Friday, June 2, 2017

Refugee crisis or a new normality?

Alicja Dańkowska

Poland, the country of emigrants, closes itself to the refugee crises – has it forgotten its own history? Will fear mongering prevail over common human decency?


Recent research shows that roughly 70% of Polish citizens are against accepting Muslim asylum seekers on the Polish territory. Meanwhile, thousands of families, single men, women and unaccompanied minors - the majority of whom with Middle Eastern or African origins - live stranded in official camps, squats, prison-like detention centres, make-shift camps by transit zones or just rough in the forests of Greece and Italy. Deprived from the last pieces of dignity and hope, traumatized by the persecutions and war they had escaped, but also - what they wouldn’t have predicted - by the widespread hostile attitudes of Europeans who seem to stick to their liberal democratic values only on the ground of declarations.


I had a first hand experience of the real misery these people go through when I was working in a Community Center in Kelebija, Serbia, just before the border with Hungary. I was working with minors who had travelled hidden under lorries for several days in a row. I was talking to parents travelling with whole families, including pregnant women, sick elderly people and little children. I met a boy who crossed the Mediterranean Sea on a small dingy boat filled with other 80 people without food, an ordeal that lasted 8 days. Nobody cared about these people, apart from a handful of independent volunteers and small NGOs. I left the Center dispirited, but also determined to take action.


The year 2015 marks the time of the biggest influx of people, who after accomplishing their perilous journeys arrived on the shores and borders of European continent, wishing to find a safe haven there. But it’s also the year of the parliamentary elections that took place in Poland. The winning party Law and Justice (PiS) during their campaigns used harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric, and their populist message found a fertile ground among the escalation of fears towards “the others” - which paved their way for the success.


As the journalist and the activist Konstanty Geber put it, allowing the government to discriminate means that, sooner or later, you will be also targeted. You don't give to governments that power - no governments, even those of your choice. What is hard to believe and struck me is the fact that some Poles used to say after the World War II about the Shoah: “It was terrible, we couldn't do such a thing. Thank God it was Hitler who solved that problem for us.” Therefore, I was terrified to hear what the leader of the Polish governing party PiS, Jarosław Kaczyński, says about migrants seeking refuge in the European countries: they are people who bring various bacteria and parasites that might not be dangerous to them, but are a mortal threat to us. Such rhetoric lies behind the vision of prolonging the status quo, where the state of Poland is legitimated by the notion of ethnic “us”, being superior to the civic “us” and the democracy based on the rule of law.
polska goscinnosc
Translation: “Poles welcome refugees in a traditional way... with bread... and salt”
Author: Andrzej Milewski
Source: http://www.andrzejrysuje.pl/tag/imigranci


The instrumental way in which issues related to the current ‘refugee crisis’ are treated by populist politicians has strengthened the illiberal discourse - that had been actually present on the Polish political scene before as well. I definitely agree with Konstanty Geber, when he's saying that it is wise to bear in mind that a democracy is an ongoing process needing constant stimulation. Thanks to his reminder, I realized the crucial importance and significance of these words to the development of the Polish democracy. After the transition from socialism, beginning with the year 1989, liberal-oriented journalists, politicians as well as regular citizens made a mistake, thinking that “the job is done” and they can come back to their normal lives. As a result, nowadays Poland can be seen as a second illiberal regime in Europe – just after Belarus. It comes along the first place among the most ethnically homogenous states, leaving behind Ireland and Iceland – while both of the countries used to be located at the top of the chart just before a huge influx of... Polish immigrants. What a quirk of fate!




Jakub Dymek, the journalist from the magazine Krytyka Polityczna, pointed out that, ironically, the previous Prime Minister of Poland Ewa Kopacz made rather an absurd statement that we can afford to receive a given number of refugees but not economic migrants. While that could be easily justified from the political strategy perspective, it is hardly rational in the terms of economic efficiency. Moreover, the decision about who should be given the refugee status is itself heavily flawed - at least for two reasons. Firstly, the applicants are often not acknowledged with the procedures of this process, sometimes additionally lacking an understanding of cultural and institutional differences between their home country and the receiving one. That makes it harder for them to meet the obligations, both of formal and informal nature. Secondly, the interview is being conducted with the contribution of a translator who can be biased, xenophobic or simply lacking competences needed to conduct an objective translation. What's more, I was personally involved in the case of a Dari-speaking asylum seeker who was only offered an Arabic translator during his court trial in Zagreb. It was only due to efforts on the part of an NGO that a proper translator was eventually found. Otherwise, he would have been deprived of the right to due process.
Syria 2
Translation: “We can accept refugees from Syria, but only Christians... white... heterosexual...
who will sing “The free motherland please give us our Lord”
Author: Andrzej Milewski
Source: http://www.andrzejrysuje.pl/tag/imigranci


I think, what is really worth to be said that – quite opposite to the common perception - xenophobia and racism have little pertaining to the notion of “others”, while it tells a lot about “us”. In that case, when the current Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło claims that Poland will not respond to the European Union's “blackmail” regarding the obligation to receive 7200 refugees in the relocation program – she actually places the country she represents as being alien to the EU, refusing solidarity in the times when it is very much needed. Polish refugee policy is politically suicidal – in case the situation in Ukraine gets worse and Poland finds masses of Ukrainians on its doorstep asking for a safe haven, would any European country care? As a result of the Dublin agreement, Greece and Italy are struggling with dozens of thousands migrants waiting – very often for a long time and in inhuman conditions – to fulfill their dreams about finding a new home in one of the European countries. While Poland, along with Hungary and Austria, is refusing to accept the obligatory quota of people seeking refuge, it's good to remind one fact: in total, there were over two million Poles that migrated to the Western European countries after joining the EU, and so the question rises – isn't there any debt we should pay back, by any chance?

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