Photo credit: Imperial War Museum
Refugeedom has been described as an emotive, complex subject that brings out the best and worst in people.
In the Cyprus Mail, Gavin Jones says the statistics are incredibly critical. There are approximately 120 million who have been forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, and violation of human rights. This includes refugees and internally displaced people. These two categories often invoke a two-tier label of worthiness, with some thinking that the former should be viewed more sympathetically.
Passions are also inflamed about the status of asylum seekers and economic migrants. The people who fall into this net, especially the latter, depend on the receiving countries’ labour market at all times.
In the case of America, Australia and Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries, the necessity of encouraging an influx of labour and populating virgin lands, the latter albeit by forcibly “displacing” native Americans, Aborigines, and Indigenous Irish by various violent methods.
The tablet at the base of the Statute of Liberty reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Immigration has become a political football in America, no more so than in Britain. The riots in July in Britain were a salutary reminder of the antipathy building up in some quarters towards immigrants and foreigners in general. “Stop the boats” was the clarion call of Tory politicians during the run-up to the general election and became the epitome of immigrant controversy. “Immigrant” has become a dirty word and synonymous with hate to such an extent that Britons living abroad describe themselves as expats in order to disassociate themselves from it.
In the 1950s, West Indian immigrants worked on trolley buses in Wolverhampton as drivers or ticket collectors, strapping their dinky aluminium machines to their waists. Similarly, Indians and Pakistanis arrived in their thousands, and many set up small corner shops open at all hours.
These people filled the labour gap and showed the indigenous population what hard work and thrift could achieve. Prejudice existed then, and it exists to a lesser extent now. This was evident in July this year when tens of thousands of Britons took to the streets in counterdemonstrations against racist rioters who targeted and attacked asylum hotels, shops and individuals. It showed that the great British public retained their deep sense of tolerance and fair play.
Cyprus also had its riots last year targeting asylum seekers/immigrants in Limassol and Papua – a stark reminder that this is universal. Thousands of Cypriots came out to demonstrate against the racist thugs who brought shame to the island.
The ongoing violence in the Middle East is an international power play. It also encompasses refugeedom on a complex and massive scale and engenders passionate viewpoints. Israel came into being in 1948, with approximately 750,000 Palestinians becoming refugees overnight. Those still alive from that era and many of their heirs remain in refugee camps or else are distributed far and wide in other countries. Meanwhile, there was a huge influx of Jews from central and eastern Europe who took over the land and properties of the former Palestinian occupants.
We are now witnessing the essence of the continuing backlash of this historical event.
In August 1974, the Turkish army forced the Greek Cypriot inhabitants of Famagusta to flee the city, and today, they live in towns and villages in the non-occupied part of Cyprus. Approximately 160,000 left the north for the south, with 30,000 Turkish Cypriots going in the opposite direction. Whenever the subject comes up in the press, there is a lot of negative feelings towards the Cypriot refugees. Most of the feelings are borne out of ignorance that refugees allegedly receive monthly payments and other so-called “benefits”. This is not true.
