Saturday 31 May 2014

Hanif Kureishi: Europe degrading the immigrant




It is impossible to speak up for the immigrant or, more importantly, hear him speak for himself, since everyone, including the most reasonable and sensitive, has made up their mind that the immigrant is everywhere now, and he is too much of a problem. There is, of course, always good reason to be suspicious of agreement: there is nothing more coercive and stupid than consensus, and it is through consensus that inequality is concealed.

Nevertheless, the immigrant is easily dismissed and denigrated since he is now no longer a person. [...] The migrant has no face, no status, no protection and no story. His single identity is to be discussed within the limited rules of the community.

[...] [T]he migrant is degraded to the status of an object about whom anything can be said and to whom anything can be done.

[...]

Today it will be him, and tomorrow someone else: the circulation of bodies is determined by profit. The rich buy freedom; they can always go where they like while the poor are not welcome anywhere.

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Tuesday 27 May 2014

Refugee blues, by W. H. Auden



                            Say this city has ten million souls,
                            Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
                            Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

                            Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
                            Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
                            We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
 
                            In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
                            Every spring it blossoms anew;
                            Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

                            The consul banged the table and said:
                            'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead';
                            But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

                            Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
                            Asked me politely to return next year:
                            But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

                            Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
                            'If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread';
                            He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

                            Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
                            It was Hitler over Europe, saying: 'They must die';
                            We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

                            Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin, 
                            Saw a door opened and a cat let in: 
                            But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

                            Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
                            Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
                            Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

                            Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
                            They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
                            They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

                            Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
                            A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
                            Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

                            Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
                            Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
                            Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.



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Sunday 25 May 2014

A watery graveyard for migrants and refugees


The date: October 2013. The place: off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. The death toll: 364 people.
The date: January 2014. The place: off the coast of the Greek island of Farmakonisi. The death toll: 11 people, including eight children.

The date: just last Monday (5 May 2014). The place: off the coast of the island of Samos, near the Turkish coast. The death toll: at least 22 people.

The date: today. The place: off the coast of Lampedusa. The death toll: currently unknown.

This tragic list goes on and on. According to the UNHCR, at least 2,600 people have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2011. In the Aegean sea alone, just between August 2012 and March 2014, 188 people drowned or went missing.

These are horrifying statistics. And every single number represents a person. A person with their own reasons for risking their life to reach Europe, a person with their own story of difficulties and abuses encountered along their journey. For those who do survive, their stories of ill-treatment often continue.

Last year, my colleague Naomi visited Greece and met refugees and migrants who had survived the perilous journey to Europe by sea. I warn you that their stories make powerful reading.

More recently, colleagues interviewed some of the survivors of the January 2014 Farmakonisi shipwreck. Two Afghan refugees described how they had been among 27 people – Afghans and Syrians – who had set sail from Turkey for Greece at night. They were forced to stop around midnight, when their motor failed.

They were only about 100 metres from the island shore and were found by Greek coastguards. The coastguards used rope to attach the boat to their own vessel, and began towing them at great speed back towards Turkey. As the boat zigzagged, it took on water. Some of the migrants who were in the water tried to climb aboard the coastguards boat but were beaten back. My colleagues heard that those refugees who did manage to get aboard were beaten and held at gunpoint.

These are not isolated incidents. Time and again, people are being pushed-back the way they came, and left adrift in the open sea. Many are denied the chance to explain their circumstances, or to try to claim asylum. Some even drown while countries argue about who is responsible for rescuing them.

People have different reasons for coming to Europe. Some are fleeing persecution and conflict in their own countries, and are seeking sanctuary, to be recognised as refugees. Others are migrants, leaving behind poverty to seek a better future for themselves and their families. Whatever their route or reason for coming, their lives and human rights should be protected. But increasingly restrictive policies, aimed at preventing people from entering Europe at all costs, have forced people to take more and more dangerous routes. The human cost of Europe’s asylum and migration policy and practice is too high. We must do better.

Right now, EU member states are developing guidelines which will shape the future of EU asylum and migration strategy for the next five years.  These guidelines will be adopted at the European Council meeting on 26-27 June – which David Cameron will attend. Please call on your MP to write to the Prime Minister, urging him to ensure that protection of people is put at the forefront of this policy.

Without concrete action, tragically, the death toll off Europe’s shores will continue to rise. Will you allow this to happen in your name?



Amnesty International is deeply concerned by the latest tragedy and loss of migrants’ and refugees’ lives off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy. The Mediterranean has once again claimed the lives of those seeking safety and refuge in Europe, with many fatalities reported and hundreds still missing. The European Union (EU) and its member states must urgently act to protect the rights and lives of all migrants and refugees.
 
In the last two days (Sunday 11 and Monday 12 May), more than 50 people have lost their lives in the two consecutive shipwrecks between Italy and Libya, with hundreds still missing. Last October’s shipwrecks off the coast of Lampedusa cost over 400 lives and triggered many statements of sadness and solidarity up to the highest level in the EU.

But to date, EU leaders have consistently and collectively failed to take concrete action to prevent further deaths along Europe’s borders. Shipwrecks and drownings have continued in the Mediterranean and in the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece. At least 188 people drowned or went missing between August 2012 and March 2014 in the Aegean, and 22 people lost their lives on 5 May 2014 while trying to reach the Greek island of Samos from Turkey.

This increasing death toll highlights the ineffectiveness of the EU’s current migration and asylum policies and practices, which focus on preventing people from reaching Europe at any human cost. The increasingly restrictive policies and practices have only forced desperate people to take more hazardous routes. With virtually no safe and legal routes to Europe, people are increasingly pushed into the hands of smugglers and traffickers, and are forced to risk their lives on unseaworthy vessels.

But there are alternatives.

A shift in EU asylum and migration policies is urgently required to save lives. The next month - as member states’ representatives gather at the 5 and 6 June Justice and Home Affairs Council and the 26 and 27 June European Summit - will be a key opportunity to redefine Europe’s approach to migration and asylum policy, before further lives are lost.

Amnesty International is calling on EU leaders to ensure people are put at the heart of migration and asylum policies and practices by ensuring more search and rescue, safe and legal routes to Europe, and ending the outsourcing of migration control to non-EU countries with deplorable human rights records.

Increased Search and Rescue

Following the October 2013 Lampedusa tragedies, Italy has been carrying out extensive search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean under the “Mare Nostrum” operation. Italy’s Operation Mare Nostrum shows that it is possible to ensure greater safety for migrants and refugees by strengthening search and rescue operations.

These efforts are to be applauded. However, with further tragedies and loss of life, the strengthening of search and rescue activities in the Mediterranean can only be achieved through a joined effort which all EU member states must contribute to. Such activities should also be carried out in the Aegean.

Safe and legal routes to Europe

To date, EU member states have been unwilling to discuss safe and legal ways for refugees to enter the EU. Even with the Syrian refugee crisis deepening at their doorstep, the member states’ responses have been nothing else but shameful. While Syrian families are risking their lives at sea, EU member states are still refusing to open meaningful safe and legal ways for refugees to come to Europe.

The member states can do this through resettlement, humanitarian admission programmes, and facilitation of family reunification. By the end of 2013, Lebanon – a country of less than 4.5 million people - had hosted 800,000 Syrian refugees, whilst only 81,000 had managed to reach the EU in search of protection.

As the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmstrom said in her reaction to yesterday’s Lampedusa tragedy,  it is possible to “reduce the risk of such tragedies from happening again” by for example “resettling refugees directly from the camps outside the EU and opening new legal channels to come legally.”

An EU-wide conference on the resettlement of Syrian refugees in EU member states as proposed by the German Parliament on 8 May would be an initial but key step in the right direction.

Cooperation on migration control with third countries

The EU and European countries are continuing to cooperate with non-European countries on migration control, whilst turning a blind eye to human rights abuses suffered by migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees in those countries.

Despite well-documented evidence of abuse against migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers in Libya, the EU and European countries such as Italy are cooperating with Libya to stem migration flows to Europe.

Cooperation with third countries neighbouring the EU must be aimed at assisting them to uphold the human rights of refugees and migrants rather than seeing prevention of arrivals in the EU as the primary aim. Any migration control agreements should also be transparent, and include adequate protection standards and measures.

The human cost of Europe’s asylum and migration policy and practice is too high. More must and can be done to prevent deaths and suffering in the waters along Europe’s shores.

This is a human rights issue. It is the collective responsibility of all of the EU member states to do everything in their power to prevent these deaths.

At the 26 and 27 June European Summit, EU leaders will agree the EU’s five year migration and asylum strategy. This is a crucial opportunity for EU member states to finally put the human rights of migrants and refugees at the heart of EU’s policy in this area, and save lives.
Without concrete action, tragically, the death toll off Europe’s shores will continue to rise. We can and must do better than this.


 See also:

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Tuesday 20 May 2014

The Zapatistas are not alone

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Saturday 17 May 2014

Stop the war against the Zapatista communities: London, 18 May 2014





Everyone is invited to join a demonstration this Sunday at 11 am at the Mexican Embassy in London. Let’s let the government know that the Zapatistas are not alone, that a lot of people in a lot of places are watching their actions, and that we know that compa Galeano’s murder was not due to a problem within the community, but the result of a paramilitarisation strategy that the government has implemented in Mexico, and particularly in Chiapas, for years. Let’s demand together the end of the attacks and justice for the cases of the murdered compas.

Please join us and bring along any banners rejecting the murderers and supporting the Zapatistas.


See also:


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Wednesday 14 May 2014

An attack on the Zapatistas is an attack on us all





A call to action in support of the Zapatistas by intellectuals, artists, and organizations; signatories include Noam Chomsky, Junot Diaz, Alice Walker, Mike Davis, Cornel West, Angela Davis, Robin Kelley, Emory Douglas, David Harvey, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Chris Hedges, Michael Albert, David Graeber, Michael Hardt, George Kaffentzis, Harry Cleaver, and many more.
Summary of recent events:

On May 2, 2014, in the Zapatista territory of La Realidad, Chiapas, Mexico, the group CIOAC-Historico [with the participation of the Green Ecological Party and the National Action Party (PAN)], planned and executed a paramilitary attack on unarmed Zapatista civilians. An autonomous Zapatista school and clinic was destroyed, 15 people were ambushed and injured and Jose Luis Solis Lopez (Galeano), teacher at the Zapatista Little School, was murdered. The mainstream media is falsely reporting this attack on the Zapatistas as an intra-community confrontation, but in fact this attack is the result of a long-term counterinsurgency strategy promoted by the Mexican government.

Given the experience of the 1997 massacre at Acteal, we are concerned about the mounting paramilitary activity against Zapatista bases of support. It is clear that if we do not take action now, the current situation in Chiapas may also lead to an even more tragic end.

Why this matters to us:

Since 1994, the Zapatistas have shown us the bankruptcy of the world that dominates us and, most importantly, the ability to organize ourselves into self-determining communities autonomous from the political class and capitalism. It is this capacity to show that another world is possible in the here and now, one not rooted in exploitation, dispossession, repression and de-valorization, but rather in liberty, democracy and justice, that has inspired us all. An attack on the Zapatistas is an attack on the other world that we have all tried to build along with them for the past 20 years.

What we should do:

We strongly denounce the murder of Compañero Galeano and the attacks against our Zapatista brothers and sisters. We denounce the deliberate destruction of the Zapatista clinic and school. We denounce the disinformation from the press regarding these attacks.

To denounce these aggressions and in support of our Zapatista brothers and sisters, the signatories below call on all Zapatista supporters, students, anti-prison activists, artists, workers, intellectuals, teachers, academics, LGBTQ groups, anarchists, communities of faith, prisoners, communities and organizations of color, indigenous peoples, Chicanos, migrants and all those seeking a more just, non-capitalist world, to pronounce themselves against these attacks by the Mexican government on the Zapatistas and to hold events starting Sunday May 18th (e.g. demonstrations at Mexican consulates and Embassies, corporate subsidiaries, and banks supporting the Mexican government, teach-ins, discussion groups, concerts, informational sessions, or other civil actions that people deem appropriate for their city) and culminating with a day of remembrance on May 24th called by the Zapatistas in honor of the late Compañero Galeano.

Let’s make our dignified pain and rage another building block towards a movement that will directly participate, along with the Zapatistas, in creating this new world.
See also: 

Zapatista news and information:
Zapatista texts and documents:
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Sunday 11 May 2014

Systematically drowning migrants and refugees


The Mediterranean has become the grave of countless migrants fleeing war and poverty: last week yet another small vessel capsized in the North Aegean, carrying people from Syria, Somalia and Eritrea. At least twenty-two were drowned, most of them women and children; some of them died trapped underwater in the cabin. These catastrophic shipwrecks are a regular occurrence, in the Aegean and in the Mediterranean south of Italy. Last month an Amnesty International report published yet more evidence of the horrifying treatment of migrants by Greek state agents: routine illegal pushbacks across the border, sometimes by hooded men; live rounds fired at boats; beatings, threats and extreme humiliation by the coast guard and police. Amnesty calls on the EU to sanction Greece for its violations of international law, but also acknowledges the EU’s responsibility. Between 2011 and 2013 the European Commission gave Greece €227,576,503 to keep the migrants out, but only €19,950,00 to help with their reception. The EU uses its border states as a barrier and prison camp for the frightened, impoverished people it would rather drown than save. The Mediterranean is now the moat surrounding Fortress Europe.


  
“The treatment of refugees and migrants at Greece’s borders is deplorable. Too often, instead of finding sanctuary, they are met with violence and intimidation. There are cases where they have been stripped naked, had their possessions stolen, and even held at gunpoint before being pushed back across the border to Turkey,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director.

“The people carrying out these push-backs are state agents. As such, the Greek authorities bear full responsibility for their actions. The authorities must openly acknowledge and ensure an end to the illegal and often dangerous practice of push-backs.”

Push-backs are collective expulsions of migrants across the border they have crossed, back to where they came from. They amount to the unlawful deportation of a group of people without consideration of individual circumstances and denying them the possibility to request asylum. Push-backs are explicitly prohibited under Greek, EU and international law.


 See also:


Further reading:

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Wednesday 7 May 2014

Return to Pitt Street: Walter Rosenblum

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Sunday 4 May 2014

Art for social justice: Ricardo Levins Morales




In a class society such as the United States, the so-called national art scene represents the rather confined dreams of a small segment of the population. It’s considered a sacred duty for artists to remain isolated from any broad community that might influence their art. Artwork must remain personal in the narrowest sense while fitting into the moment’s specifications for saleable work. Alienation is one of the requirements. A friend told me of a Midwestern painter who finally got a favorable review of her show after having worked in New York for a couple of years. The critic was elated that, in contrast to her earlier, optimistic paintings, her new work was starting to show the “angst” (read depression) of a mature artist.

The greatest form of pressure that cuts artists off from the living currents of their communities is the designation of some subject matter as “political.” As it applies to art, “political” is a clear “no trespass” sign forbidding access to whatever the ruling elite does not wish people to think about. It varies from country to country and over time. New York artist Lisa Blackshear’s paintings of interracial couples would be politically explosive in South Africa, cause some discomfort in the United States, and not raise an eyebrow in Brazil. In South Africa, the book Black Beauty was banned, for although it is the story of a horse, the linking of the two works in its title was seen as dangerously revolutionary by the censors. In General Pinochet’s Chile, teaching evolution was seen as subversive because it described a world in which change is constant and inevitable. It is therefore seen as challenging the rigid stability preached by the dictatorship.

The “political” label -- and the funding, performance space, display and publishing decisions that enforce it -- serves to prevent artists from fulfilling their function as conveyors and interpreters of their people’s dreams.

For the majority of the potentially artistic population a form of dream suppression is practiced. Organic cultural expression is discouraged by the denial of resources and the promotion of the arts as the province of a gifted few. In the crude tracking system of the schools, an artist is whoever is left when the rest are bludgeoned into silence. Those who survive this assault on their creativity may pursue it through arts schools, where they’ll be safely taught to respect taboos.

These systems of suppression and control are far from fully effective. At best they work as damage control to limit the number of artists who survive and the imaginations of those who do. But still,artists who have been successful within the cultural industries, as well as those who develop outside of the educational system, are drawn by the gravitational pull upon the artist to explore every area of communal life.

Too often, activist artists ourselves accept the “no trespass” signs of the elite, simply choosing to set up camp on the other side of them. Thus, we miss the subversive potential coming straight from the deepest springs of artistic inspiration. If we listen and convey the dreams of our people, we will ignore the signs and property lines. If we violate the warning signs, it will be while being true to our mission as artists. To grasp the full potential of cultural creation as an arena for social transformation we must go beyond seeing ourselves as simply “political artists,” “oppositional artists,” or even “voices of dissent.”




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