Rosemary Bechler on "Innocent victims"

Rosemary Bechler — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:52:47 +0000

A post from Ms.B, refugee from Bosnia:

Survivors

To me, it almost doesn't matter whether it is British public ignorance, or media hysterics, or politicians misjudging the situation – the fact is that all these interlink, and what they have in common is that people suffer because of them for no reason at all. That makes me really angry because it's so stupid, to waste people's lives who really could make a contribution.
Actually the community of refugees have a strong bond and they really do know how to get things done and they pass this on to each other. Most refugee communities are run by volunteers on extraordinarily small amounts of money, but that self-help is the basis of everything they do: that is how they got organised. The challenge is that self-help can be used and abused. The Government tries to co-opt it to provide the services that they can't provide. They try to tick boxes, and sometimes they can remove the group from its original purpose which was orientation of people in a totally new situation, 'What I've been through, you don't have to go through again – I can share this with you.'
But I always say, there are no victims here. Victims are the ones who didn't manage to get here. These people might have had terrible ordeals, and gone through terrible experiences here and indeed been victimised here, but the people themselves are survivors. That driving force is sometimes difficult to switch off – but that is the benefit that is being missed because of the extraordinary life-stories that could really inspire people. I come to work here and every day, I am inspired by people and their life stories and that is priceless – to have that human contact with such resilience. And I genuinely feel sorry for other people who are missing out on that!

Don't miss out!

Innocent victims, Rosemary Bechler

Rosemary Bechler — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:55:02 +0000

Sonja Linden started out writing 'verbatim plays' and I like many others can testify to the 'palpable effect' these first hand accounts of detention and forced removal have had on her audiences. The Darfuris or Rwandans whose words and experiences she drew on thank her, however, in particular, for making their characters feisty and rounded - not just victims, however innocent. It's a moving account.

The dangers and deceptions of conjuring with victimhood are at the centre of Bridget Anderson's fine essay on the need for a politics which can bring capable people together, domestic and foreign, to counter the myths and injustices we have highlighted this week.

But she begins with what over the last few days I find myself thinking of as 'another lesson for David Davis'. The last lesson was to be found among Saskia Sassen's conclusions to her immigration and asylum overview. Davis has always been fond of border controls - most lately, "extra policing at small and medium-sized ports and airports, and a national security council to coordinate law enforcement on cross border threats" to deal rather neatly in one fell swoop with human trafficking, drug smuggling and the war on terror. But Professor Sassen is convinced that this is one lesson Europe could and must learn from the US: the most weaponised borders simply don't work.

Bridget Anderson's 'lesson' is about the impossibility of drawing a clear line, let alone one which is fair, between the deserving and undeserving foreigner. As she puts it:

"One person's forced migrant is another person's economic threat. When we hear how England has been a haven for the persecuted for centuries, we need to remember that those who are now imagined as persecuted refugees might equally well at the time have been constructed as what we now would call ‘economic migrants'. The Jewish people who arrived in London between 1881 and 1914 fleeing persecution were viewed by many at the time with suspicion and hostility, and accused of stealing jobs, inflating rents and living in overcrowded conditions."

I've had a quick look at what David Davis has said over the years on immigration, and it is full of these sorts of formulations:

"Thanks to the government's failure we've let in hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants not to mention hundreds of dangerous foreign criminals who should have been sent to jail or deported. That failure to control our borders hasn't just led to more crime and less secure streets. It's also let down a lot of honest and hard working immigrants with something to contribute."

That was him vowing to bring immigration under control in a speech to the Conservative Party's annual conference, in Bournemouth, October 2006. Philippe Legrain spotted him on the same tack in October 2007.

But why am I picking on David Davis when this constant attempt to deploy black and white punitively in a world of shades of grey is endemic in the whole historical mess that is immigration and asylum?

Well, the answer is because, for a few moments last week, I really thought he was the first British politician from anywhere in the political spectrum that I have heard defend convincingly and even do something about democratic debate and freedom and human rights in this country, for as long as I can remember.

Until I googled his record on immigration and found the worst kind of opportunist politicking going on I really had hoped it might be worth writing to his new freedom website to see if he would include all the innocent people locked up in places like Campsfield in his list of priorities.

And even now, part of me wants to believe that, with a little nudging...hence my collection of 'lessons'.

Meanwhile, I return to Bridget Anderson's piece on the question of 'victimhood' with a new sense of what she is talking about. The fact is that, even at our most optimistic, we can't just leave it to David Davis or any other chivalric knight to rescue us on a white charger.

What might save him from himself however, and, more importantly, lead to some fundamental changes to the cynical bastion of overweening power that is Westminster - is if he found himself surrounded by people who could make common cause with him for a new language of rights and a new politics. And these people wouldn't be victims...

"The language of victimhood means that migrants/asylum seekers are not actors who can be engaged with and with whom UK nationals can make common cause, but victims who must only be helped and rescued...The language of victimhood risks sucking out the politics of citizenship."

open Democracy News Analysis - Innocent victims, Rosemary Bechler - Comments

Rosemary Bechler on "Innocent victims"

Innocent victims, Rosemary Bechler