees? The truth is, I don't know, which is why I was so interested in the story of an Afghan journalist I met in Greece. OK, now is rolling. I want to talk to my wife about her feeling, this is Syeed Reza Adeeb. He and his wife, Fatma Moussavi, are Afghan refugees.

They arrived in Greece two years ago, and today he's recording her as they prepare to leave the country.

Hello, my love. Hi, my darling. Fatima, what is your feeling now? Yes, Austrailan.

I am nervous and happy because I will live in Greece. I want to go to Finland. Finland is a very good country for my children, for our future, for everything.

Fatima, do you like that? Me as your husband. I am a journalist. Do like journalist or not.

This question is very complicated. It complicated. I like journalism and I do not like journalism because journalism, the job is very dangerous. I mean, to me this is the case with.

It may sound odd to hear Reza ask Fatmir opinion of journalists, but it's Riza's investigative journalism that shaped their lives. It's the reason they had to run from Afghanistan, then from Iran and later from Turkey. I'm Chloe Hajja Matthew. Last year I met Reza while he was living in a squalid migrant camp in Greece. I was struck by the survival instinct of this dedicated reporter, his determination against the odds to continue to ply his trade. So for assignment, this is a story.

Syed Reza Radebe is one of five siblings. He was born in 1982 after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan natively.

I am from Cherkin in name of District 13 km far from Mazar e Sharif. During that time, my district was armed by Mujahideen. So we had a very bad fighting in that area. And because of that, my parents were first to be immigrated to Iran.

Reza wasn't yet a year old when his parents were driven into exile in neighboring Iran. The family pretty much left hand-to-mouth on what his father could make working at a stone cutting factory.

My parents, unfortunately, they were not educated both. They were not educated. I mean, even the alphabet, they didn't know. What does the alphabet means all the time. I remember the first day that my father bring me to school and how emotional they were and how excited I was that Reza thrived at school.

But he also had to bring in money for the family.

I was working from that time when I was eight or nine years old. I was selling something like socks, I mean t shirt and everything. I was selling to the pupils by my hand.

Although Reza did well academically, there was another roadblock ahead. I couldn't go to university because at that time the refugees were not allowed to go to Iranian university. You know, this situation is so tough in Iran. It still is tough.

There's a lot of discrimination against Afghan migrants in Iran.

So Reza worked as a tailor during the day and studied English in the evenings. And at those classes, his teachers encouraged him to think about becoming a journalist. At 22, he made up his mind to leave Iran. He wanted to go somewhere where he might have opportunities.

The homeland of his parents for Afghanistan was much, much better than Iran. I feel that I am free. I can do something for myself. So any way I could be a good journalist.

Reza got journalistic training through one of the many international NGOs in Kabul, and he flourished. Before long, he had risen to become an editor at a TV station he married and had two boys. Managing a team was fine, but Reza still wanted to do his own journalism. I decide to make a documentary about a company for one year, I was searching about that company and finding evidence returning to Kabul from a research trip about this business.

I got a call from a journalist friend.

He said, you know, here's the deal and the business in Afghanistan, how it is they are the people who have money. Who are you? You are No. One. For them, you are really No. One river if you want to play with your life, I mean, sometimes you should be careful about yourself.

So they were too powerful for you to publish the story. So powerful.

So I decided to send my family back to Iran because I thought maybe if I want to do something, they should be safe.

Reza helped his family settle just across the border in Mashhad, in Iran, and visited them often while he continued working in Kabul.

But then in 2015, he began investigating something even more potentially explosive in Afghanistan, the documentary that I wanted to make was about the children's and sexual abuse and how army peoples, how forces, how police officers are abusing children. There was a commander in one province in Afghanistan who was a general in Afghanistan. He had the power to go to the schools, some teenager, they knew that there is a commander who is so kind who is giving money to to the to the students.

This way he was he was finding young boys and he was sexually abusing them.

He was giving them money. And they make them addicted to some narcotic drugs. And they are with them for a long time, maybe for five years, maybe for 10 years. Reza interviewed one of the general commanders victims, then he got a call from the alleged abuser.

He said to me that he wanted to talk to me. I went to meet him and he told me that forget those children. It is a political game against me. And these are addicted people. They are talking against me.

After meeting the general commander. A colleague phoned Reza.

He said to me, Reza, the person that we were interviewing is arrested by General and generally understood that you had his interview and he's searching for you. There was no time to lose, Reza left Afghanistan immediately and joined his family in Iran, there he rested, relieved to have escaped with his life, but it wasn't long before he was in trouble again, this time with the Iranian authorities in Iran.

I understood another issue, that there is a sexual abusing for those who are fighting in Syria to support Bashar al-Assad.

During my investigation, I could find some real a real document that was proved that there is a sexual abuse inside those forces.

Rozema, an Iranian soldier who'd been sent home because he was injured in the war in Syria, he agreed to be interviewed. And with his TV production hat on, Reza decided this would work best if they recorded at a mosque.

There are three persons who came and that person that who was going to have interview with me, he's pointing me to them. And then suddenly the color of their faces changed. And one of them came to me and asked me to talk to him out of the mosque.

This was a plain clothes officer. He was polite but insistent, saying this to Reza.

You have to check all equipment that you have. And they got my laptop, they got my camera and they got my passport. And they said to me, OK, give me your phone numbers. We will call you back. And I know that. What kind of document do I have in my computer and my hard drive? I called my family and I asked them in two minute Beretti, we want to go to Tehran because it's an emergency, or did you explain to your wife what was going on?

Or you just said, get ready, we need to go. And no, only I said to them, get ready. That same day, Reza and his family left Mashhad by train to Tehran, 900 kilometers away on the journey, he told Fatma why they had to leave so fast. But he also needed help. It was too dangerous to stay in Iran.

I had around 11 hours to manage and find a smuggler. And when you are with the refugees, one of the things that all the time, you know, is when the smuggler, Reza, found the man who was willing to take his family into Turkey.

It was around 7:00 when we started walking to go to the border. I saw many people are joining us. We more than 200 people. There is a two river, one a small river belong to Iran and the other one belongs to the talk we passed the first one by the two, I mean the core to that short journey across the water floating in the inner tube of a tire was terrifying and the next river was worse. The second one, they had to go through the river by ourself.

I take my wife's hand here and my and other son here and I put my little son on my shoulder. But the pressure of the water was a little heavy and. We have a war when you feel that it is your last time of your life, you should say that. Look at the evidence that the God is one the man, the prophet is the last prophet or something, then you are ready to die.

And I say them, but they made it.

Suddenly we saw the Turkish police came and they start shooting.

Reza and his family fell to the ground to take cover.

He slipped on the land for about one hour. The weather was so cold. Then after one hour, the smuggler called me and he said, OK, continue your way.

Again, we saw someone is shooting. We couldn't understand, is it the Turkish police shooting was the thing around the police is shooting? Again, we followed it down and we were on the land. I looked to my two kids and I saw that they are shaking because they were the called. We were around one or two hours, they were asleep and then a smuggler called. OK, now you can continue to go away again. We start walking.

My little sons told me that, dad, I'm so tired, I cannot walk anymore, and he was on that plane for years old. I hug him. I was saying to him, please, come on, hit me, your big man, you can walk.

Again, he was crying, Dad, I cannot walk down, I'm tired any time that I remembered that memory to suffering me, it is bothering me because they are children, they have no option. They should follow me.

I'm not a good father. It was March 2016 when the family arrived in Turkey, the journey from Iran had been so harrowing, Reza and Fatma decided to stay and rest before thinking about their next move. They registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Again, I thought that maybe it is a fall short time if I stay there because I was a tailor.

So you went back to your old profession? Yes, I wanted to do something, but can you be a journalist here or they will do something with you if they know. So I came back to my tailoring.

Your wife must have been so happy that you'd left journalism at this point because journalism had caused so many problems for your family.

Yes, she was so happy. She was saying to me, Reza, thank God that was the day she was so happy. And when she was praying, I was asking her that. Fatima, what you're asking from God, she was saying that I'm asking the God to keep you as a tailor. I don't want you to be a journalist.

They gave poor woman. That lightheartedness was short lived, Turkish officials got wind of Reza and this is what they told him about the sensitive computer files that they somehow knew he had.

We know that you have a document above the Syrian war and we are asking those documents from you.

So you had lots and lots of documents about Iran's involvement in the Syrian war. And that's what the Turkish officials wanted.

Exactly. Exactly. And they didn't have a bad behavior. They were talking so diplomatically, but they understood that something wrong will happen to me because they are not joking about Syria. And again, my poor and miserable wife was really when I was there, they asked me whatever she said. They said to her, I think we have another journey and we have to live here.

Reza contacted a smuggler and from southern Turkey, the most logical route out was across the sea to the Greek island of Lesbos.

We were waiting in the park for about two hours. We saw there was a van. I thought, OK, that's good, it's over. It was my family and my friends, family, we were 10 person, we thought that, OK, 10 percent is good for the world. But when we came inside, the smuggler had a gun and he was pushing us to see it more closely. Again, another family joined us. We became 15.

Another family joined us. We became 20. I said to him, Man, we cannot breathe. What are you doing? And my wife saved me. And she told me that I don't make yourself in trouble when I count the people. We were thirty four people in one, a small one for eight hours.

Another 30 people joined them on the beach. So now they were more than 60 people waiting for the makeshift vessel to be ready for me and my wife. We were sitting in the beach. We were saying the last word to each other. I said to her, please forgive me. If anything happened, please forgive me, please take my two kids. She said to me, don't worry, there is a good future. I can see the light.

Smugglers say the first children, second woman should go inside and they gave them to the guard said. Please keep them safe. I have no one else. They were sitting in the middle of their boat and the man they were sitting around the pool when the border start moving. Everyone was praying. And the sea got rough, you know, they are the fake is a tube and the life jacket, there were not a real life jacket. I was closing my eyes and, you know, because the way the boat was moving and become imbalance with each move, the woman's and the children were screaming.

As much as I was trying to see and to find where my two kids and my wife is, I couldn't see them because it was so dark, a large ship approached a high speed.

All the people were shouting to the captain, go, go fast, go fast. It is a Turkish boat will be deported back to the dock because the end of the story. But the small boy there, because he knew the Turkish language and you say that, no, don't worry, it is not a Turkish border. It is the Greek war. And that time I became relaxed and I was the last person who was picked up by the Greek vote.

It was the 6th of April, 2018, when Reza and his family arrived exhausted on the beach. We saw some people who were waiting for us.

They provided us the hot tea coffee date and the chocolate shoes clothes I never forget.

There was an old woman who said to me, don't worry, we'll calm. You are now safe. You will see the new face of life.

After sleeping, the newly arrived migrants were taken by bus to the quarantine camp.

We saw the sun, the island. Really, really. It was an amazing time in. Once you see the blue sea, the green jungles, it gives you the fantastic view.

Me and my wife, we were talking to get a look at this amazing picture.

Then we arrived in a gay. I didn't know who, but someone wrote in the gay. Welcome to hell.

This was a desperately rude awakening after that memorable bus journey across the island, suddenly the people are screaming and people are shouting.

And I saw a man using the electricity pylon. He's trying to kill himself. I was shocked and really I lost myself and I lose myself. I didn't know what to do. What is going on here? The man you say to the police that if you promise me to help me, I will come down. If you don't, I will kill myself.

Welcome to hell. Indeed, the quarantine camp had the capacity for 100 people, but there were 500 there in 2018.

We were there for 45 days for 500 people. It was three toilets to shower, nothing else.

And then Reza Fatma and the children moved to the main refugee camp on Lesbos Moria.

I saw a lots of issues. I saw lots of suicide. And I was in the middle of the war between Taliban and police. I was inside the Cavs got me as an experienced unionist, believe me, believe me. Believe me. It is difficult to explain to you how Morio it is.

But I can guarantee you no one in the world can live in Montreal for one hour.

Only the people who has to live there, they have no option.

With Javad Mousavi, a fellow journalist from Afghanistan, Reza began to document life in Moria.

They're film Children of Moriya was a finalist in the mobile film fest in France, The haunting images, a sea of tents, the drugs, alcohol and men watching adult movies focused on the dangers thousands of kids faced each day in the camp. Graphics informed the audience that a quarter of the children living there had thought about taking their own lives.

Perez's wife, Fatmata, those months in Moria have stayed with her. There are a lot of memory, bad memory here across the south Jordan Icona, she said.

One day my little son was playing with another of his friends and his friend pulled a knife on his neck and he said he threatened him, that if you don't give me your things that you're playing with to me, I will kill you. She said that I went to his mom and I said, you don't care about your kids. And she said, no, don't problem.

They are playing are playing camp life brutalises. In 2018, more than 10000 people lived in Moria. By the time it burned down in September this year, there were more than 20000. Back then, Reza Fatma and their children were lucky to move out to a smaller family camp Caracappa. From there, they were assigned to Mala Mallacoota, a camp on the Greek mainland, which is where he was living when I met him last year.

It's also where BBC Television's Panorama program found Reza. My name is Reza.

I'm an Afghan journalist and one of thousands of refugees locked down in Europe's migrant camps.

For Panorama, Reza investigated the impact of coronavirus in the unsanitary, overcrowded refugee camps of Greece.

Look, there's no social distance here. What can they do? What can they do? Nothing. Reza welcomed the opportunity to use his skills to show how punishing life can be for migrants. He has few regrets about the choices he made to follow his journalistic nose to pursue the stories he believes are important, especially in Afghanistan and Iran.

But he's very aware of the impact of his journalism on his family, his children have spent some of their formative years in refugee camps in Europe.

This is not a normal when you see your children are stuck in the container and there's no place for them to be educated and they are losing the time and their energy and their life because of you. Because you were there, Father. Do you think that someday when they're a bit older, they'll be proud of their father and their journalism that he did and that they'll understand why you did what you did and why they had to go through so many journeys to get to where they ended up?

Maybe, I don't know, because it's still I am refugee. Still, I am not in the situation that I can say to myself, look, now you have your house, you have your family, you have your you can make a plan for yourself. Now, I'm not in that position, but it depends in future, if they can be like other people's, maybe they say to me that well done. My father did a great job for me and thank you that we are here now.

In July, Reza sent us this bit of audio from the airport in Athens. Yeah, we are on the airplane. We have one stop in Frankfurt, in Germany then. And the next flight will be to Helsinki. Reza hopes they'll find a permanent home in Finland where Fatma sister lives. As soon as possible, I want to learn the language and I want to be a part of that society, I want to use the experience that they have and many people are looking to me to be their voices.

I mean, I'm so happy that I am a journalist and I can do something for them. The only thing that I need is protection. And to be in a safe country as a journalist and then I can find my way and I can be integrated. I can be a good citizen for Europe. I'm so excited about that. And I'm so happy. So happy. Thanks for staying with assignment, the producer was Linda Presley, it was mixed by Neil Churchill, the production coordinator was Gemma Ashman and the editor is Brugioni.

Please do pass this podcast onto your friends if you thought it was worthwhile. Listen.