Can E.U. Shift Migrant Crisis to the Source? In Libya, the Odds Are Long

This is an interesting read on how officers in the Libyan Coast Guards were trained by the Italians to intercept and rescue migrant boats near the Libyan coast before reaching international waters. Normally, if European forces intercept migrants, then they should be taken to Italy. But if Libyans pick them up from their water, then they can be taken  to Libya instead. You can find the detail of the news in - Can E.U. Shift Migrant Crisis to the Source? In Libya, the Odds Are Long

No to Immigration Ban

Five days ago, the new American President, Donald Trump, signed an executive order proposing a 90 day suspension of visas for people belonging to seven countries. 

(Photo: The New York Magazine)

While there were widespread protests across the US, the following is the letter by academics against the executive order. 

The letter is hosted at notoimmigrationban.com, and can be endorsed by sending an email to NoToImmigrationEO@gmail.com

The Petition

President Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order (EO) proposing a 90-day suspension of visas and other immigration benefits to all nationals of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. The unrealistic conditions required for discontinuing the suspension make it very likely that this EO will turn into a permanent ban. We, the undersigned academics and researchers from a variety of fields of study, backgrounds, and personal convictions, would like to voice our concern and strongly oppose this measure on three grounds:

1.    This Executive Order is discriminatory. The EO unfairly targets a large group of immigrants and non-immigrants on the basis of their countries of origin, all of which are nations with a majority Muslim population. This is a major step towards implementing the stringent racial and religious profiling promised on the campaign trail. The United States is a democratic nation, and ethnic and religious profiling are in stark contrast to the values and principles we hold.

2.    This Executive Order is detrimental to the national interests of the United States. The EO significantly damages American leadership in higher education and research. US research institutes host a significant number of researchers from the nations subjected to the upcoming restrictions. From Iran alone, more than 3000 students have received PhDs from American universities in the past 3 years. The proposed EO limits collaborations with researchers from these nations by restricting entry of these researchers to the US and can potentially lead to departure of many talented individuals who are current and future researchers and entrepreneurs in the US. We strongly believe the immediate and long term consequences of this EO do not serve our national interests.

3.    This Executive Order imposes undue burden on members of our community. The people whose status in the United States would be reconsidered under this EO are our students, friends, colleagues, and members of our communities. The implementation of this EO will necessarily tear families apart by restricting entry for family members who live outside of the US and limiting the ability to travel for those who reside and work in the US. These restrictions would be applied to nearly all individuals from these countries, regardless of their immigration status or any other circumstances. This measure is fatally disruptive to the lives of these immigrants, their families, and the communities of which they form an integral part. It is inhumane, ineffective, and un-American.

These bans, as proposed, have consequences that reach beyond the scope of national security. The unethical and discriminatory treatment of law-abiding, hard-working, and well-integrated immigrants fundamentally contravenes the founding principles of the United States.

We strongly denounce this ban and urge the President to reconsider going forward with this Executive Order.

Traveller, Refugee: The Rohingya Refugee Crisis in the light of the Condé Nast controversy.

Apala Kundu

(Apala is a student of the Department of English, M.A., at Presidency University, and can be reached at apalakundu28@gmail.com)

International celebrity Priyanka Chopra’s appearance in an “insensitive” piece of attire- a shirt that has the words “migrant”, “refugee” and “outsider” crossed out in red while the word “traveller” stands out- on the cover of the October-November 2016 issue of Condé Nast Traveller India magazine, sparked widespread controversy and furore on the social media platform, particularly on Twitter. Outraged Twitter users lashed out at Chopra for what they considered an “offensive” and “insensitive” act that sent out a “privileged” and “elitist” message, unheeding of the actual plight of refugees. With her act making international headlines and inviting scathing criticism from people all over the world, Chopra has since issued a public apology through India’s NDTV news channel stating that she was “really apologetic about the fact that sentiments were hurt” (The Guardian 2016), claiming that the magazine’s campaign had been directed towards addressing the issue of xenophobia. The magazine too came out in defence of its cover, arguing that the intention of the photograph was to drive home its belief in a world without borders. “Whether we are moving across oceans or just a few kilometres, or in our mind's eye, into a completely different world, whether we are doing so due to free will or circumstance - we are all travellers” (BBC News 2016). Indubitably, the content of the cover is disturbing. But far more than insensitivity, the strand of argument forwarded in its defence exposes the glaring ignorance and insouciance that informs such ways of thinking.

Refugee movements and flows constitute one of the most important and challenging problems confronting the international community today in the post- Cold War era. But the issue of refugee flows is more than just a humanitarian concern and calls for more than just a humanitarian response. Refugee movements are inextricably intertwined with political, economic, social and security issues that are of immense concern to both “the sending and the receiving countries” (Loescher 1993, 12). The prevention and solution of the refugee problem therefore, “are not just matters of international charity or humanitarian action by UNHCR [United Nations Refugee Agency] and other agencies; ultimately they depend on wider political and diplomatic actions taken by regional and extra-regional states and international organizations to manage regional and ethnic conflicts and to initiate the reintegration of refugees and other displaced people” (12).  

The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defined refugees as “any person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” This widely accepted definition of a refugee is deeply imbued with a sense of compulsion, which stands in stark contrast to the notions of voluntary choice, luxury and leisure that inform the idea of travel. Refugee flows should be seen for what they are, that is, individual and collective acts of fleeing across the physical borders of the homeland, motivated by a strong fear of persecution or even at times, of death.  Publisher Arpita Das (2016), in her The Huffington Post blog, puts it succinctly: “In our times, these words, ‘refugee’, ‘immigrant’ . . . are important markers of many identities which the wearer of that label is not willing to eschew for something as privileged, as generic as ‘traveller’. . . . The lack of choice in removing one's home and hearth from the familiar to the alien is one fraught with heartbreak and the feeling of being cornered.” The argument espoused by the magazine in its defence is thus exposed as “the outcome of a privileged view of a global issue that does not touch the holder of the view in the least, but is perceived as something which ought to feature in their narrative because it is so ‘topical’” (Das 2016).

Incidentally, the topicality of this narrative serves to unmask yet another disquieting dimension of the refugee crisis that confronts the world today. Priyanka Chopra’s apology, Condé Nast’s defence statement, media coverage of the controversy and the general public’s responses to the controversy on Twitter- all of these make conspicuous the bias in the response of the international community and international media to the global refugee crisis. For though global in character the refugee crisis is, certain instances of it receive conscious media focus and reportage, and involve greater participation from member states of the international community, while others are kept out of the spotlight, and consequently, outside public consciousness. This bias takes the form of a First World-Third world binary, which is reflective of the neo-colonialist character of the international community at present.

Introduction

A little more than a month ago, India celebrated her 70^th Independence Day. Whenever we talk of independence of India from British domination, we are reminded of the territorial division of British India into two independent nation states, India and Pakistan. Consequences of partition have been fundamental to the society, economy and polity of the subcontinent, so much so that Ranabir Samaddar has suggested “Partition lives on in post-colonial times to such an extent that we should truly prefer the phrase ‘partitioned times’ to the more common ‘post colonial times.’”[1] The riots that had happened in the subcontinent since 1947, the wars that India and Pakistan had fought and most importantly Kashmir remind us that we all live in the long shadows of partition.

     Nonetheless, in recent years we have witnessed increasingly “apolitical” initiatives to memorialize partition as an event of the past that primarily aim at recording as many eyewitness accounts of 1947 as possible in regions that were directly affected by partition (like West Bengal, Assam, Punjab of Pakistan and India). Such projects, important though for various reasons, iron out the ‘longness’ of partition, as Ravinder Kaur has mentioned in a recent article.[2] Moreover, the tendency is to perceive the interviewees as victims, denying their roles as agents who might have been the perpetrators of violence and most certainly had to negotiate with the governments, family, and locals as refugees or minorities. In the existing academic literature about ordinary peoples’ experiences of partition, the need to perceive the refugees as ‘agents’ was acknowledged quite a few years back. In the recent works on partition, we see more nuances being added as categories like class, region, gender, caste and age are being used to understand the varied experiences of partition. Once we bring in such categories to see how people were negotiating with the government and vice versa, we begin to get glimpses of the complexities of postcolonial governmentality.

     This issue brings together some of the young scholars working on partition now. All of them have primarily focused on the experiences of partition in West Bengal. One article complicates the idea of partition as longue durée, connecting it with the contemporary riots in various parts of India (a much needed addendum to the memorialization initiatives that we have just mentioned). Instead of treating refugees as a homogeneous mass of people, some of the articles in this issue point towards the varied experiences of ‘colony refugees’ and ‘camp refugees’ and relevance of caste and gender in studying partition. Partition studies in West Bengal have largely focused on the issues of rehabilitation, not giving enough importance to the conditions of the Muslims, the violence they faced after 1947, communal riots and their exodus. By describing the riots of 1950 in Howrah (West Bengal), one article reminds us of these little-discussed areas of partition studies.

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[1] Ranabir Samaddar, ‘The Last Hurrah that Continues’ in Deschaumes and Ivekovic (Eds), Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy of Partition, New Delhi, 2003, 21-35, 21.

[2] http://thewire.in/59146/how-not-to-remember-partition/ accessed on September 7, 2016.

The articles in this issue are as follow (click on the links below):

My Stray Thoughts on 1947

Settling the Bazaar : The Colony Market and the Refugees

The Fort of Freedom : A Study of 'Refugeehood' through the formation of 'Azadgarh Colony'

Outside the Pail : Refugees beyond Camp or Colony in Post-Partition Calcutta

A Critical Analysis of the Category of the 'Refugee - Woman' in post- Partition Studies

The Other Side of Partition Migration and Rehabilitation : Minority Displacement and Dispossession in Bengal

Settling the Bazaar: The Colony Market and the Refugees

Tista Das

(Tista teaches history at Bankura University, West Bengal, and can be reached at das.tista@gmail.com)

This paper focuses attention on a colony in the northern part of Calcutta, the Netaji colony, in the two decades since the Partition. As homes were created, lost and re created on station platforms, camps or squatters’ colonies, the thread of a normal everyday existence was held on to at all costs. The governmental policies of economic rehabilitation were hardly enough to keep this process going. The state functioned on a notion of charity which was necessarily meagre. As the colonies came up, so did the colony markets geared to the needs of the refugees and built by the refugees themselves. There is a need to trace and grapple with the stories of these markets. The narrative becomes layered and rather complex since the markets were not just a source of earning for the refugees or a means of shaping their path of rehabilitation but were also important in establishing the much desired foothold on the right side of the border. The markets would help the refugee shopkeepers belong to the nation. The markets would also become a space for communication, social or political for the community of the refugees. The intervention of the colony committees with all its political implications must be noted. They created spaces in sync with the space of the colonies. Just as the colonies, while creating a space of their own also tried to fit into the nation space – with its history of the nationalist struggle for independence, with the names of national leaders being used to name the colonies and their photographs adorning the walls of the committee offices – so did the markets. The markets became typical of the colonies as did the schools and local temples. As the government tried to fit the refugees into neat pockets by classifying them and creating different economic groups to funnel the programmes of relief in degrees, the refugee leaders refused to be grouped and in their efforts at mobilisation, harped on the umbrella identity of being a refugee, whether of the camps or the colonies. The need, therefore, was to create a midway where the worlds of State charity and of refugee enterprise could meet.

One has to tread this middle ground and trace the narrative of the agency of the refugees in general and the establishment of the refugee markets in particular. Of the many things that being a refugee implied, creating economic networks which could sustain the refugee population in the long run was one. This was especially true of the refugee in the colony because it was he/she who could not depend on State aid and who depended heavily upon these informal networks to earn his/her bread. The colony- refugee was conscious of the resources of the neighbourhood in which he/she had settled down. In many cases, old kinship ties had helped them gain a foothold on the right side of the border. He/she had to be in constant touch with his/her neighbourhood. Unlike the camp-refugee he/she had not lived in some sort of forced isolation. Therefore, his/her hope for survival depended on his/her interactions with the people around. It hardly needs to be mentioned that such interactions were not necessarily friendly interactions. Almost every step outside the colony involved bargaining (on many occasions unpleasant or even bitter) with the world outside. In most cases, the refugee markets that grew up around the colonies did not develop haphazardly with time. They were, rather, settled overnight. The pattern of settlement was similar to that of the colonies themselves. Hurry underlined refugee lives in colonies, unlike life in camps which remained seeped in forced idleness.

II

       In December, 1949, about 20 families were settled in a vacant plot off B.T. Road under the leadership of the Bangali Bastutyagi Samiti.[1]This became the Netaji Colony. The colony soon took the shape of other refugee colonies, with roads running around the community ponds, and thus sprang up a school, a temple and the market. It must be noted that this pattern of settlement which was followed in almost all the colonies was not accidental. It was a set pattern tried and tested in most colonies which became the smaller versions of the villages left behind. Before the establishment of the colony market, the refugee settlers had to go to the Baranagar Bazar nearby to meet their daily requirements. In December, 1950, exactly a year after the colony was established, a colony market was established in one corner of a vacant plot of land adjacent to the colony by the central committee of the colony. A separate fish market was opened when Lakshman Das, Chandrashekhar Bhattacharya and Satish Samaddar brought fish from the wholesale fish market at Patipukur and opened stalls. It must be noted here that the meat business, traditionally dominated by Muslim butchers, did not change its nature even in the colony market. Along with Lakshman Singh was Hedayatullah who opened the meat shop. The threads of continuity defined life in the colony as much as transformations and change. The bazaar became a gated space meant to cater to the needs of the colony on the one hand and to provide employment for the inhabitants of the colony on the other. The colonies presented the picture of plans and organised settlement patterns. If life had meant loss of life and home and an unending journey across borders for a very long time, life in the colony became one of relocation and re-creation of old patterns. Such relocation needed planning and organisation. Life was guided by committees and associations. As the colony had a central committee, so did the bazaar. With time shops changed hands, the hogla leaf ceilings were replaced by tin shades. The market was also extended.  In the decade of the 70’s, another market came to settle itself on the main road outside this colony market. This had its separate committee to look after its affairs. When the road was widened, this market had to resettle itself inside the colony market. A pond was covered up to create the extra space needed and the market became bigger.

      The market became a means of interaction with the world outside the colony. As the market space came to be legitimised and its conspicuous presence became a habit for not only the colony settlers but other local inhabitants, it also came to legitimise the colony settlement in the eyes of these local inhabitants. As the threads were re woven to create an old world, albeit a truncated and incomplete one, the noise of the bazaar had a very important role to play in creating links with a world that was already abuzz and with a life that was already being lived. The colony settlers became a part of the flow. As squatters’ colonies were later recognised by the government as legitimate living quarters through charters usually called the Arpan Patra, the market was also recognised by the municipal authorities. There was a plan to transform this market into a super market but factional squabble quashed the plan. Motish Roy, the local MLA, had been in charge of the committee for long. Later, when Shivapada Bhattacharya became the MLA and the plans to create a supermarket were afloat, there was word that the committee under Motish Roy opposed the plan. The market committee was a politicised unit that created local links. It was through these links that the refugees created their space within the nation that they claimed as their own historically. Even the fights and squabbles helped in making the refugees belong to the space that they had occupied forcefully.   

      Refugee life in colonies was different from the ghettoised existence in camps, which was defined by government surveillance. However, colony life was all about living in a community. It was this that gave one the strength to squat on lands belonging to the government or to private individuals. It was therefore important to ritualise the process of foundation of the efforts. The foundation day of the market was celebrated with programmes of songs and drama (Kabigaan, Yatra, Baul) for a long time. As the establishment of the colony was a political process, the domestic space itself was a political space. The settlement was a story of success in the face of eviction operations by the government as also the landlords’ men. Every story of success had to be celebrated and ritualised to make the colony a legitimate space of living. To create a home, the colony market was needed as was needed the colony school or the colony temple. The buzz of the bazaar provided the sanction for the colony homes.

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[1] Sajal Chowdhury, “Netaji Colony Theke Bolchi”, published in 4 installments, in, Dishari, April-July, 2009.  

The Fort of Freedom: A study of ‘Refugeehood’ through the formation of ‘Azadgarh Colony’

Sucharita Sengupta

(Sucharita is a researcher at Calcutta Research Group. She is working with Paula Banerjee on refugee politics in West Bengal as a part of CRG-RLS project on Popular Movements in West Bengal and Bihar. This article is a part of this research. Sucharita can be reached at sucharitaseng@gmail.com)

  In this essay I reflect upon the history charted by persons who were turned into ‘refugees’ or Bastuhara (the homeless) overnight after the independence of India. These colonies were illegal in nature. By not reducing the refugees from East Bengal into victims, this paper will examine the role of refugees in settling themselves in a new society through forming localities of their own by force (Jabardakhal Colony), emerging in the process as an economically productive subject. Azadgarh Colony in this paper is studied closely. It provides a glimpse of the individual negotiations that refugee leaders made in building colonies, their politics in asserting their sphere of influence over a certain area and the political tussle between the left and right wing political parties. We shall rely mostly on the memoir of Indu Baran Ganguly, a firebrand refugee leader who played a decisive role in establishing the Azadgarh Colony. Ganguly was an active member of the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI). He left the party in 1942. But he rejoined the party in 1948, the year when he came to Calcutta with his family as a refugee^[1]. The CPI then was trying to build up a strong opposition against the government and the refugee issue provided them with much needed instrument to articulate and mobilize their protests through forming groups and organizations, for instance, the ‘United Central Refugee Council’ in 1950. Ganguly mentions in his memoir that their rebellion against the Congress government in West Bengal embodied a glory that was larger than the pain they bore for the partition. Expressing apprehension on how historians will read partition history and interpret their memories, Ganguly in his memoir states that for him the history of refugee movement in the 50s was not solely of losses. It was instead a history of emancipation and stupendous success of winning over all odds to emerge powerful citizens of a new state.

      Ganguly’s memoir is interesting because it brings out the nuances of clashes among refugees over their political affiliations, the structure of power blocks they formed and using emotions to legitimize forceful occupations of lands. On one hand it reflects negotiations with the locals (in this case Muslims), on the other hand it also tells us about the tensions between neighbouring colonies, different political parties and ideologies. Each colony had an individual committee associated with a political party. For instance, Ganguly mentions that after being part of forming the second squatter colony in Calcutta, the Deshabandhu Nagar Colony in 1949, he was residing in the deserted house of the then prominent Muslim leader and zamindar Ghulam Ali Minar near Tollygaunge in exchange of a rent of Rs.50. The entire neighbourhood belonged to Ghulam Ali and poor Muslims, most of whom shared cordial relations with Ganguly. By this time Ganguly had re joined the CPI and he was being aided by the party to pay the rent. Incidentally CPI was declared illegal in March 1948. The party could not continue to pay the rent for long resulting into a scuffle between Ghulam Ali and Ganguly. Taking advantage of this situation, one group approached him to make false papers to confiscate the entire plot. They tried to evoke anger in him by saying refugees were forced to leave their land in East Bengal for the Muslims and hence ‘snatching’ their land was their right. Ganguly, in his own words, was a man of high morals and could not accept this proposal. It is clear from this narrative that for refugees like him, forming colonies through force in deserted lands was certainly not illegal but making false papers to confiscate the same was. Here Ganguly portrayed his conflict with Ali as an absolutely non-communal one, related solely to the payment of rent. Another day, Santosh Dutta, a fervent supporter of the refugee cause and main architect of the first squatter colony in Calcutta – Bijaygarh- along with Dhirendranath Roy Chaudhury, famously known as Kalabhai came to visit the area Ganguly was residing in. Both were famous freedom fighters and were supporters of the Congress. Apparently, they told Ganguly that they wanted to make the area an extension of the Bijaygarh Colony. On the same evening, he was approached by a rival group of Santosh Dutta, belonging to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), to build an independent colony there, which will have a new committee with Ganguly as the new President. Ganguly apprehended that giving the plot to Bijaygarh Colony would make Santosh Dutta more powerful and resourceful. Hence Ganguly took up the proposal of forming an independent colony and this is how the ‘Azadgarh Colony’ was formed^[2]. These plots of lands were then divided among refugee families on a first come-first served basis in exchange of a rent of Rs. 10. This is the history of the formation of the ‘Azadgarh Colony’^[3]. Members of the Azadgarh colony did not compel the Muslims living in the neighbourhood to evacuate the land but members of Bijaygarh colony, as says Ganguly, attacked them and they were forced to flee the entire area. Later, few residents of the Bijaygarh Colony came and helped Ganguly in building the colony and complained about concentration of power and corruption among few leaders within the colony^[4]. There were repeated clashes between the Azadgarh and Bijaygarh Colonies and Ganguly himself was attacked by some residents of Bijaygarh mainly because he was a communist and since he formed an independent colony there instead of giving the plot to Bijaygarh^[5].
      Although Bijaygarh Colony is in paper the first squatter colony established by refugees, Ganguly rejects this claim owing to the nature of its establishment. He echoes what Prafulla Chakraborty writes in The Marginal men, about the formation of Bijaygarh Colony. Chakraborty says that the Colony was made possible due to the help it received from the government and that Santosh Dutta had taken verbal permission from both Jawaharlal Nehru and Bidhan Chandra Roy before establishing it with the help of Jadavpur Engineering students and Jadavpur Refugee Association. So it cannot be called a ‘jabardakhal colony’ or illegal squatter of the refugees. It was neither illegal nor legal as the tacit support of both Nehru and Roy cannot be denied in establishing Bijaygarh, writes Chakraborty[6]. Uditi Sen writes “the dispute over Bijaygarh’s status” provides insights on the nature of refugee negotiations. It was the passive mode of protests that distinguished the Bijaygarh Colony from the rest. Santosh Dutta was very close to the Bengal Congress and also to a section of the elite Calcutta Society. The fact that Ganguly talked of a ‘secret pact’ between Santosh Dutta and Bidhan Chandra Roy reflected their differences in political outlooks and modes of protests. While colonies like Azadgarh adopted radical modes of protest, Bijaygarh refrained from violent opposition due to its allegiance to the congress and hence the clash between Indu Baran Ganguly, as mentioned in his memoir with leaders of the Bijaygarh Colony was only inevitable[7].

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[1] Indu Baran Ganguly, Colonysmriti : Udbastu Colony Pratisthar Gorar Kotha (1948-1954), Kolkata, 1997, pp. 4, 42-43.

[2] Ibid, pp 54-56.

[3] Joya Chatterji, “ ‘Dispersal’ and the Failure of Rehabilitation: Refugee Camp-Dwellers and Squatters in West Bengal”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No.5, 2007, pp.995-1032, p.996.

[4] Ganguly, Colonismriti, p.57.

[5] Ibid, p.112.

[6] Prafulla Chakraborty, Prantik Manab: Pashimbange Udbastu Jiboner Kotha (Bengali translation of his Marginal Men), Kolkata, 2013, p.39.

[7]Uditi Sen, ‘Building Bijaygarh: A Microhistory of Refugee Squatting in Calcutta’, in Tanika Sarkar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (ed.) Calcutta :The Stormy Decades, New Delhi, 2015, 416-418, pp.410, 411.

Harraga: Snapshot on A Migration and Its Representation

Baya Yantren 

(Baya is a Law student at McGill University and she can be reached at baya.yantren@gmail.com)

Harragaحراقةis a word that has many meanings, that has its own sounds, its images, its texts, and most of all it is a word that has claimed its own bodies. Derived from the classical tri-literal root حرقmeaning 'to burn', this word has an even longer history, a history which has impregnated the word with metaphor.

Harraga is one of the current methods of irregular emigration:  though its name is ‘el harga’, it is the person who does it that is called ‘harrag’, the plural of which is the term ‘harraga’. It is this word that has gained much media attention and has come to mean both the phenomenon and its candidates. Harraga is a phenomenon that, more than any other form of irregular immigration—by virtue of its physical weight and its and symbolic meanings—puts into question the state, and this time on a global scale. 

Algerian Migration

Since the publication of Abdelmalek Sayad’s The Suffering of the Immigrant, much has changed in the ways of emigration from Algeria, North Africa and, more generally, from around the Mediterranean. The traditional pattern of emigration from Algeria that automatically translates into immigration to France has been put into question, and the validity of the traditional Paris-Montreal-Algiers triangle of Algerian migration has been interrogated. It remains, however, that the migration of Algerians to France still was numerically the most important inflow of non-EU population to France in 2012. If the predominance of Algerian migration to France remains, the past thirty years have nonetheless witnessed a marked change in migratory fluxes.

Fratricide: A Review.

Madhurilata Basu

(Madhurilata teaches Political Science at Gurudas College and can be reached at basu.madhurilata@gmail.com)

Director: Yilmaz Arslan

Cast: Erdal Celik, Nurretin Celik, Xevat Gectan

Running time: 90 mins

‘As moths drawn to the light, many took the road to the Promised Land’, hoping that, ‘at the end of the tunnel, shines the light of money…’

The movie Fratricide (Brudermode; Germany: 2005), tries to capture the aspirations of migrants in Europe, in this case an unnamed German city, their struggles at various levels— to have a life, to live with dignity and be accepted as well as the struggles of competing with other migrants for assimilation. Yilmaz Arslan's Fratricide, traces the journey of a young Kurdish shepherd boy, Azad (Erdal Celik), to Germany, with the help of his elder brother’s (Semo, Nurretin Celik) money, in order to support their struggling family.

When Azad is all set to leave in a truck full of teenage boys or young men from nearby villages, all suited up, Azad’s father picks up some soil and puts it in his shabby coat pocket. At that moment, the words of a fellow passenger that in a new land one might lose a brother to find another,  might seem to be harsh, based on the timing, but as the film unfolds, it would seem that harsh is another name for the reality in Azad’s life. On arrival in Germany, Azad stays in some kind of a refugee shelter. He comes to know that Semo has become a pimp and he, unlike his brother, sets off to earn his living by shaving beards and trimming the nose hair of the customers from a neighbourhood hangout. It is at the shelter that Azad meets Ibo (Xewat Gectan), an orphaned Kurdish boy and forges a friendship and brotherly attachment towards him.

Mein Hoon Yusuf Aur Yeh Mera Bhai: The Story of a Real People

Maithreyi Karnoor (Maithreyi writes reviews for The Hindu, and can be reached at maitreyi.karnoor@gmail.com)

An earlier version of this review was published in The Hindu, April 29, 2016.

Ethnic violence on a gargantuan scale happens in another continent; a huge war is fought whose victory doesn’t undo the death and destruction on either side; mythology is invoked; meetings are held by a few powerful men in closed rooms in a far away country and a ‘solution’ is found by which you and your family will pay for the damage by giving up your home – your land, your loved ones, your dreams.

When one cannot explain the occupation of Palestine to a six year old convincingly, without losing one’s own convictions in the process, it is stupefying – shattering – when a six year old tells you this story himself.

All Yusuf, wants to do is play with his older brother and experience an innocent joy and warmth in the intense love story between his brother and his lover Nada. He wants to eat chocolates and let his brother fill his eyes with dreams of the future – in a home full of warmth and love. But Yusuf is flung violently in a story framed by colonialism, world wars, partitions and migration. People are forced out of their homes, many lose their loved ones. Yusuf’s brother is killed and Yusuf spends many years meandering through refugee camps living a life of confusion and pain, until he is found by Nada, a woman who would have been his sister-in-law in another destiny. What follow are emotions resonating with tenderness – mixed with the pain of loss and nostalgia – that tell a gripping story of the futility of war.

Renowned artist from Kolkata, Sanatan Dinda won the first prize at the World Bodypainting Festival 2016, Portschach (Austria). The theme of the final round was ‘Propaganda’ (control of the public mind) wherein Dinda portrayed the image of Aylan Kurdi who’s corpse was  washed ashore on Turkey’s sea beach. The message ‘immigration is not a crime’ was painted on both hands of the model. According to Dinda he represented the issues of ‘internally displaced person’ through the portrayal of Aylan.

Photo courtesy: The Times of India

Workshop on Power and Influence in the Global Refugee Regime, 23 to 25 September 2015, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada: A Report

Sreya Sen

(Sreya Sen is a Doctoral Fellow at University of Calcutta. She participated in the workshop as an International Student Rapporteur along with Dacia Douhaibi (York University).)

A workshop on “Power and Influence in the Global Refugee Regime” was organized by the Migration and Diaspora Studies Initiative at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada from 23 to 25 September 2015. The workshop considered how power and influence may be observed and studied within the global refugee regime before taking into consideration the influence of various states, international organizations, NGOs and other actors within the global refugee regime.

The workshop took off with the presentation of a background paper on “Understanding Power and Influence in the Global Refugee Regime” by workshop host Dr. James Milner, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University. The paper drew from literature on global governance and international regimes and proposed analytical tools which may explain or be used to observe power and influence in the global refugee regime. It also presented a framework for understanding power and influence in the global refugee regime that would stimulate discussion over the three days of the workshop.

CMHA Ontario’s Webinars: Important resource in taking care of refugee mental health.

Mahanam Bhattacharjee Mithun

(Mahanam is a MA student under European Masters in Migration and Intercultural Relations Programme. He is presently an intern in Calcutta Research Group)

Canadian Mental Health Associations webinars provides some very important insights into the mental health issues among the refugee population (http://ontario.cmha.ca/public-policy/capacity-building/refugeemh/). The guidelines and recommendations provided by CMHA put light on the fact on how to better deal with mental health issues specially regards to child and adult refugees mental health. These also help us to better understand the concept of mental health, factors affecting mental health, people that are more vulnerable to mental health problems and most if all provides an important guideline how to enhance our capacity in support refugees with mental health issues.

Due to ongoing war, violence and persecution in home countries, a lot of people continue to be forced to leave their own country and seek refuge in other countries. It is very important for us to understand the concept of mental health, mental health condition of the refugee population and how to support the refugees most effectively. According to the public health agency of Canada, mental health is the capacity of each and all of us to feel, think and act in ways that enhance our ability to enjoy life and deal with challenges to face. It is a positive sense of spiritual and emotional well being that respects the importance of culture, equity, social justice, interconnections and personal dignity.

Tabassum’s Morning in India – The Story of a ‘Separated’ Minor Refugee Girl

Preeta Chaudhuri

[Email:preetachaudhuri@gmail.com. Currently works as a Social Sector Consultant in a Big 4 firm. The following article is from the time when she used to work as a Child Protection Officer for the unaccompanied and separated children for an implementing partner of UNHCR in their Refugee Assistance Program]

Tabassum (name changed) suddenly woke up in her bed. Her aunt was lying next to her with a baby, Tabassum’s 1 month old niece, wrapped under her arms. Her uncle was snoring loudly from the other side of the bed. Tabassum had seen the same dream again. Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she felt the same sadness emanating from inside. At this moment, she did what she would always do after such a dream. She would get up, step outside her camp and run towards the largest tree. She would look at the rising sun and imagine it to be the face of her mother. She would then close her eyes and remember her vividly.
Tabassum is a 7 year old refugee girl who belongs to the Rohingya community and is currently residing in a refugee camp situated on the outskirts of New Delhi. When we are about to exit New Delhi and move towards Noida (which falls in Uttar Pradesh), we come across a place called Madanpur Khadar adjoining the famous gullies of Jamia Millia Islamia. A large stretch of land here has been donated by the Zakat Foundation of India to set up refugee camps for the Rohingyas. The Rohingyas are stateless persons and in India they come to seek refuge in order to preserve their community from being destroyed. This is a very vulnerable community as most of them have no resources and are not even educated to obtain small jobs. The males of the community engage in rag picking and selling. Few of them also work as labourers. The condition of the camp site can be compared to a slum community of rag-pickers where heaps of rotten waste are piled up and disaggregated into plastic, metal and food waste. There are no bathrooms and not even a public toilet; therefore, most of the inhabitants openly defecate. Women and children face high risks of sanitation and hygiene leading to their deteriorating health and serious medical conditions. The families don’t even have resources to finance treatment and mostly ignore diseases and epidemics. The children attend non-formal education classes imparted by the Zakat Foundation but most of them skip classes to engage into daily wage labour. The Rohingya community are borderline survivors in India.
Tabassum had arrived in India in 2013 with her uncle and aunt. Her father had passed away when she was an infant due to an incurable disease. Her mother had brought her up till the age of 5. She remembers her village – Sauprang, in Myanmar, as a valley surrounded by mountains and bounded by water. It was a fishing village as most families would catch and sell fish in the markets to earn a livelihood. Tabassum had a happy childhood where she would play in the mango orchards nearby with her cousins. It was in May 2013 that Tabassum’s life changed. She left her village with her mother and Uncle’s family in a boat and crossed a long river to a new place to stay. She did not know why she had to leave then but later found out from her uncle that the entire community in the village was being forcibly converted into another religion. Due to these conditions, the family decided to flee to Bangladesh along with their relatives. However, Tabassum and her family could not find a permanent place to stay in Bangladesh as they were illegal immigrants and had no protection. They had to run from one village to another and hide their identity. However, since their language and facial features were a little different from Bangladeshi natives, they would be recognized by the law authorities and detained.
Due to fear of persecution, Tabassum’s uncle decided to cross the border again in a boat from Bangladesh to India. He contacted the smugglers near the Bangladesh border and was told that he would have to pay Rs.5000 per person. Unfortunately, he had sufficient money for only three persons and no means to earn more. Tabassum’s mother decided to stay back and sent her daughter along with her uncle and aunt to India. They reached Indiain September 2013.
Once in India, they started living in a village on the outskirts of the city of Kolkata. It was a man named Sheikh Jamal (name changed) who informed them about UNHCR. Sheikh Jamal was also a Rohingya who had arrived from New Delhi in order to inform the new immigrants of their rights as refugees and pursue them to come and stay in New Delhi. Tabassum still remembers her first train ride to New Delhi. There was hardly enough space for her to sit on the berth and she spent most of the 18 hours in train crying as she missed her mother. Upon reaching, Tabassum was taken to a brightly lit office in a posh colony of New Delhi where she was interviewed for Refugee Status Determination. After 3 months, she received her refugee card and was recognized as a “separated minor refugee” by the UNHCR.
She started living in a hut which they made themselves with bamboo, plastic and metal sheets. The hut was very small and cooking was done inside using firewood. They used to earlier sleep on the floor but later her uncle got a folding bed which was shared by Tabassum and her aunt. Her aunt received a sewing machine as donation from an NGO and started making traditional dresses for the community. Her uncle joined other men in the rag selling business and would earn enough for their subsistence. Sheikh Jamalwas the representative of the Rohingya community in New Delhi and often visited UNHCR and its implementing partners for demanding assistance for the community.
Tabassum started facing psychological issues subsequently after her arrival in New Delhi. She was under the impression that her mother will join her soon in India. But months had gone by and she had not heard a word from her. Her uncle tried contacting her mother but could not trace her. After three months of waiting, they told Tabassum that probably her mother was no more. Tabassum was in shock. She would then spend all day and night crying, she could not eat anything and also had a bout of fever. After a month, she started showing symptoms of abnormal behaviour. When Sheikh Jamal was informed about Tabassum’s condition, he took her to the Psycho-Social Counselling centre which was run by one of UNHCR’s implementing partners. Tabassum was diagnosed with Depression and PTSD.
She has been seeing dreams of her mother every night and sometimes she wakes up in cold sweat. She has stopped communicating with anybody and it seems like she cannot speak. Her aunt sends her for the non-formal classes but the teacher usually gets an expressionless response from Tabassum whenever she is approached. She has made no friends and after classes and during morning hours, Tabassum is usually seen to be sitting under the tree and crying. When Tabassum was asked by her counsellor to draw her family in an Art Therapy session, she painted a small hut surrounded by mountains, a river, a tree and a lady standing under it holding the hand of a young girl. The counsellor analysed from the painting that Tabassum had not yet accepted the changes in her life and was unable to integrate herself to the new realities. The absence of her mother, whom she was so close to, furtherweakened her mental condition.
The status of mental health of minor refugees is a cause of concern in these times of the rising refugee crisis in the world. In an article titled ‘Refugees and Mental State of Refugee Children’ published in the latest volume of the Middle Eastern Journal Of Refugee Studies, Serhat Nasiroglu and Veci Seri have shared the following findings:
Clinical studies show that rates of depressive disorder among refugees vary between 4% and 89% and of PTSD are above 50%. Among Bosnian refugee children who were victims of ethnic cleansing, very high rates of PTSD (65%) and depression (35%) were observed a year after their journey to the United States. (Weine et al.,1995). Similarly, a large proportion (34%) of young Afghan refugees was diagnosed with comorbid PTSD and depression (Mghir, Freed, Raskin, &Katon, 1995). Researchers find PTSD to be associated with the experience of war and with depression related to current living conditions and recent experience of stressful events (Sack, Clarke, & Him, 1993). Other common problems in refugee children and adolescents who have experienced war include somatic complaints, sleep problems, behavioural disorders, social withdrawal, attention problems, widespread fear, extreme dependency, restlessness, irritability, and difficulty establishing peer relationships (Tousignant et al., 1999). In addition to mental health problems, mass population movements, deficiencies in health services, sanitation and access to potable water, malnutrition, and overcrowding lead to the spread of diseases in refugee camps.
In recent years, games and artistic expression have become widely used treatmentmethods for refugee children. Among the benefits of this therapy are improvements in self-confidence, theability to express feelings, problem solving, and conflict resolution through creativeexpression. Within the last decade, creative expression activities have been foundto be useful in helping refugee children face losses and traumas, re-establish socialties that were severed by war, build identities, and find meaning in life.
Tabassum’s story represents the status of many more unaccompanied and separated minor refugees who have face war, destruction, separation and have witnessed torture and killings.Tabassum is receiving therapy from the Psycho-social counselling centre operated by the implementing partner of UNHCR to help her cope and come to terms with reality.