In the
Metro, the free London daily, a reader criticised the anti-war demonstrators for
abusing his ‘right of passage’ as they were blocking Hyde Park and he
couldn’t make his way as easily as usual. In the same paper, the very same
day, another reader’s letter defended a possible war with Iraq because ‘it
would stop potentially dangerous asylum seekers from coming to England.’
Over the past year, another issue (is it really?) has raised the same
reactions - the closing of Sangatte.
Six months ago, for example, the Evening Standard described how young
mysterious men, aliens, were in Sangatte, ‘ready to invade our country’.
No description of the nationality or the purpose of these refugees were
given. They were just presented as gloomy dark faces, a kind of ‘phantom
menace’ that would soon attack the United Kingdom. The word
‘refugee’ was never used. According
to the Standard, they were already of questionable character (perhaps potential
terrorists) as they were not quietly and obediently waiting for the English and
French bureaucracy to attend their case. Indeed, for some curious reason they
refused to wait eight months for their case to be heard, and preferred instead
to put their life in danger, as stowing away on a boat or a train for England
quite often leads to a tragic end.
The
worst thing here is not only the misunderstanding or indifference towards the
refugees’ destiny; it is the perverse racism that surrounds the asylum
seeker’s cases. Racism is a strong word to use, but what is happening to these
refugees is a diffuse poison that doesn’t totally reveal its face when
politicians speak. The truth is
even more insidious. As Teresa
Hayter puts it in her book Open borders - the case against immigration
controls (Pluto Press, 2002), ‘refugees are increasingly lumped
together with “illegal immigrants” as people whose presence is not
welcomed’. This is because European governments have to justify their
reasons for closing frontiers to refugees. Certainly, the public often doesn’t
appreciate strangers who come to their country – there is a natural fear of
the unknown. Perversely this fear
is becoming more and more attractive to use as a tool. Terror feeds on
terror. One is reminded of Camus’ novel, The plague, written just
before WWII which developed a parallel between Nazism and viruses. The same
pathological disease seems to be linked to asylum seekers: even if pretending to
be just ‘genuine’ refugees (who ‘honestly escaped from oppression’),
they remain potentially ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. The film 28 Days Later developed
this idea well: a new virus is invading England – the one of fear- and once
you’ve been touched, you become a zombie.
How
strange it is that, for the entire year, the mainstream media has focused on two
major issues. Let’s take the example of a morning news programme, on C4 during
early December. First story: ‘Saddam Hussein’s terrible regime is getting
worse and worse in Iraq’. Second story: ‘The complicated situation of
closing the Sangatte Centre for refugees preoccupies the British Government’.
Ab-so-lute-ly no link is made by the radio between these two stories.
In this period of globalisation, they can’t seem to make a connection
between a country devastated by an economic embargo and a
forthcoming war on one hand, and, on the other, refugees trying to escape this
same country. Of course, these ‘people from Sangatte’ can be revealed
not to be ‘genuine refugees’ but ‘bogus asylum seekers’ and false
‘economic refugees’ (as if it were a crime to be escaping famine).
I
have myself been to Sangatte and Calais to interview refugees for a documentary
and have tried to understand what brought them there. Here is what appears to be
the case: first of all, the people in Calais (and previously Sangatte)
are mostly doctors, engineers, intellectuals or more generally the upper class
of their society. Mainly Iraqi
Kurds, but also often Afghans, they were the lucky ones to have the possibility
(with money and connections) to escape their country. Of course, some potential
refugees have been attracted by the idea of Eldorado Europe, but as Smain
Laacher had described it in his book Après Sangatte? (Ed la Dispute,Paris,
2001), based on years of enquiries in Sangatte: these people knew what they were
doing- they had to leave
their country. Many reasons pushed them to choose England as asylum, among
others the fact that the UK is still seen as a kind of metropolis; they know the
language and culture (because of the colonial past of the UK in these
countries), and for a long time it was easier to obtain refugee identity here,
without ID controls, as well as a job, then in most of the other European
countries. But what remains the main reason is that the money they received for
their trip in general comes from their family, friends or contacts in the UK,
who sent them the cash to make the journey. In exchange, as Laacher puts it
‘they have a kind of moral duty towards these generous brethren in the UK’.
When they arrive in the UK (if they ever do), they will have to work for years
for them to pay back the costs of their trip. This appears to be the case for
Kurdish, Iraqi and Afghan people. And with the possible war in Iraq, more and
more people will try to make their way and escape that devastated country.
Still, whenever their case is presented nowadays, there seems to be an eloquent
silence from politicians regarding their special situation. Indeed, Straw and
Sarkosy (the French Ministry of the Interior) tried to make us believe that
closing Sangatte has solved this problem. While they congratulate themselves, I
have seen more and more people in the streets of Calais, starving and simply
living in the streets, as they had no place to go – no centre or anything
anymore. Only some OGN are now aiding the refugees that the State hypocritically
pretends isn’t its responsibility anymore.
There
is a real scandal here. The NATO countries have the main responsibility in this
situation; even if they claim that Saddam is the only one tyrannising these
people. The European and American governments have their share of guilt from the
weapons they sold to Saddam to the embargo they devised in order to control the
Iraqi oil. Nevertheless, it is now much easier, in this climate of terror, to
potentially link asylum seekers to ‘terrorist
evil doers’, instead of recognising their responsibility towards these people.
Furthermore, there is a terrible lie here: the pretence that these
refugees are connected with the very people they are trying to escape!
While in
Calais, seeing the fatalistic expression on these young disillusioned refugees, I
wondered what they thought about being considered potential terrorists or
‘Islamic fanatics’ - as they
were actually escaping these very things. How
terrible it would be to be taken for your own enemy. But somehow it struck me
that they didn’t really care after all the nightmares they’d been through.
All they wanted at this point was, as they said, ‘a place to be free; to just
have a normal life’.
History
often is strangely and tragically repeated. Nowadays, refugees from these
countries are seen as potentially dangerous because they are Muslims, as if this
religion was in itself poisoned by a fatal fanaticism that would lead them to
terrorism. In the 30’s, Jews from Russia were considered as potentially
dangerous, as if the fact that they came from that county meant they were
somehow infected by communism. The situation was different, but the general indifference of
people towards the Jews sounds too similar to today’s indifference towards
refugees. ‘We couldn’t know’ was the main excuse given by horrified people
discovering the concentration camps in 1945. No comparison with this is
possible, but isn’t it known now that the Kurdish have been victims of
discrimination and genocide before Saddam, during the first gulf war and after
it? That Turkey, the supposed base for the possible NATO armies and airplanes,
is a country that oppressed the Kurdish people, and is still oppressing them?
Who could believe that this war would be for the good of the civilian people,
Kurdish or Iraqis?
Paradoxically,
one country has to be remembered for their welcome to Jewish people during World
War II: America. It is in
America that a Jewish Diaspora has been built, thinking about the future of its
country (even if not always listened in the creation of the Israeli State).
Sadly enough, this wasn’t the case in Europe, and more precisely in
France, where an intellectual such as Walter Benjamin was brought to commit
suicide for not being able to escape to America. Ignoring diasporas is a
hypocritical fact, but it is easier for governments not to recognize their
responsibility in helping these diasporas. If England really wants the Iraqi and
Kurdish people to be free, the first step would be to give them the possibility
to recreate their devastated land in England. This, in spite of the new will to
close England’s borders, is what a Kurdish Diaspora in London is trying to do
now.
I offer the
last words of John Lennon’s Imagine in conclusion:
‘Imagine
there’s no country.
I
wonder if you can.
No
other land to die for
A
brotherhood of men
Imagine
all the people
Living
life in peace
You
may say I’m a dreamer
But
I’m not the only one.
I
hope some day you’ll join us
And
the world will be as one’