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Ferda Çetin
“The US, Europe and the United Nations have no conscience and no moral compass. For this reason, they refrain from engaging with the larger part of their responsibilities for mass migration and blame the immigrants. The worst thing is, most ordinary citizens and societies are unaware that these stories being presented do not reflect reality,” writes Ferda Çetin for Yeni Özgür Politika.
Iain Chambers describes migrants as “moving through languages, histories and identities, which are constantly subject to change. Through the migration where each destination is a place of transit, the hope of returning home, ending the story, finding a shortcut to return home becomes impossible.”
“Forty two migrants, including thirty women and eight children died when their boat capsized in the sea after setting sail from the coastal town of Dakhla, in Western Sahara, to reach the Canary Islands,” ANF reported on 6 August.
For the civilized world (!), it is an ordinary piece of news; a boat capsizing, 42 people dying …
On 10 August, another report revealed that six EU countries insisted that the forced deportation of migrants back to Afghanistan should continue. “Stopping returns sends the wrong signal and is likely to motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home for the EU,” Germany, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Greece stated in a letter to the European Commission.
However, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, also known as the 1951 Refugee Convention or the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 – adopted by the United Nations Conference – defines a refugee as “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”
UNCHR, the United Nations’ Refugee Agency, extended this definition in the context of life threatening circumstances, so that any serious threat to one’s right to live, body integrity or freedom has been considered a valid ground for international protection.
Six countries in Europe have decided to return migrants to Afghanistan who had fled from the Taliban, which has banned education, the internet, music, cinema, theatre and even laughing in public or shaving. They had fled from the Taliban, who persecute all those from another ethnicity or religion.
The US, Europe and the United Nations have no conscience and no moral compass. For this reason, they refrain from engaging with the larger part of their responsibilities for mass migration and blame the immigrants. The worst thing is, most ordinary citizens and societies are unaware that these stories being presented do not reflect reality.
Recent events of the past that led to the current situation should be known and certainly not forgotten. European countries consumed the natural resources of South America, Africa and Asia, turned these geographies into deserts. Then, when there was nothing left to exploit in these plundered regions, they started to sell planes, tanks, cannons, bombs and weapons by inflaming conflicts among the peoples.
In this era in which we live, neither natural resources have been left in those lands, nor money to spend on war or weapons. For the capitalists, imperialists and warlords, the sources have been drained. Despair has made people fearless enough to take all kinds of risks and dangers.
Millions of people have spent their lives afflicted by war, conflict, and poverty: the only thing they seek is to live without fear of death.
A migrant fleeing Afghanistan said on TV: ”When I was born, there was war. I could not live properly in my childhood years. My youth was spent in war, with the fear of death. Now that I am 35 years old, I have not been able to spend a single day in peace. I cannot take this anymore.”
Migrants who fled Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Africa and who demand asylum in Europe come to get what their grandfathers and grandmothers had been denied.
In this unjust world, where they are all left alone without the help of the Gods and the holy books, they are trying to achieve their own justice.
Taking great risks, they journey, they cross mountains and seas and minefields. Dying one by one, losing each other, one at a time, having something taken from them little by little, they cross the borders and they try to reach the homeland (!) of freedom.
On the roads, on the borders, in the camps, millions of migrants prepare to escape and flee from countries, forever.
This might be a turning point in history, maybe this is that moment in the circular game where history plays with the sovereign and with all those who have been living happily until then so that they have to now confront the following: “Now, it is your turn to lose peace.”
The leading actors in this ‘game’ are the migrants. Another name for the immigrant is “exile.”
Edward Said described the situation of this person in limbo – who is neither accepted by their own country or any other place they seek refuge – as someone who “can neither be fully attached or disconnected from a place … Neither connections or disconnections are fully realised. The exile never feels at home, nor does he/she belong anywhere; they look at the past with pain, and looks at the present and the future with bitterness, always an asocial character.”
The six “civilised” EU countries “kick these people who are in great despair, who suffer a great deal of pain, out from their borders.”
