Tag Archives: Calais

Aylan Kurdi’s very public death must not be forgotten when the social media feeds move on

04 Friday Sep 2015

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Seven years ago in July, and before social media was quite at the heights we “enjoy” today, several broadsheets in the UK ran the story of two teenage Roma girls washed up drowned on an Italian beach. The story wasn’t so much that once again people from a disadvantaged and persecuted race had been left to rot like so much rubbish; but that the bodies lay decomposing and lightly covered in full view of Italian families enjoying a family day out.

The picture (opposite) wasn’t widely romareproduced, whether out of a sense of decency or a collective editorial view  that the “victims” didn’t merit it, wasn’t clear; but the story had some coverage, but very little reaction outside of Italy. And nothing like the global outrage to the mass reproduction of the images of Aylan Kurdi. The girls it appears had been selling trinkets on the beach when they decided to enter the water, though it was unsure if either knew how to swim.

Seven years on and the public reaction to human tragedy of the loss of a young life in appalling circumstances on a beach in Turkey, that most of us couldn’t contemplate, has quite rightly caused horror and outrage; and appears to be having an impact on our political leaders in the UK, though by how much and with what strings attached, is way too early to say. The image of a child lying dead face down in the surf on a beach that many other 3 year olds were playing on, only weeks before, is imbued with such tragic irony that few could remain unmoved. For those of us with children, no matter how grown, it sears into us the primal fear of having a child die before us. And for people everywhere it’s the image that is the antithesis of hope, a life ended too young.

But Aylan isn’t the only child to die too young this week. In fact he wasn’t the only child to die on that beach. Aylan’s brother Galip perished too along with his mother and nine others including other kids. The thousands of children who have died this week across the globe, through hunger, poverty, disease, war and crime; won’t be the last. We know this and we know we know this, but in our busy lives it’s as if we need to know this, at a distance, removed from view, and not over the cornflakes thank you very much. With every capsized boat during this summer’s sailing season, with every group of a hundred or so refugees dying on our beaches, still the politicians turned a blind eye, still the right wing press perpetrated the myths, still most people turned away uncomfortable, uneasy maybe, but still unsure about “these” people.

Then came the picture. I said to someone yesterday that I thought the image was exploitative. The look of distaste on the face of this person who has, to be frank, come late to the party of humanity and concern was almost comic. How could I, of all people, say that? Didn’t I understand what was happening? Look at the impact it has had. And it is precisely because of the impact it has had that I stand by my claim. Exploitative in a general sense as no family member back home, I believe was consulted or asked about a having this image splashed across the world and exploitative because it was published with only one aim in mind, precisely to get the reaction it did. But saying that it is exploitative is not to condemn its use or to criticise the decision firstly to take it or publish it. Far from it. Though I would prefer that reason and argument and evidence of the needs of refugees and migrants were what shaped policy, I’ll take what I can get. The fact that our and other European governments, are immune to reason, argument and evidence is shocking and ultimately very worrying. So if it takes the image of a dead child to galvanise public opinion and make a difference then the use of it is justified but it doesn’t change the fact that it was a calculated decision. For those of us who believe that generally the end justifies the means, remember that that’s fine just so long as the ends are the ones we want. And remember of something is exploitative someone else is being exploited.

The fact that the media shapes public opinion rather than reflect it is something I have written and spoken about many many times. The fact that it is often in cahoots with government is something responsible citizens not only have to wake up to but to challenge at every turn. Yet on the issues of refugees and migrants fleeing impossible conditions for the last 15-20 years, both the media and many responsible citizens have not only been silent on, but deliberately misleading. The case of the Roma girls 7 years ago (not markedly different) proves that.

So let’s be thankful for the light that has been shone on the misery of our fellow human beings but let’s be wary too. The people in the boats, behind the razor wire in Hungary, in the camps in Calais and those yet to flee Syria or where ever will still be there when the papers carrying the pictures have  been thrown out, and when the social media chatter has slipped down our page feeds. One they are settled in communities they will continue to need support. They might become your neighbours, your workmates, use your health services, attend your schools, hell they might even get a job you apply for. And when that happens or when people think that will happen or the media tell us it will happen, how supportive will you be then?

I’m pleased and relived that hundreds of thousands of people are discussing the issues that every day as Director of the Bridges Programmes me and my team deal with. Let’s hope it makes our job of promoting economic and social inclusion and integration of asylum seekers and refugees in Scotland easier. Let’s hope more doors are open, less hostility is evident. Send your dry goods, warm clothes, toys, but also send you hope, compassion and humanity. But can I also ask you when the pastas been cooked the clothes distributed that you keep your hope, compassion and humanity flowing. That’s the only way to make sure politicians listen, to make sure that things will change. That is the proper legacy for the Kurdi brothers.

Maggie Lennon is director of the Bridges Programmes, based in Glasgow working with asylum seekers refugees and migrants http://www.bridgesprogrammes.org.uk

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What price humanity? Ours is more fragile than you think

14 Friday Aug 2015

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Fleeing in fear of your life, fleeing towards a better life is NOT a criminal act

Tomorrow it will be seventy years since the end of the Second World War with the surrender of Japan. Not only is that important because it saw the end of the largest loss of life both military and civilian in a conflict, whose combatants encircled the globe; But because it was a war that witnessed the obscenity of the attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima; And a war that let powerful men play powerful games and start the cold war and the even larger loss of life in the pogroms throughout the former Eastern Bloc.

But it is important because it was a war that showed that it was actually possible to wipe out almost an entire race of people without much resistance if the fear of the other could be stoked and fanned. And partly because of that, it is also important for giving birth to the United Nations Convention on Refugees and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet 70 years on this same Europe at the epicentre of the conflagration, is facing the biggest migrant crisis in our combined and separate historie

And I use migrant crisis – not as our politicians do as an inconvenient chorus to their seemingly unstoppable capitalist neo-liberal drum beating dream. I use it in the sense that it is meant, a time of intense difficulty or danger, for the people going through it not for us standing at the sidelines.

From the Med crossings to the build up of human misery in Calais, to the unrelenting onslaught on people’s human rights during the journey and once they have arrived. The crisis of the migrants is also the crisis of our own humanity. For when we can speak of desperate people in terms of insects, when we can erode basic human rights just to get at them, then our humanity in Europe, that so many died for 70-76 years ago is in peril itself.

Yet this link between the founding of mechanisms to protect people fleeing from the aftermaths of conflict and what we are facing in the summer of 2015 is hardly being made. But it was today in a packed seminar in Glasgow arranged by Caledonian University and the Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migrant Network (GRAMNET) called Responding the Migration.

No talk of dogs and how high the fence in this room, except to condemn them both. The discussions were led by one of the most compassionate voices I have heard in a long time, Lilja Gretarsdottir from The Council Of Europe. Not unaware of the mountain to climb to change government and public opinion, her message was clear, it’s down to us as citizens of Europe and citizens of our own states, to challenge the seemingly pervasive myth that we are under attack from the barbarians at the gate.

And while that might not seem like much of way to initiate change, it is, in all honesty, I believe all we have. When I speak about refugees and migrants, which I do a lot, I always start a speech by asking who in the room does not wish for a better life, an improvement in salary or prospects, or place to live, or more money in their pockets, better holidays, happy less stressed lives, children who thrive? It’s an odd group that doesn’t universally admit to that. So why is it that so many believe the better life is fine for us but not for them, the others? While we in Europe benefit from democratic (mostly) governments, an abundance of resources we control, or can afford to acquire (legally or otherwise) and a level of unprecedented social mobility in Europe since 1945; we forget with dangerous carelessness that the world is ill divided and most of the world’s peoples do not share in that good fortune. And so for them those goals are harder to reach.

Never mind that actions by European and American government since 1945 (and before in the case of the Middle East) have combined to ensure that countries are invaded, bled of resources, left with corrupt governments propped up in the name of trade “national interests” and that once stable states – and especially those not to our taste – have become failed states, with all the human misery that entails.

We cannot deny what is happening in North Africa, Syria, Iran and still in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know deep in our hearts that if it were us on those boats and in those lorries, that we would break laws, defy dogs, smash fences and risk our lives to save ourselves and our children. Because the need to survive is what makes us human. And we forget at our peril that every outstretched arm through a roll of razor wire, that every scream of a hungry child belongs to a member of our human race. Whether refugee or economic migrant whose own personal economy has been destroyed by things over which they have no control, fleeing in fear of your life, fleeing towards a better life is NOT a criminal act. Punishing sanctioning, vilifying detaining those who do however, is criminal.

In breach of so many parts of the European Human Rights Act, our governments’ joint and several actions trample their – and ultimately your – human rights in the dust. It is time to realise and acknowledge that the dialogue of then and us is empty. That how we in Europe and other developed countries deal with this and other migrant crisis, speaks directly to our own humanity and asks questions, serious questions, about the basic principles by which we live and bring up future generations.

Calais and the deaths in the Med are holding up a mirror to us and the image reflected back is ugly.

The detention of hundreds of thousands in conditions which would breach EU law on the keeping of animals goes unquestioned. The question from government isn’t how do we make conditions behind the fences better, but how high should we build them? It doesn’t really matter where this is happening but 146 people being detained for over 4 weeks in a cage 112 square metres, men and women and children mixed in with no access to clean clothing is medieval.

That 70% of global migrant deaths are happening in the Mediterranean, some within sight of beeches where as Europeans we go to distress, goes unremarked. The suspension of the Mare Nostrum project was on the dubious logic that if you rescued them, more would come. Yet there has been no let up in the numbers coming, so knowing that and doing nothing is tantamount to murder, surely?

By depriving people of their rights when they do make land, giving them leave to remain yet not leave to work what are we driving people to?

A woman at the seminar, a migrant herself asked quite simply why Migrants were now regarded by the UK government as the third biggest problem behind the economy and the NHS. And why such a ridiculous scapegoating was being promoted by the media.

That at least is an easier question to answer. One of the greatest myths of all is that governments respond to public opinion and the media merely reflects that; as if Pubic Opinion drops from the heavens above. The truth is far simpler and all the more chilling. Governments faced with the inability or the unwillingness to solve problems, create instead a problem that doesn’t exist and then helpfully suggest a solution – maybe the final one- and the media merely manipulates public opinion into that acceptance. Those would be the listening governments we are so sick of listening to. Scapegoats! Yet Europe from Nazi Germany to Stalinist Europe at least knows what scapegoating is, and what results, doesn’t it? Yet we seem not to have learned. The very reason so many people flee is that they are the scapegoats of their own governments and now become that when they arrive looking for safety. The irony is strong enough for even the most irony averse American to get.

But you, reading this are one of the public, you have an opinion. The wide outrage to Cameron’s inhuman labelling of the migrants in Calais, from many sources, was a cause of some hope. And if you don’t know how to answer those who are unmoved by the plight of wretched people in desperate straits. Try this. Tell them, “they are people, humans just like you, with children just like you, with bodies that break and spirits that can be crushed, just like you, and one day it just might BE you that becomes the other. the outsider”.

Compassion, mercy, they cost nothing yet are the richest gifts we can give our fellow men and women and the only way of showing that we too, are human.

Maggie Lennon is the Director of the Bridges Programmes an organisation in Glasgow that promotes the social economic integration and inclusion of Refugees Asylum seekers and Migrants.

And so it begins…..Entente Cordiale at the expense of the vulnerable

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

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And so it begins

On 27th October, an event in Glasgow celebrated and rewarded the successes of asylum seekers and refugees in their efforts to integrate- and for those who are allowed to work- to recognise their contribution to their new society. The employers who play such a part in this were also rewarded and applauded by the 120 or so people who attended. In my speech I robustly and passionately defended the record of my company The Bridges Programmes in this work but warned the audience that with just over 6 months to go to the General Election that we knew that race, and in particular, immigration would be one of the main battlegrounds for votes, and with the main UK parties outdoing each other with tough talk, that while we may not know who is going to win the election we know that migrants both forced and voluntary will be the losers.

Expect lazy journalism, I warned, where the difference between those that flea from persecution are confused with, and lumped in with, those that come voluntary looking for a better life. Because wanting a better life is NOT the sole desire of people in the wealthy West.

It started the weekend before with the Defence Minister Fallon’s ill-chosen use of words talking about being swamped and under siege by foreigners. While he apologised later the damage is done the papers and media reported and revelled in it. Like the barrister who in court makes outrageous statements which a judge tells a jury to ignore, these things cannot be unsaid and Fallon and the government know it.

But even Nigel Farage couldn’t have predicted the gift that would be given to the anti-migrant cohorts with the intervention of the centre right self-serving mayor of Calais Madame Bouchart who crossed the channel – in more comfort we have to assume that many migrants- to lecture the UK Parliament no less on its benefits and asylum system. Bit of a turn up that, given that we certainly don’t want Johnny Foreigner to import their brand of trade unionism and activism and we don’t want to know that they think about the UKs involvement in illegal foreign wars, but suddenly it’s fine to have their views on our asylum system and its effect on asylum seekers based in France.

But before we begin to count the holes in Bouchart’s arguments let’s just for the sake of clarity understand what we are talking about.
Migrants as opposed to asylum seeks from outside the EU are not entitled to benefits until they can turn their entry visa into indefinite leave to remain which can be between 5-10 years. Migrants from outside the EU get entry visas to support a work permit for a job they are coming to, for study with restrictions on that too regarding benefits and ability to work, or as family members who have no recourse to public funds.

Migrants from inside the EU have to wait 3 months to be eligible for benefits but those are not the people the Mayor was talking about.
Migrants without entry visas are illegal and not entitled to benefits at all.

So the only people waiting to cross ,by her own admission, and evidence are people coming to claim asylum and just to be clear about this there is no such thing as an illegal asylum seeker and asylum seekers are not migrants.

Got that?

Good. Then let’s get on with the blog.

The simplistic message from Madame Le Mayor was this: stop being so bloody generous to asylum seekers in the UK and they will stop coming to France and especially my back yard of Calais trying to gain admittance to “Eldarado” as she ironically referred to it. The UK government and the right wing press rubbed their little white hands in glee and will clearly stop at nothing, even colluding with the French, to promote the misinformation and vilification to little Englanders.

Now I don’t expect a reasoned and accurate review of the facts in the UK media anytime soon but here’s a small attempt to set the record straight.

Calais
Mary Tudor on losing England’s last foothold in France said when she died Calais would be carved on her heart. David Cameron might be thinking the same thing. The shortest crossing to the UK it’s been a place where migrants and asylum seekers have gathered for decades. In 2002 the official refugee camp run by the French and the Red Cross at Sangatte was closed down by Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Minister for the Interior, as much at the demands of the UK government as the French. In 2009 when President he went further demanded the destruction of the informal camps that sprung up when the formal camp was taken down. He called for the destruction of the Jungle as he saw it. When President Hollande got his hands on the Elysee Palace however, in a humanitarian gesture he said that a series of small camps with basic shelter and cooking facilities should be re-established in the North of France to support migrants living there, run by officially recognised NGOs to provide a vestige of humanitarian support, and more crucially to countermand the rise of violence, mafia like activities and people trafficking which had increased in the feral atmosphere of the informal and irregular camps. These small camps have now been set up around , though not in, Calais and surprise surprise but Mayor Bouchart has gone on the record to say she SUPPORTS this humanitarian move if it means that these people are no longer living in poor conditions or in her back yard in the suburbs of Calais. She is concerned she says not so much by the plight of the tragic individuals living there as the very same rise in violence, mafia like activities and people trafficking that she has seen develop in the last ten years. So perhaps this is the real reason Madame Le Mayor is exercised. With a view to her own political future and re-election she wants to be seeing tough on asylum seekers and in an example of NIMBYism that is quite breath-taking is blaming an asylum sysstem in another member state for being too generous. That’s a bit like blaming the rise of heart failure and alcohol abuse amongst the middle classes on a surfeit of Camembert and French wine. Ridiculous.
Eldorado it’s not
So let us examine this fabled generosity of the UK system. Asylum seekers are housed in community housing in a number of local authorities across Britain through a contract between private housing companies and the UK government to utilise poor quality housing stock that otherwise could not be rented. As they are living in the community they are in receipt of a single person’s weekly allowance of £36 from which they must feed and clothe themselves and use public transport. It equates to about 50% of income support levels and has remained static for over 5 years. They must live where they are put and report weekly (sometime more regularly) to a reporting centre to prove they are still around. For some in Glasgow the cost of that reporting trip is equivalent to a day’s worth of their allowance. They have limited access to health care, full access to schools for their children and no right to work. Initial decisions (80% are no) are normally granted within 6 months so they have no right to appeal to be given the right to work under EU rules that say if there is no initial decision within 12 months limited access to work can be applied for. Over half of the right to remain granted are as a result of appeal proving that the initial decision system is not robust. In England asylum seekers can access no support, help or training that might promote their speedy integration and entry into the labour market should they being granted Leave to Remain. In Scotland integration is deemed to be from day one so access to wider integration services is allowed including English lessons. So it’s not living in a cardboard box on the French north coast but it’s not exactly easy street.
The French system
Now compare this to the French system. Asylum seekers are housed in reception centres and fully provided with food, clothing, heating and other essential services such as French lessons and integration programmes, so there is no need to grant most of them additional funds though asylum seekers with families are able to access other French social service payments. They have access to Universal Health Care and education for their children. So its arguable that though asylum seekers in France like many other parts of Europe have restrictions on their movements thy are not materially worse off than those in the UK.

French politicians accuse their system of sending out a message that THEY are the soft touch, not the UK. So suddenly the UK system doesn’t look quite so much like Candy Mountain. So maybe the further motivation for Bouchart’s claims is less to do with people striving to get to the UK and more to do with what is widely recognised as a French asylum system in in crisis, at least that’s what a French Parliamentary report in April of this year thinks.  So is the rise of Mme Bouchart a cynical attempt by the French trying to blame someone else for their own mess, sacre bleue!!

The report highlighted long-drawn-out and ineffective procedures and spending way over budget. But, although the number of applicants has almost doubled in the last four years, it is still far from the record numbers reached in 1989 and 2003. And there is NO EVIDENCE what so ever that this doubling of numbers in the last 4 years has meant the numbers congregating at Calais have increased to the same extent. If anything the numbers have decreased, and interestingly the numbers of asylum seekers coming to the UK hasn’t doubled n the last 4 years but has been cut m by more than half!
And here’s another interesting fact about the inefficiency and failure of the French system: costs have soared 70 per cent since 2008 while the number of demands has risen just 55 per cent, so somebody somewhere is being a tad careless with the Euros yet French MPs say that relevant agencies are “chronically underfunded”. Interesting, non?
The report also targets long-drawn-out administrative procedures (sometimes 2 years before an initial decision against the UK’s 6 months, that frequently do not result in failed applicants leaving the country so it can’t be refused asylum seekers “dying” to get to the UK then as according to their own figures France says refused asylum seekers are staying put.

So maybe the reason for all the asylum seekers in Calais is less to do with the race for London and more to do are because of a poorly run French system but a system attractive enough and “generous enough” to mean people are quite happy to be in France. Oh and all those asylum seekers coming to France might just a have a little to do with that country’s colonial past and the fact they are happily bombing civilians in Syrian and Iraq.
Not convinced?
OK if you are still not convinced let’s look at what the people involved are saying about it all themselves. No-one yet interviewed by the BBC has admitted it’s the generosity of £36 a week that’s leading them to risk their lives. What they DO say is they believe that the UK respects and understands Human Right (ironically just as Cameron says we’ll ditch the Human Rights Act) and that British people are fair and kind. They also talk about wanting to work, and no they don’t mean on the grey market. I’ve never met a migrant or asylum seeker yet who gets up in the morning and says yippee I can’t wait to be hired by a gang master today and exploited and work for £1 an hour.
In 2002 the UK government commissioned a huge piece of research through University of Cardiff as to why people come to the UK as migrants and asylum seekers, with the aim of proving it’s all to do with the benefits. Unsurprisingly this research got buried because the results were NOT what was expected. Turns out it’s not the benefit system people are after (most didn’t know anything about the system before they got here) it’s because of our colonial past, the belief that UK does stand up for the underdog, that English is spoken, that we have a multi-cultural and diverse society and more recently, as we have sought to bring down dictators people suffering at the hands of these dictators expect, not unnaturally to my mind, the UK might help them get their lives back.

And every time since 2001 people have tried to prove that migrants and asylum seekers are here for what they can get rather than what they can contribute, the benefit system is never mentioned. And remember from way back up at the top of this blog no migrant as opposed to an asylum seekers has automatic right to benefits when they arrive. But Maybe Madame Bouchart knows something that we don’t.
When is a UK asylum seeker not a UK asylum seeker?
There is another element to this whole debacle that Bouchart surely is aware of but chooses to ignore. Thanks to an odd bit of EU legislation called Dublin II it states that if t can be proved that asylum seekers have entered the EU from any other member state other than that in which they have claimed asylum they must be sent back to that original state. So Mme Bouchart knows that even if lots of asylum seekers make it to the UK there is a very strong chance they will be sent back to France and that France will be required to process them, so the outcome might be that migrants/asylum seekers that the French system deem to be irregular, and not under their jurisdiction, might in fact be ruled to be, thus putting more strain on the system. Could this be a case of passing the buck?

It seems clear to me that while undoubtedly people are trying to cross form France to the UK it’s not in the numbers she claims and it’s not for the reasons she claims. If not a single person crossed to the UK in the next 12 months it would not educe the numbers moving to France though it might mean they don’t make a mess of her little part of France and she might stand a chance of being re-elected.

Colluding with this shameful piece of self-promotion by a minor French official by the UK government, to further add fuel to an incendiary issue, is stooping pretty lo even for them.
And let’s not forget while we get caught up in the finer points of asylum law and variations thereof, what we are dealing with groups of highly vulnerable people who have left their homelands under duress, whether war, famine, persecution or good old fashioned poverty and who are looking for a better safer life. Both countries are signatories to the UN Convention on Refugees and so have to step up to the plate. Playing political football with claimants is despicable, and diminishes both countries, especially when we have to accept that actions by both France and Britain since the second world war, in various parts of the world , has added to the sum total of displaced peoples.

The fact remains that both France and the UK play politics with all sorts of vulnerable people but this is the first time it’s been cross border! Perhaps we are seeing the start of a new Entente Cordiale.

And in a final and ironic twist there is an early day motion gathering momentum in the UK Parliament for the daily rate for UK asylum seekers to raise from the paltry sum of £5.23 a day to the princely sum of £7.17 a day. 80 MPs have signed it so far. Madame Bouchart and her new “compines” in the UK government must be hoping this doesn’t happen otherwise clearly France will empty and maybe not just of asylum seekers. But in the meantime the scaremongering can really get under way with her false claim screamed from headlines that migrants are
dying to get to Britain for our Benefits.
And so it begins