Posted by cathannabel in Politics on June 30, 2016
I’m glad I waited a bit before blogging about the outcome of the Referendum. Anything I wrote on Friday would have been an incoherent outburst of grief and anger. Not that I’m in a position to write a more informed and balanced piece now – we still, on day 7 of our ‘independence’, know nothing, and it appears that those who purport to lead us are no clearer than we are. We have neither government nor opposition, we have voted to leave the EU but have taken none of the necessary steps to set that process in motion.
In this vacuum Nigel Farage presents himself as the voice of Britain, jeering at the MEPs, taking his revenge for having been laughed at for so long. In this vacuum those who voted Remain earnestly debate whether to sign the petition for a re-run of the referendum, or to lobby for a General Election, or whether we’re worrying about nothing because nobody will actually press the red button, since nobody (other than Farage) actually wants to. In this vacuum those who voted Leave are frustrated that nothing is happening, that the Remainers are still whingeing on about the result, and that the leaders of the Leave campaigns are rowing back vigorously on the promises made during the campaign. Some of them are saying that they didn’t really mean it, that they’d vote to Remain if there was a re-run. Some of them are saying that what they meant by it was that all foreigners should get out, now.
Meanwhile our European erstwhile partners are shaking their heads, and reminding us that freedom of movement is inextricably linked to trade deals and that we can’t have one without the other. They’re reminding us that our membership of the EU is as the United Kingdom and therefore that if Scotland and Northern Ireland want to honour their population’s vote to Remain, they would have to break away from the UK which, overall, has voted to Leave. Marine le Pen, of course, is rejoicing.
I’m not going to speculate about what happens now – there are people far better informed than me who are doing that and I’ll leave them to it. And I’m not going to rant about or criticise those who voted Leave – they did so for many and various reasons, some at least of which I might respect and understand, however profoundly I disagree. My response is a personal one – now that my emotions are less raw, I can begin to explore why I felt such grief, as well as such anger, and why I felt, and feel, afraid.
In the early hours of Friday, having felt increasingly pessimistic as the results came in with such dismaying consistency, I saw that Sheffield had voted Leave. That was when I felt that we’d lost, not just the referendum but so much more. That was when I wept, and despaired.
I have always felt at home in this city – I’ve lived here for over forty years, and since I got here I haven’t wanted to live anywhere else. I’ve always loved it – its hills, its greenery, its culture, its friendliness. But in the light of that decision I felt as though I didn’t know it after all, wasn’t as much a part of it as I had believed.
Of course, the vote was close – Leave and Remain were separated by just 6,000 of my fellow Sheffielders. But what it confirmed is that the city is polarised, more so perhaps than some of the other big northern cities. We have one of the wealthiest political constituencies in the country – but nearly one-quarter of the local areas used to assess deprivation are in the most deprived 10%. This polarisation has increased since 2010. My Sheffield voted Remain. But my Sheffield is dark blue.
I don’t have a detailed breakdown of how different areas of the city voted. But a new article by Charles Pattie, Professor of Electoral Geography at the University of Sheffield, has looked at data on the proportion of graduates, amongst other indicators, in different areas of the city.
All of this paints a picture of a city deeply divided; a city where class, education and opportunity have shaped the political understandings of its people. And although we’re still waiting on a demographic breakdown of the results, it’s highly likely that such divisions will have cut through the rest of the UK, too. The case of Sheffield shows that the fracture lines in British society do not just run between north and south, Scotland and England, or rural and urban areas. They run through every community in the country.
It’s still my city, my home. Burt I forgot those fracture lines. Those fracture lines are dangerous. People like me tend to live next door to, work and socialise with people like me. People like me hear from our social media contacts and our colleagues the echo of our own views. We can be oblivious to how the world looks when employment is hard to find or insecure and when your wages aren’t enough to support your family, when debts are unmanageable and creditors importunate, when housing is inadequate and schools are failing, and benefits are sanctioned – and when the party in power tells you that you are a skiver not a striver, a scrounger rather than a hard-working tax payer. We can be oblivious to how tempting it is to find scapegoats, the scapegoats offered up daily on the front pages of the Mail, the Express, the Sun (people like me don’t read those papers, of course). We can be oblivious to how easy it is to believe that this daily struggle is the result not of austerity but of immigration, that others are not struggling but are being given an easy path to housing and jobs and prosperity. If we’re to heal we need to stop being oblivious, stop listening just to people like us.
What that does not mean, however, is to continue with the mealy mouthed refusal to challenge racism. Gary Younge makes this point powerfully:
Labour tends to condemn outright bigotry before clothing it in the cosy blanket of understanding and concern for the bigot. It protests and then it panders. It routinely points out that racism is bad, but is rarely brave enough to make the case for why anti-racism is good. This leads to the worst of all worlds. Racism and xenophobia are condemned but never challenged, which leaves those who hold such views feeling silenced and ignored, but never engaged.
Some of those who have been silenced, ignored but not engaged now feel legitimised and emboldened by the referendum result. Everyone but Farage may have been insistent that the referendum was not about immigration, but the sub-text was often clear, and in the Mail, the Express, the Sun, it was not sub-text, not even text, but screaming headline.
Of course the recent spike in racist abuse may be in part down to more of these incidents being reported post-Brexit. But the accounts have something specific in common – the assertion that ‘we’ won, that ‘we’ have our country back now and that therefore ‘they’ should be packing their bags because ‘they’ will have to go. No distinction is made between those who have lived here all their lives, whose families have lived here for generations, and recent arrivals. No distinction is made between those who have come here thanks to the EU’s freedom of movement and those who have Tier 2 sponsored posts here. Because of the hostility to white European immigrants, no distinction is made on the basis of colour (although of all groups facing this viciousness, hijab-wearing Muslim women are probably the most at risk). Either they have not yet realised that Brexit could never mean that EU nationals already here would be expelled, let alone that British citizens of non-British ancestry would be deported, or they do not care, their narrative is suddenly dominant, they have got their moment and are seizing it.
Why this sudden explosion? Paul Bagguley, a sociologist based at the University of Leeds, points to the gleeful tone of the racism: “There is a kind of celebration going on; it’s a celebratory racism.” With immigration cited in polls as the second most common reason in voting for Brexit, “people are expressing a sense of power and success, that they have won,” he says. “People haven’t changed. I would argue the country splits into two-thirds to three-quarters of people being tolerant and a quarter to a third being intolerant. And a section of that third have become emboldened. At other times, people are polite and rub along.”
It is this ‘celebratory’ aspect to the racism that is particularly horrifying. It didn’t start with Brexit, of course, but those who might always have felt this way now feel they can express it.
It may die down. Or, if one wished to take a less sanguine view, as people realise that Brexit is likely to mean no reduction in net migration, that it will not result in anyone being ‘sent back’, they will be bitter and angry and rather than blaming the politicians who allowed them to believe such things in order to win their votes, they will continue to blame the migrants and the refugees in their communities.
And so we find ourselves talking about how we can counter racism on our streets, in our schools, on the tram and the bus, in the pub. We wear safety pins in our lapels to indicate our support for those who are under attack and our willingness to stand with them, to stand up for them.
Will this do any good? Who knows. But when someone launches a tirade of racist abuse on the bus, if I’m wearing my pin the first thing I will do is to look around to see if I have any allies. If two of us stand up, I believe others will follow. As to what we might actually do, that depends upon the situation. The aim must be to defuse rather than to inflame, focusing on the victim rather than the aggressor, making them feel safer, letting them know the hatred is not shared by all of us. But we do also need to speak, to let not only the victim but the aggressor and those who are fiercely staring at their newspapers or their phones and pretending they can’t hear or see what’s happening know that this is not right.
The thing is, I want my country back too.
I want to wake up tomorrow in a country where people are kind, and tolerant, and decent to one another. A country where people – all people – can feel at least a little bit safe. I want to rub the sleep of neofascist nightmares from my eyes and find myself in a country where we do not respond to the killing of a politician by voting against everything she stood for. A country where we are polite to our neighbors. A country where we have dealt like adults with the embarrassing fact that we once conquered half the world, instead of yearning for a time when our glory was stolen from enslaved people a convenient ocean away and large parts of the map were the gentle pink of blood in the water. I want to go back to a Britain where hope conquers hate; where crabbed, cowed racism and xenophobia don’t win the day; where people feel they have options and choices in life and are less likely to press the big red button to bring the house down on top of us. I want my country back.
The country that Laurie Penny wants back is, she acknowledges, fictional. But so is Farage’s – and which would we rather live in? The country I want back was conjured up memorably and brilliantly in the opening ceremony to the 2012 Olympics. Funny, celebratory and bonkers, it gave us a vision of ourselves now, not as we used to be, and it set the scene for our collective joy and pride as a succession of medals were draped around the necks of our athletes, who themselves represented Britain now, in all its rich diversity.
That seems a long time ago and very far away. But we have to try to find it again. In Europe or out of it – we may not be able to reverse that decision, but we can work to make things better now, here, for all of us. Meantime, remember:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-saul/brexit-resist-the-simple-_b_10702820.html
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/uk_reject_racism_/?wLhJdab
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/i-want-my-country-back
Posted by cathannabel in Refugees on June 26, 2016
I said a week ago when I started my annual Refugee Week blogathon that it felt different this year. As Refugee Week draws to a close it feels unimaginably different again. We are in, as so many people said during the long hours as the result of the referendum emerged, uncharted territory. We are in uncertain times.
For refugees and asylum seekers there is no charted territory, there are no certain times. But as anecdotal evidence mounts of racism and xenophobia seemingly legitimised and emboldened by the vote to leave the EU, as we wait for those who would lead us into this brave new world to give us a clue as to what it will be like, I know I am not alone in being afraid.
I’ve been told that the referendum result is democracy in action, and that I should stop whingeing about the outcome. Certainly I have no intention of endlessly bemoaning it, or berating those who voted Leave. But there is plenty to be said, plenty that must be said.
I know that I cannot assume that all of the 48% who voted to remain would endorse the message that refugees are welcome here, any more than all of the 52% would want to send them all back. But many of us do share the belief that how we treat people who seek sanctuary from war, persecution and starvation is a measure of what kind of country we are, what kind of people we are. And many of us do believe that generosity, empathy, compassion are qualities that represent the best that we can be, individually and collectively.
So as this Refugee Week ends we will be continuing to say that refugees are welcome, saying it louder if we need to, if the voices against us are more numerous or more vociferous.
And we’ll keep saying it in memory of Jo Cox.
We all know that the vast majority of the terrified, friendless and profoundly vulnerable child refugees scattered across Europe tonight came from Syria.
We also know that as that conflict enters its sixth barbaric year that desperate Syrian families are being forced to make an impossible decision: stay and face starvation, rape, persecution and death or make a perilous journey to find sanctuary elsewhere.
And who can blame desperate parents for wanting to escape the horror that their families are experiencing. The reality in which children are being killed on their way to school, where children as young as seven are being forcibly recruited to the front line and where one in three Syrian children have grown up knowing nothing but fear and war.
These children have been exposed to things no child should ever witness and I know I personally would risk life and limb to get my two precious babies out of that hell-hole.
#LoveLikeJo #MoreInCommon #The48% #RefugeesWelcome
Posted by cathannabel in Music, Refugees on June 25, 2016
To celebrate Glastonbury weekend, check out the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians, with Damon Albarn. “When there is violence in the world, you have to make more beautiful music, and make it more intensely.” Music in exile becomes a kind of homecoming.
We don’t know what impact there will be from Britain’s withdrawal from the EU on refugees and asylum seekers. We can be certain, however, that people will continue to flee war and persecution, and that those who get here, by whatever routes, will continue to face bureaucracy, prejudice, detention and destitution. So the work of charities who dedicate themselves to campaigning and fundraising and organising to support them will continue to be vital.
Assist Sheffield is one of those organisations.
ASSIST Sheffield is currently the only Sheffield charity focused on destitution among asylum seekers.
Our aims
- To provide accommodation, food and support for asylum seekers in Sheffield who are in conditions of need, hardship or distress
- To advance the education of the public, and other statutory and voluntary organisations, in order to assist the inclusion of asylum seekers into the wider community
- To raise awareness about the plight of asylum seekers in our city
Who we help
We help asylum seekers whose initial claims have been rejected, and who are therefore destitute.
We only give support to people who can demonstrate their situation.
Unfortunately, we cannot support everyone who needs help. We prioritise those who don’t have any other means of support from friends or family, those who do not have somewhere safe to sleep or regular access to food and those who are particularly vulnerable, for example because they are unwell, elderly or pregnant.
If you can, support this work by donating or volunteering.
Saturday 25th June
Rudio, by Lucy Haighton
12pm-2pm
A ‘meet and greet’ movement based workshop.
NB: This workshop will take place in the Adelphi Room at The Crucible Theatre (55 Norfolk Street)
—
The Art of Migration Showcase, featuring Bashar Farhat (poet), Mina Salama + Special Guest
12pm-2pm
Performances from a vibrant mix of talented regional artists with migration and refugee backgrounds. Commissioned by Arts on the Run.
—
Puppetry Worskhop, by Vertebra Theatre
2pm-4pm
Exploring immigration through puppetry!
—
Silk Road, by Incomplete Collaboration
4pm-5pm
Migration explored through poetry, sound and art.
—
Eastern Europeans for Dummies, by There There
6pm-7pm
Brutal beginners guide to Eastern Europeans.
—
Tanja, by Strawberry Blonde Curls
7.30pm
Locked up. Shipped around. Sold as sex.
Posted by cathannabel in Africa, Genocide, Refugees on June 24, 2016
We may be preoccupied at present with the refugee crisis that has brought so many thousands across the Mediterranean and across Europe, displaced by war in Africa and the Middle East. But looking back over the decades, this is really nothing new.
In 1936, refugees were escaping from flooding in Shantung, in China, and were fed and housed by the provisional government in Tsinan.
In the USA, the Dust Bowl and resulting drought forced tens of thousands of families to abandon their farms. Many migrated to California in the hope of finding better conditions. Meanwhile in Europe, the Spanish Civil War led many to flee, often heading across the border into France, which proved only a temporary haven, and in Germany Jews who had been subjected to anti-semitic legislation were taking whatever opportunities they could to leave before things got worse. CARA (under the name of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning) was working to find posts in British universities for academics thrown out of their posts at institutions in Germany.
1946 saw displacement on a massive scale, across most of Europe. Germans were forcibly expelled from the territories that had been occupied during the war and now fell under the Soviet remit.
Many citizens of Eastern European countries were desperately trying to stay in the West. And the survivors of the concentration camps were making their way to the homes they had once known, or waiting for the possibility of passage to Palestine, or the US.
In 1956 the brutal Soviet suppression of the uprising in Hungary led to around 200,000 people fleeing the country, initially to Austria and West Germany.
In 1966 Vietnamese were fleeing ahead of the Vietcong advance. The New York Times reported that nearly half of the 10,000 inhabitants of the An Lao valley had chosen to leave, pleading desperately with withdrawing US troops for help.
In 1976 in Lebanon the civil war created a wave of refugees, around 900,000, or about one-fifth of the population. On 12 August 1976, supported by Syria, Maronite forces managed to overwhelm the Palestinian and leftist militias defending the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in East Beirut, and 1,000-1,500 civilians were massacred.
In 1986 the ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka generated thousands of internally displaced people as well as refugees, mostly Tamils. Many fled to neighbouring India and western countries such as Canada, France, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
In 1996, the refugee crisis in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide became increasingly unstable. Hutu militants in the camps were now well organised, and led attacks into Rwanda and eastern Zaire. In what became known as the First Congo War, around half a million people were herded by the militants into the border areas, and subsequently fled back into Rwanda, or further into Zaire. Tens of thousands were killed, or died of exposure or starvation.
Ten years ago, refugees came primarily from Sudan, DRC, Somalia and CAR, as they do currently. In addition, Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia generated significant numbers of refugees following their civil wars, and the ongoing crisis in the Great Lakes area added Burundi and Rwanda to the list.
2016 – more than 1,200 people have died of starvation and illness at an aid camp in north-east Nigeria that houses people fleeing the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, according to the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières.
It goes on, and it always will. There will always be wars, and rumours of wars. There will be, increasingly, natural disasters as a result of climate change. There will be persecution and oppression and terrorism. People will leave because they have to, because home is the mouth of a shark. And we will have to find better ways of helping them, we must be braver, more generous, more open. Today of all days that seems a forlorn hope. But we must hang on to it, nonetheless.
Migration Matters Festival
Friday 24th June
To Walk in Your Shoes, by Rachael Munro-Fawcett
10.30am-6pm
Exhibition.
—
The Scar Test, by Untold
5.30pm-6.15pm
“I came to England, scarred for life.”
—
Deaths by Rescue, by SYMAAG with Dr Simon Parker
6.30pm-9pm
Film & discussion on the refugee crisis.
—
Iftar with Open Kitchen
9pm
Food and conversation!
Posted by cathannabel in Africa, Genocide, Refugees on June 23, 2016
One person in 113 worldwide is displaced from home due to conflict or persecution. That’s the highest it’s ever been. We’re talking about forced displacement, not people choosing to leave home because they fancy a better life somewhere else. Warsan Shire’s poem expresses this with immense power:
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well…
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
The UNHCR says that Syria at 4.9 million, Afghanistan at 2.7 million and Somalia at 1.1 million together accounted for more than half the refugees under its mandate worldwide. Colombia at 6.9 million, Syria at 6.6 million and Iraq at 4.4 million had the largest numbers of internally displaced people.
Commentators have often shown an uncanny ability to scan the faces of the people in the boats or waiting at border posts and determine where they have come from, and then to use these conclusions to argue that they are not ‘genuine’ refugees but economic migrants. Better to turn to the data gathered by UNHCR.
These tell us that the countries producing the highest number of refugees are, in order,
One does not have to be an expert on world affairs to be aware that the majority of these countries are, and in some cases have been for many years, riven by vicious civil wars, often spilling over into neighbouring countries. The accusation that the young males amongst the refugees should be fighting for their country is nonsensical in these chaotic and volatile situations – who should they be fighting with, or against? An oppressive government or an extremist rebel force? Often both official and unofficial forces bolster their fighting strength by forcing boys and young men to join them. In Sudan and CAR there has been at least the threat of genocide, in DRC disease and famine as well horrific violence and rape on an unthinkable scale. In addition, IS and its affiliates are active in many of these areas.
Given all that, why do we even wonder about the motivations of those who flee?
The other accusation that is often made is that ‘they’ should have sought refuge in neighbouring countries – the nearest safe place – rather than heading to Europe. Most do. In all, 86 per cent of the refugees under UNHCR’s mandate in 2015 were in low- and middle-income countries close to situations of conflict. Worldwide, Turkey was the biggest host country, with 2.5 million refugees. With nearly one refugee for every five citizens, Lebanon hosted more refugees compared to its population than any other country.
But in these countries, those who have fled genocide, famine, war and persecution find themselves in refugee camps. These are, by definition if not in practice, temporary holding spaces, transitory, a stop along the road to a place to call home. They are likely to be desperately short of food and medical supplies, sanitation is often rudimentary at best, and there is little prospect of education for the children. Many of the countries that host most of the world’s refugees are barely able to support their own citizens. When we say we are full or that we do not have the resources to support a pitifully tiny percentage of the desperate displaced people who need our help, we are demonstrating our own complacency and ignorance.
Here in Europe we can afford to feed, clothe, house and heal our own AND more. The statistics tell us that we are not doing our bit, nowhere near.
Migration Matters Festival – Thursday 23 June
Verse Matters – a Feminist Arts Event (19.30 pm) An inclusive, supportive space for poetry, spoken word, storytelling, music and comedy. Performers include Khadijah Ibrahim, Rae Burgess and Chijioke Ojukwu.
Posted by cathannabel in Refugees on June 22, 2016
Magnus Wennman’s heartwrenching series of photos, “Where The Children Sleep,” , shows what happens to the children fleeing the conflict in Syria. He says that whilst the conflict and the crisis can be difficult for people to understand, “there is nothing hard to understand about how children need a safe place to sleep … They have lost some hope. It takes very much for a child to stop being a child and to stop having fun, even in really bad places.”
The recent debate about offering sanctuary to unaccompanied child refugees was constantly and powerfully connected to the story of the Kindertransport. As the Nazi threat to the Jews of Europe became clear, a number of individuals, including Sir Nicholas Winton, negotiated and organised transport for children to places of safety. Their parents sent them onwards, with small suitcases or rucksacks packed with care and love, with the things they thought they’d need and the things that would remind them of home. Some parents managed to get away separately, and were subsequently reunited with their children. Most were too late, and perished.
The children who arrived in the UK were welcomed by a variety of organisations, Jewish and Quaker amongst others, and provided with foster homes. There was a brief window of opportunity – once war was declared, borders closed, and no more trains could leave Germany, Austria or Czechoslovakia. Other trains would take many of the children left behind to other, terrible destinations. Some children got no further than France or the Netherlands, and many of those were deported from the homes they’d found there after those countries were occupied. Gerda-Sophie Klein was born in Vienna in 1935, and came to the Netherlands early in 1939. She survived until 1944, when she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered, on her 9th birthday.
In the House of Commons, on 21 November 1938, Sir Samuel Hoare (then Home Secretary) told Members of Parliament:
I could not help thinking what a terrible dilemma it was to the Jewish parents in Germany to have to choose between sending their children to a foreign country, into the unknown, and continuing to live in the terrible conditions to which they are now reduced in Germany. I saw this morning one of the representatives of the Quaker organisations, who told me that he had only arrived in England this morning from a visit to Germany and a visit to Holland. He inquired of the Jewish organisations in Germany what would be the attitude of the Jewish parents to a proposal of this kind, and he told me that the Jewish parents were almost unanimously in favour of facing this parting with their children and taking the risks of their children going to a foreign country, rather than keeping them with them to face the unknown dangers with which they are faced in Germany.
No one claims an exact equivalence between the circumstances in Nazi Europe and those we face now. But equally no one would doubt that in desperate circumstances children are the most vulnerable, least able to defend themselves, most open to abuse.
It is often asked, below the line, what kind of parents would abandon their children to such a fate. Firstly, it is a huge assumption that these children have been abandoned. Many will be orphaned. Many will have become separated from their parents in the chaos of flight. And some parents, faced with the desperate choice to save some but not all of the family will have chosen to send their children on to at least the chance of safety, as those parents did 80 years ago.
It’s also often claimed that the children are a sort of Trojan horse – if we allow our hearts to soften and give them sanctuary here, their parents and older siblings will then emerge from the shadows and demand to join them. Or that they are not in fact minors, just young-looking adults. It takes a particularly determined brand of cynicism to look at these children in such need and see only threat and deceit.
Most of us will see instead both vulnerability and potential. If we take them in we can both protect them from the dangers they currently face, and allow them to fulfil the potential they have, to contribute to the country and the community that gives them sanctuary.
The children of the Kindertransport gave back, richly. Four are Nobel prize laureates, others have built distinguished careers in all branches of the sciences and arts, in politics and business.
One of the Kinder, Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley, explicitly linked her philanthropic work to her history: ‘I need to justify the fact that my life was saved.’
We can’t know who amongst the children currently stranded in war zones or in refugee camps might prove to be an outstanding scientist, writer, composer, or entrepreneur. We can only know that whilst they live the half-life of the refugee camp, deprived of stability, education and adequate healthcare, they cannot be the people they have the potential to be.
The last words on this are those of the late Jo Cox. who would have been 42 years old today.
We all know that the vast majority of the terrified, friendless and profoundly vulnerable child refugees scattered across Europe tonight came from Syria.
We also know that as that conflict enters its sixth barbaric year that desperate Syrian families are being forced to make an impossible decision: stay and face starvation, rape, persecution and death or make a perilous journey to find sanctuary elsewhere.
And who can blame desperate parents for wanting to escape the horror that their families are experiencing. The reality in which children are being killed on their way to school, where children as young as seven are being forcibly recruited to the front line and where one in three Syrian children have grown up knowing nothing but fear and war.
These children have been exposed to things no child should ever witness and I know I personally would risk life and limb to get my two precious babies out of that hell-hole.
Migration Matters Festival – Wednesday 22 June
Howl Yuan – The Invisible Guest (6.00 pm and 7.00 pm): A drop-in, one on one performance followed by a full audience show, exploring how we are changed by our names, the places we live, the languages we use
Eclipse Theatre Company & Amaal Sharif – Rather: A Work in Progress (7.30 pm): One man’s journey to understanding humanity and the bonds that tie us together more than land, blood, language or creed
Rachel Munro-Fawcett – To Walk in Your Shoes: a documentary exploration of asylum, giving a voice to the voiceless
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/the-little-boy-who-escaped-from-hell-1-1259947#ixzz4CE9bnFYL
http://www.dokin.nl/deceased-children/gerda-sophie-klein-born-6-mar-1935
Posted by cathannabel in Refugees on June 21, 2016
What is it they want, all these people?
What do we want? What do we hope for, for ourselves and for our children? We may hope for prosperity, for a nicer house in a nicer part of town, a better job, for our kids to be successful as well as happy. But if what we have was taken from us, what then?
We’d want to be safe. If our home, our street, our place of work, the school our children go to, the hospital they were born in and where we go if we’re sick, are bombsites and warzones, we’ll take our chances to go somewhere that perhaps just might be safe.
We’d want to be safe from violence and the constant threat of violence, because we believe in the wrong god or in no god, because we love the wrong people, because we support the wrong political movement, because we are the wrong race. We’d want to be safe from rape and the constant threat of rape, from abuse, from mutilation in the name of tradition. We’d want to be safe from the constant threat of starvation and disease, the desperate quest for enough food to just stay alive, the desperate quest for help when we or our children are sick.
But we’d want more than that.
We’d want to have a place where we can shut our door and hang up our hats, and sleep without fear, and be with the people we love. We’d want the chance to work, to use our skills to earn enough to provide for ourselves and the people we love, to prepare healthy meals, to buy new shoes for the children as they grow, to be warm enough in winter. We’d want the chance to learn, new languages and new skills, and we’d want our children to go to school and learn all that they need to make their way in the world, and to make friends and play.
We’d want to become part of a community. Paying our way, making a contribution, chatting to our neighbours, free of the threat that there will be a knock on the door early one morning and we’ll be sent away, back where we came from, or just away, to anywhere that’s not here.
And with all of that we’d want not to be told in the headlines of the newspapers that we’re a threat, that we’re terrorists, that we’re spongers, that we’re liars, that we’re cowards. We’d want not to see in the eyes of the people we meet that they wonder whether that’s true.
We’d want to be welcome.
Tuesday 21 June – Migration Matters Festival
British Red Cross Refugee Awareness Workshop (2.00 pm): find out about their work, and how you can get involved
Displace Yourself Theatre – Free to Stay (7.30 pm): An exploration of life without nationality, through physical theatre and projection, telling the stories of individuals with first-hand experience of statelessness
Posted by cathannabel in Refugees on June 20, 2016
Last week, two teams from the University of Sheffield set off, from Hornsea and Southport respectively, to walk over 120 miles on the Transpennine Trail.
The weather was not kind. The terrain was tough going too. It tested them all, even the most experienced walkers amongst them. Day after day, to get up and face a 20 mile walk, in boots that had barely had time to dry out from the previous day, on damaged feet. But for Tom Rhodes the Big Walk was ‘a chance to show that humanity and hope is stronger than fear, division and intolerance’. Tony Strike spoke of his tears of relief when it was all over, at not putting boots on blistered feet, and commented, ‘Respect to refugees who have no choice and no home’.
Physicist Matthew Malek gives his account here, and explains why he undertook the challenge.
Last week, I participated in the University of Sheffield’s Big Walk — a long-distance hike for the purposes of aiding refugee students and academics. In total, there were 21 participants; we were divided into two teams and sent to opposite ends of the Trans Pennine Trail. After five days of hiking towards each other, we met in the middle on Thursday night, and then hiked the final miles back to Sheffield together on Friday. Each team walked over 120 miles, and we were joined by about 100 other people on the final day for the Big Walk One Day Challenge.
I am an experienced hiker, having previously completed the Hadrian’s Wall Path, a large portion of the Thames Path, and the National Three Peaks Challenge. However, the Big Walk involved six days of long distances, covering over 20 miles per day. This sort of sustained distance was new to me. It proved difficult at times, both for myself and for other members of my team — Team Hornsea. We looked out for each other, though, and always made sure everyone was okay.
A long walk like this is a challenge that is part physical and part mental. You need the physical stamina to cover great distances daily; you need the mental resolve to keep moving when the pain kicks in and things get tough. We endured blisters and bleeding feet; we endured heat rash and muscle pain. For me, the greatest challenge came towards the end of the fifth day; at about 110 miles in, my ankles incurred soft tissue damage, leaving me to walk the final 20 miles on Thursday night and all day Friday in significant amounts of pain. As I write this, my feet are bandaged and I am walking with a crutch for the next week or so until the damage has a chance to heal.
What gave us the strength to keep going under such conditions? The spirit of teamwork was strong, to be sure. However, the single greatest motivation was the cause itself, the reason that we had undertaken the Big Walk in the first place — the refugees.
Despite the troubles we encountered, our walk was a pleasant experience, full of camaraderie. On the walks, we enjoyed good company and conversation. Each night, we were able to rest in a warm bed after a hot meal. These are luxuries and privileges that refugees do not get. When we walked, we had not left behind everything — and everyone — that we had ever known. We did not walk out of fear for our lives. We did not walk in danger; we all knew how long the journey would be and that we would survive it. Most importantly, we knew that when we reached the end of the walk, there would be friends and family waiting to cheer for us, hug us, and welcome us home.
I wish every refugee could walk under such conditions. This is not the reality that they experience. After leaving their homes behind and completing long, dangerous journeys, the sad truth is that it is all too common for these people to meet nothing but hostility at the end of their travel. The sad truth is that they are more likely to be detained in camps whilst accused of being terrorists, or of stealing jobs and unemployment benefits. This is to the lasting shame of Europe and the United States. We can do better. We must do better.
When my walk became painful, this is where my thoughts turned. It gave me perspective and the willpower to keep placing one foot in front of the other. Whatever I was experiencing, I know that it was utter luxury compared to a refugee’s journey.
As a newcomer to Sheffield and to this University, I am pleased to have moved to the United Kingdom’s first City of Sanctuary. And I am proud to be a member of a University that would initiate such an event, giving 21 staff members a week of paid leave to support such an important cause. We have raised over £40,000 for refugees, and I hope that others will continue to send support through our JustGiving page.
My Big Walk was made by choice and it is now over. There are far too many who are forced to make walks, and that is a reality that we must work together to end.
Dr Matthew Malek
Lecturer in Physics & Astronomy, University of Sheffield
Funds raised through the Big Walk will be used to support refugee academics and students at the University, to demonstrate our solidarity with refugees and to show that refugees are welcome at our University and in our city. Our University is a University of Sanctuary and this has been our tradition since this institution was founded.
Funds raised through the Big Walk 2016 will be used in the following ways:
• Supporting at-risk academics: We have strong links with a number of programmes to support at-risk academics, including the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund and the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) – a charity which helps academics in immediate danger, those forced into exile. Through these partnerships, the University of Sheffield can host academics, giving them a place of safety and the financial and practical help to continue their careers until such as time as they can return home.
• Students seeking refuge or asylum: The University offers fully funded undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships for refugees including those seeking asylum in the UK. Throughout 2016 we will be raising funds to increase this support.
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/alumni/donate/specialfunds/big-walk-2016
https://www.justgiving.com/teams/big-walk2016
Posted by cathannabel in Refugees on June 19, 2016
This year things feel different, in the run-up to Refugee Week. When I started blogging about refugees it felt like a neglected topic – even though organisations like Refugee Action and CARA and many others were working incredibly hard to support refugees and asylum seekers, and to raise awareness of the issues, they weren’t making headlines.
Since the photograph last September of that small boy, who came to stand for so many other children washed ashore as their flimsy, overcrowded boats sink in the Mediterranean, refugees have hardly been out of the headlines.
That’s a double edged sword, of course. Whilst many, many people have been stirred to do something, moved by looking into the eyes of grieving parents, frightened children and traumatised young men and recognising that they are like us, that they could be us, others have used the same images to stoke up hatred and suspicion.
The theme this year is ‘Welcome’. The heady days when refugees were greeted with smiling crowds and flowers faded pretty quickly but the people themselves are still with us, and more are coming, because they have no choice. Those who are here already can’t go home because home isn’t there any more for them, just as those others who are leaving now, grabbing what they can carry, handing their money over for a hazardous passage to an uncertain future, can’t just say, well, you know what, perhaps we’ll stay put after all.
We have to keep pressing our governments to make them welcome. We have to keep challenging the miserable, hateful lies that are told daily about them. We have to keep telling their stories so that more people make that leap into understanding and empathy.
Over the next week I’ll be trying to do some of that. As in previous years, I’ll post at least one piece each day. If you like what you read, feel free to reblog/share.
Tonight at the Migration Matters festival in Sheffield, Ice and Fire Theatre present their Asylum Monologues, based on ten years of gathering and disseminating testimonies of asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. And they’ve a packed and varied programme throughout Refugee Week as well, including Ardi Mejzini’s one-man show based on his own experience as a refugee from Kosovo (Monday, 20.00). All events will take place at Theatre Delicatessen, 17 The Moor and are Pay What You Decide.
Posted by cathannabel in Politics on June 18, 2016
I do have faith. Not in any god or gods, but in people. Sometimes that’s hard to sustain. It gets bashed about a lot, and this last week it has been kicked in the teeth and the guts.
Sometimes hanging on to one’s faith is an act of will. I refuse to despair of humanity. I refuse to believe that hate will win.
That’s not based on some rose-tinted view of the world, some sanitised suitable for small children version of history. I am currently reading the late David Cesarani’s book on the Final Solution. I have read so many accounts of the Holocaust and of the Rwandan genocide. I know what human beings can do to one another.
But I also know, from those same accounts that there are always people who stand up to be counted, people who risk their lives to protect others. I know there are people for whom love and compassion are such powerful principles that they will act upon them even when the whole of their society seems to be in opposition. Everywhere that there is hate, there is also love.
The poison that seeps out daily from the front pages of some of our tabloids, that oozes from the comments below the line on any newspaper article about refugees/migrants, has its effects. If people only ever hear that message, why would they not begin to believe it? Who hasn’t been told, by a stranger or a family member, that we aren’t allowed to celebrate Christmas any more? (I was told that on Christmas Day, in a room filled with the usual festive debris, after a splendid traditional Christmas dinner, so there you go). Or that Sharia law is now in force here, or that ‘they’ can jump the queue for housing, benefits, etc. In the face of all the evidence, these lies take hold, as lies so easily do when they tap into deep insecurities and fears. Insecurities and fears that are nurtured and fed every day.
In the face of the lies we have to keep speaking and showing truth. In the face of hate we have to keep speaking and showing love. In the face of the horrors that seem to happen daily – in Paris, in Kuda, in Orlando, in Birstall – we have to keep speaking and showing faith.
Keep on keeping on.
Sometimes – Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day (E B White)
Theirs is a land with a wall around it
And mine is a faith in my fellow man…Sweet moderation, heart of this nation
Desert us not, we are between the wars(Billy Bragg, Between the Wars)
We are building up a new world.
Do not sit idly by.
Do not remain neutral.
Do not rely on this broadcast alone.
We are only as strong as our signal.
There is a war going on for your mind.
If you are thinking, you are winning.(Flobots – We are Winning)
The simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.Caitlin Moran – How to Build a Girl
If there’s no great glorious end to all this, if … nothing we do matters … then all that matters is what we do. ‘Cause that’s all there is. What we do. Now. Today. … All I want to do is help. I want to help because I don’t think people should suffer as they do, because if there’s no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.Joss Whedon – Angel
We are, almost all of us, in the flesh merely odd shaped, damp-eyed vulnerable human beings in constant need of love. There is, we must remember, more love and unity than hate in this world. Sometimes it takes a death to force us out into the streets and admit it
https://www.gofundme.com/jocox
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/big-walk2016
You are currently browsing the archives for June, 2016
Passing Time 