I Am A Refugee!

'Then they came for me...'

I am forever drawn back to the stark words of latterly-reformed, one-time-fan of Nazism, Martin Niemöller. I find them to be most haunting; haunting in a manner not reflected upon nearly enough by pretty much anyone. The quotation is short and direct, just seventy-one words. If we think to put some serious spin upon the reflection we could easily add further verses, no doubt as could have done Niemöller himself, but nowhere better will we find a more apposite example of the adage, 'Less is more!' He references three groups of people who were persecuted by the Nazis but could so easily have added more, which would have elaborated further upon historical detail yet could not have made the words any more pertinent.

We don't require Martin Niemöller- deceased 6th March 1984- to explain to us that the referenced peoples, the 'socialists,' the 'trade unionists' and the 'Jews,' are there to refer to all of us!

If we were Keir Starmer- heaven forbid- we could choose to reflect upon the first referenced, the socialists. If we were discussing the news we might, instead, opt to consider the unmentioned refugees. Let's dabble and go with the latter.

Two terms, not accurately interchangeable, yet frequently used as such by the majority of the UK's MSM, populated as it is by so many pseudo-journalists, are 'asylum-seeker' and 'refugee.' This is pertinent because, until the asylum-seeker is legally accepted (processed) as such he or she cannot officially be termed a refugee, whereupon further and greater rights are endowed upon the individual. Prior to this procedure the asylum-seeker is anyway protected in international law and is entitled to seek refuge in the country of his or her choosing, as stipulated in international law. Further, recognising that asylum-seekers necessarily often flee without copious paperwork or personal possessions, these same laws also accept that asylum-seekers may arrive by any means, or by any route, humanly possible.

This means that international law regards no asylum-seeker, nor route travelled, to be illegal! Nor does it regard potentially persecution-fleeing individuals as 'boats!'

Currently, Britain's presented lack of compassion, and/or its racist rhetoric, appears to have shoe-horned the term 'illegal migrant' to the fore. It is to the shame of so many of those aforementioned pseudo-journalists that such language is not challenged; the term does not apply! Afforded proper legal protections and procedures most asylum-seekers to the UK go on to gain recognition as genuine refugees. Those who do not 'may' discompassionately be regarded as 'failed asylum-seekers' but, given the current underhanded methods of the UK's asylum system, we should recognise that many of these may well have been denied proper legal representation. Of those who manage to gain access to proper legal appeal many go on to have their initial 'judgement' overturned.

'Then they came for me...'

Niemöller came to recognise that everybody is a potential refugee, circumstances may spin upon a sixpence! So, not yet! Hopefully! He also, latterly, came to recognise that democracy is a relative and often abused term. That the wrongful manipulation of legislation may quickly 'transform' any aspiring-towards-democracy into one of more dubious credentials, aspiring-instead towards dictatorship, ultimately fascism!

Rather than climbing the proverbial ladder and then pulling it up afterwards one should best judge a state, not by how well it indulges and looks after its elites, more by how well it looks after its poorest and most unfortunate 'citizens.' The state's actions to strip citizens of their statehood should be recognised as a danger to all rather than any sort of protections for any.

To perfectly illustrate the issue (concern), the United Kingdom- 'great bastion of freedom' within which it wishes to cloak itself- is yet again being investigated by the UN, over its treatment of chronically ill and disabled people. The UNCRPD (United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities), to which the UK is a signatory, has asked to meet with the UK Government in order to see what the nation has done since it was last accused by the UN of "grave" and "systematic" Human Rights abuses. Ongoing evidence supports the UN's claim of 'continued regression,' 'breaching and ignoring substantive obligations.' With typical distain, the government has chosen to defer the meeting. With similar disregard the MSM has left its canvass compliantly blank.

'and I did not speak out' Presumably, because I was not disabled.

Consider: what circumstances may cause anyone to abandon all possessions, flee their home, their family, to risk life in unfamiliar countries or unknowable waters, risk being trafficked, risk being sold into prostitution, into slavery, to risk separation from one's own children? Imagine, or rather don't, what such an individual may already have experienced and encountered! And, that's before the asylum-seeker washes up against the cold, barnacled hide of a Suella Braverman or a Julia Hartley-Brewer. Or the bulbous concrete sea-defences of a Mike Graham.

Many of the asylum-seekers that our corporate media uses to illustrate its diatribe possess brown skin. Those of a lighter shade may have arrived by fantastical and ethereal 'safe and legal routes' that the UK's MSM echo chambers platform yet never seem capable of enlightening or elaborating upon. So, from whence do those darker 'invading swarms' originate?

Conservative funder, Michael Samuel's 'Full Fact' site lists the top five nations (asylum-seekers to the UK) as Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Bangladesh; also noted on site are Syria, Sudan and Eritrea. When it is considered that many of the asylum-seekers risking their lives in the Mediterranean and the Channel are fleeing war, and/or its associated atrocities, a curious point to note must be 'quite how thriving is the UK's overseas arms trade!' The UK currently sells £millions in arms to 58 of the 73 countries listed as being subject to restrictions. Included in this sinister itinerary can be found such items as 'sniper rifles' to Pakistan. Listed on UK government websites as being both countries where the UK is "particularly concerned about human rights issues," whilst also featuring as key customers for precisely the trade that is likely to further these faux 'concerns,' are nations such as Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, China, Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Oman.

I am a refugee! Not quite. Hopefully not under the current system!

Whilst the UK's louder platforms may saturate airtime with their anti asylum-seeker rhetoric, by contrast, very little is devoted to one of the key contributors to their number... exported war! The 'better' funded the war the greater the exodus! And, neoliberalism aspires, above all else, to generating greater business opportunity!

UNHCR more sympathetically recognises the global scale in displaced populations. It names the top three nations of origin as Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan. The UK could lay claim to having played its part in funding and bolstering the displaced populations of each of these. The UK does not feature in the top five host nations, which are: Turkey (3.6 million refugees), Iran (3.4 million), Colombia (2.5 million) Germany (2.1 million) and Pakistan (1.7 million). When such numbers are displaced organising the exodus is necessarily impossibly messy; nations may feature both as source and host. UNHCR informs that 70% of the global population of refugees settle in neighbouring countries- hint, that's not us! A truly ghastly detail is that 43.3 million are children, of which 1.9 million were born as refugees.

Search and you'll find former major colonialist, UK, languishing behind other European nations, in order, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Austria and the Netherlands, in terms of received refugees. France currently hosts about three times as many refugees as does the UK, Greece about one-and-a-half times as many. Obviously, 'Refugees Welcomed!'- words unlikely to ever form upon the lips of current Home Secretary- paints a wholly misleading picture. In terms of asylum-seeker applications received, relative to population size, the UK languishes well down the European table, in seventeenth place. Turns out Gary Lineker was 'right on the money!'

Business partner- "subject to restrictions" due to human rights concerns- Saudi Arabia, is hugely invested with both the Syrian exodus and that of Yemen. MSM may wish to disguise the fact with smoke and mirrors but Yemen currently plays unwilling 'host' to today's 'greatest' human rights crisis. We could ponder as to quite what extent the UK currently enables either displacement. Again, "messy!" Again, we have nations appearing in both columns- in this instance, as funder of war-born exodus and as angry objector to the resultant surge in asylum-seeker numbers. Neither Palestine, nor Yemen feature as key contributors to the UK but the UK still plays a full part in funding Israel's war crimes against the occupied Palestinians and Saudi Arabia's similar atrocities upon the Yemeni population. Again, both columns! "Messy!" in terms of the citizens genocidally targeted, murdered and displaced! So skewed has MSM pretended the rhetoric to have become that former members have been expelled from Keir Starmer's Labour Party for even daring to question the UK arms trade with Israel. Labour MP, Kim Johnson, was recently made to apologise in the Commons for pointing out the documented fact that “Since the election of the fascist Israeli government last December there has been an increase in human rights violations against Palestinians, including children." If only there were non-client journalists afforded full and proper platform to question, to clarify and to highlight the consequences of such 'neatly,' joined-up international events.

Maybe, it's not always quite so 'messy' as it's portrayed? That is to 'say,' it's 'messy' in terms of blood and lost lives but it's 'neatly sewn-up' in terms of business contracts.

The Home Secretary's 'Rwanda Deal,' 'endorsed' by the courts, some of them, may be Braverman's dream but it's many an asylum-seeker's nightmare! The wonderful Human Rights Watch team continue to keep a close eye upon the ongoing political repression that's afoot inside Rwanda. The country currently features as both proposed recipient to, ironically, successful asylum-seekers (aka refugees) and documented contributor to the global exodus. Another detail the client 'journalists' repeatedly fail to bring to the fore. The UK General Election is fast approaching, where we will be permitted, this time, to swap in the B Team. Dare we hope that Keir Starmer's lobbyists will reject the Rwanda Deal, reject it's hasty replacement, Ascension Island, and reject the overcrowded 'sinking' prison hovel, the Bibby Stockholm? Dare we? A man thoroughly in step with current national ideology, Starmer is also very capable of spinning upon a sixpence! He barely stops!

Recently 'passed' through the Commons (and the Lords), is the 'Illegal Migration Bill.' An over-inflated dinghy, of 'unquestionably far-superior founding,' the UK now sets out to drift ever further from the ideals set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention, an outlier with all the worst signifiers, hastened through persistent easterlies, slicing through those blue and spumey waves, into the uncharted waters of "safe and legal routes." Here be dragons! Presumably, the well-documented recurrence of Dickensian diseases will be accompanying the nation out into those waves, to the jingo-bawl of 'Rule Britannia!' Flags at the ready!

The '1951 Refugee Convention' document, together with its '1967 Protocol,' is thorough. The document defines precisely who it terms to be a refugee. Further it affords and protects their rights, their status, means to affording food and provisions- obviously, they've been dispossessed!- their property, rights to housing, freedoms to travel and to seek employment; it's a deeply invested document. It does not threaten deportation and does not seek to disincentivise 'Refugees,' with spittle-flecked threats of cramped prison confinements. Relative to Articles 21 and 26, 'Housing' and 'Freedom of Movement,' we should be both alarmed and outraged in equal measure. Far wealthier than in 1951, clear of the shadow of physical involvement in war, 21st Century Britain, specifically England, increasingly now elects to muddy the waters by creating its own internal numbers of dispossessed. Anomalous England 'boasts' no fault evictions, 2 weeks or one pay cheque away from homelessness! A pariah state! The nation of financialised housing, social housing sold off and usurped by the private sector. Landlords who may spin upon a sixpence, act upon a whim. By contrast, in Germany tenants are free/encouraged to register rents. Unless the landlord needs to move in him-or-herself the tenant is pretty much secure in their established home. In Austria tenants are afforded a three-year tenancy, in France it's six years, Belgium it's nine or ten years. Thus, these nations have not created their own mass internal ongoing-migration.

Then they came for the renters.

Brexit! Blue passports! Rickets, Tuberculosis, Scarlet Fever, Scurvy. Austerity, poverty and malnutrition!
"Blest Isle! With matchless beauty crown'd,
And manly hearts to guard the fair."
'and I did not speak out' ... because I had private health insurance... maybe?

The UK's definitely not going to become a nation of Refugees Welcome! overnight. Army camps ? Tents through the winter? Niemöller's vision re-enacted for modernity? Will history, perhaps, come to re-imagine Niemöller as some sort of latter day prophet?

What would the angriest amongst us have the nation do? Should we once again fully embrace the historic Empire Island's outlook of exported colonialism and imported resources only? Could the globe stomach another dose? Regard the asylum-seekers as mere cargo? Property? I think the globe's wised up to that one! "Our safe and legal routes are some of the most generous anywhere-" the Government's words, definitely not mine! Should we illustrate precisely just how "generous" we really are, by turning the sinking dinghies round and pushing them back into the crashing waves? Where many of them will soon, likely, have "f***** off to the bottom of the sea"? Diane Abbott's justifiably angry words so perfectly illustrating precisely how the messenger may be publicly shot and shut down, whilst the cancerous source metastasizes, care of the UK's worshipful tabloids. Legionella sardines? Re-educate the populace to equate 'refugee' with 'criminal?' 'Illegal migrants?' Turn off the legal protections? Become the pariah state?

Co-signatories to the '1951 Refugee Convention,' France have also performed poorly over their respect for the Refugee Convention...
"The right not to be punished for irregular entry into the territory of a contracting State (Article 31)"
"The right to access to justice (Article 16)"
...although, more favourably than has, and does, the UK. The United Kingdom, history teaches us, is an island of migrants. In a messy sort of way, it kinda works... after a fashion... if one factors out most of the wars and stuff... and the narrator sticks religiously to the script. Nations pick and choose a narrative that best suits their own respective Big Brother Narrator, but the connections are seldom universal! Western learning would have it that certain nations are somehow better than others. But, dip into recent colonial history and the accumulated details soon begin to weigh increasingly upon the 'desired telling.' Global narrative is beginning to fill in many of the blanks. The UK may indeed have been planning well ahead when it dreamt up 'Operation Legacy' and ordered its colonial troops to grasp, with all hands, the documented (formerly) Great British Overseas Legacy and to ignite those towering bonfires! "What's burnt won't be missed!" exclaimed one unnamed British soldier. It was 1963 Borneo and 423 files had barely made a dent in the incinerator backlog.

Then they came for the evidence. 'and I did not speak out- because...' I was not one of the the colonised.

The irreplaceable Nelson Mandela seemed, effortlessly, to float above his peers. Sorely missed! In dealing with South Africa's shameful apartheid past he strode a pathway through the gory horrors, and avoided much of the bloodshed that might otherwise have resulted, through South Africa's 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission.' In this regard Israel is the noted outlier. Mandela recognised that if there is one major 20th Century overarching realisation of enacted human betrayal it surely has to be Settler Colonialism. True, much Empirical thinking predates the 20th Century- Bloody Kings and their bloody kingdoms!- but the 20th Century fully encapsulates the essence of the big and uncomfortable truth! South Africa may have laid shameful claim to the discredited system but variations upon the theme have left a stain across much of the globe. It's evident in the White Australian treatment of Aborigines, in the White new Zealand treatment of Maoris, in the White American treatment of Native Americans, its evident in all of those former British Colonies, those where Operation Legacy was being enacted as recently as 1963- living memory! It was evident when the late British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, drew up a British Mandate for a colonised and segregated land that wasn't Britain's to mandate, and gave it away to yet another colonial settler via a short statement of sixty-eight words, The Balfour Declaration. The arrogance of the then 'current occupier' is breathtaking beyond words! Thus, at the stroke of a pen, creating 700,000 refugees!

When the UK was a major signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention- subsequently signed up to by nearly 150 nations- there was (we are informed) a common thread that 'such horrors should never again be permitted to happen!' Refugees were afforded rights and protections; the nightmarish scenarios that they may once again encounter were guarded against. 150 nations signed up to internationally recognised obligations that should forever onward be afforded to the globe's dispossessed.

"One of the outstanding achievements of the 20th century in the humanitarian field has been the establishment of the principle that the refugee problem is a matter of concern to the international community and must be addressed in the context of international cooperation and burden-sharing."

'I did not speak out—because...'

Through its so-called international business aspirations the UK is wholeheartedly playing a major role in creating precisely the sort of climate within which another refugee crisis can, and has, occurred. We can only wonder what Churchill would have thought. On record, he was more than a touch racist but, even so, I doubt he'd have been very proud.

I am a Refugee!

'Then they came for me...'