visAvis no. 10

No. 10 2014

Voices on Asylum and Migration

Indhold / Content

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Leder / Editorial / / Excerpts From a Migrant‘s Notebook – Naraki Abdulhadi Avnstrup asylum camp in glimpses – visAvis camp group The Pain That Cannot Wait – Lina Myritz Verdens yngste nation – Leon J I survived, but my life has stopped – Ali Sonetter – Pablo Llambías Amplify Our Unheard Voices – Moges Mulugeta Amharay Love Is Sweet, But Cannot Eat – Paula Bulling and Jan Bachmann Hun er vred – Maja Lee Langvad Dagbog fra Vestbredden – Henri Barbara One of the many European histories about how to start a war – Patrick A life departed – Mohammed Reza Qasemi Yearning for peace – Sohrab Latifi Pooyandeh - bogklubben der aldrig giver op – Linea Kornum Rask "Der er ingen fremtid for os her" – Kiki Hynding Hansen Underground – Haby Som om katastrofen ikke allerede var her – Athena Farrokhzad

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Kolofon / Colophon:

visAvis er / visAvis is Adam Qvist Ali Ali Ali Birte Wedel-Brandt Casper Øbro Christina Marie Jespersen Christina Wendelboe Fareed Gita Ghei Haby Henri Barbara Hilal Can Ida Holmegaard Ina Serdarević Jennifer Hayashida Jonathan Munk Nielsen Jonathan Lutz Karen Ravn Vestergaard Katja Lund Thomsen Kipanga Kourosh Farzin Kristian Byskov Kristjan Wager Leon J Lina Myritz Line Skov Lise Koefoed Liv Nimand Duvå Marie Boye Thomsen Maria Timis Marie Northroup Mohammad Reza Qasemi Naraki Abdulhadi Nimish Gautam

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Bank Info Patrick Paula Nimand Duvå Pil Rasmussen Riema Ali Simon Væth Sohrab Latifi Sylvester Roepstorff Taniele Gofers Tora A. Schultz Larsen Yildiz Arslan Redaktion / Editorial Board: Linea Kornum Rask Lise Olivarius Rasmus Brink Pedersen Rikke Andersen Hannah Lutz

Design & layout Casper Øbro

Print Specialtrykkeriet Viborg

Bank account/Bankkonto Jyske Bank Reg. Nr. 7851 Kontonr. 3285805 CVR-nr. 33788827 IBAN: DK4978510003285805 SWIFT: JYBADKKK ISSN: 1904-528X

Kontakt / Contact Thoravej 7, 2400 Copenhagen NV www.visavis.dk visavis.contact@gmail.com

Tak til/ Thanks to The Trampoline House YNKB (Ydre Nørrebro Kultur Bureau) Roskilde Festival (economic support)

Græsrodsfonden Snabslanten

Cover The drawing is a part of the project Love is Sweet But Cannot Eat on page 43

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About visAvis

Om visAvis

visAvis is a magazine on asylum and migration, the movement of people across borders and the challenges connected to this. We work to improve the debate on asylum and migration, among other things by publishing texts that people seeking asylum want to share. visAvis is an activist project where people with and without citizenship in Denmark meet to create an alternative public space and debate. visAvis is also a web magazine.

See more on www.visavis.dk and follow us on Facebook.

visAvis er et tidsskrift om asyl og migration, menneskers bevægelser over grænser og de udfordringer, der er forbundet med dette. Vi arbejder for at forbedre debatten omkring asyl og migration ved bl.a. at bringe tekster af folk, der søger asyl. visAvis er et aktivistisk projekt, hvor folk med og uden statsborgerskab i Danmark mødes om at skabe en alternativ offentlighed. visAvis er desuden et webmagasin.

Se mere på www.visavis.dk og følg os på Facebook.

Support visAvis

Støt visAvis

visAvis is free.

We are happy to receive any donation on our account: Reg. Nr. 7851 Account number. 3285805 IBAN: DK4978510003285805

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Vi modtager med glæde donationer på vores konto: Reg. Nr. 7851 Kontonr. 3285805 IBAN: DK4978510003285805

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Editorial

Dear reader Hello and welcome to visAvis #10! Our efforts and hopes for this issue are part of an ongoing process of making the journal accessible to more people, in more languages, and presenting a diverse range of texts and images which we hope will create pathways into this issue of visAvis.

One of the areas of focus for #10 is that of visual storytelling from Avnstrup Asylum Camp, which the Camp Group has visited continuously during the spring.

Furthermore, we bring you a comic created at a workshop hosted by the Visual Group in the Trampoline House in April, as well as visual material from a workshop in Switzerland.

In general news, the Trampoline House has moved to Thoravej 7 in the Nordvest neighbourhood. Congratulations on the new space! In the future, visAvis will have office hours in the new house, and we want to welcome you all to stop by with your thoughts and ideas, or just for a conversation. All the visAvis groups – Visual, Editorial and Camp Group – are open for new members and inspiration. We would especially like to make a call-out to those of you with language skills such as Arabic, Kurdish, Dari, Farsi, Pashtu or others!

Come and talk to us if you are thinking about joining. /the editorial group, visAvis

This issue contains poetry and essays by a number of different contributors, among them Athena Farrokhzad and Maja Lee Langvad, who draw attention to the current public debates about racism, the EU’s migration politics and transnational adoption.

Moreover, we present poems in Dari and Danish, testimonies of journeys from Iran and Morocco, a story of Syrian boat refugees, reflections on borders and movement in South Sudan and Palestine, and discussions of the conditions of asylum seekers.

Finally, we continue our series on migrants’ access to health care.

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Leder

Kære læser Hej og velkommen til visAvis #10! I dette nummer bestræber vi os fortsat på at gøre tidsskriftet tilgængeligt på flere sprog og for flere mennesker. Det gør vi blandt andet ved at præsentere et bredt udvalg af tekster og billeder, som vi håber kan åbne visAvis for et større publikum.

Et af fokusområderne i #10 er visuelle fortællinger i form af historier fra Avnstrup Asylcenter, som lejrgruppen løbende har besøgt gennem foråret. Vi bringer også tegneserier fra en workshop arrangeret af visAvis’ visuelle gruppe i Trampolinhuset i april samt billeder fra en tegneserieworkshop i Schweiz.

Andre nyheder er, at Trampolinhuset er flyttet til Thoravej 7 i Nordvest. Tillykke med det nye sted! I fremtiden vil visAvis have kontortid i det nye hus, og vi vil gerne byde jer alle sammen velkommen til at kigge forbi med jeres tanker og idéer, eller bare til en snak. Alle grupperne i visAvis – den visuelle, redaktionen og lejrgruppen – er åbne for nye medlemmer og inspiration. Vi vil især gerne række ud til jer med sprogkundskaber som arabisk, kurdisk, dari, farsi, pashtu eller andre sprog. Kom og snak med os, hvis du overvejer at være med. /redaktionen, visAvis

Derudover indeholder dette nummer poesi og essays af en række forskellige bidragsydere, heriblandt forfatterne Athena Farrokhzad og Maja Lee Langvad, der blander sig i de aktuelle, offentlige debatter om racisme, EU’s migrationspolitik og transnational adoption.

Vi præsenterer desuden digte på dari og dansk, vidnesbyrd om rejser fra Iran og Marokko, en historie om syriske bådflygtninge, refleksioner over grænser og bevægelse i Sydsudan og Palæstina samt diskussioner af asylansøgeres vilkår. Sidst men ikke mindst fortsætter vi vores serie om migranters adgang til sundhedsydelser.

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Excerpts From a Migrant‘s Notebook

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by Naraki Abdulhadi

More than a year has passed since Naraki contacted visAvis the first time. He urgently wanted to share his story with the world. His story was contained in a very large pile of several hundred pages, written in Arabic by hand. Finding help for the transcription, translation and editing presented quite a challenge to visAvis. So with great delay we present a small selection of excerpts from his text.

The selection was made by Naraki, and consists of both his thoughts about the life of migrants in general and details from his personal experiences.

Excerpt I – The life of migrants in Spain My name is Naraki Abdulhadi, Moroccan from Casablanca. I migrated to Spain and have lived there for more than 24 years. During this period I witnessed the first waves of secret migrants, who came to Spain in large groups on boats. I had lived in Almería for a month, when the Spanish government tried to settle the issues of those immigrants, but that did not really improve their conditions. The government would issue ID cards that in the beginning seemed quite hard to get and were valid for less than six months. The illegal immigrants were required to fulfill social insurance payments and have a job contract in order to be entitled to a new ID card. In 1998, the policy took a rigorous turn which made it more difficult for illegal immigrants to obtain ID cards. This is still the case.

What were these measures like? To what extent have these new groups interacted with the Spanish society? And how did they deal with opportunistic employers, police harassment and racist oppression?

The situation before the financial crisis It was extremely hard for Spain to accommodate illegal immigrants because of the problems following its integration into the European Union. In this trans-

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formation period it was very difficult for Spain to accommodate this new population, which enticed the immigration service to accept migrants only based on criteria of profitability. This gave way to widespread deviations among immigrants, and racist acts at the hands of the people as well as the police.

Of all the things I have witnessed and experienced through the years, one thing has stayed on my mind: the ridiculous and aggressive way in which the Spanish police treated immigrants, especially those coming from North Africa.

I have witnessed how the police chased and arrested illegal immigrants, not only in public places, but also in private homes, shops, hotels and even at the gates of restaurants where churches offered food to the needy and the marginalized. These fascist squads became familiar to me. They started their work every night, hunting illegal immigrants like dogs and putting them in big vehicles to drive them to police stations, where those who had not extended the validity of their identity cards went through strict controls before they were deported.

While the police infringement is well-known, widespread exploitation of immigrants in the fields and in other exhausting jobs also takes place.

Complaints filed by these immigrants to unions were seen as strange, meaningless rituals, as everything rotated around the interests of the capitalist elite.

Through procrastination and time-wasting on the part of the police, the immigrants were driven into giving up their rights. I myself have suffered several losses and could not get my dues even at the forefront of Spanish justice. Spain uses immigrants as production tools to feather their own nest. Moreover, the Spanish government sees immigrants as the cause of problems and the reason of the deteriorating circumstances in Spain.

Immigrants during the financial crisis The financial crisis led to further worsening of the conditions of immigrants and exacerbated their marginalization. After a decrease in construction work, only agricultural work was left for them. That was very precarious work, as harvest seasons can accommodate only a limited number of workers, who work for minimum wages. In addition, on some occasions there have been bloody clashes with Spanish workers, who would shout “Spaniards first”.

It has become too difficult for immigrants to protect themselves from the social decline. The Spanish government sees them as a burden, which led to tightening of the procedures of granting and prolonging residence permits. To its shame, it has also become normal for this government to neglect granting permanent residence permits to the immigrants awaiting their old age with no homes or support.

Here appears the great schism that separates immigrants from the rest of society. This has driven most of them to the dumps and to gather things they can sell at the weekly market for a profit of less than 10 Euros. Those who get this profit are the lucky ones who can sustain their body cells for further work.

The right wing ruling party has secured its victory only based on its guarantees of revenge against the immigrants. Consequently, only Spanish citizens are being prioritized, despite the fact that the immigrants live in a miserable chaos of unemployment and disorientation. This appealed to the less generous side of the Spanish population, who started blaming the immigrants on the street corners for the crisis.

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Excerpt II – I will have a considerable fortune I will have a considerable fortune.

When we went back from the square, Rahhal went to the supermarket to buy what he needed, while I went back to the shag to carry a gas bottle and replenish the stock before I went to buy what I needed.

Boats intensively penetrate the coasts of Andalusia, carrying illegal immigrants from Africa and Morocco, while other groups enter airports as tourists.

Once the immigrants arrive in Spain, they head for the old stadium with the destroyed walls, in order to erect their huts using wood from vegetable boxes next to existing huts built in the same way. The local police pays no heed to the situation of those immigrants, except when fights break out between them, or when local residents file theft complaints against them.

I left the old stadium one month after my arrival in order to work on Christopher’s field. He allowed me to live in a very small house, which had been used to store agricultural equipment. The field also accommodated other houses where other Moroccans, like me, were waiting to start working when the peas ripened.

Excerpt III – The stadium There is nothing to be seen behind the traditional market of Roctas de Mar except a gate that separates two short destroyed walls. Smoke ascends to the sky near a dump, surrounded by dispersed huts covered in plastic. At the end of the wall there is a small house that used to be a changing cabin for players. Next to the house you find Algerians, Moroccans and other Africans sitting with their miserable, pale faces, preparing food from the field crops in black utensils on burning embers. When the two Africans left, I took my clothes off and splashed myself with soap and then bathed myself with the hose. I dried myself using napkins, got dressed, grabbed a bottle of beer, put it in a plastic bag and left.

I lifted the plastic cover that hid the Algerian’s hut. His head moved, he smiled calmly and said: −− −− −− −−

Kidayr el bilad (how are you)?

Fine, fine.

Have you managed to work some days?

Only few days, and you?

He got up and stared at me with calm eyes. −−

I haven’t worked since the last season, and I have spent all of my money.

He asked me for a cigarette, and I lit it for him.

Excerpt IV – Looking for work I took the bag and left to spend the whole day in the Cuatro Caminos

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region and the areas around Bravo Morero and Castella Square, asking cafeterias and construction sites for work. I filled out a job application form for McDonalds without leaving my phone number. Around 12:30 a.m., I entered the station and lay on the bench, tired and worried, with sad images and people and things running through my head. A blond youth was sipping his coffee next to me from a plastic cup. He looked Polish. He tried to steal a glance at me every now and then and then surprised me when he spoke Arabic: −− How are you? −− Fine. And you? −− Fine.

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−− −− −− −− −− −− −− −−

Are you Moroccan?

Yes. I thought you were a Pole. Which city do you come from?

From Sla, but I am originally from the mountains.

What is your name? I am Abdulhadi.

Nice to meet you.

How much is a cup of black coffee from the machine?

25 - no problem.

We got up, and he pulled a cup of black coffee for me from the machine. I sipped a little and lit a cigarette. He asked me: −− −− −− −− −− −− −−

Where are you going to sleep?

As you see, on the street.

You are going to sleep at my place tonight. A warm place.

Nearby or far from here?

Very close.

Warmer than the street?

Come with me. We are from the same country and should help each other.

We left through the back door of the station that leads to the subway and took a black escalator downstairs and then passed through a long corridor that led to the gate of the subway station. There were Moroccans, Poles, Africans and Spanish addicts whose skins were perforated from injections and whose faces were dry and pale. They were lying on cardboard in the corridor. I took my place next to Mousa and laid down on the cardboard. I sensed a degree of warmth I had not felt in the previous nights. The bodies laid prostrated in two rows on the cardboards under the strong light of the wide lamps. The waves of these radiations aroused the skin as does electricity to industrial chickens.

Excerpt V - Lost in this city A week passes like a day with the boredom of jobless months, which led many to get lost in this city. I started to think again about going back to Almería, but I would abandon the whole idea each time. I felt I was going back to the start, to being a fugitive escaping the boats of death, and I hated myself around the ghosts that inhabited the deserted places. Almería for me was a city that gave me nothing, but a search for misery in the time of farming. Here I do nothing important other than watching a curious human irony. Maybe I'll remain like that until my pollen is carried by the wind of need that takes it to pollinate the flower of some work at some cattle farm in the villages around Madrid. Or maybe a new city. I receive no news with the happiness of receiving a fabulous gift. But where does the luck hover? Is salvation a dead currency? Are you nothing more than a declared number?

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Avnstrup asylum camp in glimpses

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by visAvis' camp group: Karen Ravn Vestergaard, Katja Lund Thomsen, Rikke Andersen og Linea Kornum Rask.

This spring, visAvis’ camp group made five visits to Avnstrup Asylum Camp, situated in a forest in central Zealand. Our aim was to meet new activists, readers and contributors to visAvis, in a place that is practically cut off from accessing information and having a voice in the media. We brought boxes of magazines and single-use cameras, free to use. The following pages are glimpses of the many conversations and images that came into being during, and in-between, these meetings.

“I don’t have any problems here: no violence, but I cannot sleep at night.

My heart is moving: will I get positive, will I get negative? I have six children and my wife in a refugee camp in Germany. Three boys and three girls. I didn’t call them for two years, because I am afraid they will ask me for money, I cannot give them anything.”

-Ahmed, Somalia

“I don’t like to be in peace, because it means that they will mislead you gradually. That is why I never stand still. Peace is just a phenomenon introduced into man to calm his ways in every situation. The camp is a stagnant place, no motion, there cannot be peace, only a different peace. There are two types of peace: one kind of peace will lead you to equality and justice and another will keep you down and mislead you. The peace we find in the camp cannot last. You can dream about it, but it is not permanent.

Fuck peace!”

- Aido

“I am human, I saw people who lost their arms and heads in the war. I came here, and think that now I am safe, but I am not relaxed. Sometimes I think that I will rather die than stay here longer. I am getting depressed.

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to wait three more weeks. I want freedom of speech. Here it is worse than in my own country. I control myself, because there are many fundamentalists. This is like a society; if I say my opinion, they say that I am infidel, because of religion. I still don’t feel free. They can make problems for me, here and in my country, because I have books that are extremely prohibited in the religion. I just like to read everything because I’m interested in literature. I hope to get positive [to get asylum], and to become a good citizen. I am sure of that. But if I stay here longer, I will get more mental problems. I know I have a depression and if they keep me longer, I cannot be a good man.”

- Anonymous

“I came a long way from Afghanistan. I travelled 2 months and 15 days through seven countries to come here. The first day I came here, in Sandholm, I saw people coming with a magazine, it was your magazine, but I didn’t really understand what was going on. I like it here, I have a good school and I learn English. I play cricket and football with my friends, do fitness and go to the forest. It’s like Afghanistan - I also had a good life there before Taliban came. But tonight when I am sleeping, I have my family in my mind. My story is really sad. I am waiting.”

- Mohammad, Afghanistan

“The key of the country is the language - only when you know the language. Here in Avnstrup it’s like a prison. No internet, no nothing. There are no Danish people here. If there are no Danish people, how can you learn? No shops, no people, no hospital. How can you get to learn a country? It’s like a prison.”

- Anonymous, Iraq

“I know it is not important, but you always look for history. We also want to make our own history, we are looking for history, just like you. But everything is in their hands. Nothing is in my hands. I am thinking: what will happen? We are still on the journey. It is too difficult to lose it for nothing.

Pray for God. I wish to have a future, take it serious, see a child running around. Tell them my history, tell them about history. Until then, I am good. I try to forget the crisis, I have almost forgotten. Make your heart empty, make everything empty.”

- Lee, Somalia

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Yudi: The picture is taken at my school, I am playing tag with my friends.

Yudi: Billedet er taget på skolen, jeg leger fangeleg med mine venner.

Yudi: We learn about the Danish Royal Family at my school.

Yudi: Vi lærer om den danske kongefamilie i skolen.

Yudi: This is a family picture with my father and my sister and my friend.

Yudi: Her er et familiebillede med min far og min søster og min ven.

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Yudi: This is the church close to my school, it is pretty.

Yudi: Det er kirken tæt på min skole, den er pæn.

Jawid: I like flowers and green places. In my country there are not many green places, this picture was taken on my favourite day, with very nice weather.

Jawid: Jeg kan godt lide blomster og grønne steder.

I mit land er der ikke mange grønne steder, dette billede blev taget på min yndlingsdag, hvor det var rigtigt godt vejr.

Jawid: We enjoy eating Afghan food together, me and my friends. We like to eat with our hands like in Afghanistan, we always eat on the floor.

Jawid: Vi nyder at spise afghansk mad sammen, mig og mine venner. Vi kan godt lide at spise med hænderne som i Afghanistan, vi spiser altid på gulvet.

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Jawid: I am in work-practice as a beekeeper in Copenhagen.

It is very important to change the atmosphere for me. We are living in the same room too much time, we do nothing, its not good for the health. I was a lawyer in Afghanistan, I was always busy with too much to do: working, studying, helping my big family. When I came here I said everything is okay for me, I just want to get out of the camp and learn something

After Jawid took these pictures, his asylum case was rejected, and he was deported to Afghanistan.

Efter disse billeder blev taget, har Jawid fået endeligt afslag på asyl, og er blevet deporteret til Afghanistan

Jawid: Jeg er i praktik som biavler i København. Det er meget vigtigt for mig at skifte omgivelser, vi bor i det samme rum for meget tid, vi laver ikke noget, det er ikke godt for vores sundhed. Jeg var advokat i Afghanistan, jeg havde altid travlt med alt for meget at lave: arbejde, studere, at hjælpe min store familie. Da jeg kom her, sagde jeg, alt er fint for mig, jeg vil bare ud af lejren og lære noget nyt.

Hasibul: I like this picture. It looks like I’m going to university, like in Afghanistan, but I was very stressed, I was waiting for the answer. I have been waiting for an answer for four months. I go to school and work-practice as a mechanic – it’s very good. I like my teacher. He is a very nice man.

Hasibul: Jeg kan godt lide det her billede, det ligner, at jeg går på universitetet som i Afghanistan, men jeg var meget stresset. Jeg ventede på svar. Jeg har ventet på svar i fire måneder. Jeg går på sprogskole og er i praktik som mekaniker - det er rigtigt godt.

Jeg kan godt lide min lærer, han er en meget flink mand.

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Ahmad: I often sit alone. There is one book that I always read. The name is: “Do you believe there’s a God in this world”. It contains a lot of meaning about life. It’s like my food or drink. I got it as a gift from a friend in Norway some months ago. So I thought: I’m gonna find a solution about life, gonna make a decision, make life better than before. The book doesn’t exactly give me solutions, but I get more cool when I read it. I was a very hurry-up boy, and my life in Greece for 6 years was hurry-up.

In my old life I made many mistakes. I didn’t think about the future, just day to day. But with the book I have got many answers about God, beliefs, pain, love, trust, friends, families. I get new information about my life. My mind woke up here, in a good way.

Ahmed: Jeg sidder tit alene. Der er én bog, som jeg altid læser. Navnet er: Tror du der er en Gud i denne verden. Den består af en masse om meningen med livet. Den er som min mad eller drikke. Jeg fik den i gave af en ven i Norge for nogle måneder siden. Så jeg tænkte: jeg skal nok få en løsning på livet, jeg vil træffe en beslutning, gøre livet bedre end før. Bogen giver mig ikke ligefrem løsninger, men jeg bliver mere cool, når jeg læser den. Jeg var en meget travl dreng, og i 6 år var mit liv i Grækenland meget travlt. I mit gamle liv lavede jeg mange fejl. Jeg tænkte ikke på fremtiden, kun fra dag til dag. Men med bogen har jeg fået mange svar om Gud, tro, smerte, kærlighed, tillid, venner, familie. Jeg får nye oplysninger om mit liv. Mit sind vågnede op her, på en god måde.

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Wasi: This picture was after I got positive, I was so happy. I chose my favourite place, it’s a green place. In Afghanistan you cannot lie in the grass in a public place, but here I am not afraid to look happy and relaxed. Now I have a life, safety. I am not afraid anymore, now I can think about my future.

Wasi: Billedet blev taget efter jeg fik positiv, jeg var så glad. Jeg valgte mit yndlingssted, det er et grønt sted. I Afghanistan kan man ikke ligge i græsset offentligt, her er jeg ikke bange for at se glad og afslappet ud. Nu har jeg et liv, tryghed. Jeg er ikke længere bange, nu kan jeg tænke på min fremtid.

Isa: Everyone understands the sign; also those who don’t know anyone. The same people who walk up and down the same places, they understand it. Also the people, who don’t understand anything or know anyone. The sign is good because everyone understands it.

Isa: Alle forstår skiltet; også dem, der ikke kender et øje. De samme mennesker, der går op og ned de samme steder, de forstår det. Også dem, der ikke forstår noget og ikke kender nogen. Skiltet er godt, fordi alle forstår det.

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The Pain That Cannot Wait

by Lina Myritz Illustration by Marie Boye Based on Lina Myritz’ master’s thesis in medicine, "The Pain That Cannot Wait: A Pilot Study About Undocumented Migrants' General Health Status And Access To Healthcare In Region Skåne" Lund University (2013) The pain piercing through Reza’s head is so intense he has to force his thoughts to his mother and younger brother back in Afghanistan to stop himself from jumping from the balcony. Tears are streaming down his cheeks. His friend Ali is standing beside him. He has dialled the emergency number on his mobile phone but is too scared to press the call button. “No, don't make the call! They will arrest us both. If we are deported, we are both dead.” Reza can hardly articulate, his body feels numb.

All he can feel is the horrific throbbing pain in his head.

Reza survived, despite not seeking healthcare. You could say it saved him an unnecessary CT scan and a lumbar puncture. But it also meant a series of hellish nights, ridden by pain accentuated by fear and a reminder of the insecurity of his entire existence. When a bill suggesting to grant undocumented migrant minors healthcare equal to that of permanent residents in Sweden was presented, the Swedish Minister of Migration was asked to comment. His response was that

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“children should not be punished for their mothers’ bad decisions”. Thus, the political establishment believes that undocumented migrants such as Reza should be punished for their refusal to leave the country after being denied asylum and that restricting their access to healthcare is a suitable penalty. It was in order to investigate the consequences of this attitude that I, with the support of the social epidemiology institution at Lund University, embarked on a survey study exploring differences in health status and access to healthcare between the documented and undocumented populations in Skåne, Southern Sweden.

Background In theory, it could all be so easy. The right to a health-promoting existence and access to healthcare constitutes not only a citizen’s but also a human right as defined in article 25 of the International Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948). Swedish healthcare legislation goes even further in stipulating that healthcare resources should be distributed according to need (Hälso- och Sjukvårdslagen, SFS 1982:763), legitimating affirmative action on behalf of individuals and populations suffering from a higher burden of disease or vulnerability. All healthcare workers would have to do in order to secure the human rights of undocumented migrants, is simply their job.

Yet despite the legal basis for a universal right to healthcare, asylum seekers and irregular migrants’ rights to healthcare are not regulated by the Swedish Healthcare Act. Until the 1st of July 2013, separate legislation required Swedish counties to offer all who reside within their borders unsubsidized “immediate healthcare” (Lag om mottagande av asylsökande mfl, 1994:361). The price for a visit to the Accident & Emergency Department could cost around 2000 SEK and an uncomplicated delivery 20-25 000 SEK (Swiergiel, 2012). Asylum seeker minors had the same right to healthcare as children with resi-

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dence permits. However, children born after their parents had been forced into hiding, or children who for other reasons had never entered into the asylum process, had the same limited right to healthcare as adult undocumented migrants – that is, emergency care but at their own expense (SCORP-IFMSA, 2012).

Voluntary organizations and networks in Sweden argued that the regulations were in contravention of the universal right to healthcare and created much space for arbitrariness (Björngren Cuadra, 2010), placing health care practitioners in essentially political dilemmas – lodged between their duty to “perform their work in agreement with science and proven experience” (Lag om yrkesverksamhet på hälso- och sjukvårdens område, 1998:531) and the restrictions imposed by migration policy.

Paul Hunt, former special UN rapporteur for the right to healthcare argued that the Swedish policy was discriminatory and in contravention of international law (Hunt, 2007). In a comparative study of eleven European countries, Sweden was assessed to be one of the most restrictive when it came to providing healthcare to irregular migrants (LiV, 2009).

The criticism directed against the former legislation has had a certain effect.

The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs commissioned an enquiry in 2010, which recommended that asylum seekers and undocumented migrants of all ages should be offered healthcare “to the same extent and according to the same criteria as regular citizens.” (Socialdepartementet, 2011).

Eventually, a considerably less generous proposal was proffered and put into action on the 1st of July 2013 (Lag om mottagande av vissa utlänningar som vistas i Sverige utan tillstånd, 2013:407). The new national legislation gives everyone under the age of 18 the exact same right to health and dental care as documented residents. People who are 18 or older have the right to emergency healthcare and health/dental care that cannot wait, maternity care, abortion

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and family planning (RS 2011). Perhaps the most important news is that healthcare and medication is now subsidized in the same way as for asylum seekers.

The current national legislation closely resembles Region Skåne’s policy from 2008 on healthcare provision for asylum seekers and clandestine migrants, extended to also include (undocumented) non-asylum seekers in April of 2011. This stipulates that “the medical healthcare should, as with other patient groups, come first and the ability to pay second” and that “Region Skåne’s publicly financed primary care should be the natural first choice” (RS, 2011) but does not include subsidization of medication. Furthermore, in the guidelines published in conjunction with the announcement of this policy in Region Skåne, it is stated that undocumented migrants may not be refused healthcare due to their legal status and that they should be “treated with empathy for the particular conditions of refugee-hood” (RS, 2011).

In having introduced virtually all of the reforms that have recently been transformed into national policy, the county of Skåne pre-2013 provided an excellent opportunity to explore the effects of these reforms on access to- and consumption of – healthcare among undocumented migrants in general, including the identification of potential extra-legal impediments to the satisfaction of healthcare needs that persist despite the relative generosity of the policy.

The study In short, the study is based on 97 replies to a survey covering self-reported general health, experience of healthcare and background information, complemented by in-depth interviews and participant observation involving a smaller number of respondents. This data was then compared to a larger documented sample of responses to a public health survey from 2008 (Rosvall, Grahn, Modén & Merlo, 2009).

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Conducting a study of undocumented migrants as a population presupposes a commonality, at a bare minimum a common sense of marginalization. But does the undocumented migrant population in Skåne imagine itself that way? It could be argued that there is in fact a high degree of distrust and secrecy surrounding the simplest task or routine, with multiple and varying codes regulating what, when and with whom one talks that effectively obstruct the creation of such a common identity.

The secrecy represents both a reluctance to disclose seemingly innocuous but potentially damaging information and a desperate attempt to control hard-to-come-by resources or contacts. In this zero-sum game, there is little space for nurturing solidarity or collective rage.

Moreover, there is a complex differentiation between, for example, former asylum seekers who have lived through some variant of armed conflict, labor migrants and politically engaged academics. Class, gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality… the list of potentially divisive attributes is long and does not necessarily have to preclude a sense of community. Yet it seems that these attributes often take a master signifier role in the lives of migrants who have perhaps been forced into displacement precisely because of them. A third complicating factor is that many undocumented lives straddle the boundary of legal residence, be it through social relations of some sort to permanent residents/citizens or participation in institutional activity such as high school or voluntary organizations. Even overtly political forms of organization can emerge from this, as seen among sectors of the undocumented minor population.

Intertwined with the lives of the activists supporting these youth into adulthood, that entanglement seems to have provided a platform of basic security from which to build other relations and a sense of entitlement foreign to other undocumented groups.

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Setting these problems of generalizability aside for the moment, the undocumented survey participants are 18-78 years old, the majority of them unemployed or students.

Employed respondents report salaries ranging from 10-100 SEK per hour and monthly salaries ranging from 1200-7500 SEK per month (no consideration taken to hours worked). 65% of the employed respondents answered that it would be difficult for them to stay at home from work if they were taken ill. 48% of the undocumented respondents declare that they have unpaid debts, mostly acquired to cover travel costs or living expenses in Sweden.

50% of the undocumented respondents have had to sleep outdoors at some point during their migration (either in or outside Sweden), only 22% report living in a permanent home and 24% consider their home to be dangerous or harmful to their own or their children’s health. 18% of the respondents have been exposed to starvation in Sweden, 17% have been prevented from working or have lost income, and 17% suffered restrictions on freedom of movement. Moreover, 22.9% of the respondents have at some point been detained at a Migration Board detention centre in Sweden, whereof 41.7% at the time of responding with a mean duration of 99 days.

Health status The undocumented sample exhibits a worse self-rated health status than their documented counterparts, with 46.7% of the undocumented sample rating their general health as bad or very bad, compared to 6.0% among the documented sample. Comparing foreign-born respondents among the undocumented and documented samples, it is 6.77 times more likely for an undocumented individual in the sample to rate their own health as bad, compared to a foreign-born documented individual. When asked how their mental and physical health had been affected by

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№ 10 visAby vis • 2014 illustration Marie Boye

their time in Sweden, high rates of deterioration of health were reported, particularly psychological (58%).

A greater proportion of the undocumented sample (38.1%) than the documented sample (17.7%) have been prevented from carrying out their normal tasks because of disease or injury during the past 14 days and the undocumented sample also displays a greater proportion of permanent problems (duration of 6 months or longer).

Interestingly, undocumented men report a greater disease burden than undocumented women, while the opposite is true for documented respondents. When asked to specify their ill health, the undocumented respondents predominantly reported psychological problems of varying degrees – sleeping problems, anxiety and fatigue.

Why then is undocumented status so detrimental to health? What really delineates this complex and heterogeneous factor that we call undocumented existence?

The results of this survey point in part to factors related to the migration experience and reasons for migrating, such as exposure to war, insufficient food supply and restrictions on freedom of movement. It is telling that it is when one of these violations of personal security and integrity, such as food insecurity, occur in a Swedish context, which is supposedly safer, that it becomes most useful as a predictor of bad and deteriorating health. A major part of the undocumented experience described by the respondents is the ever present sense of all-encompassing fear, accompanied and aggravated by a sense of unreality – that this cannot possibly be happening. By juxtaposing their expectations upon arriving in Sweden with the outcome, two of the participants described this feeling like walking on the streets as if they were real but all the others were actors in a film.

A third participant felt unable to engage in life as a “real person”, due to what he described as internal changes wrought by his change in legal status. These feelings of disbelief seem to be compounded

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by experiences of detention, such as in Mohanad’s case. As he puts it: “We are like monkeys to them. They give us food and then sit in a corner watching us eat. It is very difficult not to go crazy here, believe me. Everything is so clean and the food is good. The TV is big and the beds are soft.

When we are sad they come to put a hand on our shoulder and ask us if we want to talk. It is as if they don’t know that this is a prison and they are our prison guards!”

Three of the respondents spontaneously spoke about being viewed as criminals, as wanted people, but also how this experience of living in a semi-legal space is gradually internalized. Reza: “So now, in this situation, believe me, when I walk in the streets I am . . . I am walking like a wanted person. I feel like I’m a criminal person! I am going to the corners, I don’t go to places with too much rush. If I see a police car, I will change my way and go home back.”

Other elements are more unequivocally tied to the material conditions of undocumented existence in Sweden. The right to the highest attainable standard of health is impeded by substandard and unsafe housing, unemployment and sub-minimum wages, occupational hazards without union support, threat of denouncement and detention, and lack of social support.

In short, undocumented legal status is an unsatisfying category of analysis as it can mean so many different things and this study has not been able to produce a model of variables that satisfactorily accounts fully for the violent and health-endangering experiences that constitute it. Legal status appears tangential to socioeconomic status but cannot be reduced to it and there is much still to add to our understanding of “the particular conditions of refugeehood” (RS, 2011). It is clear that the intimidation and interruption of normal life endured by this heterogeneous group, defies mere quantitative analysis.

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Resisting One means of surviving undocumentedness proffered by the participants is a more or less conscious dissociation of mind and body – of going through the motions of life but without truly engaging in them. Reza described this as the only way he can survive the constant assaults that life offers, that he would otherwise in actual fact die, although he simultaneously mourns that he can no longer live life to the full.

In a different bid to resist bad health, Beata vividly describes checking the skin of her two year-old child for bruises and abrasions each night before sleep, bundling her up into warmer clothes than perhaps is strictly necessary and going without food herself in order to afford vitamin and mineral supplements for her baby. “She is my first baby so, you know, maybe it is normal.

All mothers are crazy with their babies.

But I know myself. I am not like this. But the only thing that worried me before I went into hiding was this: What do I do if she gets sick? How will that end?”

Adnan is also obsessed with keeping healthy and avoiding accidents, going to lengths to avoid certain streets that he regards as particularly prone to accidents and declining invites to go watch fireworks on New Year’s Eve for fear of getting hit.

“In this situation I really take care of myself to not get sick. Because I decide that if I get sick now I know that they will not treat me like other people.”

Access to healthcare When asked about their healthcare utilization, the documented respondents exhibit a greater use of primary care centers, specialist clinics and district nurses, while undocumented respondents tend to frequent the emergency room (18.6% compared to 10.3%). This pattern is corroborated by earlier studies (Fresk, 2009) and can be explained by several possible mechanisms.

Primary care centres require one to call ahead and book an appointment, poten-

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tially discouraging those with deficient Swedish and also implying a risk of being denied healthcare before even reaching the healthcare facility. Another reason could also be that undocumented migrants, ignorant of their rights and/or not in a position to defend those rights, wait longer before seeking healthcare and therefore require more intensive care once they do. This is deleterious both to the individual, the healthcare system and the society at large in terms of increased suffering and costs.

It implies difficulties in accessing preventive or long-term care of chronic illnesses requiring regular check-ups and titration of medication precisely to avoid emergency situations.

Undocumented respondents report a greater consumption of sleeping pills, sedatives and anti-depressants. Painkillers, with and without prescription, are consumed in approximately equal proportions, but all remaining types of medication are consumed more by the documented sample. Undocumented respondents display a higher tendency than documented respondents to refrain from collecting prescribed medication due to not being able to afford it (70.7%), being afraid of going to the pharmacy (48.8%) and lacking an ID (46.3%). In the free comment sections of the survey respondents describe having medication sent from their former home countries, borrowing someone else’s identity, buying black market pharmaceuticals, visiting clandestine clinics or physician acquaintances and using different names at different times. Many of these strategies, although beneficial to the individual in a short-term perspective, result in no or unsatisfactory record-keeping and severely endanger patient security.

Several respondents testify to the particular obstacles involved in accessing healthcare from within detention centers.

Subject to the whim of one district nurse and more or less cooperative staff, several cases of maltreated diabetes, ignored psychiatric disease and chronic pain have

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been reported. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those respondents who are too sick to be able to survive an undocumented existence outside the confines of the detention center. Mohanad suffered from a severe back condition, and after the Migration Board rejected his asylum case and declined to cover the costs of the surgery, the orthopaedic clinic decided to cancel the operation they had been planning for a year. Mohanad: “They killed me. (PAUSE). I cannot live like this. After five days I went to the police station and begged them to lock me up. It is not just….

It is not just that I cannot work, I cannot eat.”

The 54.6% of undocumented respondents who report having refrained from seeking dental care, did so because they could not afford it (34.0%) or for fear of denouncement (47.2%). The 68.8% who refrained from seeking healthcare despite considering themselves to be in need of it did so due to fear (46%), the belief that they lacked the right to healthcare (45%) and that the healthcare establishment could not help them (46%). Out of the 34% of the undocumented respondents who have children under the age of 18, 16.5% report having refrained from seeking healthcare for their children in the past 3 months.

Many of the comments related to this part of the survey pertain to the discouraging presence of police officers in healthcare settings. When I accompanied Waleed to the ER, he very nearly panicked and immediately started to rummage around for his shoes when two male white police officers walked up to the nurse’s desk adjacent to the room in which Waleed and I were waiting, he wearing only a thin hospital shirt.

One of the police officers leaned casually on the desk, while the other jokingly tried to grab a pen from the female nurse manning the desk. All three laughed and a second nurse soon joined them, directing her attention toward the policeman leaning on the desk. I tried to ease the tension by speculating about who fancied whom at

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which Waleed offered me a bleak smile and agreed that the police and nurses were indeed flirting, then jokingly asked me why they did not flirt with him instead.

Obstacles to care The sheer bureaucratic burden of registering undocumented migrants is a reoccurring topic in interviews. Despite the policy having been in place since 2008, no simple way of administrating undocumented patients seems to exist. Adnan, suffering from regular attacks of dizziness and fainting, was forced to wait for 45 minutes while his papers were sorted out. Fidgeting and embarrassed by the bother he was causing the receptionist, Adnan asked me repeatedly whether it might be better if he were to leave. The receptionist was not accustomed to the required procedure, despite regularly working in a primary care center catering to asylum seekers – thus also receiving a disproportionately high number of undocumented former asylum seekers. She asked for the help of her colleagues several times, sometimes walking away from the computer in search of her superior, or dialing a number on the phone. Afterwards, Adnan would tell me that he was afraid that she was actually making him wait so as to give the police time to come and arrest him.

On several occasions, a lack of knowledge on the part of the treating physician as to the restrictions of undocumented life was made apparent, rendering the provided care irrelevant. One example involved Thandi who visited the psychiatric ER after a severe panic attack. The lack of understanding was in this case aggravated by the psychiatrist’s refusal to call an interpreter for Thandi. In sum, Thandi went into great detail about the circumstances of her life and the reasons for her despair, after which the psychiatrist prescribed her some sedatives and recommended a few life-style changes. He spoke about the importance of taking responsibility for one’s own life, of

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not remaining cooped up at home all day but instead being active, social and engaging in a hobby. His specific suggestion was yoga, at which Thandi and her friends poked a lot of fun after the visit, working out that one yoga session would cost Thandi at least two and a half day’s salary.

Of the undocumented respondents who have attempted to seek healthcare in Skåne, 65% report having been denied healthcare because of their legal status, most of them in 2011 and 2012. The majority of these denials were by nurses or administrative staff, often placed at the frontlines of patient contact. Although nurses are trained and expected to make such decisions, this figure includes nurses’ aides. Interpretations of what constitutes “healthcare that cannot wait” are thus left to staff categories who, however competent and experienced they are in their own field, possess minimal medical expertise.

Illustratively, 74.2% of the undocumented sample did not know that Region Skåne provides equal access to healthcare for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.

54.2% report that they do not know how to go about accessing healthcare. The disparity between the policy text and how it is implemented could be a reason for this, as could the lack of a communication strategy to make the policy known to the affected population.

37.8% of undocumented respondents who have ever sought healthcare in Sweden report having had to pay the full price for healthcare rather than a subsidized fee.

This sum ranged from 300 SEK (in actual fact possibly a correct fee depending on the type of visit but all the same experienced as prohibitively expensive) to 25 000 SEK. 14% answered that they knew of someone who had been arrested when seeking healthcare. This last figure does not reflect the number of people actually detained in healthcare settings but rather the fear that permeates any meeting with authorities.

Moreover, of the undocumented respondents who have sought healthcare in

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Sweden (n=74), 67.1% report having felt degraded or severely offended on one or more occasions upon interaction with the Swedish healthcare system during the past 12 months. Some aspects of this discrimination might be jotted down on charts and patient computer journals, yet the language used there is summary and redacted. The inequality also lies in tone of voice, posture, body language, way of looking at and touching the patient’s body, ways of evading or inviting touch, emotional connectedness. When asked to offer their opinion on why they had been treated in a degrading manner, the undocumented respondents proffered legal status and ethnicity as the two main plausible explanations.

Processes of Othering, that is the projection, production and maintenance of difference between imagined communities of people, have in health care settings generally been studied in terms of interaction between majority and racialized groups. By way of interviews and focus group discussions with healthcare workers and South Asian female patients in Canada, Johnson et al discuss how essentializing, culturalist and racializing forms of justification for the Othering process overlap and combine to create an ahistorical, stereotypical and static understanding of these patients’ life experiences (Johnson, 2004). This deployment of “culture” as a master explanatory factor for all perceived problems of interaction serves to mask structural obstacles to compliance with medical advice or prescription.

While cautious of the risk of reproducing Othering by articulating its manifestations, Johnson et al emphasize the importance of challenging the pacifying and problematic assumption that all patients share the same opportunity to exercise their rights and maintain their health. This places the onus of inequalities on the racialized individual or group, rather than on organized racism and socioeconomic inequalities. Simultaneously, it is built on the assumption that there is some other

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ideal patient – always compliant, sensible and deserving. In her institutional ethnography of several Canadian surgical wards, Kirkham likewise identifies a decontextualizing reluctance to acknowledge other factors than culture as barriers to an equitable healthcare (Kirkham, 2003).

Region Skåne has a policy that emphasizes the importance of taking the undocumented group’s particular experiences into consideration. However, without proper implementation by way of practical guidelines and examples as to what this actually entails, this policy can actually do more harm than good. Rather than understanding that exposure to war, food insecurity and restriction of movement are mediators of bad health, this risks translating into a consideration of these patients’ cultural Otherness, as opposed to the healthcare practitioners’ illusory culture-less-ness (Kirkham, 2003). This risks leading to conflations of legal status with ethnicity and other proxy categorizations that are too often taken to have inherent, often pejorative, characteristics.

Beckman et al (Beckman, 2004) discuss this at length, specifically focusing on health policies that set foreign- and Swedish-born patients apart. Rather than leading to the disintegration of the categories through the erasure of inequalities, this can actually serve to reproduce them.

Combined with Johnson et al (Johnson, 2004) and Kirkham’s (Kirkham, 2003) recommendation to move away from cultural sensitivity and towards a critical power perspective, this translates into a policy where undocumented legal status would not mean ethnic or cultural difference but an amalgam of characteristics, many of them shared by segments of the documented population.

Exacerbating the discrimination of undocumented migrants is their association with criminality in the public imagination.

The introduction of REVA (Judicial and

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Efficient Deportation Work), involving the intensified apprehension and deportation of denied asylum seekers, has only served to strengthen this link between undocumented status and deviance. This is clearly reflected in the disciplining vein of much patient-healthworker interaction. During one of the observation sessions, an undocumented patient was rolled in by ambulance personnel and placed on the other side of the curtain from us. The patient was a teenage boy who had overdosed on sedatives and attempted to set himself on fire after dousing his legs with petrol from a lawn mower. Rather than expressing understanding for his actions, the nurse taking his vitals muttered to her colleague that “they only do it to stay, you know”, after which she proceeded to prod the boy and ask him what exactly he had taken and when. This incident can be interpreted as one instance of disciplining resistance into appropriate channels and venues.

Using one’s own body to protest, e.g. setting oneself on fire, is not acknowledged as legitimate protest but as illness, foolishness, and/or failed strategy. The avenues open for the migrant lacking recourse to the Swedish language, contacts or political savvy are thus extremely restricted. When faced with outright hostility, there are no extrovert forms of protest that will work.

Shouting patients are escorted out by security, threatened with police, and asked to contact the patient ombudsman the next day. In a country where political achievements of recent decades are generally associated with state-sanctioned reform, all protests must take an official route, from which the participants in this study are excluded.

Even when undocumented patients are received with the softest of touches and utmost of care, this actually serves to dismantle the last political claim that they can make – the right to have rights (Arendt, 1968). By being given rights rather than claiming and winning them, and by this

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being framed as a sympathetic, condescending gesture, the humanitarian impulse is intimately tied to its restrictive flipside.

Summing up In summary, this study does not purport to prove that undocumented migrants are discriminated against in accessing healthcare. This discrimination is already given and inscribed in law – an exception to the otherwise generous provisions of the healthcare legislation applied to documented residents of Sweden. In addition to this exception there are, however, several significant extra-legal mechanisms of discrimination and barriers to care that further restrict the freedoms allowed by Region Skåne’s policy. Although in worse health, undocumented migrants are provided with less care, leading to a downward spiral of counter-productive coping strategies and potentially lifeendangering conditions. The structural violence characterizing their existence is acknowledged in policy text but actually perpetuated through the practices of the institutions mandated to implement that text. Acknowledging that undocumented migrants face particular challenges in staying healthy does not amount to saying that undocumented legal status is a pathological condition, although its manifestations may very well be somaticized.

However, their limited access to healthcare is the result of a pathological, and in actual fact illegal, exercise of power.

Migrants themselves acutely feel the discrimination inherent in the Swedish healthcare system. Many a dream has been derailed by toothache, relationships sunk by insomnia. Theirs is a pain that truly can and will no longer wait to be rectified. The impetus for the study described above was the urge to shine light on the inequality characterizing undocumented migrants’ right to healthcare – to scream it out, shake people out of their 32

complacency, force through change. In hindsight, this thought was terribly naïve.

The inequality is not only known, but also calculated. I was duly warned. Several of the undocumented migrant respondents expressed their skepticism during their participation in the survey that the study is based upon: “You think they don’t already know? So… how will this help us exactly?”

However, having completed a pilot version of the study, I would now like to use this opportunity to make a public inquiry.

If there are any undocumented migrants who would consider it worthwhile to conduct further research on this subject, please contact me. Would it be insulting to suggest that the undocumented status provides a space of potentiality – a vantage point from which to see and judge the Swedish state more clearly? Perhaps.

I have never had to writhe in stomach cramps for days, too afraid to ask for help.

But I do believe in the importance of talking back to power. The research questions are not worked out, we will work them out together. Yet here are a couple of suggestions. What does this state of exception say about us? And, more importantly – how do we fight back?

References Arendt, H., 1968. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt.

Beckman, A. M. J. L. J. G. U.-G. L. M. L. T., 2004. Country of birth, socioeconomic position, and healthcare expenditure: a multilevel analysis of Malmö, Sweden. Journal of Epidemiology of Community Health, Volume 58, pp. 145-49.

Cuadra, C. B., 2011. Right of acces to health care for undocumented migrants in EU: a comparative study of national policies. European Journal of Public Health, 22(2), pp. 267-271.

Fresk, M. G. H., 2009. Vårdbehov hos papperslösa. Erfarenheter från Röda Korsets Sjukvårdsförmedling för papperslösa 2008.

Stockholm: s.n.

Johnson, J. L. B. J. L. B. A. J. G. S. H. B. A. &. C. H., 2004.

Othering and Being Othered in the Context of Health Care Services. Health Communication, 16(2), pp. 255-271.

Kirkham, S. R., 2003. The Politics of Belonging and Intercultural Health Care. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 25(7), pp. 762-780.

Peel, 2006. “It’s no skin off my nose” – why people take part in qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, Volume 16, pp. 1335-1349.

Rosvall, M. G. M. M. B. M. J., 2009. Hälsoförhållanden i Skåne.

Folkhälsoenkäten Skåne 2008, Malmö: Socialmedicinska enheten, Region Skåne.

Swiergiel, M., 2012. Patienten har min lojalitet. In: S. a. M. S. Jansson, ed. Omänskliga Rättigheter. s.l.:s.n., pp. 89-97.

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translation page 96

Verdens yngste nation af Leon J illustration af Kim Richard Adler Mejdahl

Forsimplet mediedækning af baggrundene for verdens konflikter skaber unuancerede fortællinger om flygtningestrømme med kurs mod Europa. I disse fortællinger glemmes det ofte, at størstedelen af verdens fordrevne aldrig krydser en grænse. At verdens største grupper af flygtninge ender i nogle af verdens fattigste områder. Og at mange af de længstvarende konflikter til stadighed udspringer af blandt andet europæisk kolonialisme. Det er tilfældet i Sydsudan.

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Mandag den 4. august 2014 var afsat til endnu et forsøg på såkaldte fredsforhandlinger i Sydsudan. Den snart otte måneder lange konflikt har frembragt mange analyser med særligt fokus på Sydsudans etniske sammensætning samt diskussioner om præsidentens magtmisbrug.

Etniske spændinger og kritikken af præsidentens magtbeføjelser har plaget Sydsudan siden den overordnede modstandskamp mod Khartoumregimet1 førte til Sydsudans uafhængighed i 2011.

Der er flere lighedspunkter mellem den nuværende konflikt og den interne kamp i Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) i det sydlige Sudan i 1991. Det bliver dog sjældent uddybet i medierne, da nyheder fra såkaldte ”konfliktzoner” alt for ofte bliver dækket af utrolig få og forsimplede artikler i internationale såvel som i danske medier.

Dagbladet Information trykte for nylig en analyse af mediernes dækning af diverse konflikter2, der konkluderer, at den utilstrækkelige mediedækning har store konsekvenser for den offentlige debat og meningsdannelse. Dermed kan det heller ikke overraske, at forestillingen om flygtningestrømme bliver brugt som trusselsbilleder og argument for at opretholde Fort Europa, mens forståelsen af baggrundene for diverse flygtningestrømme forsvinder.

Mens medier fokuserer på flygtninge som en trussel for ”modtagerlande”, glemmes det ofte, at langt de fleste, der flygter, aldrig krydser en landegrænse i deres søgen efter sikkerhed, mad og husly. Tværtimod er størstedelen af verdens fordrevne – over 33 millioner3 – internt fordrevne; ”flygtninge”4 inden for egne landes grænser.

Det er også tilfældet i Sydsudan. Men ud over de mange internt fordrevne huser Sydsudan samtidig over 200.000 sudanesiske flygtninge. Eller rettere: Flygtninge, der på papiret er sudanesere fra delstaten Blue Nile, men som igennem de sidste mange år har sympatiseret med sydsudanesernes kamp for et ”nyt Sudan” med lige rettigheder og lige adgang til magt og ressourcer. I delstaten Blue Nile opstod den militante organisation SPLA-North (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North), som efter Sydsudans uafhængighed befandt sig på Sudans side af ”grænsen”5 , hvor Khartoumregeringen sidenhen har bombet flere landsbyer for at understrege, at kampen for et ”nyt Sudan” godt kan pakkes helt væk.

Da de første strømme af sudanesiske flygtninge ankom til Sydsudan i slutningen af 2011, blev de af de sydsudanesiske lokalsamfund modtaget som de søstre og brødre, de var blevet anset for gennem tiden. Her var årelange handelsudvekslinger, giftermål på kryds og tværs og kulturel udveksling blandt nabostammer bestemmende for lokalbefolkningens åbenhed over for sudaneserne længere nordfra. I dag er Sydsudans knappe resourcer begyndt at sætte grænser for gæstfriheden.

Det er en udfordring klart at definere, hvem der henholdsvis hører til i kategorierne sudanesisk og sydsudanesisk. Det bliver yderligere kompliceret af, at bestemte rettigheder afhænger af nationalt tilhørsforhold. Når flygtninge og lokalbefolkning må deles om Sydsudans knappe ressourcer, og når flygtningene i henhold til international lov har adgang til basale ydelser, som lokalbefolkningen paradoksalt nok ikke har, kan det skabe spændinger. For at råde bod på denne ”forskelsbehandling” og på den bitterhed, det kan skabe i lokalbefolkningen, arbejder flere humanitære aktører på at etablere udviklingsprojekter rettet mod de lokale parallelt med overordnet flygtningeassistance.

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Den britiske kolonimagt kan takkes for mange af de konflikter, befolkningerne står overfor i dag. Allerede da briterne ankom til området i 1800-tallet, tegnede de grænsen for, hvor det nordlige Sudan skiltes fra det sydlige. Mens nord modtog langt de fleste ressourcer og udviklede en velfungerende infrastruktur, gjorde kolonimagten ikke meget mere i syd end at isolere det og udbytte befolkningen. Det resulterede i en slående økonomisk ulighed, der stadig gør sig gældende den dag i dag. Det sydlige Sudan havde desuden en helt unik funktion for den britiske kolonimagt: Det skulle agere som bremseklods for islamiseringen og sikre, at den ikke nåede til briternes østafrikanske imperium.

Overordnet sikrede man sig kontrol over det sydlige Sudan ved at inddele folk i etniske kategorier. Det var først rigtig med briterne, at man blev tvunget ind i en bevidsthed om hvilken etnicitet, man tilhørte. Hidtil havde både dinka og nuer ikke blot levet side om side, men integreret sig ind i hinandens grupper over flere hundrede år.

Sudans borgerkrig – ofte kaldet det afrikanske kontinents længste fra 1953 til 2005 – var ikke bare en kamp mellem forskellige etniske eller religiøse grupper, sådan som den ofte bliver fremstillet. Igennem flere årtier var det en kamp mod den politiske elite i Khartoum - alle sudaneseres kamp for en ligelig fordeling af magt og ressourcer over hele landet.

De få nyheder, der når os, begrænser sig til at fokusere på flygtningestrømmene. Man kan kritisere Fort Europa for meget, men virkeligheden er, at langt størstedelen af verdens flygtninge aldrig kommer i nærheden af fortets mure.

De færreste af dem, der flygter, kommer længere end til nabolandene – som i tilfældet Sudan-Sydsudan. Når det kommer til flygtninge og internt fordrevne, bærer verdens fattigste lande de tungeste byrder. Hvis man hverken kender til Sydsudans eller Sudans forhistorie, geografiske størrelser eller nuværende politiske landskaber, og når mediernes dækning samtidig kun er overfladisk, kan det være svært at begribe, hvad der egentlig foregår. Denne manglende forståelse påvirker den respekt, som mennesker, der er flygtet, har krav på. Deres flugt bliver simplificeret – ”endnu en flygtningebølge” – og ryger ind i overordnede generaliseringer om afrikanske lande og deres befolkninger, og endnu en ”konflikt” bruges som argument for, at Fort Europa skal bestå.

1 Primært organiseret i Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) fra 1983 til 2005 2 Dagbladet Information, 28. juli 2014: Mediernes lyskegle flakker mellem verdens brændpunkter. http://www.information.dk/504767 3 UNHCR Global Trends Report 2013, offentliggjort juni 2014 4 I alt 1.861.000 sydsudanesere er blevet fordrevet, hvoraf næsten 1.300.000 er internt fordrevne og mere end 575.000 er flygtninge i nabolandene. Sydsudan huser desuden omkring 243.000 flygtninge, hvorad størstedelen er fra Sudan.

(Kilde: U-landsnyt, august 2014) 5 Sydsudan og Sudan er officielt endnu ikke helt enige om grænsedragningen mellem de to lande.

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I survived, but my life has stopped

by Ali illustration by Yildiz Arslan I live in a camp waiting for nothing. I’m a rejected asylum seeker. I have been in Denmark for two years and one month now. But it is more than three years ago that I left Iran. I have travelled through Europe as an illegalized migrant.

Ironically, it began with a misunderstanding. I left Iran because of the political repression in the wake of the Green Revolution in 2009. I was wanted by the police even though I wasn’t active in the protest movement, the authorities connected me to it by accident. I was a bus driver and one day, I was driving a group of college students. They were political activists, active in the Green Revolution.

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On the drive from the college, some of the students suddenly pulled out green flags and started waving them out of the windows of the bus. We were immediately stopped in the street by the police, who thought I was the leader of the students.

They broke the windows and smashed the bus completely. I was terrified; convinced that they would shoot me on the spot.

Frantically, I stepped on the gas, made a sharp turn and drove up onto the pavement. The cops started shooting at me.

Then I crashed into a motorbike. Somehow I managed to get away.

For hours I drove around in my totally smashed bus. Late in the evening, I finally ventured to go home. I was still in shock, my body pumping with adrenaline from all the action. I felt terrified, confused.

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Then at two o’clock at night, I heard my front door breaking open. I hurried to the window. Outside, I could see a lot of secret police. It was January and very cold. I had just woken up and was wearing only boxers and an undershirt, but I climbed out of my bedroom window without taking the time to get dressed. I climbed up on my roof and fled by running on the roofs of the row houses, all the way down the street. When I got to the last house, I jumped down from the second floor and hurt my leg. I hid for hours in some high grass, lying with an injured leg in my underwear in the freezing cold, before I dared to get up. From that night on, I was on the run.

I fled the country and went to Turkey after hiding in a town close to the border for a little while. I stayed underground in Turkey for four months. I was working in a restaurant and waiting for my father, who has contacts within the police, to call me and tell me that the coast was clear. But he never did. The coast never cleared.

I decided to go to Europe to seek asylum, or just to be safe, one way or the other.

First, I went to Greece. I crossed the border by foot, walking through the forest.

I just kept walking. No one believes it, but it’s true: I walked from Iran to Italy. I got arrested numerous times. In Croatia, I was in jail five times, but until Italy, I avoided getting fingerprinted.

In Rome, I was caught by the police and had my fingerprints taken. They released me shortly after with a piece of paper saying that I had a month to leave the country and the EU. When I got arrested, I first decided to seek asylum in Italy. But already at the police station, I witnessed the bad conditions of asylum seekers in Italy.

I asked the police: “Is your country good to seek asylum in?”, and they said, “No, it’s not good for asylum seekers. You should get out while you can.” One of the cops actually helped me by deleting my fingerprint. It was the strangest coincidence: he looked just like me – we had the exact same face, even the same mole on the cheek. The

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others asked if we were brothers. When I left the police station, we said, “Goodbye, brother” to each other. My fake brother gave me fake documents to help me cross the border.

Then I went through France and Germany to Denmark. I had decided to seek asylum in Denmark, so I went to a police station, and I was sent to Sandholm, a camp. After seven months, my case entered phase two. I had my second interview, and after three months, I got negative.

I will rather die than go back to Iran and face the persecution of the regime. So on the night I got negative, I tried to kill myself. I ate forty-three sleeping pills. But I was taken to a hospital and survived. For four days, I was unconscious. After I woke up from the coma, the camp staff promised to schedule a new interview for me in order to appeal my case. But they never did. My case was closed.

I was discharged from the hospital and returned to the camp. I felt desperate, powerless; I had to do something. So I sewed my lips together and started a hunger strike.

On the same day that I started the hunger strike, there was a big party in the camp. The manager of the camp told me to go somewhere else, so I wouldn’t ruin the atmosphere. That made me feel awful; less than human.

After twelve days, the camp staff talked me into stopping the hunger strike. They said that they would help me reopen my case. They were still lying. But I got hold of a lawyer, and after six months, I succeeded to get another interview in order to reopen my case. I tried my case at the Refugee Board, and I got negative again. And again, I tried to commit suicide. Again with pills.

But again, I was taken to a hospital.

I survived, but my life has stopped.

And now I live in a camp waiting for nothing. * The name Ali is fictional, his identity is known by the editors.

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Hvis man skulle stikke næsen frem

Hvis man skulle stikke næsen frem med et eksempel på ”strukturel racisme”, der for de fleste vil være netop så harmløst, som det ønsker at være, kunne man nævne Molsliniens aktuelle reklamekampagne. Molslinien har i tv-reklamer og på billboards lanceret sit transportprodukt under sloganet ”Kombardo”. Dette slogan henviser til dét, som trafikledere formodes at sige, når de skal gelejde bilister ombord på færgen.

Ordet ”Kombardo” giver i mine ører klare associationer til den udbredte tradition for danske parodier

på spansk sprog og livsstil

på spansk sprog og livsstil, som begyndte under halvfjerdsernes charterturisme.

Denne tradition får danskere til at tale skraldespansk på en særlig overbærende måde. Et eksempel fra begyndelsen af årtusindeskiftet er ordet ”mobilos”, der blev anvendt i en reklame for TDC. Det er ikke noget tilfælde, at ordet ”mobilos” blev brugt i forbindelse med en særlig udtalt provinsiel dumhed, som reklamefilmene ”uhøjtideligt” fremviste. Afdøde fodboldtræner Richard Møller Nielsens kælenavn, ”Ricardo”, trækker på samme

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læst og udtrykker

læst og udtrykker på en og samme tid både socialt tilhørsforhold og disrespekt: Du skal ikke tro, du er noget, men netop derfor kan du være en guttermand. Denne repressive guttermandslogik er jeg selv blevet udsat for i stor stil som barn, men har også mødt den som voksen. Da disrespekten altid bliver afleveret med en afvæbnende humor, kan man ikke rigtig stille noget op mod den. Dens ”harmløshed” gør den immun over for kritik, og jeg måtte derfor stiltiende acceptere ”drillerierne” som pris for at blive accepteret i gruppen. På samme måde

har jeg det med

har jeg det med Molsliniens ”Kombardo”kampagne. Jeg føler mig mobbet på en sød og harmløs måde, som jeg ikke kan stille noget op med. Det betyder ikke rigtig noget.

Det er bare meget irriterende. Og når jeg påpeger det irriterende ved det, får jeg af andre ikke-darioer, ikkelatinoer, ikke-don’er, men derimod ”helt almindelige danskere” af den slags, som man ser på reklamerne at vide, at det er mig, der er noget galt med. Jeg skal ikke tage mig selv så højtideligt. Det er højst lidt kærlig drilleri. På den måde får jeg at vide, jeg skal rette ind. Igen.

af Pablo Llambías

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translation page 99

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Amplify Our Unheard Voices

by Moges Mulugeta Amharay illustration by Allan Cruz

This speech was given on the 22nd of May 2014 in Sund, Norway at a public gathering attended by Sund’s mayor. It addresses the political unrest and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, and draws attention to the conditions of Ethiopian asylum seekers in Norway, as well as to how their asylum requests are being neglected by the Norwegian immigration authorities. The original speech has been edited by visAvis.

Dear Norwegian friends and fellow asylum seekers!

Most of us here – particularly Ethiopians who have been living in Sund Asylum Camp and other centers since we arrived in Norway in the aftermath of the election in Ethiopia in May 2005 – have been waiting patiently for so long for our pending political and humanitarian asylum cases to be reviewed by the immigration authorities. But unfortunately, most of us who after a long wait in the camps have got two negative answers or more, are still obliged to stay for so long here and in other camps with nothing to do.

My political asylum case is now being reviewed by the UNE (The Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board), and I might be facing deportation. However, I still have hope for a positive outcome – even after nearly seven years of living idly in camps without serving any purpose. I have gone through camps such as Loren, Solbakken, Leira, Ullensvang, and now Sund with little money to live on. Even though I went through a Norwegian course, I still lack practice of the language because of my current status as an asylum seeker living in an isolated camp.

When most of us came to Norway – from three to nine years ago or more – we all believed that we had the proper documentation to support our cases. We had presented the relevant documents to the Norwegian Police, the UDI (The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration), or the UNE authorities in accordance with the Norwegian immigration policy, which requires proof of the potential threats we are facing – such as detention, torture, prosecutions, trumped-up charges with falsified evidence as well as other kinds of systematic rights abuses – if we get deported forcefully from Norway.

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We, the asylum seekers in Sund Asylum Camp, strongly hope that the police, the UDI or the UNE will start considering all of our asylum cases in the light of the current social and political unrest in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has suffered a terrible political crisis since its disputed election in May 2005. Before the election, I campaigned for the country’s pro-democracy party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), which later achieved a sweeping victory in the capital, Addis Ababa. But to my dismay, the results were overturned, and protests broke out amid allegations of fraud. The ruling EPRDF party’s security police forces quickly began cracking down on the members and supporters of the major opposition party CUD. A team of election observers led by Ana Maria Gomes of the European Union reported of extensive human rights violations in the months that followed. 193 peaceful demonstrators were killed by security forces, and tens of thousands of others were imprisoned in military barracks throughout the country. I escaped arrest and moved to the countryside, but my affiliations with the opposition party subjected me to continued threats, harassment, and intense intimidation even long after the election.

We, the Ethiopian asylum seekers currently awaiting a response, are not here to complain about the Norwegian police, the UDI, or the UNE, but only to try to make our Norwegian friends in Sund Municipality understand our ill-fated situation here or elsewhere in Norway. For the last seven years or more we have been living in camps without any possibilities for further professional, academic, or vocational training; without work permits or possibilities for finding any suitable jobs; with almost no transport accommodation to visit friends and relatives nearby. We have been sitting idly in our camps, bored and frustrated.

We all hope that Norway’s newly elected government of Erna Solberg will fulfill its obligations, and the promises they made during their election campaign ten months ago where I myself took part in several political debates about asylum policy.

The Sund Municipality ought to listen to us and amplify our unheard voices in unison to Norwegian politicians and immigration authorities. Everyone ought to hear about the current situation in Ethiopia: the political repression, the intensive human rights abuses, the economic mismanagement, the rampant corruption, the high youth unemployment rate, the rising inflationary rate, the government’s misuse of foreign aid to its political advantage, and the bad governance as a whole. All that has forced us to end up in Norwegian asylum camps as refugees with various kinds of asylum requests, some of us with families and children, and some of us alone with relatives and loved ones left behind.

We, the Ethiopian asylum seekers, who have been waiting for so long here in Sund Camp or elsewhere in the country, use this opportunity to make our voices heard and assure our friends that “Yes, every asylum seeker here agrees that home is better than anywhere else, but all of you must understand that there is something very wrong in Ethiopia.”

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translation page 101

Love is Sweet, But Cannot Eat

by Paula Bulling and Jan Bachmann The drawings shown here are excerpts from a larger body of drawings that were made at the NoBorder Café in Bblackboxx.

Bblackboxx is an independent community art space in a former kiosk on the outskirts of Basel. It is situated in the immediate vicinity of a reception center and deportation prison. Bblackboxx is a counter-space in opposition to the control and charity regime of the Swiss asylum system.

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In March, April, and May 2014 we opened the NoBorder Café twice a week, and during this period we brought around 1000 blank postcards with us for the workshop.

The cards have been written on, drawn on, overwritten, and commented on many times. Afterwards, they were assembled in a large collage on the outer walls of Bblackboxx, reaching all the way around the small building. Finally, we compiled a book of around 600 drawings from which this selection was chosen.

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45

The selection is not necessarily representative of the lot. It was made following individual aesthetic tastes and political positions. Would anyone like to see more, all the drawings are online at: http://cargocollective.com/loveissweetbutcannoteat/ Bblackboxx’s website is: http://www.bblackboxx.ch/

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translation page 101

HUN ER VRED – Et vidnesbyrd om transnational adoption af Maja Lee Langvad

visAvis bringer her et uddrag af Maja Lee Langvads tredje udgivelse HUN ER VRED - et vidnesbyrd om transnational adoption, der udkom i foråret 2014 HUN ER VRED på sin ældste søster over at fortælle hende, at hun har en bums på næsen. Hun er udmærket klar over, at hun har en bums på næsen. Det behøver hun ikke at have sin søster til at fortælle sig.

Hun er vred over, at hun har en bums på næsen. Hun er jo ikke teenager længere. Hun kan ikke lade være med at tænke på, om det kan have at gøre med, at hun er laktoseintolerant. Om det er hendes manglende evne til at nedbryde laktose, der gør, at hun får bumser.

Hun er vred over, at hun er laktoseintolerant.

Hun er vred over at være vokset op i Danmark, når hun nu er laktoseintolerant.

Hun tør slet ikke tænke på, hvor mange liter mælk hun har drukket i løbet af sin opvækst, for ikke at tale om de mængder af ost, smør, fløde, yoghurt, ymer, flødeis og cremefraiche hun har indtaget.

Hun er vred over, at hendes adoptivforældre ikke blev informeret om, dengang

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de adopterede hende, at langt de fleste asiater er laktoseintolerante. Hvis nu hendes adoptivmor havde vidst det, tænker hun, ville hun ikke have købt alle de mælkeprodukter til hende, da hun boede hjemme.

Hun er vred på sin adoptivmor, fordi hun beklagede sig over at skulle støvsuge hendes lange, sorte hår op, da hun boede hjemme.

Hun er vred på en frisør i København, hun engang blev klippet af, fordi han brugte en kniv til at tynde ud i hendes hår. Det er lettere at bruge en kniv end en saks, da asiatisk hår er meget tykt, havde han sagt. Mijeong grinede, da hun fortalte hende, hvordan han havde skåret hendes hår af med noget, der lignede en stor køkkenkniv.

Hun er vred over, at der ikke findes et Koreatown i København. Hvis der fandtes et Koreatown i København, ligesom der gør i Los Angeles, ville hun være taget derhen for at blive klippet.

Hun er vred over, at hun ikke kan forklare sin frisør i Seoul, hvordan hun vil klippes. I stedet må hun pege på det billede i mappen, der kommer tættest på det, hun har i tankerne.

Hun er vred over, at hun ikke selv kan ringe til sin udlejer for at spørge, om hun kan forlænge sin lejekontrakt, men i stedet må bede Mijeong om at ringe til ham.

Hun er vred over, at hun skal forlænge sin lejekontrakt med mindst et år, hvis hun vil blive boende i lejligheden. Hun er bange for at binde sig for et helt år, hun kan jo ikke vide, om hun skulle få lyst til at flytte tilbage til Danmark inden.

Hun er vred på sine biologiske forældre over at sige til hende, at hun skal flytte tilbage til Danmark for sin adoptivmors skyld. Det sårer hende, når de siger det. Hun er jo netop flyttet til Sydkorea for at opbygge et forhold til dem.

Hun er vred over at være i tvivl om, hvorvidt hun skal flytte tilbage til Danmark eller ej. Det er ligesom ikke første gang, hun tager sig selv i at veje fordele og ulemper mod hinanden, når hun overvejer, om hun skal blive boende i Sydkorea eller flytte tilbage til Danmark. Hver gang fremlejekontrakten med Astrid udløber, kommer hun i tvivl. Som Andrew meget rammende har sagt, så har hun migrationskrise sådan cirka en gang om året.

Hun er vred på sig selv over at forsøge at fremprovokere en beslutning om, hvorvidt hun skal flytte tilbage til Danmark eller ej. Det tager den tid, det nu engang tager, og hun kommer i hvert fald ikke hurtigere frem til en beslutning ved hele tiden at veje fordele og ulemper mod hinanden. Måske gør det hende faktisk bare endnu mere forvirret.

Hun er vred på sig selv over at gøre det til et spørgsmål om at skulle vælge land.

Hvorfor ikke tænke, at hun kan pendle mellem Danmark og Sydkorea i stedet for at skulle vælge mellem et af landene? Det ville selvfølgelig kræve en indtægt af en vis størrelse, hvis hun skulle have råd til at flyve frem og tilbage mellem Seoul og København, men det er ikke utænkeligt, at hun kunne få finansieret sine rejser ved at være med i kunstneriske projekter begge steder. Det var så-

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dan, Andrew fik råd til at flyve frem og tilbage mellem Seoul og Los Angeles, inden han endelig besluttede sig for at slå sig ned i Seoul, og når han kan, kan hun også.

Hun er vred på sig selv over at overveje, hvorvidt hun skal flytte et helt tredje sted hen. Som om det ikke er nok at være i tvivl om, hvorvidt hun skal blive boende i Seoul eller flytte tilbage til København.

Hun er vred på sig selv over at overveje, om hun skal flytte til Grønland. Det var det, Henrik Lee gjorde, inden han flyttede tilbage til Danmark. Han bosatte sig i Nuuk i et par år, hvor han fik ro til at fordøje de mange oplevelser og indtryk fra årene i Sydkorea.

Hun er vred på sig selv over at overveje, om hun skal flytte til USA. Hun er vred på sig selv over at overveje, hvorvidt hun skal flytte til New York eller Los Angeles, hvis hun beslutter sig for at flytte til USA. Hun er vred på sig selv over at tro, at det vil være lettere for hende at bo i USA end i Danmark. Det kan godt være, at man taler om race på en anden måde i USA, end man gør i Danmark, overhovedet det at man taler om race i USA, men dermed ikke sagt, at det nødvendigvis vil være lettere for hende at bo i USA end i Danmark.

Hun er vred over, at man i Danmark ikke kan tale om race uden at blive beskyldt for at være racist.

Hun er vred over at blive beskyldt for at være racist.

Hun er vred på Astrid over at beskylde hende for at være racist, når hun siger, at hun ikke gider at deale med hvide mennesker.

Hun er vred på sig selv over at sige, at hun ikke gider at deale med hvide mennesker. Det er vel ikke hvide mennesker i sig selv, der er problemet. Hun har overvejet, om det ligefrem er racisme, når hun siger, at hun ikke gider at deale med hvide mennesker, eller når Andrew siger, at han ikke gider at deale med hvide mennesker. Hun ved godt, at Andrew er af den opfattelse, at farvede mennesker ikke kan være racister, men hvad skal man så kalde det, når Andrew siger, at han ikke gider at deale med hvide mennesker?

Hun er vred på hvide mennesker.

Hun er vred på hvide mennesker, der er racister.

Hun er vred på farvede mennesker, der er racister. Hvis altså farvede mennesker kan være racister.

Hun er vred på racister.

Hun er vred over at høre Henrik Lee fortælle, at han blev slået ned på åben gade i Aarhus af en gruppe mænd, som han formoder var medlemmer af White Pride.

Hun er vred over at høre Morten fortælle, at han blev nægtet adgang til et diskotek i Herning. Vi lukker kun hvide ind i aften, havde dørmændene sagt, da han bad om en begrundelse.

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Hun er vred over, at Morten ikke er hvid.

Hun er vred over, at Mike ikke er hvid. Mike opfyldte alle kravene i jobbeskrivelsen fra den skole i Seoul, som han søgte en stilling som engelsklærer på, men fik afslag med den begrundelse, at forældrene til de studerende foretrak en hvid mand eller kvinde til at undervise deres børn i engelsk.

Hun er vred på forældrene til de studerende, fordi de foretrækker en hvid mand eller kvinde til at undervise deres børn i engelsk.

Hun er vred på skoleinspektøren, fordi han retter sig efter forældrene til de studerende.

Hun er vred over, at Mike langtfra er den eneste farvede person, som har fået afslag på en stilling som engelsklærer. Hun kender til flere koreansk adopterede, som af samme grund ikke har fået en stilling som engelsklærer, selvom de har været fuldt ud kvalificerede. I nogle stillingsannoncer står der endda, at man ikke er interesseret i kyopos1 eller personer med et F4- visum.2 Hun er vred over at læse i en stillingsannonce på nettet, at man ikke er interesseret i personer med et F4-visum.

Hun er vred over at læse i en artikel4 på nettet, at et stigende antal koreanske forældre vælger at lade deres børn blive adopteret proforma af amerikanere, som arbejder inden for militæret. Det kan godt være, at børnene kommer til at lære engelsk, fordi de bliver indskrevet i en amerikansk skole på en af militærbaserne i Sydkorea, og i det hele taget får bedre uddannelsesmuligheder, men hvem har lyst til at blive adopteret proforma af en amerikaner bare for at lære engelsk og få bedre uddannelsesmuligheder?

Hun er vred på forældre, der har ladet deres barn blive adopteret proforma af en amerikaner ansat i militæret.

Hun er vred på amerikanere ansat i militæret, som har modtaget penge for at være værge for et koreanskfødt barn.

Hun er vred på dem, der formidler kontakten mellem forældrene og de ansatte i det amerikanske militær. Ifølge artiklen har flere af mellemmændene kontor i Itaewon, som er hovedkvarter for den amerikanske militærbase i Sydkorea.

Hun er vred over, at Itaewon overhovedet findes.

Hun er vred over, at den amerikanske militærbase i Sydkorea overhovedet findes.

Hun er vred over USA’s militære tilstedeværelse i Sydkorea. Ifølge Mary, som arbejder på den amerikanske militærbase i Seoul, er der ikke længere nogen grund til at have amerikanske soldater udstationeret i Sydkorea. Hverken Nord- eller Sydkorea er interesserede i en krig, siger Mary og tilføjer, at det er USA heller ikke. Det er udelukkende ud fra økonomiske interesser, at USA stadig har soldater udstationeret i Sydkorea, siger hun.

Hun er vred over, at USA stadig har soldater udstationeret i Sydkorea, når det udelukkende er ud fra økonomiske interesser.

Hun er vred på de amerikanske soldater udstationerede i Sydkorea.

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Hun er vred på de amerikanske soldater udstationerede i Sydkorea, der ikke tog ansvar for at have gjort en koreansk kvinde gravid.

Hun er vred over, at koreanske kvinder, der var blevet gravide med en amerikansk soldat, havde svært ved at blive accepteret i det koreanske samfund.

Hun er vred over, at børn af blandet race havde svært ved at blive accepteret i det koreanske samfund. Som følge af Koreakrigen var der blevet født flere tusinde børn, hvis mødre var koreanske, og hvis fædre var soldater fra USA og andre FN-medlemslande.5 Hun er vred over, at mødre har følt sig nødsaget til at skjule deres barn fra omverdenen, hvis barnet var af blandet race.

Hun er vred over, at mødre har set sig nødsaget til at forlade deres barn, hvis barnet var af blandet race.

Hun er vred på mødre, der har forladt deres barn, fordi barnet var af blandet race. Mødre, hvoraf mange arbejdede i de såkaldte camptowns,6 der skød op omkring de amerikanske militærbaser. I Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations kan man læse, at over 1 million sydkoreanske kvinder har arbejdet som prostituerede i camptowns siden Koreakrigen.7 Hun er vred over, at der overhovedet fandtes camptowns.

Hun er vred over, at der stadig findes camptowns. I dag er det hovedsageligt udenlandske kvinder, som arbejder der, fortæller Mijeong. Hun interviewede for nylig nogle kvinder i en camptown tæt på den demilitariserede zone, hvoraf de fleste var fra Filippinerne.

HUN ER VRED over ikke at vide, hvordan man sætter sit hår op i en løs knold, sådan som hun har set de koreanske kvinder gøre. Det er noget med at vikle et gummibånd rundt om knolden, så meget ved hun, men det er endnu ikke lykkedes hende at sætte sit hår op på samme måde, som de gør.

1 Kyopo er betegnelsen for en koreaner, som bor uden for Sydkorea.

2 F4-visum er forbeholdt personer klassificeret som kyopos, heriblandt koreansk adopterede.

3 Kang, Shin-who. ”Adoption Abused for Enrollment in Schools at US Military Camp”.

Publiceret på koreatimes.co.kr, 7. december 2008.

4 Hübinette, Tobias. Comforting an Orphaned Nation. Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture: s. 56. Ph.d.-afhandling, Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, 2005.

5 Camptown er betegnelsen for et kvarter eller et mindre område uden for en amerikansk militærbase i Sydkorea, hvor prostituerede tilbyder seksuelle ydelser til soldaterne på militærbasen. Foruden bordeller findes der som oftest barer, restauranter og en kirke.

6 Moon, Katharina H.S. Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations: s. 1. Columbia University Press, 1997.

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Dagbog fra Vestbredden

translation page 105

af Henri Barbara fotos af Ursula Bach

BEN GURION LUFTHAVN 10/4 2014 Om natten flyver vi elleve mennesker afsted fra København mod sydøst.

Stemningen er god, men også nervøs – for hvad nu, hvis én af os bliver nægtet adgang til Israel? På vej ind over fastlandet ser vi mørkegrønne marker og brune bakkedrag.

Vi ser nye huse på rad og række, og vi ser et område, som de fleste af os har læst og hørt så meget om, men endnu ikke besøgt.

Da vi ankommer til lufthavnen i Israel bliver alle passagerer ført til paskontrollen.

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Der er nu to muligheder; én, for dem med israelsk pas, og én, for dem med udenlandsk pas. Foran mig står to unge danske piger med palæstinensiske rødder. De skal besøge familie på Vestbredden. De er tydeligvis nervøse, da de har hørt mange historier om at blive nægtet adgang ind i Israel og dermed også videre ind i de besatte palæstinensiske områder, hvis grænser staten Israel kontrollerer.

Få sekunder efter de har snakket med kvinden i skranken, bliver de ført hen til et afhøringslokale. Efter et par spørgsmål fra samme kvinde, ”hvad er formålet med dit

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ophold?”, ”hvor skal du være, hvad skal du lave?”, får jeg en lille blå papirlap, som er et visum. Min tur gennem paskontrollen er lettere nervepirrende, men det går dog nemmere end for de fem fra vores studietursgruppe, som tilbageholdes i afhøringslokalet. Den sidste er færdig tolv timer efter vi landede i den lyse formiddag. Her er et uddrag af en tekst fra en af dem, som var tilbageholdt: ”Der blev spurgt nærmere ind til min rejse og mit formål med rejsen. Derefter skulle hele mit privatliv gennemrodes. Jeg skulle oplyse min mail, mine forældres navne og baggrunde, min instragram-profil og mit telefonnummer. Min telefon blev gennemrodet for israelske/palæstinensiske numre (...). Jeg blev kaldt ind til endnu en afhøring, hvor de fokuserede meget på mine forældre, som er født og opvokset i en flygtningelejr i Libanon. Efter denne afhøring blev jeg igen lovet, at jeg ville få mit pas, men det skete ikke. Vi var to piger tilbage fra gruppen – mig og en anden dansk pige med palæstinensiske rødder. Vi var så udmattede fysisk og psykisk. Først efter otte timer i venteværelset fik jeg mit pas og visum og så værsgo ind i den demokratiske stat Israel!”

Alle med tilknytning til Palæstina bliver tilbageholdt, som arrangørerne af studieturs-gruppen også havde forventet.

For de resterende venter en bus uden for lufthavnen. Derfra bliver vi kørt til byen Ramallah, som ligger inde på den besatte palæstinensiske Vestbred.

Senere får vi at vide, at en af de andre deltagere med palæstinensisk baggrund blev nægtet adgang ind på Vestbredden af 'sikkerhedsmæssige årsager'. Han havde forsøgt at rejse gennem Jordan til Vestbredden, men staten Israel kontrollerer alle palæstinensiske grænser.

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BARHOOM OG BETLEHEM 10/4 2014 Barhoom henter mig på en café tæt ved Fødselskirken, som efter sigende er bygget, hvor Jesus blev født. Han viser mig straks rundt i kirken, der er fyldt med religiøs mystik og kameraklikkende turister. Vi har en masse at snakke om og bliver venner med det samme. Barhoom drømmer om at rejse rundt, især til Europa, men den israelske besættelse af Vestbredden begrænser hans muligheder for at rejse.

Han følger mig ud af den indre bydel og ned ad en bakke; han peger op på endnu en bakke foran os – der ligger hans families hus. Der er træer, lilla blomster, sandfarvede huse og vindrueplanter som tage over små terrasser. Dette sted, disse små hjem er magiske, som barndommens fantasi – som en leg, hvor man bygger et lille sted op mellem træer og buske. Der er krukker og spande med blomster i, og solen varmer.

Ligeså smukt her er, ligeså vanskeligt er her også. Betlehem er omringet af israelske bosættelser, og muren er bygget midt i den historiske by. Folk kan ikke rejse, hvorhen de ønsker. Barhoom kan for eksempel ikke besøge sin fætter, som bor i staten Israel blot fem minutter herfra. Fætteren kan nemt besøge Betlehem og Barhoom, men ikke omvendt. ”Mange individer støtter os, men det gør deres regeringer ikke,” fortæller Barhoom mig modløst.

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“Klokken fem om morgenen i vinteren 2004 ankom en stor gruppe israelske soldater til vores hus. Der var i alt hundrede soldater i vores nabolag for at lede efter én fyr. De låste mig og min familie inde i et af værelserne og gennemrodede resten af vores hus. Vi rørte os ikke i tre timer. Imens kunne vi høre soldaterne bruge toilettet og sengene. Hvorfor ikke, det var jo vinter?

De efterlod deres beskidte fodspor over det hele – selv i sengene. Og jeg kom for sent til min eksamen.”

Barhoom og hans familie åbner ubetinget deres hjem for mig de næste to dage.

De viser mig deres liv som palæstinensere i Betlehem med de enorme udfordringer, det indebærer. På toppen af deres flade tag står for eksempel to store vandbeholdere, for i perioder lukkes vandet af.

PALÆSTINA MARATON 11/4 2014 Tidlig fredag morgen. Betlehem er smuk og solen er synlig mod øst. Bjergene overfor berøres af solens stråler – himlen er lys, luften er klar og løberne er parate til at løbe enten 42, 21 eller 10 kilometer gennem byen. Pladsen ved Fødselskirken i byens midte er allerede fyldt med folk fra hele verden – men især børn og unge fra Vestbredden. Høj technomusik brager ud gennem store højtalere. Der varmes op i mindre grupper og løbeskoene spændes til.

To danske kvinder arrangerede det første maraton for et år siden, og i år gentager succesen sig. Grundlæggende handler pro-

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jektet om bevægelsesfrihed. Løbet kan ikke foregå 42 kilometer i ét stræk på grund af muren. Dem, som løber den fulde maratonlængde, må løbe den samme rute frem og tilbage fire gange.

Vi løber forbi murens høje plader, som er bygget i udkanten af byen. På betonen er malet solidariske hilsner fra blandt andet baskiske kammerater. Ruten går videre af små og snørklede veje ind gennem Aida-flygtningelejren, som blev oprettet i 1950. Indgangen til lejren har den berømte træport, der er kendetegnet ved den store nøgle på toppen. Nøglen symboliserer den palæstinensiske ret til at vende tilbage. Ifølge international lov har de titusindvis af fordrevne palæstinensere samt deres efterkommere – i alt omkring 5 millioner mennesker – ret til at vende tilbage til deres hjem både i de besatte områder og i det, der nu er staten Israel. Mange af de fordrevne har gemt nøglerne til deres huse, selvom mange af husene slet ikke eksisterer i dag.

Vi løber videre ud på byens største landevej, Hebronvejen. På vejen møder vi heppende, forbavsede, skeptiske og smilende ansigter. Børn, unge og ældre – alene eller i grupper. Vi møder også palæstinensiske spejdere, som giver os koldt vand og appelsinstykker. Sveden driver ned af os og benene syrer, men byen står stille for alle os, som løber for at gøre opmærksom på den begrænsede bevægelsesfrihed på Vestbredden.

Om aftenen holder arrangørerne en stor fest lidt uden for byen. Her bliver der serveret traditionel palæstinensisk mad til alle – frisklavede falafler, humus, babaganoush, yoghurter, tabbouleh og brød.

Bagefter bliver der danset i rundkreds, og stemningen er høj og herlig.

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CHECKPOINT 13/4 2014 For at komme til Jerusalem skal vi igennem checkpointet i Qalandiya, som er et af de største checkpoints på Vestbredden.

Muren er bygget på hver side af checkpointet.

For palæstinenserne er vejen gennem checkpoints som Qalandiya den eneste mulighed, når de skal til Østjerusalem eller ’48, som staten Israel bliver kaldt af mange palæstinensere, for at arbejde, gå i skole, tage på hospitalet eller besøge familie – hvis det da overhovedet er en mulighed. At krydse muren fra Vestbredden kræver en israelsk tilladelse, som langt fra bliver givet til alle. Fra klokken fire om morgenen er Qalandiya propfyldt, fortæller vores guide.

Den store hal er omgivet af gitterværk, tyk pigtråd og overvågningskameraer. Da vi ankommer, basker et par fugle rundt under det meget høje loft.

Vi går ind i et område med cirka seks nye indgange, som hver har en svingdør af metalstænger. Den kontrolleres af et par unge soldater. De sidder sammen i små aflukker. Rød lampe – svingdøren er låst.

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Grøn lampe – kroppen svinger med indad.

Rød – stop. Kroppen er indhegnet af vandret og lodret metal, hegn og stænger. Grøn lampe lyser – kroppen kan gå.

På den anden side lægger man taske, jakke og bælte på en bakke, som kører gennem en stor scanner. Herefter går man selv ind gennem en personscanner og viser sit pas og visa eller ID-kort til soldaterne på den anden side af ruden. Vi oplever i fem minutter den venten, frustration og ydmygelse, som mange palæstinensere hver dag bruger mange timer på.

BIL’IN 16/4 2014 Bil’in er en lille landsby, der ligger på den vestlige del af Vestbredden. Byen ligger også i område C, som ifølge Oslo-aftalen er under fuld israelsk kontrol. Muren har annekteret op mod 60 % af Bil’ins landbrugsjord, som er blevet brugt og stadig bruges til at bygge israelske bosættelser, blandt andre den ultraortodokse Modi’in Illit.

“Bare vi kunne leve her – uden den mur. Før i tiden kunne vi køre hjemme-

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fra og hele vejen ud til havet. Det kan vi ikke mere,” fortæller Iyad Burnat.

Han og hans familie har budt os velkommen i deres hus i Bil’in. Vi står på deres lille terrasse og kigger på muren og de bagvedliggende bosættelser.

Omkring huset vokser krogede oliventræer i den sandtørre jord.

Bil’in er verdenskendt blandt andet på grund af de mange internationale aktivister, som gennem årene har besøgt byen og deltaget i den ugentlige fredagsprotest mod den israelske besættelse af Vestbredden – med særligt fokus på muren, som er blevet bygget inden for de seneste tolv år.

Bil’in er også kendt for den prisvindende dokumentar 5 Broken Cameras, som er filmet af Iyads bror Emad Burnat.

Filmen skildrer livet i Bil’in i 2005, hvor Emads yngste søn kommer til verden, og muren samtidig begynder at blive bygget gennem Bil’in. Med fem forskellige kameraer dokumente-

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res ændringerne af byen i takt med, at jord og olivenlunde bliver indlemmet – og hegn og mur bliver bygget.

Emads konstant tændte kameraer viser alt fra børn, der demonstrerer til nære venner, som såres og dræbes på tæt hold af israelske soldater.

Vi kører ud af Bil’ins lille kerne af huse. Første stop er byens gravplads, hvor brugte tåregasgranater ligger spredt rundt omkring på jorden. De sorte bolde ligger i klynger blandt gravstenene. Flere af dem er blevet fyldt med jord og frø, og grønne stilke og blomster vokser nu frem.

Iyad tager os med til det område, der efter murens opførsel nu er byens udkant. Her går vi langs muren og føler den hårde beton mod hænderne.

Her, hvor den ugentlige fredagsprotest har fundet sted de sidste ni år. Her, hvor mange protesterende palæstinensere og internationale aktivister er blevet såret og dræbt af kugler og tåregasgranater.

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One of the many European histories about how to start a war

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by Patrick illustration by Hilal Can In 1746, the Swedish king Adolph Frederick had his first child, Gustav Adolph.

At this time in Europe, the tendency of “enlightened monarchs” really became fashionable, and the Swedish Royal Family was in fashion. The young Gustav studied Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Racine, and Corneille, and he mastered the French language so well that he spoke and wrote it better than Swedish.

Apparently his love for the French belles-lettres had a decisive influence on the formation of his adventurism, but we will come back to that later. Gustav adored the theatre, and when he became a king, he began to write plays. He loved Shakespeare’s phrase “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” In general his life would come to resemble a play, more precisely a tragicomic operetta.

On the evening of March 1, 1771, while sitting in the royal loge of the Opéra national de Paris, he received the news of the death of his father. He returned to Stockholm as a king, but a king only with responsibilities to the Swedish parliament, ‘Riksdagen’. Having received a large grant from France, King Gustav III organised a coup d’état. On August 19, 1772 in the shadow of gun muzzles, the Riksdag adopted a package of new laws significantly expanding the powers of the king. The parliament of Sweden was hereby transformed into a consultative good-for-nothing.

From the first days of his reign, Gustav III began preparations for war against Russia. Already in 1775, he said to his entourage: “We shall, without losing a single moment, prepare for the attack. We will attack Saint Petersburg with full force and thus erase Russia from our maps.” To prevent war, Katherine II of Russia (who was actually Gustav’s cousin) suggested a military alliance between the two nations.

For several years the two monarchs exchanged very friendly letters full of compliments. Gustav was even received in audience by Catherine in 1777 in Saint Petersburg, and she returned the visit in 1783 in Fredrikshamn, bringing with her a gift of 200.000 roubles. Gustav took the money, but still boasted about his military plans.

In 1787 the Russian-Ottoman war began in Crimea. France and the Ottoman Empire allocated Gustav III huge subsidies to convince him to join them against Russia. The king decided that it was his hour of triumph.

However, according to the Swedish constitution, the king was not allowed to start a war unless the kingdom was under attack.

In the spring of 1788 Gustav’s agents spread a rumour that the Russian navy was going to attack Karlskrona. In fact, the Russian ships were busy fighting the Ottomans in the Mediterranean Sea. By order of Katherine, the Russian Ambassador in Stockholm handed over to the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs a note, which on behalf of the Empress demanded explanations of Sweden’s military action.

Gustav III took this message as a “Casus Belli” (cause of war). It is illegal, according to Swedish law, for the Russian Ambassador to turn to the Riksdag and the population. The Swedish king had presented Russia with an ultima-

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tum: to punish the ambassador, to give the Swedes all land in Finland including Karelen, and return Crimea to the Ottoman Empire. If Russia didn’t meet Sweden’s demands, Sweden would take military action against them.

The only thing Gustav achieved was an agreement on a complete non-interference of Russian diplomats in relations between the king and the opposition.

What else is necessary? Reign quietly, write plays, and make plays and masquerades. But Gustav couldn’t stop – immediately after the war with Russia, he started preparations for war with Denmark and... France. Well, with Denmark all clear, he wanted to grab Norway – the dream of every Swedish king. But how Gustav was going to crush the revolutionary France and restore Louis XVI and the Bourbons to the throne – we can only guess.

However on March 16, 1792, he was shot at the Stockholm Opera, where he danced in full dress. The new king was Gustav Adolph (1778-1837), the son of the assassinated king Gustav III. At the time of the death of his father, Gustav IV Adolph (as he was called as a king) was only around 13 years old, so until 1796 the country was ruled by his uncle, the well-known Carl Södermanland, but that’s a whole other story.

Gustav was not only known for his military behaviour, but also for a few very funny stories. One day he visited Paris. There, he was approached by a group of French scientists, who honoured the king and thanked him for the hospitality that M. Scheele had received in his kingdom (which they really respect). But the thing was - Gustav did not know who M. Scheele was and before a delegation of scientists arrived in Sweden, he immediately wrote home: “Immediately find out who Scheele is, and prepare everything for awarding him the title of count”. But the problem was - a senior official who received the decree of the king did not know either who Sheelles was. The only information they could find was: “Chelles is a great guy, Lieutenant of artillery, marksman, and in addition a wonderful billiard player”. The lieutenant became a count. And nobody suspected anything.

Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the world-famous chemist, the owner of a pharmacy, who provided many revolutionary chemical experiments, devoted all his life to the introduction of new substances and mixtures, and died without the title of count, poor, unknown to the world, and outside of the court’s interest. The lucky lieutenant Chelles – the “great guy” – died in luxury.

One day Gustav, being not only a very reasonable ruler, but also a curious person, decided to finally establish what that would bring most harm to human health – coffee or tea. For this experiment he summoned two twins, who were sentenced to death, and he ordered one to drink several cups of tea daily, and the other as much coffee. To make the experiment more scientific, he included two professors of medicine to supervise. The rules of the experiment were simple: The drink that would be recognized as the most harmful, was the one drunk by the one of the twins who died first.

However, the experiment ended like this: First died one professor, then another, and in 1792 Gustav died himself. The twins continued to participate in the experiment. The man who drank tea died first. However, at that time he was already more than 80 years old. Nobody won.

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A life departed

oversættelse side 109

by Mohammed Reza Qasemi photos by Mohammed Reza Qasemi

The following pictures were taken during six months of visiting my friend A.M, sometimes living with him, following the routines of his everyday life.

A.M. and I first met when I was relocated from the asylum centre in Sandholm to Auderød in August 2011. We shared a room and began to open our hearts, talking about why we had left Iran and about the events that had brought us away from our family to a foreign land. A.M. talked a lot about his father.

He had been executed after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran without a fair trial, because of his association with the Shah of the former regime. A.M. hardly remembers his father, since he was only one year old when he saw him for the last time. A.M’s family was informed by letter that the father was convicted and executed. Only through a letter did they learn about the location of the father’s grave.

They never saw the body. He told me, “We are not sure this grave is really my father’s”. They had problems with the grave; it was regularly desecrated by strangers. In 2001, due to his complaints about the case of his father’s grave, A.M. was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years of prison by the Iranian Islamic court. They never found the ones responsible for the destruction of the grave. Iran was like hell for him, and according to his doctor he has been traumatized. Now he takes pills prescribed by a psychiatrist, but he still can’t stop thinking about his past. “Using hash helps me kill the memories from Iran,” he says, “it’s a relief.”

*A.M wishes to be anonymous, his full name is known by the editors.

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Writers, Painters, Photographers, Creatives – with or without citizenship.

Get your words, thoughts & stories out!

Contact us at visavis.contact@gmail.com is a magazine on asylum and migration, the movement of people across borders and the challenges connected to this. We work to improve the debate on asylum and migration, among other things by publishing texts that people seeking asylum want to share. visAvis is an activist project where people with and without citizenship in Denmark meet to create an alternative public space and debate.

Thoravej 7 · 2400 København NV · Danmark www.visavis.dk · www.facebook.com/visavis.magazine visavis.contact@gmail.com

‫ای‬

‫گوهر معصوم دگر تا به کی فغان‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ریاد و اشک سوز بود در دلت نهان‬

‫خون از دو دیدگان معلوم تا به کی‬ ‫در آرزوی راحت این ظلم تا به کی‬ ‫تا کی نگاه ساکن و اندوه رایمی‬ ‫تا کی جفا و ظلمت رنجور بامنی‬ ‫رو‬

‫زی قضا رسد که ز غم دور میشویم‬ ‫از‬ ‫دیدگاه توپ و تفنگ دور میشویم‬ ‫‪.‬با هم همه در جشن وشوق صلح‬ ‫پر‬

‫رنگ ترین زمزمه گردون میشویم‬

‫نویسنده ‪ :‬سهراب ( "لطیفی")‬ ‫شعر‪ :‬سهراب ( "لطیفی")‬

‫شعر کوچک که نوشتم خواستم صدای پرندگان‬ ‫سالم و احترام به خواننده گرامی‪ .‬با‬ ‫برای پرواز آماده نیستند اما پرواز کردند‬ ‫‪.‬کوچک را برای تان برسانم که هنوز‬ ‫اما دیگر بهار در زندگی شان وجود ندارد و‬ ‫پرندگان که برای بهار پرواز کرده اند‬ ‫صدای طفل کوچک هستم که صدایش به آسمان‬ ‫زمین برای شان جای ندارد‪ .‬بله من‬ ‫یداند لبخند چیست‪ .‬طفل که در باغچه سبز و‬ ‫رسیده اما شنیده نمیشود کودک که نم‬ ‫د‪.‬در دنیای کودکانه که هرازان خیال و خوشی‬ ‫زیبای کودکانه اش جز خار چیزی ندار‬ ‫رزو برای شان دوباره آمدن پدر به خانه است‬ ‫و آرزو است نمیدانند آرزو چیست‪.‬فقد آ‬ ‫چکش را خوشحال ببینید و با صد خیال و خواب‬ ‫پدر که هیچ وقت نتوانست فرزند کو‬ ‫مانده اند‪.‬حال آن بلبل زیبا و کوچک آرزو‬ ‫رهایش کرد‪.‬خواب های که همیشه خواب‬ ‫نرم لطیف که باید در گرمای محبت پدر و‬ ‫فقد برایش لقمه نان است و آن دست های‬ ‫درد دنبال لقمه غذا هستند‪.‬چقدر زیبا میبود اگر‬ ‫مادر باشد در همان سردی زمستان با‬ ‫نشست‪.‬آیا آن ها حق ندارند نمیدانم چرا سردی‬ ‫آن طفل در چوکی مکتب با لبخند می‬ ‫ساس میکنم و آن درد ها مرا درد میدهد‪.‬آیا حق‬ ‫آن دست ها را هر لحظه در بدنم اح‬ ‫یدانم از کی بپرسم که تا چه زمان ادامه دارد‪.‬‬ ‫آنها همین است؟‪.‬ایا انها انسان نیستند؟ نم‬ ‫به جای گل های سرخ و زیبا اطفال کوچک‬ ‫دیگر خسته ایم از صدای تفنگ و تا کی‬ ‫صلش را جز صدای ناله زمین چیزی ندیده ام‪.‬‬ ‫خود را به زمین بسپاریم‪ .‬من که حا‬ ‫که برای ما از گل های زیبایش عطر میسازد‬ ‫دیگر زمین هم از ما خسته است‪.‬زمین‬ ‫که زیبایش فقد برای نگاه کردن است‪ .‬رنگ‬ ‫‪.‬خسته است از بوی درد و رنگ عشق‬ ‫جلوه میدهیم نمیخواهد به خاک بسپاریم‪.‬من از‬ ‫سرخ که به آن زیبایی های خود را‬ ‫مادر هستم میخواهد طفل کوچک که برایش‬ ‫مادران که طفل دارند خواهان دعا به آن‬ ‫مادر که میخواهد لبخند بر لبان شان باشد‪ .‬فقد‬ ‫آرزوی بزرگی دارد بتواند بزرگش کند‬ ‫و غم و بوی خون از سرحدات کشور های‬ ‫آرزو دارم که دیگر به جای صدای درد‬ ‫شتی و محبت به گوش های همه بیاید‪.‬و به خانه‬ ‫که جنگ است صدای صلح‪ ،‬صدای آ‬ ‫باره لبخند و خوشی کودکان رنگ زیبایی دهد‪.‬‬ ‫های تاریک و دل های خسته شان دو‬ ‫نویسنده ‪ :‬سهراب ( "لطیفی")‬ ‫شعر‪ :‬سهراب ( "لطیفی")‬

Yearning for peace

by Sohrab Latifi

Hey innocent children for how long should you yell, all these yells and tears that disappear inside you?

For how long will the blood be seen in your eyes, for how long will you stay in the comfort of oppression?

For how long will your sights be numb to permanent pain, for how long will this betrayal and oppression stay with us?

A new day will come where we will be released from suffering, where we will be far from the perspective of the gun.

Together we will be celebrating peace with great eagerness, we will be colorful with peace so that the whole world can see it!

Hi and many greeting to the dear readers!

With this small poem, that I have written, I want to convey the voice of these small birds to you.

The small birds who are still not ready to fly, but who saw the other birds flying during the summer. Only they could not, because in their lifetime, there was no summer season, and there is no space on the earth for them.

Yes, I am the voice of that small child who always yells and his voice reached to the sky, but still no one has heard it.

A child who does not know what a smile is. A child who has only cactus in the green garden of his childhood, in the childhood world.

Happiness is the wish of the children, but they still do not understand the meaning of it.

Children who wish that their father will return home. But the father, who already left home with many dreams, will not be able to see the happiness of his children.

All the wishes that we always leave behind as a dream. Now those sweet little birds wish to have a piece of bread. Those soft hands, which were supposed to be warmed by parents, now they are looking for a piece of food in the middle of the winter, in so much pain.

How beautiful it would be if these sweet children were sitting on a chair at the school with a smile, shouldn't it be their right?

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I am still feeling those cold hands on my body every moment and the pain hurts me all the time, is it what they deserve?

Are they not humans? I do not know whom I should ask this question: for how long will it continue?

We are tired of hearing gun shots, for how long shall we give our children to the ground, instead of planting those beautiful red flowers?

I did not see the result of war, except for hearing the sound of pain through the ground, the earth itself is getting tired of us.

The earth, whose beautiful flowers always provide us with perfume, is now tired of being witness to these artificial colours that we are creating only for display.

The red colour that we display our beauties with, would not expect us to bury our beloved. I am demanding all mothers who have children to pray for that mother who also wishes to be the witness of her own children growing up, to raise them, the mother who wants to see the smile on their lips.

I only wish soon to hear the voice of peace instead of pain and sorrow from the countries, where fighting exists on the borders. A voice of reconciliation and love that can touch all human ears, and once again the smile of these little children can bring color of fortune to their dark room and tired hearts.

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Pooyandeh

translation page 110

- bogklubben der aldrig giver op af Linea Kornum Rask fotografier af Linea Kornum Rask

I et lille kælderlokale på Nørrebro bliver der drukket te og diskuteret politik og litteratur over et spil skak. Dekorationerne på væggene er en blanding af feministiske budskaber, socialistiske slagord og blegede martyrbilleder. Fra gulv til loft er rummet dækket med reolvis af farverige og flossede bogrygge, men titlerne er ulæselige for de fleste danskere. Her blev de første persiske bøger sat på hylden for 12 år siden af en lille gruppe iranere med flygtningebaggrund, og siden da er arbejdet fortsat med at støtte såvel politiske fanger i Iran som flygtninge i Danmark. Mamad Pejam og Ali Azad er blandt grundlæggerne af foreningen, der er opkaldt efter en iransk forfatter, som blev henrettet af regimet. Her fortæller de om deres kærlighed til bøger og kamp mod undertrykkelse.

Hvordan startede jeres organisation?

Ali: Vi mødte ofte hinanden til aktiviteter i forskellige politiske foreninger, og vi havde mange fælles holdninger; imod det islamiske styre, for demokrati, imod henrettelser og politiske fængslinger. Vi er alle sammen socialister, men vi tilhører ikke noget bestemt politisk parti, vi er mere åbne, og vi var enige om, at vi manglede et fælles samlingsted, en bogklub.

Efter kort tid besluttede vi, at vi også ville være politisk og kulturelt aktive som en antinationalistisk og antireligiøs venstrefløjsbevægelse, som kæmper for demokrati og frihed. Vi blev meget politisk aktive i forhold til den iranske situation, fordi der blev ved med at komme nye iranske, politiske flygtninge til København efter at arbejder-, kvinde- og studenterbevægelserne begyndte at blive stærkere i Iran, og der blev slået hårdere ned på dem. Derfor begyndte vi at samarbejde med flere foreninger i Iran, f.eks. støttekomiteen for politiske fanger og kvindebevægelsen.

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Mamad: Sidste år besluttede vi at lave flere og bredere aktiviteter, som foredrag om kulturelle, sociale og politiske emner. Her kommer iranere med mange forskellige meninger, og alle er velkomne uanset baggrund. Den eneste undtagelse er dem, som støtter den islamiske regering i Iran, som vi kæmper imod. Vi har også aktive fra mange forskellige befolkningsgrupper i Iran såsom kurdere, arabere og baluchere. Men det er vigtigt at understrege, at vi ikke synes, at iransk kultur er bedre end andres. Vi er ikke kun en iransk klub, vi er et sted for forskellige mennesker, som respekterer hinanden. Vi har et tæt samarbejde med danske aktivistgrupper som asyl-, kvinde- og antifascistgrupper. Vi holder arrangementer sammen og støtter hinanden. Vi er ikke hundrede procent enige, men det er tæt på, og vi lærer en masse af hinanden.

Den forbudte litteratur I Pooyandeh kan alle komme ind fra gaden og læse i det lille biblioteks bøger eller låne dem med hjem, når der hver lørdag er åbent. Men på grund af den farlige politiske situation i Iran, behøver man hverken oplyse sit personnummer eller sit fulde navn for at låne de gratis bøger, og man noterer selv hvilke bøger, man har lånt. Der er noget at vælge imellem: iransk poesi, historie, filosofi og samfundsstof. Der er Nietzsche, Kant, Tolstoj, Marx og Salman Rushdies De Sataniske Vers.

Hvorfor var det netop litteratur, der blev fokus i jeres forening?

Ali: Vi manglede et bibliotek for iranere i hele Danmark. Det var meget svært at få adgang til iransk litteratur, fordi vilkårene for pressefrihed er så dårlige i Iran, og rigtig mange bøger var ulovlige. Der er en stor del af iransk litteratur, politiske aviser og blade, som kun eksisterer i udlandet. I Iran kan en bog blive godkendt af censuren og komme på markedet, og så efter et år gør regimet den pludselig ulovlig, hvis den bliver populær. Derfor er vi selv meget interesserede i at læse og diskutere litteratur, her hvor bøgerne er lovlige. Men iranske bøger er også meget dyre i Europa. Når vi køber flere bøger sammen, får vi rabat, derfor er det vigtigt at have en klub. Vi syntes også, at det er vigtigt at støtte de iranske forfattere og forlag, så vi køber mange bøger på persisk og sælger dem billigt i Danmark. Vi tjener ikke penge på det, tværtimod, men vi gør det for at støtte den iranske befolkning.

Mamad: De fleste af vores bøger er ulovlige i Iran, man bliver hårdt straffet for at have dem, så vi køber mange af dem i Sverige og Frankrig, men også i Canada og USA. Hvis for eksempel du bliver taget i Iran med Salman Rushdies De Sataniske Vers, bliver du henrettet med det samme.

Sprogligt frirum og åbne sår Hvilken rolle spiller det sociale sammenhold i jeres bogklub?

Mamad: Der manglede en iransk klub. Der er mange pensionister eller arbejdsløse, som kommer og spiller skak eller backgammon og læser aviser i stedet for at sidde alene derhjemme og have det dårligt. Folk kan godt blive mere

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generte og tilbageholdende i sociale sammenhænge, når de skal tale dansk. Det kan være svært at diskutere politik, hvis man ikke taler så godt dansk. Der er andre medlemmer, som ved meget mere om politik end mig, men det er alligevel ofte mig, der fremfører vores argumenter i større sammenhænge, fordi jeg taler bedre dansk. Når vi diskuterer her, har vi et lige udgangspunkt.

Ali: Vi er som en slags familie, for der er mange af os, som ikke har set vores egen familie i flere årtier, siden vi flygtede. Det er for farligt for os at rejse tilbage, og det er næsten umuligt for vores søskende at få visum til at besøge os.

For vores forældre er det også svært, og de er måske for gamle eller allerede døde. Iran var et lille fængsel, nogle gange føles Danmark som et stort fængsel.

Mamad: Vi har alle sammen flygtningebaggrund. Vi er fra forskellige politiske partier i Iran, og derfor er der også mange af os, som selv er blevet tortureret eller har mistet familie og venner. Det er helt naturligt i Iran. Men hvis jeg skal være helt ærlig, så nogle gange, når jeg taler med nytilkomne flygtninge og hører, hvordan de blev fanget og tortureret i de iranske fængsler, så kan jeg pludselig føle, at det går så tæt på mig selv. Jeg fornemmer at, okay, jeg har nogle ting inden i mig, som jeg aldrig har fået arbejdet. Vi tror, vi er så stærke, men der er så utroligt mange ting inden i én selv. Pludselig, når de begynder at fortælle detaljer om, hvordan de blev tortureret, kommer alle minderne tilbage, så kan jeg gå helt baglæns, så kan jeg ikke fortsætte, ikke holde det ud. Det er næsten som et sår. Hvis vi snakker om det, bliver det mere åbent. Nogle gange har folk det bedst med ikke at snakke om det. Der er mange som mig – det er tredive år siden, jeg flygtede, og nu tænker jeg, okay, jeg har et sår inden i mig, så skal jeg ikke snakke med Ali, måske har han et andet sår. Så vi påvirker også hinanden, vi beskytter os selv over for hinanden… på godt og ondt. Vi snakker ikke om de ting, der skete i Iran for mange år siden.

Men selvom det kan være svært at tale om de ting, som de nye flygtninge har oplevet i de iranske fængsler, accepterer vi det, fordi vi ved, at de bruger os som en slags terapeuter. Man kan ikke give op. Iran er en del af vores identiet, og jeg bliver ved med at kæmpe for frihed og demokrati.

Magtesløs, ikke håbløs Hvordan hjælper I nye flygtninge?

Mamad: Vi bliver kontaktet af folk, der har brug for rådgivning, hvis de mangler et sted at bo, eller retshjælp. Mange af dem er asylansøgere. Der er mange af de iranske flygtninge, der kommer i problemer, når de søger asyl i Danmark. De stoler ikke på myndighederne, fordi de har så dårlige oplevelser med dem i Iran, især politiet. Derfor tør de ikke fortælle sandheden om grunden til, at de flygtede. Det kan ødelægge deres mulighed for at få asyl. Især kvinder er i fare, fordi mange af dem er blevet seksuelt misbrugt i fængslet, og de skammer sig så meget. Vi giver støtte og hjælper med oplysninger om regler, og vi kender mange foreninger og advokater med forskellige specialiseringer.

Ali: Vi fokuserer på Irak, Afghanistan og Iran, fordi vi har netværk og kendskab til landene og taler lignende sprog. Vi fokuserer på at hjælpe unge, kvinder med børn og syge. Det kan være et meget hårdt arbejde, for vi har ingen penge,

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og de fleste asylansøgere er i en meget dårlig situation, når de kommer til os.

Mange har allerede fået afslag på asyl, og så prøver vi at hjælpe med at få deres sag genoptaget. Det føles som om, man mister sine venner og familie, hver gang nogen bliver udvist. Jeg bliver trist og kan ikke sove. Det iranske regime har mange penge og muligheder, men alligevel klarer vi den på et tidspunkt.

Jeg føler ikke, at situation er håbløs, men man kan føle sig magtesløs. Når vi for eksempel har støttet en politisk fange i Iran gennem 6 år, og så en dag tænder fjernsynet og ser, at han blev henrettet i går, så føles det som om, man har mistet en søster eller bror. Når flygtninge kommer til os uden venner og familie, kan vi give dem psykisk hjælp, fordi vi snakker sammen og laver sjov. Vi har omsorg og medfølelse, selvom vi ikke altid kan løse problemerne. Men vi har fået en slags netværk af viden fra alle de flygtninge, vi har mødt gennem tiden, om hvad der sker i deres hjemland, om hvilke lande, man har størst chance for at få asyl i og så videre. Det er en stor oplevelse at se sammenholdet mellem flygtninge fra mange forskellige lande.

Vi har ikke mulighed for at give op over for det iranske regime, man kan ikke være ligeglad. Lykke er ikke personligt – hvis samfundet ikke er lykkeligt, er jeg det heller ikke. Men vi er gamle nu, I er de unge, I kan godt klare at skabe et bedre samfund end min generation. Vi glemte fremtiden. Jeg har håb for jer unge. Rettigheder er ikke gratis, vi skal kæmpe for dem. Vi er snart færdige, det er jeres tur nu!

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“Der er ingen fremtid for os her”

translation page 112

Det er ikke første gang, Hanan og hendes mand Mohammad søger mod Europas kyster, siden de begge forlod Syrien for lidt over et år siden. For et halvt år siden blev de taget af det egyptiske politi om bord på en båd med flygtninge med kurs mod Europa. Nu vil de forsøge igen, inden Hanan føder deres første barn.

af Kiki Hynding Hansen illustration af Alina Vergnano

Hanan planlægger i øjeblikket sit andet forsøg på at nå Europa med en af de mange både, der sejler fra de nordafrikanske kyster. Første gang de prøvede, fangede politiet hende og hendes mand. Den kuldsejlede flugt mod Europa sidste år resulterede i 36 dages fængsel for dem begge og ikke mindst den lille i Hanans mave. Dengang var det ikke til at se, men nu strutter Hanans mave fint ud over buksekanten. “Mit barn skal ikke vokse op her i Egypten,” siger hun.

Hun ved godt, at det er farligt at krydse Middelhavet i båd, og at det ikke gør det mindre risikabelt, at hun oven i købet er højgravid. Men Hanan føler ikke, at hun har noget valg.

Det er ikke let at skulle forlade Egypten “Det er mit første barn og jeg vil virkelig gerne være sammen med mine forældre, som jo bor her i Egypten. Min mor har også bedt mig om ikke at rejse.

Men min mand kan ikke holde ud at blive her,” fortæller Hanan, mens hun nipper til retterne på Alexandrias bedste syriske restaurant.

“Jeg har brug for at føle mig respekteret, at føle mig som et rigtigt menneske,” siger Hanans mand Mohammad og refererer til den stigmatisering af syriske flygtninge, de oplever i Egypten. “Der er ingen job til os, og mange udlejere udnytter vores desperate situation og hæver huslejen, så snart de hører, at man

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er fra Syrien,” fortæller Hanan. “Egypterne vil ikke have os her,” siger hun og kigger på sin mand på den anden side af bordet. Mohammad forsætter: “Der er ingen fremtid for os her. Hvordan skal man kunne bygge en fremtid, når man kun lige akkurat har penge til at betale sin husleje,” spørger han retorisk. “Han var frisør, men nu er han arbejdsløs, og jeg går på barsel om få uger, og hvad gør vi så,” spørger Hanan lige så retorisk. De håber på, at huslejen om ikke andet bliver nemmere at betale, og at deres barn kan få en god opvækst i Europa.

Første forsøg slog fejl Hanan og Mohammad mødte hinanden i Egypten, efter de begge var flygtet fra Syrien for lidt over et år siden. En dag i oktober sidste år fortalte han hende pludselig, at han ville rejse til Italien næste dag, og hvis hun ville med, ville han gifte sig med hende på stedet, fortæller Hanan smilende.

“Så jeg tog hjem til min mor og sagde: Jeg rejser til Italien i morgen, og jeg skal giftes i dag,” griner Hanan og kigger forelsket på sin mand.

Dagen efter ringede skipperen fra båden og fortalte, at båden var aflyst, fordi politiet havde fået nys om det. “Hver dag i de følgende uger sad vi klar med en pakket taske og ventede på opkaldet, der ville give os grønt lys,” fortæller Hanan. “Pludselig en dag fik vi besked om, at nu var det nu. Da vi ankom til båden, var der ikke 150 mennesker om bord, som vi havde fået at vide, men snarere 400 mennesker. Man kunne overhovedet ikke bevæge sig,” siger Hanan og viser med armene, hvor tæt sammenpressede de sad. Hun googler et billede på sin telefon og viser et af de typiske billeder, medierne bringer af en lille, overfyldt båd, hvor ben dingler ned langs bådens sider. “Sådan her er det,” siger hun og ryster på hovedet. “En af mine største bekymringer var, hvordan jeg skulle kunne komme på toilettet på den seks døgn lange rejse,” fortæller hun.

Men Hanan og Mohammad nåede ikke at være i båden mere end et par timer, før det egyptiske politi fangede dem. Hanan forklarer, at det koster 3000 USD at tage en båd fra Alexandria til Italien, men at man kun betaler, hvis man når frem. Derfor 'slap' hun og hendes mand med 36 dages fængsel. “Men det var ikke let,” fortæller Hanan. “Heldigvis havde vi gode folk i vores netværk, som kunne hjælpe ved at sende mad, tøj og medicin, mens vi var fængslede.”

Hanans chef hos den internationale organisation Caritas, der netop arbejder for at støtte syriske flygtninge i Egypten, hjalp også parret med advokathjælp, hvilket reddede dem fra udvisning og i stedet gav dem amnesti og lov til at blive i Egypten med flygtningestatus.

Anden gang er måske lykkens gang Den lille families plan er nu at tage turen i bil over grænsen til Libyen for derfra at tage en båd mod Italien. “Det koster kun 500 USD for turen over land og 1000 USD for bådturen,” forklarer Hanan. Det er altså halv pris af, hvad det koster med båd fra Alexandria, og turen til søs er kun et døgn. “Men det er heller ikke uden farer at krydse den libyske grænse,” siger Mohammad. “Sidste uge fandt man syv egyptiske mænd henrettet. Libyen er lovløst. Der er frit spil for tyve og mordere.”

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“Jeg er bange,” siger Hanan. “Det er han også,” forklarer hun. “Da vi sad fængslet, fik han udslæt over det hele, fordi han var så bange og nervøs for mig og babyen. I øvrigt opdagede jeg først, at jeg var gravid, mens jeg sad fængslet.

Det var virkelig et chok. Men jeg besluttede ikke at være bange, for min mands skyld. Vi måtte stå sammen. Det er det samme nu,” fortæller hun. I teorien kunne Mohammad nemlig godt selv tage turen over Middelhavet til Europa og sidenhen søge om familiesammenføring; dét kender parret flere, der har gjort.

Problemet er, forklarer Hanan, at de lige nu ikke har officielle papirer på, at de er gift, fordi de kun har flygtningestatus i Egypten. Når deres barn bliver født, vil det være utroligt svært at få papirer på, at Mohammad er faderen, hvis han opholder sig i Europa. Derfor har hun valgt at rejse med ham nu. “Vi vil gerne til Holland,” forklarer de begge. Hanan hiver sin smartphone frem og viser et billede af en fælles ven i Holland. Han står med sin lille søn i favnen i en grøn park. “Der skal mit barn også vokse op” siger Hanan, og Mohammad nikker og smiler til hende.

Syriske flygtninge flygter i stort omfang til Egypten og Europa I første halvår af 2014 har flere end 75.000 flygtninge ifølge UNHCR nået Sydeuropas kyster. Det er 25 % flere end i 2013. Derudover er omkring 800 personer fundet druknede, ligeledes i 2014, i forsøget på at krydse Middelhavet.

Ifølge George Washdev, projektansvarlig for den syriske operation hos Caritas under UNHCR i Alexandria, er det nødvendigt, at EU øjeblikkeligt tager ansvar. Han påpeger, at EU’s økonomiske støtte til UNCHR ikke er tilstrækkelig.

I øjeblikket anslår UNHCR, at der opholder sig omkring 150.000 registrerede syriske flygtninge i Egypten. I 2013 var tallet 120.000.

En hollænder bliver født Ovenstående artikel blev skrevet i maj 2014, før Hanan og Mohammad rejste.

Efter aftale med parret ville artiklen ikke blive publiceret, før de begge var nået sikkert frem. Et par uger efter vi havde sagt farvel, tikkede en besked ind på min telefon: “Jeg er i Libyen. Her sker meget, jeg fortæller mere, når jeg er fremme.”

To uger senere kom næste besked: “Jeg er i Paris. Jeg tager til Belgien og så til Holland!!”

Og endelig to dage senere kom beskeden: “Jeg er i Holland. Jeg er glad.”

Få uger senere kom den næste glædelige nyhed, da et billede af Mohammad med deres nyfødte datter i armene tikkede ind på min telefon. Den lille familie opholder sig stadig i en flygtningelejr i Holland, men håber på at kunne flytte ud af lejren og ind i et lille hus om fire måneder.

Hanan og Mohammads fulde navne er redaktionen bekendt.

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UNDERGROUND Haby

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Som om katastrofen ikke allerede var her

translation page 114

af Athena Farrokhzad illustration af Simon Væth

visAvis bringer her et uddrag af programmet Sommar i P1, Sveriges Radio. Hver dag i løbet af sommeren blev en person inviteret ind som programvært. Forfatteren Athena Farrokhzad var vært den 21.7.2014. Her benyttede hun blandt andet muligheden til at tale om racisme, EU’s migrationspolitik og feminisme.

3.

”En dag vil jeg dø i et land, hvor folk kan udtale mit navn.” Sådan skriver den svenske digter Jila Mossaed. Hvis det ikke var for vores navne, som Sverige aldrig lærer at udtale, ville jeg have talt med jer om døden. Jeg ville have fortalt om de mennesker, jeg har mistet. Jeg ville have fortalt om Frida Lo, som skrev de smukkeste digte og en dag ikke orkede længere. Om Babak, som sammen med toogtres andre døde i diskoteksbranden på Hisingen. I stedet må jeg tale om den strukturelle racisme.

Racisme er et begreb, der ofte forbindes med apartheidsystemet i Sydafrika eller Ku Klux Klan i USA, det vil sige noget, der eksisterer langt væk fra Sverige. I virkeligheden er den svenske velfærdsstats historie gennemsyret af racisme. I 1921 blev det racehygiejniske institut grundlagt i Uppsala og udførte eksperimenter med henblik på at eliminere uønskede elementer fra samfundskroppen. I 1934 blev loven om tvangssterilisation vedtaget, hvad der ramte kvinder fra socialt udsatte grupper, som for eksempel Sveriges romaminoritet og den oprindelige, samiske befolkning. Såvel arbejdsmigranter som flygtninge vidner om oplevelser, der tegner et andet billede end af et land, hvor diskrimination ikke forekommer. Få vil i dag kalde sig racister. Men det betyder ikke, at de ikke drager fordel af racismens måde at kategorisere og vurdere mennesker på, eller at de ikke viderefører kolonialistisk tankegods. For den, der udsættes for en racistisk handling, spiller intentionerne bag handlingen en mindre rolle end dens konsekvenser. Racisme rammer os forskelligt alt efter hvor i samfundet, vi befinder os.

Racisme er at få sin boligansøgning frasorteret på forhånd på grund af sit navn. Racisme er at blive nægtet indgang på et diskotek, hvis man er afrosvensk, og af samme grund blive overfaldet på vej hjem. Racisme er, at den gennemsnitlige årsindkomst i den migranttætte forstad Bergsjön er en halv million kroner lavere end i villakvarteret Hovås i den anden ende af byen, hvor den gennemsnitlige levealder som følge er ni år længere. Racisme er udeluk-

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kende at blive skildret i medierne som undertrykt eller terrorist, hvis man ser ud som henholdsvis mig eller min bror. Racisme er at få sit tørklæde revet af, når man venter på bussen. Racisme er ikke at kunne anmelde de forbrydelser, man udsættes for, fordi politiet vil betragte en som gerningsmand i stedet for offer. Racisme er, at småbørn findes i politiregistre alene af den grund, at de er romaer. Racisme er altid at være den eneste perker på en poesifestival, da det trods sin selvforståelse er et sværttilgængeligt rum. Racisme er den fattigdom, der føder den frustration, der sætter forstæderne i brand. Racisme er, når sociale tiltag erstattes af politiindsater. Racisme er, da jeg fem år gammel kommer frem i iskøen til midsommerfesten og hører kvinden, der deler is ud til børnene med blomsterkranse sige til sin kollega: ”Sådan er de, de spiser al isen, og så bliver der ikke noget tilbage til de svenske børn.” Racisme er, når min syvårige guddatter siger til sin mor, at hun også vil have lyst hår som de andre i klassen. Racisme er at blive stoppet af grænsepolitiet, når man kører med metroen, fordi ens hudfarve får dem til at antage, at man er papirløs. Racisme er at blive deporteret, når man bliver stoppet af grænsepolitiet, fordi man er papirløs.

Racisme er ikke at kunne få et arbejde, der passer til ens uddannelse. Racisme er ikke at have nogen uddannelse, fordi man er tvunget til at forsørge sine søskende, når ens enlige mors løn ikke rækker, selv om hun gør rent syv dage om ugen.

Eller med den amerikanske digter Gil Scott Herons ord: ”Madpriserne stiger, og som om det lort ikke var nok, bed en rotte min søster Nell, mens ham hviderikken går på månen. Hendes ansigt og arm svulmede op, men ham hviderikken går på månen. Gik alle de penge, jeg tjente sidste år til ham hviderikken på månen? Hvorfor har jeg ingen penge her? Hviderikken går på månen.

Ved du hvad, jeg har fandeme fået nok af ham hviderikken på månen. Jeg tror, jeg sender hospitalsregningen, med specialpost, til hviderikken på månen.”

4.

”Jeg prøver og prøver at tale om at elske, men det eneste jeg taler om er krigshandlinger og krigshandlinger og krigshandlinger.” Sådan skriver den amerikanske digter Juliana Spahr i forbindelse med det, der gik under navnet krigen mod terror, og som har kostet millioner af liv i Irak og i Afghanistan og tvunget endnu flere på flugt. Under den igangværende krig i Syrien, som hidtil har resulteret i ti millioner flygtninge, har mindre end én procent fået asyl i EU. For de fleste er det ikke lykkedes at komme forbi EU’s mure. Hvis ikke det var for alt det, ville jeg have talt med jer om at elske. Jeg ville have fortalt om dem jeg elsker, og frem for alt om mine bedste venner, dem som får mig til at grine på mine værste dage, når kærligheden forvandles til sorg eller verdens krigshandlinger ikke kan holdes på afstand, dem som hjælper mig med at formulere ord som disse. I stedet må jeg tale om EU’s migrationspolitik.

Juliana Spahr fortsætter: ”Vi siger at vores seng er en del af alle andres seng, selv når vores seng er afskåret fra andre af et sindrigt system af hegn og paskontrolkabiner.” Vi hører ofte, at vi har en generøs flygtningepolitik, og at åbne grænser ville medføre en katastrofe. Som om katastrofen ikke allerede var her. Spørg dem, der taber i asylprocessens lotteri, på trods af at de hellere sultestrejker eller tager deres eget liv end rejser tilbage. Spørg dem, der er spærret inde og behandles som kriminelle, mens de venter på at blive sendt

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tilbage. Spørg dem, hvis afslag på opholdstilladelse er blevet fejret med kage af Migrationsverkets ansatte. Spørg de bøsser og lesbiske, der bliver deporteret til lande, hvor homoseksualitet er strafbart, undertiden med døden. Spørg dem, der ville have fået opholdstilladelse i Sverige, hvis ikke de først var ankommet til et andet Schengenland, hvortil de sendes tilbage. Spørg de forældre, der beskyldes for at have forgiftet deres børn, når asylprocessen har gjort dem apatiske. Spørg dem, der vasker op på restauranter uden nogen fagforening at vende sig mod, når arbejdsgiveren nægter at udbetale deres minimale løn.

Spørg de kvinder, der bliver mishandlet eller voldtaget af deres mænd, og som risikerer at blive udvist, hvis de anmelder det. Spørg de mellem tredivetusind og halvtredstusind mennesker, der lever uden papirer i Sverige. De tyvetusind, som er døde ved Europas grænser gennem de seneste ti år, kan du ikke spørge.

Mine forældre kom hertil midt i firserne, på flugt fra repressionen efter den iranske revolution. Jeg har stadig de postkort, min far sendte til mig i Teheran, da jeg var barn og han var tvunget til at forlade landet efter mange år som politisk fange. Kort efter kom min mor og jeg hertil. Opholdstilladelserne var allerede udstedt. I dag ville det have været betydeligt sværere. Min far havde formentlig ikke fået lov til at blive, selvom han var endt i fængsel igen, hvis han var vendt tilbage. Det var sandsynligvis ikke engang lykkedes ham at komme hertil. Frontex, EU’s grænsesamarbejde, som resulterer i, at flygtningebåde forliser i Middelhavet med den svenske kystvagts medvirken, havde gjort alt for at hindre ham.

Migrationspolitikken er vor tids største europæiske katastrofe. Derfor kræver den også mere end noget andet vores solidaritet. Hvis du har et ledigt værelse, kan du tilbyde det til en papirløs. Hvis du har juridiske eller medicinske færdigheder, kan du engagere dig i organisationer, der yder retshjælp og behandling til dem, der lever her uden at være omfattet af dine rettigheder.

Hvis du har penge, kan du donere dem til netværket Ingen människa är illegal, som arbejder med praktisk at støtte dem, der er tvunget til at gå under jorden.

Hvis du er svensk statsborger, kan du gifte dig med én, som har brug for asyl i Sverige. Du kan gøre det, der står i din magt for at bidrage til opløsningen af nationalstaten, den konstruktion der ligger til grund for katastrofen.

5. ”Og du vil spørge: Hvorfor handler hans digte ikke om drømme og blade, om de storslåede vulkaner i hans hjemland? Kom og se på blodet i gaderne.”

Sådan skriver den chilenske digter Pablo Neruda. Hvis det ikke var fordi, Mellemøsten lå i ruiner, ville jeg have talt med jer om solopgangen over broerne i Isfahan, om katakomberne i Alexandria og appelsintræerne i Jeriko. I stedet må jeg tale om blodet i Irans, Egyptens og Palæstinas gader.

Den persiske digter Fateme Ekhtesari skriver: ”Løb hen til sejrtegnets to bitre fingre. Til natten, vor nats sorgfulde fortsættelse. Til blodet, der størkner i vores mundvige. Til frihedens ufuldstændige nat.” Efter at Fateme deltog i en poesifestival, som mine venner og jeg organiserede i Sverige, blev hun arresteret ved hjemkomsten til Teheran, hvor hun tilbragte en måned i varetægtsfængsel. Hun er nu tiltalt for terrorisme alene af den grund, at hun er en systemkritisk digter, hvis digte skildrer uretfærdigheden i det iranske samfund. Det berygtede Evinfængsel, hvor Fateme sad, og hvor min far engang

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sad, bliver for sjov kaldt Evinuniversitetet, fordi det holder så mange af landets studerende, journalister og intellektuelle indespærrede. En betydelig del er kurdere, der kæmper for borgerrettigheder. I femogtredive år har regimet terroriseret befolkningen, og selv om modstanden er massiv, er den indtil nu gang på gang blevet slået ned. De enorme klasseskel i et af verdens mest olierige lande er mindst lige så stort et problem som den manglende ytringsfrihed.

I Alexandria sidder min ven Mahienour El Massry fængslet sammen med titusindvis af andre aktivister for at have protesteret mod, at undertrykkelsen og uretfærdighederne fortsætter. Selv om der er gået mere end tre år siden den egyptiske revolution, sidder militæret fortsat på magten. Ind imellem tænker jeg på, hvad Mahienour har fortalt mig: Den 20. januar 2011, det vil sige fem dage inden, at millioner samledes på Tahrir-pladsen og afsatte diktatoren Hosni Mubarak, trøstede hun en opgivende kammerat med, at der nok ikke var mere end ti år til revolutionen. Når jeg fortvivler, tænker jeg på det hun fortalte som et løfte. At folket igen kan rejse sig når som helst, at oprøret venter rundt om hjørnet.

På den anden side af Sinai-halvøen, i Gaza, bor min ven digteren Somaya El Sousi sammen med næsten to millioner mennesker i verdens største udendørs fængsel. Der, ligesom på Vestbredden og i Jerusalem, lever befolkningen under besættelse. I 1948 blev hundredetusinder fordrevet fra deres hjem, blandt andet til flygtningelejre i Libanon og Syrien, hvor mange stadig lever, hvis ikke borgerkrigene igen har tvunget dem på flugt. Ulovlige bosættelser, checkpoints, apartheidlove og etnisk udrensning har siden grundlæggelsen været en fundamental del af staten Israels politik. Mod en af verdens største våbenmagter står en palæstinensisk befolkning med sten og raketter. Nu falder bomberne igen over Gaza.

Somaya skriver: ”De der gyserfilm kunne lære en ting eller to af at leve dit liv for en dag. Instruktørerne ville forkaste deres egne forældede idéer og bønfalde dig, oprigtigt og ømt, om at få lov til at filme en hvilken som helst af dine dage.” Den svenske digter Lars Mikael Raattamaa svarer: ”Og solen begynder så småt at varme. Israel, mordere. Og nogen udskifter batterierne i kameraet.

Israel, mordere. Og nogen lægger fødderne på bordet. Israel, mordere. Jeg er træt af denne her leg.”

Somaya, Mahienour og Fateme er tre kvinder, hvis kamp og skrift jeg er så heldig at kende. Når jeg lammes af min egen utilstrækkelighed, tænker jeg ofte på dem, på mine mostre og min mor, på alle som har udholdt tusind trængsler for frihedens skyld. En del af dem lever i Sverige og har afgørende kendskab til samtidspolitiske begivenheder. Men offentligheden er ikke interesseret i, hvad de har at fortælle. Det er os, der må sprede ordet om deres kamp. Eller som den palæstinensiske digter Mahmoud Darwish skriver: ”Vi er der stadig, selv om tiden er blevet skilt fra stedet”, og med den jødiske digter Nelly Sachs’ ord har vi i stedet for hjemlande ”verdens forvandlinger.”

7. ”Min mormor, som døde af drømme, vugger uophørligt drømmen, der opfinder hende, som jeg opfinder.” Sådan skriver den mexicanske digter Gloria Gervitz, og den svenske digter Karin Boye svarer: ”Jeg drømte om sværd i nat.

Jeg drømte om strid i nat. Jeg drømte jeg kæmpede ved din side, rustet og stærk

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i nat.” Hvis det ikke var fordi, livet i det her samfund i bedste fald er pissenederen, ville jeg have talt med jer om drømmen om en have som min mormors, hvor mynten engang voksede langs med vandløbene. I stedet må jeg tale om dem, ved hvis side jeg kæmper. At elske, hylde og begære kvinder og queers, at forsøge at omvælte den orden, hvor vi er afhængige af mænd til at forsørge os eller give os nydelse, har altid været det vigtigste jeg ved. For mig har feminisme aldrig været en stræben efter at blive betragtet som den heteroseksuelle mands lige, men derimod kampen for at styrte den patriarkalske grund, hvorpå vores viden om verden hviler.

Eller med den finlandssvenske digter Edith Södergrans ord: ”Skønne søstre, her højt oppe på de stærkeste klipper. Vi er alle krigerinder, heltinder, ryttersker, uskyldsøjne, himmelpander, rosenlarver, tunge brændinger og forfløjne fugle. Vi er de mindst ventede og de dybest røde, tigerpletter, spændte strenge, stjerner uden højdeskræk.”

10. ”Jeg kan ikke huske ordene i mit første digt. Men jeg kan huske løftet, jeg gav min pen, om aldrig at dyppe den i andres blod.” Sådan skriver den amerikanske digter Audre Lorde. Hvis det ikke var for det løfte, ville jeg have talt med jer om mit første digt. Jeg ville have fortalt om, hvordan det gik op for mig som barn, at et mærkeligt rim eller en uventet metafor kan sætte verden i et nyt lys og dermed gøre et menneske modtagelig for betydninger, hun ikke troede, hun kunne favne. At poesiens evne til at fastnagle ”det stillestående punkt i konstant forskydning” med den norske digter Eldrid Lundens ord stadig er grunden til, at jeg skriver. At digtet, når det er bedst, er en udforskning af betydningens og historiens grænser. I stedet må jeg tale om kampen om sproget.

Vi lever i en tid, hvor det hedder, at mennesker lever i parallelsamfund, som om det var en egenskab og ikke noget, de placeres i. Såvel det nye som det gamle arbejderpartis politik gør arbejderklassen fattigere og fattigere, overvågning sælges med tryghedsretorik, børskrak beskrives som naturfænomener, udviklingen får ikke lov til at være mere bæredygtig end at den ikke truer kapitalens vækst, og racisme bliver til fremmedfjendlighed, som bliver til indvandringskritik. Sproget er et medium, som virkeligheden skabes med. Hvad vi kalder ting, får konsekvenser for hvis behov, der styrer hvordan samfundet udformes. Eller med den svenske digter Jenny Wrangborgs ord: ”Stockholm. Her er lægehusene kapitalfonde registreret i skatteparadis. Valgfrihed er ensretning, effektivitet nedskæringer. Her har de femårige i børnehaveklasserne lært at tale modsatsprog, og vi lader til at have glemt, at ”jeg taler ikke modsatsprog” netop betyder, at man gør det.”

Jeg tror ikke, at digtere kan ændre verden. Men jeg tror, at digtet er et medium til at undersøge den slags ideologiske forskydninger samt hvem, der må betale prisen for dem. Da herskerens værktøj med Audre Lordes ord aldrig kan rive herskerens hus ned, kan vi ikke bare overtage retoriske figurer og fylde dem med eget indhold. Vi kan for eksempel ikke møde diskussionen om, hvor meget indvandrerne koster med forsikringer om, at vi faktisk bidrager med kebab og klirren i statskassen. I stedet må vi afvise ræssonementet og minde om, at menneskers eksistensberettigelse ikke kan måles i, hvad de bidrager med.

Eller med den svenske digter Mara Lees ord: ”Vi må nægte at svare, når idiotien kalder, og i stedet formulere nye spørgsmål.”

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Indhold / Content Oversættelser / Translations

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Uddrag fra en migrants dagbog – Naraki Abdulhadi Asylcenter Avnstrup i glimt – visAvis’ lejrgruppe Smerten, der ikke kan vente – Lina Myritz The world's youngest nation – Leon J Jeg overlevede, men mit liv er gået i stå – Ali Sonnets - Pablo Llambías Lad os råbe i kor – Moges Mulugeta Amharay Love is Sweet, but Cannot Eat – Paula Bulling og Jan Bachmann She is Angry – Maja Lee Langvad Diary from the West Bank – Henri Barbara En af de mange europæiske historier om hvordan man starter en krig – Patrick Et bortgået liv – Mohammad Reza Qasemi Pooyandeh - the book club that never gives up – Linea Kornum Rask "There is no future for us here" – Kiki Hynding Hansen As if the disaster isn’t already here – Athena Farrokhzad

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Uddrag fra en migrants dagbog af Naraki Abdulhadi

For mere end et år siden kontaktede Naraki visAvis for første gang. Han var ivrig efter at dele sin historie med verden. Hans historie havde form af en stor bunke ark på flere hundrede sider, skrevet på arabisk i hånden. Det har været en udfordring for visAvis at finde hjælp til transskribering, oversættelse og redigering. Her præsenterer vi med stor forsinkelse et lille udvalg af uddrag fra hans tekst. Udvalget er foretaget af Naraki og består af hans tanker om livet som migrant generelt, såvel som af detaljer fra hans personlige oplevelser.

1. uddrag – Livet som migrant i Spanien Mit navn er Naraki Abdulhadi, marokkaner fra Casablanca. Jeg er migreret til Spanien og har boet der i mere end 24 år. Gennem min tid i Spanien har jeg bevidnet de første bølger af hemmelige migranter, som kom til Spanien i både i store grupper. Jeg havde boet i Almería i en måned, da den spanske regering forsøgte at løse problemerne med disse immigranter, men det forbedrede ikke deres situation. Regeringen udstedte ID-kort, der allerede i begyndelsen var ret svære at få fat i, og som var gyldige i mindre end en måned. De illegale immigranter skulle betale sociale forsikringsydelser og have en jobkontrakt for at komme i betragtning til et nyt ID-kort. Fra 1998 blev den spanske immigrationspolitik voldsomt strammet, og nye tiltag gjorde det endnu sværere for illegale immigranter at få fornyet deres ID-kort.

Hvordan virkede disse tiltag? I hvilken grad har de nye grupper interageret med det spanske samfund? Og hvordan forholdt de sig til skruppelløse arbejdsgivere, politisk chikane og racistiske overgreb?

Situationen før finanskrisen Som følge af udfordringerne med at blive en integreret del af EU var det særdeles svært for Spanien at tage sig af de illegale immigranter. I overgangsperioden var det yderst udfordrende for Spanien at tage imod de nye befolkningsgrupper, hvilket fik immigrationsmyndighederne til udelukkende at tage imod migranter, når de kunne profitere på

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dem. Det banede vejen for store forskelle mellem migranterne, men også for racistiske handlinger fra både befolkningen og politiet.

Af alt hvad jeg har oplevet og bevidnet gennem årene, står én ting klart for mig: Den latterlige og aggressive måde, som det spanske politi har behandlet immigranter på – særligt dem, der kommer fra Nordafrika. Jeg har set, hvordan det spanske politi har forfulgt og arresteret illegale immigranter, ikke kun på offentlige steder, men også i private hjem, butikker, hoteller og endda ved indgange til spisesteder, som med støtte fra kirker deler mad ud til fattige og marginaliserede.

Efterhånden vænnede jeg mig til disse fascistiske patruljer. Hver nat jagtede de illegale immigranter som var de hunde, satte dem ind i store køretøjer og kørte dem til politistationer, hvor dem, der ikke havde fornyet deres ID-kort, blev grundigt forhørt inden de blev deporteret.

Politiets overgreb er velkendte, men immigranter blev også i vid udstrækning udbyttet i landbrugsarbejde og andre udmattende jobs. Når immigranterne klagede til fagforeninger, blev det betragtet som underlige, meningsløse ritualer, da alt handlede om den kapitalistiske elites interesser. Politiet trak alle sager i langdrag, og på grund af dette tidsspilde blev immigranterne presset til at opgive deres rettigheder. Jeg har også selv lidt adskillige tab og kunne ikke engang få medhold af den spanske domstol. Spanien bruger immigranter som produktionsredskaber til at mele egen kage. Flere spanske regeringer i træk har betragtet immigranter som grunden til deres problemer og årsagen til de forværrede forhold i Spanien.

Immigranters liv under finanskrisen Finanskrisen ledte til yderligere forringelse af immigranternes forhold og forøgede marginaliseringen. Efter byggebranchens nedgang var der kun landbrugsarbejde tilbage. Det er usikkert arbejde, da høstsæsonen kun giver plads til et begrænset antal arbejdere, der arbejder til mindsteløn.

Yderligere har der været blodige sammenstød med spanske arbejdere, som råbte "spaniere først".

Det er blevet for svært for migranterne at beskytte sig mod socialt forfald. Den spanske regering betragter dem som en byrde, hvad der har ført til stramninger af procedurerne for at få og forlænge

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opholdstilladelser. Desværre er det også blevet normalt, at myndighederne negligerer permanente opholdstilladelser til aldrende immigranter, som må gå alderdommen i møde uden hjem eller pension.

Her ses det tydelige mønster for, hvad der adskiller immigranter fra resten af samfundet. Det har forvist immigranterne til slummen, og til at samle og sælge ting på det ugentlige market for en profit på under 10 euro. Dem, der får denne profit, er de heldige, der kan holde deres krop i live til at arbejde yderligere.

Det højreorienterede regeringsparti vandt valget alene baseret på løfter om hævn over immigranterne. Derfor er det kun spanske statsborgere, der bliver prioriteret, på trods af at immigranter lever i et miserabelt kaos af arbejdsløshed og forvirring.

Det har appelleret til de mindre generøse sider af den spanske befolkning, som er begyndt at skyde skylden for krisen på migranterne på gadehjørnerne.

2. uddrag – Jeg får en betragtelig formue

to ødelagte mure. Røgen strækker sig mod himlen nær det slumkvarter, hvor hytter dækket af plastik ligger spredt. For enden af muren er der et lille hus, der engang var omklædningsrum for spillerne på stadionet. Ved siden af huset ser man algeriere, marokkanere og andre afrikanere, som sidder med deres ulykkelige, blege ansigter og tilbereder mad fra marken i sort køkkentøj over varme gløder. Da de to afrikanere gik, tog jeg mit tøj af, sæbede mig ind og skyllede mig med vandslangen. Jeg tørrede mig med nogle servietter, tog tøj på, snuppede en øl, kom den i posen og gik.

Jeg løftede plastikdækket over den algeriske mands hytte. Han drejede hovedet, smilede roligt og sagde: - Kidayr el bilad? (Hvordan har du det?)

- Fint-fint.

- Har du fundet noget arbejde?

- Kun nogle få dage. Hvad med dig?

Han rejste sig og så på mig med rolige øjne.

- Jeg har ikke arbejdet siden sidste sæson, og jeg har brugt alle mine penge.

Han bad om en cigaret, og jeg tændte den for ham.

Jeg får en betragtelig formue.

Da vi kom tilbage fra pladsen gik Rahhal i supermarkedet for at købe det, han havde brug for, mens jeg gik tilbage til skuret for at hente en gasflaske og fylde lageret op, inden jeg gik ud for at købe ind.

Med stor intensitet rammer bådene den andalusiske kyst og bærer de illegale immigranter med sig fra Afrika og Marokko, alt imens andre lander i lufthavne som turister. Når immigranterne ankommer til Spanien, styrer de mod det gamle stadion med de ødelagte mure for her at bygge deres hytter af gamle grøntsagskasser. Det lokale politi lader sig ikke mærke af immigranternes situation, bortset fra når der er slagsmål, eller når lokale spaniere anklager dem for tyveri.

En måned efter jeg kom, forlod jeg det gamle stadion for at arbejde på Christophers marker. Han gav mig lov til at bo i et meget lille hus, som var bygget til at opbevare landbrugsredskaber. På marken var der flere huse, hvor andre marokkanere ligesom mig ventede på at arbejde, når ærterne blev modne.

3. uddrag – Stadionet Der er ikke noget at se bag det traditionelle marked i Roctas de Mar bortset fra en port, der deler

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4. uddrag – På udkig efter arbejde Jeg tog af sted med min taske for at tilbringe dagen i Cuatro Caminos-området og i områderne omkring Bravo Morero og Castella Square for at spørge om arbejde på cafeterier og byggepladser.

Jeg udfyldte en ansøgning ved McDonalds uden at give mit telefonnummer. Omkring halv et om natten vendte jeg tilbage til stationen og lagde mig på bænken, træt og bekymret, med sørgelige billeder, mennesker og ting kørende rundt i hovedet. En ung, blond mand ved min side sippede til sin kaffe i et plastikkrus. Han så polsk ud. Han forsøgte at få øjenkontakt et par gange og overraskede mig så, da han talte arabisk: - Hvordan har du det?

- Fint, hvad med dig?

- Fint.

- Er du fra Marokko?

- Ja. - Jeg troede, at du var polsk. Hvilken by er du fra?

- Fra Sla, men oprindeligt er jeg fra bjergene.

- Hvad hedder du? Jeg hedder Abdulhadi.

- En fornøjelse at møde dig.

- Hvad koster en sort kaffe fra maskinen?

- 25 - intet problem.

Vi rejste os, og han trak en sort kaffe til mig fra maskinen. Han spurgte mig:

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- Hvor skal du sove?

- Som du ser, på gaden.

- Du kan sove hos mig i nat. Et varmt sted.

- Tæt på eller langt herfra?

- Meget tæt på.

- Varmere end på gaden?

- Kom med mig. Vi er fra det samme land og skal hjælpe hinanden.

Vi gik gennem stationens bagdør, som ledte os ud til metroen, tog en sort rulletrappe ned og gik gennem en lang korridor, der førte ud til metroens udgang. Her var marokkanere, polakker, afrikanere og spanske misbrugere, hvis hud var gennemhullet af indsprøjtninger, og hvis ansigter var udtørrede og blege. De lå på papstykker på gulvet i korridoren. Jeg fandt min plads ved siden af Mousa og lagde mig på pappet. Jeg fornemmede en varme, som jeg ikke havde følt i adskillige nætter. Kroppene lå udstrakte i to rækker på pappet under det skarpe lys fra de store lamper. Bølgerne fra lysstrålerne prikkede i huden som elektrisk lys på industrikyllinger.

5. uddrag – Faret vild i byen En uge går som en dag med de jobløse måneders kedsomhed, hvad der fik mange til at fare vild i byen. Jeg begyndte igen at overveje at tage tilbage til Almería, men jeg skubbede hver gang tanken fra mig. Jeg følte, at jeg ville være tilbage, hvor jeg begyndte; til at være en flygtning, der var undsluppet dødsbådene, og jeg hadede mig selv blandt de spøgelser, der fyldte de øde steder. Almería var for mig en by, der intet andet gav mig end søgen efter landbrugsarbejdets elendighed. Her gør jeg intet andet end at observere en underlig menneskelig ironi. Måske forbliver jeg sådan indtil min pollen bliver båret væk af nødvendighedens vind og bestøver et arbejdes blomster på en eller anden kvægfarm i en landsby nær Madrid. Eller måske en ny by. Når jeg ingen nyheder får, modtager jeg det med en glæde som den, der får en vidunderlig gave. Men hvor svæver lykken? Er frelse en udgået møntfod? Er man intet andet end et optalt nummer?

Asylcenter Avnstrup i glimt af visAvis’ lejrgruppe: Karen Ravn Vestergaard, Katja Lund Thomsen, Rikke Andersen og Linea Kornum Rask

I løbet af foråret har visAvis’ lejrgruppe fem gange besøgt Asylcenter Avnstrup, der ligger i en skov i Midtsjælland. Formålet var at møde nye aktivister, læsere og bidragsydere på et af de steder, der er mest afskåret fra information og adgang til medierne. Med os havde vi kasser med visAvis-tidsskrifter og engangskameraer til fri afbenyttelse. De følgende sider byder på glimt af de mange samtaler, der fandt sted, og billeder, der blev skabt i løbet af besøgene.

“Her har jeg har ingen problemer. Ikke med vold, men om natten kan jeg ikke sove. Mit hjerte er i bevægelse: vil jeg få et positivt svar [på asyl], vil jeg få et negativt svar? Mine seks børn og min kone er i en flygtningelejr i Tyskland. Tre drenge og tre piger. Jeg har ikke ringet til dem i tre år, fordi jeg er bange for, at de vil spørge mig om penge. Jeg har ingenting at give dem.”

– Ahmed, Somalia “Jeg bryder mig ikke om at være i fred, fordi det betyder, at man lidt efter lidt vil blive vildledt.

Derfor står jeg aldrig stille. Fred er bare et fænomen, mennesket er blevet introduceret til, så man kunne få det til at dæmpe sig i alle situationer.

Lejren er et stagneret sted uden nogen bevægelse.

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Her kan der ikke blive fred, højst en anden slags fred. Der er to former for fred: den ene form fører til lighed og retfærdighed, mens den anden form undertrykker og vildleder. Den form for fred, der kan findes i lejren, varer ikke ved. Man kan drømme om det, men det er ikke permanent. Fuck fred!”

– Aido “Jeg er et menneske. Jeg set folk miste deres arme og hoveder i krigen. Jeg kom hertil og tænkte, at nu er jeg tryg. Men jeg er ikke afslappet. Af og til tænker jeg, at jeg hellere vil dø end at blive her længere. Jeg bliver deprimeret. I næsten fire måneder har jeg hver tredje uge modtaget et nyt brev om, at jeg må vente i yderligere tre uger. Jeg vil

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have ytringsfrihed. Det er værre her end i mit eget land. Jeg må styre mig, fordi her er mange fundamentalister. Det er som et samfund. Hvis jeg siger min mening, får jeg at vide, at jeg er vantro. Jeg føler mig stadig ikke fri. De giver mig både problemer her og i mit hjemland, fordi jeg har bøger, der er ekstremt forbudte inden for religionen. Jeg interesserer mig for litteratur og kan bare godt lide at læse alt muligt. Jeg håber på, at jeg får positivt svar [på asyl], så jeg kan blive en god borger.

Det er jeg sikker på, at jeg kan. Men hvis jeg bliver her længere, vil jeg få endnu flere psykiske problemer. Jeg ved, at jeg har en depression, og hvis de vil beholde mig længere, kan jeg ikke være et godt menneske.”

– Anonym “Jeg kom den lange vej fra Afghanistan. Jeg rejste to måneder, femten dage og krydsede syv lande for at komme her. Den første dag jeg kom her til Sandholm, så jeg nogle, der kom med et tidsskrift.

Det var jeres tidsskrift, men jeg forstod ikke rigtigt, hvad der skete. Jeg kan godt lide at være her.

Her er en god skole, og jeg lærer engelsk. Jeg spiller cricket og fodbold med mine venner. Jeg træner og går ture i skoven. Det er som i Afghanistan.

Før Taliban kom, havde jeg også et godt liv dér.

Men om aftenen når jeg skal sove, tænker jeg på min familie. Min historie er virkelig sørgelig. Jeg venter.”

– Mohammad, Afghanistan

“Sproget er nøglen til landet – kun når man kan sproget. Det er som et fængsel her i Avnstrup. Her er ikke noget internet, ingenting. Her er ingen danskere. Når der ikke er nogen danskere, hvordan kan man så lære sproget? Her er ingen butikker, ingen mennesker, ingen hospitaler. Hvordan kan man lære et land at kende? Det er som et fængsel.”

– Anonym, Irak “Jeg ved godt, at det ikke er vigtigt, men man leder altid efter jeres historie. Vi vil også gerne skabe vores egen historie. Vi leder efter vores historier, præcis som I gør. Men alt er i deres hænder. Intet er i vores egne. Jeg tænker; hvad vil der ske? Vi er stadig på rejse. Det er for svært at tabe det hele for intet. Må bede til Gud. Jeg ønsker at få en fremtid, at tage det seriøst, at se et barn løbe rundt. Fortæl dem min historie, fortæl dem om historie. Indtil da er jeg okay. Jeg forsøger at glemme krisen. Jeg har næsten allerede glemt det. Man må gøre sit hjerte tomt, gøre alt tomt.”

– Lee, Somalia

Smerten, der ikke kan vente af Lina Myritz

Baseret på Lina Myritz’ kandidatopgave i medicin, "Smerten, der ikke kan vente: et pilotstudie om udokumenterede migranters generelle sundhedsstatus og adgang til sundhedsydelser i Region Skåne" ved Lunds Universitet (2013).

Smerten, der gennemborer Rezas hoved, er så intens, at han må tvinge sig selv til at tænke på sin mor og lillebror i Afghanistan, for ikke at hoppe ud fra balkonen. Tårerne strømmer ned ad hans kinder. Hans ven Ali står ved siden af ham. Ali har trykket alarmnummeret på sin mobiltelefon, men er for bange til at trykke på opkaldsknappen. “Nej, lad være med at ringe op! De arresterer os begge to. Hvis vi bliver deporteret, er vi begge to døde”. Reza kan knap nok formulere sig, hans krop er følelsesløs. Det eneste han kan mærke er den frygtelige, dunkende smerte i hovedet.

Reza overlevede, selvom han ikke søgte lægehjælp. Man kan sige, at det sparede ham for en unødvendig CT-scanning og en rygmarvsprøve,

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men det betød også en række nætter i helvede plaget af smerter forstærket af frygt og påmindelser om den usikkerhed, han lever med. Da et lovforslag om at yde lægehjælp til udokumenterede, mindreårige migranter på lige fod med faste indbyggere i Sverige blev fremsat, blev den svenske migrationsminister bedt om at kommentere. Hans svar var: “Børn bør ikke straffes for deres mødres dårlige beslutninger.” Magthaverne mener altså, at udokumenterede migranter, som Reza, bør straffes for at nægte at forlade landet, efter at have fået afslag på asyl, og at en begrænset adgang til sundhedsydelser er en passende straf. Det var for at undersøge konsekvenserne af den indstilling, at jeg – med støtte fra institut for Socialepidemiologi

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ved Lunds Universitet – gav mig i kast med en spørgeskemaundersøgelse af forskellene mellem dokumenterede og udokumenterede mennesker i Skåne med hensyn til sundhed og adgang til lægehjælp.

Baggrund I princippet kunne det være meget enkelt. Retten til sundhed, velvære og adgang til lægehjælp er ikke bare en borgerrettighed, men også en menneskerettighed, stadfæstet i artikel 25 i FN’s Verdenserklæring om Menneskerettighederne (FN, 1948). Den svenske lovgivning om sundhedsydelser går endog videre i sine bestemmelser om, at sundhedsressourcer bør fordeles i henhold til behov (Hälso- och Sjukvårdslagen, SFS 1982:763) og legitimerer positiv særbehandling af enkeltpersoner og befolkningsgrupper, der sundhedsmæssigt er mere udsatte. Det der skal til for at sikre papirløse migranters menneskerettigheder, er ganske enkelt, at de ansatte i sundhedssektoren gør deres arbejde.

Frem til 1. juli 2013 pålagde en særskilt lovgivning de svenske regioner at tilbyde alle inden for deres grænser ”akut lægehjælp” uden tilskud (Lag om mottagande av asylsökande mfl, 1994:361).

Prisen for et besøg på skadestuen kunne koste omkring 2000 SEK, og en ukompliceret fødsel 20-25.000 SEK (Swiergiel, 2012). Mindreårige asylansøgere havde samme ret til lægehjælp som børn med opholdstilladelse, men for de børn, der enten var født efter deres forældre var tvunget til at gå under jorden, eller der af andre grunde aldrig havde været i asylsystemet, gjaldt de samme begrænsede rettigheder til lægehjælp som for de voksne udokumenterede migranter, dvs. akuthjælp for egen regning (SCORP-IFMSA, 2012).

Frivillige organisationer og netværk påpegede, at lovgivningen var i strid med den universelle ret til lægehjælp, at den skabte for meget rum for tilfældighed (Björngren Cuadra, 2010) og desuden satte ansatte i sundhedsvæsenet i et essentielt politisk dilemma mellem deres pligt til at “udføre deres arbejde i overensstemmelse med videnskaben og dokumenteret erfaring” (Lag om yrkesverksamhet på hälso- och sjukvårdens område, 1998:531) på den ene side og restriktionerne pålagt af migrationspolitikken på den anden. Paul Hunt, FN’s tidligere særlige rapportør for retten til sundhedspleje, påpegede, at den svenske politik var diskriminerende og i strid med international lov (Hunt 2007). I en sammenlignende undersøgelse af elleve europæiske lande blev Sverige vurderet til at være et af de mest restriktive lande, når det kom til at yde lægehjælp til irregulære migranter (LiV, 2009).

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Social- og sundhedsministeriet iværksatte i 2010 en undersøgelse, der anbefalede, at asylansøgere og udokumenterede migranter i alle aldre skulle tilbydes sundhedsydelser ”i samme grad og efter de samme kriterier som almindelige borgere.” (Socialdepartementet, 2011). Det endte dog med et betydeligt mindre generøst forslag, der trådte i kraft 1. juli 2013 (Lag om mottagande av vissa utlänningar som vistas i Sverige utan tillstånd, 2013:407). Den nye, landsdækkende lovgivning giver alle under atten år præcis samme ret til sundhedsydelser og tandpleje som dokumenterede indbyggere. Folk over atten har ret til akut lægehjælp og sundheds/tandpleje, der ikke kan vente, graviditets- og fødselshjælp, abort og familieplanlægning (RS 2011). Den vigtigste nyhed er måske, at det nu er muligt at få tilskud til lægehjælp og medicin på lige vilkår med asylansøgere.

Den nuværende, landsdækkende lovgivning minder meget om Region Skånes politik fra 2008 om sundhedsydelser til asylansøgere og illegale indvandrere, som i april 2011 blev udvidet til også at inkludere udokumenterede migranter, der aldrig har søgt om asyl. Den fastsætter, at “medicinsk sundhedspleje bør komme i første række – som for andre patientgrupper – og at mulighederne for at betale bør komme i anden række”, og at “Region Skånes offentligt finansierede, primære sundhedsydelser bør være det naturlige førstevalg” (RS, 2011), men inkluderer ikke tilskud til medicin. I retningslinjerne, offentliggjort i forbindelse med bekendtgørelsen af denne politik i Region Skåne, erklæres det, at udokumenterede migranter ikke må nægtes lægehjælp på grund af deres juridiske status, og at de bør “behandles med omsorg for deres særlige vilkår og status som flygtninge” (RS, 2011).

Da Region Skåne allerede havde gennemført stort set alle de reformer, der for nylig er blevet landsdækkende politik, udgjorde Region Skåne inden 2013 en fremragende mulighed for at undersøge virkningerne af disse reformer af sundhedspleje til papirløse migranter generelt. Det gælder også identificeringen af potentielle, ikke lovfæstede hindringer for opfyldelsen af behov for sundhedsydelser; hindringer, der stadig gør sig gældende på trods af politikkens relative generøsitet.

Undersøgelsen Kort fortalt er undersøgelsen baseret på 97 udokumenterede migranters svar på et spørgeskema om selvrapporteret generel sundhed, oplevelser af sundhedsydelser og baggrundsinformation, suppleret med dybdegående interviews og deltagerobservation af et mindre antal respondenter. Disse data er derefter blevet sammenholdt med et større

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udvalg af dokumenterede menneskers svar på en undersøgelse af folkesundhed fra 2008 (Rosvall, Grahn, Modén & Merlo, 2009).

Når man foretager en undersøgelse af papirløse migranter som befolkningsgruppe, forudsætter det en vis grad af ensartethed blandt dem; som minimum en fælles følelse af at være marginaliserede. Men er det sådan, den udokumenterede, migrante befolkning i Skåne opfatter sig selv? Det kan hævdes, at dannelsen af en sådan fælles identitet hindres af en høj grad af mistillid og hemmeligholdelse af de mest banale, daglige gøremål og rutiner med forskellige, skiftende koder for hvad, hvornår og med hvem man taler.

Hemmeligholdelsen skyldes både en modvilje mod at afsløre tilsyneladende uskadelige, men potentielt belastende oplysninger og et desperat forsøg på at holde styr på sværttilgængelige ressourcer og kontakter. I dette nulsumsspil er der ikke meget plads til at pleje solidaritet eller kollektiv vrede. Desuden er der komplekse forskelle mellem eksempelvis tidligere asylansøgere, der har gennemlevet forskellige former for væbnede konflikter, arbejdsmigranter og politisk engagerede akademikere. Klasse, køn, etnicitet, alder, seksualitet – listen over potentielt skelsættende træk er lang, men udelukker ikke nødvendigvis følelser af fællesskab. Og dog virker det til, at disse træk ofte bliver de vigtigste og mest definerende for migranter, der måske har været tvunget til at flygte netop på grund af dem. En tredje komplicerende faktor er, at mange udokumenterede bevæger sig i det lovlige opholds grænseland, hvad enten det er gennem en form for social relation til folk med permanent ophold eller statsborgere, eller om det er gennem deltagelse i institutionaliserede aktiviteter som uddannelse eller frivilligt organisationsarbejde. Endog åbenlyst politiske former for organisering kan opstå ud af dette, som det er set blandt dele af den udokumenterede, mindreårige befolkning.

Sammenfiltringen mellem udokumenterede og dokumenterede personers liv – hvor aktivister for eksempel støtter udokumenterede migranter på vej ind i voksenlivet – skaber tilsyneladende en platform af grundlæggende sikkerhed for de unge papirløse, hvorfra andre relationer kan skabes, samt en følelse af berettigelse, der er fremmed for andre grupper af udokumenterede mennesker.

Ser vi et øjeblik bort fra problemer vedrørende generaliseringer, er deltagerne i undersøgelsen 18-78 år gamle og størstedelen er arbejdsløse eller studerende. Respondenterne, der har arbejde, rapporterer timelønninger, der rækker fra 10-100 SEK og månedlige indkomster fra 1200-7500 SEK (uden skelen til antallet af arbejdstimer). 65 % af

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de beskæftigede respondenter svarede, at det ville være svært for dem at tage fri, hvis de blev syge. 48 % af de udokumenterede respondenter oplyser, at de har ubetalt gæld, som de for de flestes vedkommende har sat sig i for at dække rejseomkostninger eller leveomkostninger i Sverige. 50% af de udokumenterede respondenter har været nødt til at sove udendørs på et eller andet tidspunkt under deres migration (enten i eller uden for Sverige).

Kun 22 % rapporterer, at de har fast tag over hovedet, og 24 % betragter deres hjem som farligt eller skadeligt for deres eget eller deres børns helbred.

18 % af de adspurgte har sultet i Sverige, 17 % er blevet forhindret i at arbejde eller har mistet deres indkomst, og 17 % har oplevet begrænsninger i deres bevægelsesfrihed. Desuden har 22,9 % af de adspurgte på et eller andet tidspunkt været frihedsberøvet i et af Migrationsnævnets detentionscentre, hvoraf 41,7 % i gennemsnit har været tilbageholdt i 99 dage.

Sundhedsstatus Svarene fra de udokumenterede viser dårligere selvvurderet helbred end de dokumenterede modstykker. 46,7 % af de udokumenterede besvarelser vurderer deres helbred som dårligt eller meget dårligt sammenlignet med 6,0% af de udokumenterede besvarelser. Når man sammenligner udokumenterede respondenter født i udlandet med dokumenterede respondenter født i udlandet, er det 6,77 gange mere sandsynligt for en udokumenteret person at vurdere eget helbred som dårligt end for en dokumenteret. Adspurgt om hvordan deres mentale og fysiske helbred er blevet påvirket af deres tid i Sverige, blev der oplyst om høje grader af helbredsforringelser, især psykologisk (58 %).

En større del af de udokumenterede (38,1%) end de dokumenterede (17,1%) er i de seneste fjorten dage blevet forhindret i at udføre deres almindelige gøremål på grund af sygdom eller skader, og de udokumenterede besvarelser udviser også en større andel af permanente problemer (af seks måneders varighed eller længere). Interessant nok oplyser udokumenterede mænd om en større sygdomsbyrde end udokumenterede kvinder, mens det modsatte gør sig gældende for de dokumenterede respondenters vedkommende. Når de bliver bedt om at specificere deres dårlige helbred, oplyser de udokumenterede respondenter først og fremmest om forskellige grader af psykologiske problemer – søvnbesvær, angst og træthed.

Hvorfor er det så skadeligt for helbredet at være udokumenteret? Hvad er det, der kendetegner

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den komplekse og mangeartede livsform, som vi kalder det udokumenterede liv? Resultaterne af denne undersøgelse peger til dels på faktorer relateret til migrationserfaringen og grundene til at migrere, såsom oplevelser af krig, utilstrækkelig fødevareforsyning og begrænsninger af bevægelsesfrihed. Det er sigende, at krænkelser af personlig sikkerhed og integritet, såsom fødevareusikkerhed, der forekommer i en tilsyneladende tryg svensk kontekst, er brugbare som indikatorer for dårligt og skrantende helbred. En betydelig del af livet som papirløs, som det beskrives af de adspurgte, er den allestedsnærværende følelse af altomfattende frygt, ledsaget og forstærket af en følelse af uvirkelighed – at det her simpelthen ikke kan ske. To af de adspurgte beskriver forventningerne ved ankomsten til Sverige sammenstillet med udfaldet, de tilbagevendende ydmygelser og krænkelser, som en følelse af at gå på gaden i virkeligheden, mens alle andre er skuespillere i en film. En tredje deltager følte sig ude af stand til deltage i livet som et ”rigtigt menneske” på grund af det, han beskrev som indre forandringer skabt af ændringerne i hans juridiske status. Som Mohanad formulerer det i forbindelse med en indespærring: ”Vi er som aber for dem. De giver os mad og sidder i et hjørne og ser os spise. Tro mig, det er meget svært at undgå at blive sindssyg her. Alt er så rent, og maden er god. Fjernsynet er stort, og sengene er bløde. Når man er ked af det, kommer de og lægger en hånd på ens skulder og spørger, om man vil snakke. Det er som om de ikke ved, at det er et fængsel, at de er vores fængselsvagter!”.

Tre af de adspurgte talte spontant om at blive betragtet som kriminelle, som eftersøgte, og hvordan oplevelsen af at leve i et semi-lovligt rum gradvist bliver internaliseret. Reza: “Så nu, i min situation, tro mig, når jeg går på gaden, er jeg… Jeg går som var jeg en eftersøgt person.

Jeg føler mig som en kriminel! Jeg gemmer mig i hjørnerne, jeg går ikke der, hvor der er for mange mennesker. Hvis jeg ser en politibil, vender jeg om og går tilbage”.

Andre elementer hænger mere utvetydigt sammen med de materielle vilkår for papirløse i Sverige. Ordentlige sundhedsstandarder umuliggøres af usikre og dårlige boligforhold, af arbejdsløshed og en løn, der ligger under minimumsgrænsen, af erhvervsrisici uden støtte fra fagforeninger, trusler om opsigelse og om detention samt mangel på social støtte. Kort fortalt er den juridiske status som udokumenteret en utilfredsstillende analysekategori, da den kan betyde så mange forskellige ting. Undersøgelsen har derfor ikke formået at producere en model af variabler, der i tilfredsstillende grad gør rede for de voldelige og sundhedsskadelige vilkår, der ud-

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gør den udokumenterede eksistens. Juridisk status synes at udspringe af socioøkonomisk status, men kan ikke reduceres til dette, og der mangler stadig meget i vores forståelse af “de særlige vilkår for flygtninge” (RS 2011). Trusler og afbrydelser af det normale liv, som denne uensartede gruppe lever med, udfordrer en rent kvantitativ analyse.

Modstand De adspurgte peger på, at en måde at overleve papirløshed, er en mere eller mindre bevidst adskillelse af sind og krop – mekanisk at udføre livets bevægelser uden rigtigt at engagere sig. Reza beskriver dette som den eneste måde, hvorpå han kan overleve de overgreb, han konstant bliver mødt med; at han uden denne forsvarsmekanisme rent faktisk ville dø, selvom han samtidig beklager, at han ikke længere kan leve livet fuldt ud.

Et andet bud på modstand mod dårligt helbred beskrives malende af Beata, der tjekker sit toårige barns hud for blå mærker og hudafskrabninger hver aften inden sengetid. Hun pakker barnet ind i varmere tøj end strengt nødvendigt, og undværer selv mad for at få råd til vitaminog mineraltilskud til sit barn: “Hun er mit første barn, så du ved, måske er det normalt. Alle mødre er vilde med deres børn. Men jeg kender mig selv.

Jeg er ikke sådan her. Men det eneste, der bekymrede mig, før jeg gik under jorden, var dette. Hvad skal jeg gøre, hvis hun bliver syg? Hvordan skal det ende?”

Adnan er også besat af at holde sig rask og undgå ulykker; han strækker sig vidt for at undgå de gader, han betragter som farlige. Han afslår invitationer til at se på fyrværkeri nytårsaften af frygt for at blive ramt: “I min situation passer jeg virkelig godt på mig selv for ikke at blive syg, for jeg ved, at hvis jeg bliver syg nu, vil de ikke behandle mig som andre mennesker.”

Adgang til lægehjælp Adspurgt om deres udnyttelse af sundhedsydelser, udviser de dokumenterede respondenter en stor brug af primære plejecentre, specialiserede klinikker og distriktssygeplejersker, mens udokumenterede respondenter har tendens til hyppigere at bruge skadestuen (18,6 % i forhold til 10,3 %).

Dette mønster bekræftes af tidligere undersøgelser (Fresk, 2009) og kan forklares med flere mulige mekanismer. Primære behandlingscentre kræver, at man ringer i forvejen og bestiller en tid, det kunne afskrække dem med mangelfulde svenskkundskaber og også indebære en risiko for at blive nægtet sundhedspleje, allerede før man når frem til sundhedsvæsenet. En anden grund kunne også være, at udokumenterede migranter, uvidende om deres rettigheder og/eller uden mulighed for at

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forsvare disse, venter længere, før de søger sundhedsydelser og derfor kræver mere intensiv pleje, når de gør. Dette er skadeligt både for den enkelte, sundhedsvæsenet og samfundet som helhed i form af øget lidelse og omkostninger. Problemet indebærer vanskeligheder med at få adgang til forebyggende eller langvarig pleje af kroniske sygdomme, der kræver regelmæssig forebyggende undersøgelser og titrering af medicin netop for at undgå akutte situationer.

De adspurgte udokumenterede migranter rapporterer et større forbrug af sovepiller, beroligende medicin og antidepressiver. Smertestillende medicin – med og uden recept – forbruges i omtrent samme forhold, men alle de resterende typer af medicin forbruges mere af de dokumenterede.

Udokumenterede respondenter viser en højere tendens end dokumenterede til at afstå fra at hente ordineret medicin, fordi de ikke har råd til det (70,7 %), er bange for at gå på apoteket (48,8 %), eller mangler et id (46,3 %). I de frie kommentarfelter beskriver respondenterne, hvordan de får medicin sendt fra deres tidligere hjemlande, låner en andens identitet, køber lægemidler på det sorte marked, besøger hemmelige klinikker eller læge-bekendte og bruger forskellige navne på forskellige tidspunkter. Selvom det er til gavn for den enkelte i et kortsigtet perspektiv, resulterer mange af disse strategier i manglende journalføring, hvilket er en alvorlig trussel for patientens sikkerhed.

Flere af de adspurgte vidner om de særlige hindringer, der er involveret i at få adgang til sundhedsydelser inde fra asylcentre. Asylansøgerne har været underlagt en distriktssygeplejerskes luner og et mere eller mindre samarbejdtsvilligt personale.

I flere tilfælde rapporteres der om fejlbehandlet diabetes, ubehandlet psykiatrisk sygdom og kroniske smerter. I den anden ende af spektret findes de respondenter, der er for syge til at kunne overleve en udokumenteret eksistens uden for rammerne af detentionscentret. Mohanad, der lider af alvorlige rygproblemer, beskrev hvordan den ortopædiske klinik, som havde planlagt at operere ham gennem et år, aflyste operationen, efter at Migrationsverket afviste hans asylsag og dermed afviste at dække omkostningerne ved operationen. “De dræbte mig.

[PAUSE]. Jeg kan ikke leve sådan her. Efter fem dage gik jeg til politistationen og bønfaldt dem om at bure mig inde. Det er ikke kun... ikke bare det, at jeg ikke kan arbejde, jeg kan ikke spise.”

De 54,6 % af udokumenterede respondenter, der angiver at have afholdt sig fra at søge tandpleje, gjorde det, fordi de ikke havde råd til det (34,0 %) eller af frygt for at blive angivet (47,2 %). De 68,8%, som afstod fra at søge sundhedsydelser,

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selvom de vurderede, at de havde behov for det, gjorde det af frygt (46 %), fordi de ikke vidste, at de havde ret til sundhedsydelser (45 %) og fordi sundhedsinstitutionen ikke kunne hjælpe dem (46 %). Ud af de 34 % af de udokumenterede respondenter, der har børn under 18 år, har 16,5 % rapporteret at have afstået fra at søge sundhedspleje for deres børn inden for de seneste 3 måneder.

Mange af kommentarerne i forbindelse med denne del af undersøgelsen vedrører den afskrækkende tilstedeværelse af politifolk i sundhedssektoren.

Da jeg ledsagede Waleed til skadestuen, gik han næsten i panik og begyndte straks at rode rundt efter sine sko, da to mandlige hvide politibetjente gik op til sygeplejerskens skrivebord, der stødte op til det rum, hvor vi ventede. Han var kun i ført en tynd hospitalsskjorte. En af politimændene lænede sig afslappet ind over skrivebordet, mens den anden spøgende forsøgte at få fat i en kuglepen fra den kvindelige sygeplejerske. De lo alle tre, og en anden sygeplejerske sluttede sig snart til dem, med opmærksomheden rettet mod den anden politimand. Jeg forsøgte at lette spændingen ved at overveje, hvem der var lun på hvem.

Waleed sendte mig et dystert smil og gav mig ret i, at politiet og sygeplejerskerne faktisk bare flirtede, så spurgte han mig med et glimt i øjet, hvorfor de ikke flirtede med ham i stedet.

Forhindringer for lægehjælp Den bureaukratiske opgave det er at registrere udokumenterede migranter, er et tilbagevendende tema i interviews. På trods af den pågældende policy, der trådte i kraft i 2008, findes der ingen enkel måde at administrere udokumenterede patienter på. Adnan, som lider af regelmæssige anfald af svimmelhed og ofte besvimer, var tvunget til at vente i 45 minutter, mens hans papirer blev gennemgået. Vævende og pinligt berørt af det besvær, han påførte receptionisten, spurgte Adnan mig flere gange, om han ikke bare burde gå.

Receptionisten var ikke vant til den arbejdsgang, som er påkrævet i en sådan situation – på trods af, at hun arbejdede i et primært sundhedscenter, der ofte tager sig af asylansøgere, og derfor også modtager et ualmindeligt stort antal udokumenterede, tidligere asylansøgere. Hun spurgte sine kolleger om hjælp flere gange, og forlod til tider sin computer for at lede efter en overordnet eller foretage et telefonopkald. Efterfølgende fortalte Adnan mig, at han var bange for, at hun i virkeligheden lod ham vente, for at give politiet tid til at komme og arrestere ham.

Ved flere lejligheder har den behandlende læges manglende viden om restriktionerne, som de udokumenteredes livsførelse indebærer, vist sig at gøre den givne behandling ligegyldig. Et eksem-

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pel på dette var Thandis besøg på den psykiatriske skadestue efter et voldsomt angstanfald. Manglen på forståelse var i dette tilfælde forværret af, at psykiateren nægtede at tilkalde en tolk til Thandi.

Thandi måtte give detaljerede beskrivelser af sine livsomstændigheder, hvorefter lægen udskrev bedøvende medicin og foreslog en række livsstilsændringer. Han talte om vigtigheden i at tage ansvar for eget liv, ikke at være buret inde derhjemme hele dagen, men at man i stedet bør være aktiv, social og få sig en hobby. Hans specifikke forslag var yoga, hvilket Thandi og hendes venner gjorde meget grin med efter besøget på skadestuen, fordi de regnede ud, at en enkelt yogatime ville koste Thandi mindst to og en halv dags løn.

Af de udokumenterede respondenter, som har forsøgt at få adgang til sundhedsydelser i Skåne, har 65 % angivet, at de er blevet nægtet behandling i sundhedsvæsnet på grund af deres retsstilling, de fleste i 2011 og 2012. Størstedelen af disse afslag blev givet af sygeplejersker eller administrative medarbejdere, som ofte er den del af personalet, der har mest patientkontakt. Sygeplejersker er oplærte og forventes at tage den slags beslutninger, men afslagene gives også af hjælpepersonalet.

Fortolkninger af, hvad ”behandling, som ikke kan vente” vil sige, er derfor overladt til dele af hospitalsstaben, som kan være nok så kompetente indenfor deres eget felt, men som ikke desto mindre har minimal medicinsk erfaring. Dette forhold illustreres ved, at 74 % af de udokumenterede respondenter ikke vidste, at Region Skåne yder lige adgang til sundhedsydelser for udokumenterede migranter og asylansøgere. 54,2 % angiver, at de ikke ved, hvordan de skal få adgang til sundhedsydelser. Årsagerne kan være forskellen mellem lovteksten og hvordan denne implementeres og manglen på en kommunikationsstrategi til at gøre befolkningsgruppen bekendt med den lovgivning, der påvirker dem.

37,8 % af de udokumenterede respondenter, som havde søgt lægehjælp i Sverige, angiver, at de har måttet betale den fulde pris for sundhedsydelserne i stedet for den subsidierede pris. Summerne spænder fra 300 SEK (hvilket muligvis er den korrekte pris, afhængig af behandlingens karakter, men som alligevel opleves som uoverkommeligt dyrt) til 25 000 SEK. 14 % svarede, at de kendte til nogen, som var blevet arresteret, da de opsøgte behandling. Dette sidste tal viser selvfølgelig ikke antallet af mennesker, som faktisk bliver tilbageholdt indenfor sundhedssystemets rammer, men snarere den frygt, som gennemsyrer mødet med myndighederne.

Af de udokumenterede respondenter, som har søgt at få adgang til sundhedsydelser i Sverige (n=75), har 67,1 % desuden angivet, at de har følt sig ydmyget eller alvorligt krænket ved et eller

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flere møder med det svenske sundhedssystem i løbet af de seneste 12 måneder. Visse aspekter af denne diskrimination bliver måske noteret i diagrammer eller digitale patientjournaler, men det sprog, som bruges her, er kortfattet og reducerende. Den uligeværdige behandling ligger også i stemmeføring, positur, kropssprog og i blikket på og omgangen med patientens krop, måder at undgå eller invitere til berøring og følelsesmæssig samhørighed. Da de blev bedt om deres tolkning af, hvorfor de blev behandlet nedværdigende, svarede de udokumenterede, at deres retsstilling og etnicitet var de to mest plausible forklaringer.

Andetgørende processer, der dækker over projektion, produktion og vedligeholdelse af forskelle mellem forestillede fællesskaber af mennesker, er i sundhedsregi generelt blevet undersøgt med udgangspunkt i interaktionen mellem majoriteten og racialiserede grupper. Ved hjælp af interviews og fokusgruppediskussioner med sundhedspersonale og sydasiatiske kvindelige patienter i Canada, diskuterer Johnson m.fl., hvordan essentialistiske, kulturelle og racemæssige former for retfærdiggørelse af andetgørelse overlapper og kombineres for at skabe en ahistorisk, stereotyp og statisk forståelse af disse patienters liv og erfaringer (Johnson, 2004). At forstå ”kultur” som den afgørende forklarende faktor for alt, der opfattes som problemer med interaktion, maskerer strukturelle udfordringer med at overholde medicinske råd og forskrifter.

Johnson er bevidst om ikke at reproducere andetgørelsen ved at artikulere den og understreger, hvor vigtigt det er at udfordre den passiviserende og problematiske antagelse, at alle patienter har lige mulighed for at udøve deres rettigheder og bevare deres helbred. Ansvaret for disse uligheder placeres hos det racialiserede individ eller gruppe og ikke hos den strukturelle racisme eller de socioøkonomiske uligheder. Samtidig hersker ideen om en art idealpatient – en der altid er medgørlig, fornuftig og som fortjener behandling. I hendes institutionelle etnografiske undersøgelse af flere canadiske operationsgange identificerer Kirkham ligeledes en dekontekstualiserende modstand mod at anerkende andre faktorer end kultur som en barriere for et retfærdigt sundhedsvæsen (Kirkham, 2003).

Region Skåne har en politik, som understreger vigtigheden i at tage de udokumenterede gruppers særlige erfaringer i betragtning. Uden ordentlig implementering ved hjælp af praktiske retningslinjer og eksempler på, hvad dette egentlig indebærer, kan en sådan politik dog gøre mere skade end gavn. I stedet for at forstå krig, usikkerhed om fødevareforsyning og restriktioner for den enkeltes bevægelsesfrihed som katalysator for dårligt helbred, risikerer denne politik at blive oversat til

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hensyn til disse patienters kulturelle andethed, i modsætning til sundhedspersonalets illusoriske kulturløshed. Dette kan medføre at retsstilling sammenblandes med etnicitet og andre kategoriseringer, med ofte nedsættende karakteristika.

Beckman m.fl. (Beckman, 2004) diskuterer emnet udførligt med særligt fokus på sundhedspraksisser, der gør forskel på udenlandsk- og svenskfødte patienter. Snarere end at opløse kategorierne gennem en udviskning af uligheder, kan det faktisk producere dem. Johnson m.fl. (Johnson, 2004) og Kirkhams (Kirkham, 2003) anbefalinger om at bevæge sig væk fra kulturel følsomhed og mod et magtkritisk perspektiv vil medføre en praksis, hvor udokumenteret retsstilling ikke betyder etnisk eller kulturel forskel, men en sammenblanding af karakteristika, hvoraf mange er delt med segmenter i den dokumenterede befolkning.

Diskriminationen forværres desuden af, at udokumenterede migranter associeres med kriminalitet i offentlighedens øjne. Introduktionen af REVA (Judicial and Efficient Deportation Work), som omfatter intensiveret pågribelse og deportation af afviste asylansøgere, har kun bidraget til at styrke sammenhængen mellem udokumenteret retsstilling og afvigelse. I en af observationssituationerne blev en udokumenteret patient rullet ind på hospitalet af ambulancepersonalet og placeret på den anden side af et gardin fra os.

Patienten var en teenagedreng, som havde taget en overdosis af bedøvende medicin og havde forsøgt at sætte ild til sig selv efter at have oversprøjtet sine ben med benzin fra en græsslåmaskine. I stedet for at udtrykke forståelse for hans handlinger, mumlede sygeplejersken, som tjekkede hans vitale tegn, til sin kollega ”Du ved, de gør det kun for at kunne blive her,” hvorefter hun fortsatte med at stikke til drengen og spørge ham om, hvad han helt præcis havde taget og hvornår han havde taget det. Dette kan tolkes som et tilfælde af, at modstand bliver afmonteret og rettet mod passende kanaler og steder. Det at bruge sin egen krop til at protestere, altså at sætte ild til sig selv, anerkendes ikke som en legitim protest, men forstås som sygdom, dumhed og/eller som en fejlslagen strategi.

De veje, som er åbne for migranter, som mangler ressourcer hvad angår det svenske sprog, kontakter eller politisk kundskab, er således ekstremt begrænsede. Når disse udokumenterede mødes med direkte fjendtlighed, er der ingen udadvendte former for protest som virker. Råbende patienter eskorteres ud af sikkerhedspersonale, bliver truet med politiet og bedt om at kontakte patientombudsmanden næste dag. I et land, hvor politiske præstationer i de seneste årtier generelt associeres med statssanktionerede reformer, må alle protester gå ad bureaukratiets vej, en vej som deltagerne i dette studie er afskåret fra.

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Selv når udokumenterede patienter modtages med de blødeste berøringer og den bedste pleje, medvirker det til at demontere det sidste politiske krav, de kan stille – retten til at have rettigheder (Arendt, 1968). Ved at blive givet rettigheder i stedet for at kræve og vinde dem, og ved at dette bliver fremstillet som en empatisk, nedsættende gestus, hæftes den humanitære impuls øjeblikkeligt til dens restriktive bagside.

Opsummering Sammenfattende kan det siges, at dette studie ikke foregiver at bevise, at der diskrimineres mod udokumenterede migranter, når det gælder adgang til sundhedsydelser. Denne diskrimination er allerede given og indskrevet i loven – en undtagelse til de ellers generøse bestemmelser i den del af sundhedslovgivningen, som gælder for dokumenterede indbyggere i Sverige. Ud over denne diskrimination findes der dog flere andre udenomsjuridiske diskriminationsmekanismer og barrierer for behandling, som derudover begrænser den frihed, der tillades indenfor Region Skånes lovgivning og praksisser. Selvom udokumenterede migranter har dårligere helbred, modtager de mindre behandling, hvilket fører til en nedadgående spiral af kontraproduktive håndteringsstrategier og potentielt livsfarlige tilstande. Den strukturelle vold, som karakteriserer deres eksistens, er anerkendt i lovteksten, men rent faktisk fortsætter den ufortrødent gennem praksisser hos de institutioner, som har mandat til at implementere denne tekst.

Det at anerkende, at udokumenterede migranter står over for særlige udfordringer, når det kommer til at forblive raske, er langt fra det samme som at sige, at det at have en udokumenteret retsstilling er en patologisk tilstand, selvom manifestationerne af en sådan situation sagtens kan være kropslige. Deres begrænsede adgang til lægehjælp er til gengæld resultatet af en patologisk, og rent faktisk ulovlig, udøvelse af magt.

Den iboende diskrimination i det svenske sundhedssystem mærkes akut af migranterne selv.

Mange drømme er blevet afsporet af tandpiner, forhold er blevet sænket af søvnløshed.

Deres smerte er en smerte, som virkelig hverken kan eller vil vente med at blive udbedret.

Drivkraften for dette studium var trangen til at blotlægge den ulighed, som karakteriserer udokumenterede migranters ret til lægehjælp – at råbe det ud, at ryste folk ud af deres selvtilfredshed, gennemtvinge forandring. Set i bakspejlet var denne tanke forfærdeligt naiv. Uligheden er ikke kun velkendt, men også kalkuleret. Jeg blev advaret. Flere af de udokumenterede respondenter af det spørgeskema, som undersøgelsen er baseret på, udtrykte deres skepsis under deltagelsen: ”Tror

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du ikke, at de allerede ved det? Så præcis hvordan vil det her hjælpe os?”

Nu hvor en pilotversion af denne undersøgelse er gennemført, vil jeg til gengæld gerne benytte mig af lejligheden til at fremsige en offentlig forespørgsel. Hvis der er nogle udokumenterede migranter, som finder det værd at foretage flere undersøgelser af dette emne, så vær venlig at kontakte mig. Ville det være anstødeligt at hævde, at den udokumenterede status tilvejebringer et udsigtspunkt, hvorfra vi kan se og dømme den svenske stat mere klart? Måske. Jeg har aldrig været nødt til at vride mig med mavekramper i flere dage, fordi jeg var for bange til at opsøge hjælp, men jeg tror på vigtigheden i at tage magten tilbage. Problemformuleringerne er ikke fastlagte, dem kan vi fastlægge sammen. Her er dog et par forslag. Hvad siger denne undtagelsestilstand om os? Og, endnu vigtigere, hvordan yder vi modstand?

Kildeliste Arendt, H., 1968. The Origins of Totalitarianism.

San Diego: Harcourt.

Beckman, A. M. J. L. J. G. U.-G. L. M. L. T., 2004.

Country of birth, socioeconomic position, and healthcare expenditure: a multilevel analysis

of Malmö, Sweden. Journal of Epidemiology of Community Health, Volume 58, pp. 145-49.

Cuadra, C. B., 2011. Right of acces to health care for undocumented migrants in EU: a comparative study of national policies. European Journal of Public Health, 22(2), pp. 267-271.

Fresk, M. G. H., 2009. Vårdbehov hos papperslösa. Erfarenheter från Röda Korsets Sjukvårdsförmedling för papperslösa 2008.

Stockholm: s.n.

Johnson, J. L. B. J. L. B. A. J. G. S. H. B. A. &.

C. H., 2004. Othering and Being Othered in the Context of Health Care Services. Health Communication, 16(2), pp. 255-271.

Kirkham, S. R., 2003. The Politics of Belonging and Intercultural Health Care. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 25(7), pp. 762-780.

Peel, 2006. "It's no skin off my nose" – why people take part in qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, Volume 16, pp. 1335-1349.

Rosvall, M. G. M. M. B. M. J., 2009.

Hälsoförhållanden i Skåne. Folkhälsoenkäten Skåne 2008, Malmö: Socialmedicinska enheten, Region Skåne.

Swiergiel, M., 2012. Patienten har min lojalitet. In: S. a. M. S. Jansson, ed. Omänskliga Rättigheter. s.l.:s.n., pp. 89-97.

The world's youngest nation

by Leon J Simplistic media coverage of the conflicts around the world results in overly simplified narratives about floods of refugees towards Europe. These narratives often fail to mention that the majority of the world's forcibly displaced people never even cross a border. The largest amount of refugees ends up in some of the world's poorest areas, and many of the longest lasting conflicts in the world are still rooted in European colonialism. This is the case in South Sudan.

On the 4th of August 2014 the supposed peace negotiations in South Sudan were to be resumed.

The conflict, which has lasted about eight months, has provoked a myriad of analyses with particular focus on South Sudan's ethnic composition and discussions about the president's abuse of power.

These two issues – ethnic tensions and the powers of the president – have haunted South Sudan since its founding in 2011, when the resistance struggle1 finally resulted in the independence from Sudan and the Khartoum regime.

There are several similarities between the current conflict and the internal power struggles of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in southern Sudan in 1991. This is, however, rarely elaborated on in the media. Coverage of so-called

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conflict areas is often scarce and simplistic in international as well as Danish media.

The Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information recently published an article on the media coverage of the conflicts around the world 2. The article concludes that the inadequate coverage has far-reaching consequences for the public debate and opinion. The notions of refugee floods are depicted as threats and are deployed to argue in favor of Fortress Europe, while an actual understanding of the causes behind the refugee flows is lost.

While media focus on refugees as a threat for the “receiving countries”, they often fail to mention that the vast majority – more than 33 million3 – of those who flee their homes never actually cross a national border. They remain internally displaced “refugees”, within the borders of their own countries.

This is also the case in South Sudan. But in addition to the large group of internally displaced people, South Sudan moreover accommodates more than 200.000 Sudanese refugees4. Or rather: Refugees from the Sudanese federal state Blue Nile, who formally hold Sudanese citizenship, but who, for the most part for years, have

visAvis № 10 • 2014

sympathized with the South Sudanese fight for a ”new Sudan” with equal rights and equal access to power and resources. The SPLA-North (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North) emerged in the federal state Blue Nile, which, after the independence in 2011, remained on the Sudanese side of the ”border”5. The regime in Khartoum has since then attacked and shelled several villages in the federal state to deter the endeavor for a new Sudan.

When the first flow of Sudanese refugees arrived in South Sudan in the end of 2011, they were received as sisters and brothers by local communities. The neighboring tribes of the region have a long tradition of trade, intermarriage and cultural exchange, but today, the scarcity of resources begun to test the hospitality of the South Sudanese.

It is a challenge to make a clear distinction between Sudanese and South Sudanese, an exercise that is further complicated by the fact that certain rights depend on nationality. When refugees and the local population have to share the scarce resources of South Sudan, and when refugees according to international law have rights to basic services that the local population paradoxically do not enjoy, it inevitably creates tensions. To prevent tensions from breaking out during conflicts, humanitarian organizations are launching projects targeted at the local populations simultaneously with the general aid for refugees.

Many of the hardships that the region faces today can be traced back to the time of British colonial rule. Already when they arrived in the 19th century, the British drew a border between northern and southern Sudan. The northern part of Sudan received the vast majority of resources and attention and thus went through an infrastructural development that was completely absent in the resource-scarce south, where the British did little but ignore and exploit the population. This imbalanced input inevitably resulted in the economic inequality between the two areas, which prevails today.

To the British colonial rule, however, southern Sudan had a very special function: It was to form a buffer between the British controlled East Africa

and the Islamisation coming from the North.

Control over southern Sudan was to a large extent ensured by dividing people into ethnic categories. Up until the arrival of the British, Dinka and Nuer people had been living side by side and interacted throughout the centuries.

The Sudanese civil war – often referred to as the longest on the African continent, lasting from 1953 to 2005 – was not simply a war between ethnic and religious groups, as it is often portrayed.

For several decades, it was a struggle against the political elite in Khartoum and thus a collective, Sudanese fight for a nationwide, fair distribution of power and resources.

The limited number of news stories that reach us focus on the flow of refugees. Much can be said about Fortress Europe, but in reality the majority of the world's refugees never even get close to the walls of the fortress. Few of those who flee get farther than neighboring countries, as in the case of Sudan-South Sudan. It is the world's poorest countries that carry the biggest burden when it comes to refugees and internally displaced persons.

Without an awareness of neither Sudan's nor South Sudan’s history, geography, and political realities, it is impossible to understand what is going on, based on the superficial media coverage. This lack of understanding causes a lack of respect towards the people who flee. They are reduced to “yet another flood of refugees” and become part of a generalized narrative about Africa and its populations – and yet another conflict is used as an argument for the perpetuation of Fortress Europe.

1 Primarily organized through the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) from 1983 to 2005.

2 Dagbladet Information, July 28, 2014: ”Mediernes lyskegle flakker mellem verdens brændpunkter”, http://www.information.dk/504767 3 UNHCR Global Trends Report 2013, publicized June 2014 4 A total of 1.861.000 South Sudanese have been displaced, of which almost 1.300.000 are internally displaced and more than 575.000 are refugees in the neighbouring countries. South Sudan moreover accommodates around 243.000 refugees, the majority of which are from Sudan. (Source: U-landsnyt, August 2014) 5 The border demarcation between South Sudan and Sudan is still officially disputed.

Jeg overlevede, men mit liv er gået i stå af Ali Jeg bor i en lejr og venter på ingenting. Jeg er afvist asylansøger. Nu har jeg været i Danmark i lidt over to år. Men det er mere end tre år siden, jeg forlod Iran. Jeg har rejst gennem Europa som papirløs.

2014 • visAvis № 10

Ironisk nok begyndte det hele med en misforståelse. Jeg flygtede fra Iran på grund af den politiske repression, der fulgte i kølvandet på den grønne revolution i 2009. Jeg var eftersøgt af politiet, selvom jeg ikke var aktiv i protestbevægelsen,

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men ved et uheld satte myndighederne mig i forbindelse med den. Jeg var buschauffør, og en dag kørte jeg med en gruppe universitetsstuderende.

De var politiske aktivister, aktive i den grønne revolution.

På køreturen fra universitetet hev nogle af de studerende pludselig grønne flag frem og begyndte at vifte med dem ud af vinduerne. Vi blev øjeblikkeligt standset af politiet, som troede, jeg var lederen af flokken. Politiet slog vinduerne i stykker og smadrede bussen totalt. Jeg var rædselsslagen; overbevist om, at de ville skyde mig ned på stedet.

Jeg trampede panisk på speederen, drejede skarpt og kørte op på fortovet. Politiet begyndte at skyde efter mig. Så kørte jeg ind i en motorcykel. På en eller anden måde lykkedes det mig at slippe væk.

I timevis kørte jeg rundt i den fuldstændigt smadrede bus. Først langt ud på aftenen vovede jeg at tage hjem. Jeg var stadig i chok efter al postyret; adrenalinen pumpede rundt i min krop. Jeg var rædselsslagen, rådvild. Klokken to om natten hørte jeg nogen sparke min hoveddør ind. Jeg styrtede hen til vinduet. Udenfor kunne jeg se en masse agenter fra det hemmelige politi. Det var januar og meget koldt. Jeg var lige vågnet og havde kun boxershorts og undertrøje på, men jeg kravlede ud af soveværelsesvinduet uden at tage mig tid til at klæde mig på. Jeg klatrede op på taget og flygtede ved at løbe hen ad tagene på rækkehusene hele vejen ned ad gaden. Da jeg kom til det sidste hus, sprang jeg ned fra anden sal og slog mit ben.

I timevis gemte jeg mig i noget højt græs med et skadet ben, kun iført undertøj i den isnende kulde.

Fra den nat var jeg på flugt.

Jeg flygtede ud af landet og tog til Tyrkiet, efter at have skjult mig i en by tæt ved grænsen i et kort stykke tid. Jeg var under jorden i Tyrkiet i fire måneder. Jeg arbejdede på en restaurant, mens jeg ventede på, at min far, som har kontakter inden for politiet, skulle ringe og fortælle, at kysten var klar.

Men det gjorde han aldrig. Kysten blev aldrig klar.

Jeg besluttede mig for at tage til Europa for at søge asyl – eller bare for at være i sikkerhed på den ene eller den anden måde.

Først tog jeg til Grækenland. Jeg krydsede grænsen til fods ved at gå gennem et skovområde. Og så blev jeg bare ved med at gå. Ingen tror det, men det er sandt: Jeg er gået til fods fra Iran til Italien. Jeg blev arresteret utallige gange.

I Kroatien var jeg i fængsel fem gange, men indtil Italien undgik jeg at få taget mit fingeraftryk.

I Rom blev jeg fanget af politiet og fik taget mit fingeraftryk. Kort tid efter løslod de mig med et stykke papir, hvorpå der stod, at jeg havde en

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måned til at forlade landet og EU. Da jeg blev arresteret, havde jeg først bestemt mig til at søge asyl i Italien, men allerede på politistationen var jeg vidne til asylansøgernes dårlige vilkår. Jeg spurgte politiet: “Er jeres land godt at søge asyl i?”, og de sagde, “Nej, det er ikke godt for asylansøgere. Rejs, mens du kan.” En af betjentene hjalp mig sågar ved at slette mit fingeraftryk. Det var det mærkeligste tilfælde: Han lignede mig på en prik – vi havde præcis det samme ansigt, endda det samme modermærke på kinden. De andre spurgte, om vi var brødre. “Farvel, min bror,” sagde vi til hinanden, da jeg forlod politistationen. Min falske bror gav mig falske papirer, der skulle hjælpe mig med at krydse grænsen.

Derefter rejste jeg gennem Frankrig og Tyskland til Danmark. Jeg havde besluttet mig for at søge asyl i Danmark, så jeg meldte mig på en politistation og blev sendt til Sandholmlejren.

Efter syv måneder trådte min sag ind i fase 2. Jeg gennemgik mit andet interview, og efter tre måneder fik jeg afslag på asyl.

Jeg vil hellere dø end tage tilbage til Iran og regimets forfølgelse. Natten efter jeg fik afslag, forsøgte jeg at begå selvmord. Jeg tog treogfyrre sovepiller. Men jeg blev bragt på skadestuen og overlevede. I fire dage var jeg i koma. Da jeg vågnede, lovede lejrpersonalet at arrangere et nyt interview for mig, så jeg kunne appellere min sag.

Men det gjorde de aldrig. Min sag var lukket.

Jeg blev udskrevet fra hospitalet og vendte tilbage til lejren. Jeg følte mig desperat, magtesløs; jeg blev nødt til at gøre noget. Så jeg syede mine læber sammen og begyndte at sultestrejke.

Den dag jeg indledte min sultestrejke, blev der tilfældigvis holdt en stor fest i lejren. Lejrlederen beordrede mig til at gå et andet sted hen, så jeg ikke ødelagde stemningen. Det fik mig til at føle mig endnu mere elendigt tilpas – som om jeg ikke engang var et menneske.

Efter tolv dage overtalte lejrpersonalet mig til at indstille min sultestrejke. De sagde, at de ville hjælpe mig med at genåbne min sag. Det var stadig løgn. Men jeg fik fat på en advokat, og efter et halvt år lykkedes det mig at få et nyt interview.

Min sag blev prøvet ved Flygtningenævnet og jeg fik igen afslag. Og igen forsøgte jeg at begå selvmord. Igen med piller. Men igen blev jeg bragt på hospitalet i tide.

Jeg overlevede, men mit liv er gået i stå. Og nu bor jeg i en lejr og venter på ingenting. *Ali er et opdigtet navn, forfatterens rigtige navn er redaktionen bekendt.

visAvis № 10 • 2014

If I were to go out on a limb

If I were to go out on a limb and cite an example of “structural racism” which in the eyes of most would seem as harmless as it endeavours to be, I could point to Mols-Linien’s [a Danish ferry company] current ad campaign. In television ads and billboards, Mols-Linien promotes its new transport product with the slogan “Kombardo”. The slogan is presumably what the parking guides say as they escort drivers on board the ferry. In my ears, the word “Kombardo” has clear associations with the widespread tradition of Danish parodies of Spanish language and lifestyles

and lifestyles dating back to 1970s Danish charter tourism. In this tradition, Danes speak Spanish in a particularly exaggerated and indulgent manner. An example from the early 2000s is the word “mobilos”, featured in an advertisement for the telecom company TDC. By no coincidence, the word “mobilos” was used in conjunction with a strongly provincial dimwittedness, which the ads presented “unpretentiously”. The nickname of late football manager Richard Møller Nielsen, “Ricardo” stems from the same tra-

dition

dition, simultaneously expressing a social affiliation and disrespect: You shouldn’t go thinking that you’re special, but that’s exactly why you can be a one of the guys. All too frequently as a child, I was subjected to this one-of-the-guys logic, but I have also encountered it as an adult.

The disrespect is always conveyed with a disarming humour that renders any counter impossible. Its “harmlessness” makes it immune to criticism, so I was forced to tacitly accept this “teasing” as the price of being accepted in the group

group. I feel the same way about Mols-Linien’s “Kombardo” campaign. I feel bullied in a cute and harmless manner that I am unable to counteract in any way. It’s not a matter of deep importance.

It’s just very irritating. And when I point out the irritating aspects, the other non-“Darios”, non-Latinos, non-“Dons” – “ordinary Danes” of the kind seen in the ads – inform me that I’m the one who is in the wrong. I shouldn’t take myself so seriously. It’s nothing more than a little affectionate teasing.

And thus I am told to fall in line. Again.

by Pablo Llambías

(Translated by Michael Lee Burgess)

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Lad os råbe i kor Talen her blev holdt den 22. maj 2014 i den norske kommune Sund i en forsamling, hvor blandt andre Sunds borgmester var til stede. Talen berører den politiske uro og menneskerettighedskrænkelserne i Etiopien og henleder desuden opmærksomheden på etiopiske asylansøgeres vilkår i Norge samt på, hvordan deres asylsager bliver forsømt af de norske udlændingemyndigheder. visAvis bringer her en redigeret version af den oprindelige tale. af Moges Mulugeta Amharay Kære norske venner og medasylansøgere!

De fleste af os her til stede – især os etiopere, der har boet i Sund asyllejr eller andre lejre, siden vi kom til Norge efter valget i Etiopien i 2005 – har længe tålmodigt ventet på, at udlændingemyndighederne skal genoptage vores politiske eller humanitære asylsager. Men desværre er de fleste af os, der efter at have ventet længe har fået to eller flere afslag, stadig tvunget til at blive boende her eller i andre lejre uden noget at tage os til.

Min politiske asylsag bliver p.t. behandlet af UNE [Utlendingsnemnda, svarer til det danske Flygtningenævn], og jeg kan risikere at ende med at blive deporteret. Jeg håber dog stadig på et positivt udfald – selv efter gennem næsten syv år at have siddet med hænderne i skødet i forskellige lejre. Jeg har boet i norske asyllejre som Loren, Solbakken, Leira, Ullensvang og nu Sund næsten uden nogen penge at leve for. Selvom jeg har gennemført et norskkursus, har jeg ikke haft megen lejlighed til at øve mig i sproget, da jeg som asylansøger kun har boet i isolerede lejre.

Da de fleste af os kom til Norge – for mellem tre og ni år siden – troede vi, at vi havde den nødvendige dokumentation til at understøtte vores asylansøgninger. Vi fremviste de relevante dokumenter til det norske politi, UNE eller UDI [Utlendingsdirektoratet], i overensstemmelse med den norske asylpolitik, der kræver beviser for de potentielle trusler, vi møder – såsom indespærring, tortur, forfølgelse, falske anklager og andre former for rettighedskrænkelser – hvis vi tvangsudvises fra Norge.

Vi asylansøgere i Sund asyllejr opfordrer på det kraftigste myndighederne i politiet, UDI og UNE til nøje at overveje alle vores asylsager i lyset af den aktuelle sociale og politiske uro i Etiopien.

Etiopien har befundet sig i en grufuld, politisk krise siden det omstridte valg i maj 2005. Op

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til afstemningen førte jeg valgkamp for landets prodemokratiske parti, Coalition for Unity and Democracy [CUD, Koalitionen for Enhed og Demokrati], der senere vandt en overvældende sejr i hovedstaden Addis Ababa. Men til min forfærdelse blev resultatet ikke anerkendt. Protester mod valgsvindlen rejste sig. Det siddende EPRDFpartis sikkerhedspoliti begyndte hurtigt at slå ned på medlemmerne i oppositionspartiet CUD samt dets støtter. Et hold af valgobservatører ledet af Ana Maria Gomes, som er medlem af Europaparlamentet, meldte om omfattende brud på menneskerettigheder i de følgende måneder.

193 fredelige demonstranter blev dræbt af sikkerhedsstyrker, og titusindvis af andre blev fængslet i militærbarakker over hele landet. Jeg undgik fængsling og flygtede ud på landet, men på grund af mine forbindelser til oppositionspartiet blev jeg udsat for trusler og chikane selv længe efter valget.

Vi etiopiske asylansøgere, der i øjeblikket venter på svar, er ikke kommet her for at klage over det norske politi, UDI eller UNE, men udelukkende for at prøve at få vores norske venner i Sund Kommune til at forstå vores ulyksalige situation her og i andre norske lejre. Gennem de sidste syv år eller endnu længere har vi boet i lejre uden nogen mulighed for at videreuddanne os fagligt eller akademisk, uden arbejdstilladelser eller mulighed for at finde arbejde og næsten uden transportmuligheder til at besøge venner og bekendte. Vi har siddet passivt i vores lejre, frustrerede og triste. Vi håber alle, at Norges nye regering med Erna Solberg i spidsen vil leve op til sine forpligtelser og opfylde de løfter, der blev aflagt under valgkampen for ti måneder siden, hvor jeg selv deltog i adskillige debatter om asylpolitik.

Ingen har endnu hørt på os, men Sund Kommune bør lytte til os og forstærke vores stemmer – lad os i kor råbe de norske politikere og udlændingemyndigheder op. Alle bør høre om den nuværende situation i Etiopien: Den politiske

visAvis № 10 • 2014

repression, de omfattende brud på menneskerettigheder, den dårlige forvaltning af økonomien, den hæmningsløse korruption, den høje arbejdsløshed blandt unge, den stigende inflation, regeringens misbrug af ulandsbistand til egen fordel og den generelt elendige regeringsførelse. Alt dette har tvunget os til at ende i norske asyllejre som flygtninge, der søger asyl på forskellige grundlag – nogle af os med familier og børn, andre alene med

vores nærmeste ladt tilbage.

Vi etiopiske asylansøgere, som har ventet så længe her i Sund asyllejr eller andetsteds i Norge, benytter denne lejlighed til at løfte vores stemmer og forsikre vores venner om, at “Ja, enhver asylansøger her er enig i, at hjem er bedre end noget andet sted, men I må forstå, at der er noget helt galt i Etiopien.”

Love is Sweet, but Cannot Eat af Paula Bulling og Jan Bachmann Tegningerne på disse sider er et lille udvalg af den store mængde, der blev lavet ved NoBorder-caféen i Bblackboxx.

Bblackboxx er et uafhængigt og lokalt orienteret kunstrum i en tidligere kiosk i udkanten af Basel.

Det ligger op og ned af et modtagelsescenter og et deportationsfængsel. Bblackboxx er i opposition til det kontrol- og velgørenhedsregime, der udgør det schweiziske asylsystem.

I løbet af marts, april og maj 2014 var NoBordercaféen åben to gange om ugen, og i denne periode havde vi omkring 1000 hvide postkort med til workshoppen. Kortene er blevet skrevet på, tegnet på, overskrevet og kommenteret på mange gange.

Efterfølgende blev de sat sammen til en stor collage på Bblackboxx's ydervægge, der nåede hele vejen rundt om den lille bygning. Til slut sammensatte vi en bog med omkring 600 tegninger, blandt andre dem, der her er vist.

Udvælgelsen er ikke nødvendigvis repræsentativ for den samlede mængde af tegninger. Den blev foretaget på baggrund af individuelle æstetiske præferencer og politiske standpunkter. For enhver, der gerne vil se mere, er alle tegningerne tilgængelige på: http://cargocollective.com/loveissweetbutcannoteat/.

Bblackboxx's hjemmeside er: http://www.bblackboxx.ch/

She is Angry visAvis presents an excerpt from Maja Lee Langvad's third publication SHE IS ANGRY - A testimony of transnational adoption, published in spring 2014

by Maja Lee Langvad SHE IS ANGRY with her oldest sister for telling her that she has a pimple on her nose.

She is very well aware of having a pimple on her nose. She doesn't need her sister telling her that.

Denmark, since she is lactose intolerant. She doesn't dare to think of how many liters of milk she drank during her childhood, not to mention the quantities of cheese, butter, yogurt, sour milk, cream and sour cream she has had.

She is angry about having a pimple on her nose. She is not a teenager anymore. She can't help wondering if it has to do with her being lactose intolerant. If it is her inability to break down lactose that gives her pimples.

She is angry that her adoptive parents were not informed, when they adopted her, that most Asians are lactose intolerant. If her adoptive mother only knew, she thought, she would not have bought all those milk products for her when she lived at home.

She is angry that she's lactose intolerant.

She is angry about having grown up in

She is angry with her adoptive mother, because she complained about having to

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vacuum her long black hairs when she lived at home.

She is angry at a hairdresser in Copenhagen who once cut her hair, because he used a knife to thin out her hair. It's easier to use a knife than scissors since Asian hair is very thick, he said. Mijeong laughed, when she told her how he had cut off her hair with something that looked like a large kitchen knife.

She is angry that there isn't any Korea Town in Copenhagen. If there was a Korea Town in Copenhagen, as there is in Los Angeles, she would go there for a haircut.

She is angry that she can't explain to her hairdresser in Seoul how she wants her hair done. Instead, she must point at the image in the folder that comes closest to what she has in mind.

She is angry that she's unable to call her landlord herself to ask whether she can extend her lease, but has to ask Mijeong to call him instead.

She is angry that she has to extend her lease by at least one year if she wants to stay in the apartment. She is afraid to commit for a full year. She doesn't know whether she would want to move back to Denmark before that.

She is angry with her biological parents for saying to her that she should move back to Denmark for the sake of her adoptive mother. It hurts her when they say that. She just moved to South Korea to build a relationship with them.

She is angry about being in doubt whether or not she should move back to Denmark.

It's not like it's the first time she catches herself in weighing the pros and cons against each other, when she wonders whether she should stay in Korea or move back to Denmark. Every time the lease with Astrid expires, she has doubts. As Andrew aptly has said, she has a migration crisis about once a year.

She is angry with herself for trying to induce a decision as to whether or not she should move back to Denmark. It takes the time it takes, and she is not going to reach a decision any faster by constantly weighing the pros and cons against each other. Maybe it

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actually just makes her even more confused.

She is angry with herself for trying to make it a matter of having to choose a country.

Why not think that she can commute between Denmark and South Korea instead of having to choose between one of the two? Of course, flying back and forth between Seoul and Copenhagen would require an income of a certain size, but it is not inconceivable that she could have her travels funded by taking part in artistic projects in both countries. That was how Andrew could afford to fly back and forth between Seoul and Los Angeles, before he finally decided to settle down in Seoul. If he can do it, she can do it too.

She is angry with herself for considering whether she should move to a completely different place. As if it wasn't enough to be in doubt whether she should stay in Seoul or move back to Copenhagen.

She is angry with herself for considering whether she should move to Greenland.

That's what Henrik Lee did before he moved back to Denmark. He settled in Nuuk for a few years, which gave him time to digest the experiences and impressions from the years in South Korea.

She is angry with herself for considering whether she should move to the United States.

She is angry with herself for considering whether she should move to New York or Los Angeles, if she decides to move to the United States.

She is angry with herself for believing that it would be easier for her to live in the United States than in Denmark. It might be that they talk about race in a different way in the United States than in Denmark. Everyone talks about race in America, but this doesn't mean that it will necessarily be easier for her to stay in the United States than in Denmark.

She is angry that in Denmark you can't talk about race without being accused of being racist.

She is angry of being accused of being racist.

She is angry with Astrid for accusing her of

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being a racist when she says that she doesn't bother dealing with white people.

She is angry with herself for saying that she doesn't want to deal with white people. It's not white people per se that are the problem. She has wondered whether it's actually racism when she says that she doesn't want to deal with white people, or when Andrew says that he doesn't bother dealing with white people. She knows that Andrew believes that people of color can't be racists, but what should you call it when Andrew says he doesn't want to deal with white people?

She is angry with white people.

She is angry with white people, who are racists.

She is angry with colored people, who are racists. If colored people can be racists.

She is angry at racists.

She is angry to hear that Henrik Lee was knocked down in the street in Aarhus by a group of men he suspects being members of White Pride.

She is angry to hear that Morten was denied access to a nightclub in Herning. We only let in whites tonight, the doormen had said, when he asked for an explanation.

She is angry about Morten not being white.

She is angry about Mike not being white.

Mike met all the requirements in the job description from the school in Seoul, where he applied for a job as an English teacher, but was refused on the grounds that the parents of the students preferred a white man or woman to teach their children English.

She is angry at the parents of the students, because they prefer a white man or woman to teach their children English.

She is angry with the school principal because he caters to the parents of the students.

She is angry that Mike is far from the only colored person, who has been denied a position as an English teacher. She knows of several Korean adoptees who weren’t given

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a position as English teachers for the same reason, though they were fully qualified.

Some job advertisements even say that they are not interested in Kyopos1 or persons with a F4 visa 2.

She is angry about reading in a job advertisement on the web that they are not interested in people with F4 visa.

She is angry about reading in an article3 on the web that a growing number of Korean parents choose to let their children be adopted pro forma by Americans who work in the military. It may well be that their children get to learn English, because they are enrolled in an American school in one of the military bases in South Korea and in general have better educational opportunities, but who wants to be adopted pro forma by an American just to learn English and get better educational opportunities?

She is angry at parents who let their child be adopted pro forma by an American employee of the military.

She is angry at Americans employed by the military who receive money for being guardians of a Korean child.

She is angry at the ones who establish contact between the parents and the employees of the American military. According to the article, several of the men have their offices in Itaewon, which is the headquarter of the American military base in South Korea.

She is angry that Itaewon even exists.

She is angry that the American military base in South Korea even exists.

She is angry at the United States´ military presence in South Korea. According to Mary, who works at the American military base in Seoul, there is no longer any reason to have American soldiers stationed in South Korea. Neither North nor South Korea is interested in a war, Mary says, adding that nor is the United States. It is solely out of economic interests that the United States still has troops stationed in South Korea, she says.

She is angry that the United States still has troops stationed in South Korea, since it's solely a matter of economic interests.

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She is angry at the American soldiers stationed in South Korea.

She is angry at the American soldiers stationed in South Korea who didn't take responsibility for making a Korean woman pregnant.

She is angry that the Korean women who became pregnant by an American soldier, had difficulties being accepted in Korean society.

She is angry that mixed-race children have difficulties being accepted in Korean society.

As a result of the Korean War, thousands of children were born to Korean mothers, and were fathered by soldiers from the United States and other UN-countries4.

2 F4-visas are reserved for persons classified as kyopos, including adoptees.

3 Kang, Shin-who: ”Adoption Abused for Enrollment in Schools at US Military Camp.” Published on koreatimes. co.kr, 7. december 2008.

4 Hübinette, Tobias. Comforting an Orphaned Nation.

Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture: s. 56. PhD thesis, Department of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, 2005.

5 The phrase ‘camptown’ stands for a neighborhood or a smaller area close to an American military base in South Korea, where prostitutes offer sexual services to the soldiers. In addition to brothels, the camptowns also contain bars, restaurants and churches.

6 Moon, Katharine. H.S. Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations: p. 1. Columbia University Press, 1997.

She is angry that mothers have been forced to hide their children from the outside world because the children were of mixed race.

She is angry that mothers have been forced to leave their child if the child was of mixed race.

She is angry with the mothers who abandon their child because the child was of mixed race. Mothers of whom many worked in the so-called camp towns5, which sprung up around the American military bases. In Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in US-Korea Relations, one can read that over 1 million South Korean women worked as prostitutes in the camp towns since the Korean War6.

She is angry that camp towns even existed.

She is angry that camp towns still exist. Today, it is mostly foreign women who work there, Mijeong says. She recently interviewed some women, mostly from the Philippines, in a camp town near the demilitarized zone.

SHE IS ANGRY about not knowing how to put her hair up in a loose bun, as she has seen the Korean women do. It has something to do with wrapping a rubber band around the bun, that much she knows, but she has not yet succeeded in putting her hair up in the same way as they do.

1 Kyopo is the term for a Korean who lives outside of South Korea.

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Diary from the West Bank

by Henri Barbara

BEN GURION AIRPORT 10/4 2014 In the middle of the night, the eleven of us fly out of Copenhagen, southeast bound. The mood is good, though tense as well – what if one of us is refused access to Israel? Heading over the mainland we can see dark green fields and brown hills.

We see newly built houses placed in rows, and we see an area that most of us have read and heard so much about, but have yet to visit. When we arrive at the airport in Israel, all of the passengers are led to the passport control. Now there are two places to go, one for the holders of Israeli passports and one for the holders of foreign ones. Standing in front of me are two young Danish girls with Palestinian roots. They’re going to visit family in the West Bank. They are clearly nervous due to the many stories of people being denied access to Israel and thereby to the occupied Palestinian territories, whose borders the state of Israel controls.

Just seconds after speaking to the woman at the counter, they are taken to an interrogation room.

Following a few questions from the same woman, “what is the purpose of your stay?”, “where are you going to stay, what are you going to do?”, I am handed a little blue piece of paper which is a visa.

My trip through the passport control is slightly nerve-wracking, but it is definitely going easier than for the five people from our field trip group who are still detained in the interrogation room.

The last one is released twelve hours posterior to our bright morning landing. Here is an excerpt of a text from one of those who were detained: “I was asked in detail about my trip and my reasons for travelling. After that, my whole life was scrutinized. I had to give up my email address, the names of my parents, their backgrounds, my instagram profile and my phone number. My phone was scrutinized for Israeli/Palestinian phone numbers (…) I was summoned for yet another interrogation where their focus was steadily on my parents who were born and raised in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Following this interrogation, I was promised that I would have my passport returned to me, yet this didn’t happen. We were two girls left from the group – me and another Danish girl with Palestinian roots. We were so mentally and physically exhausted. Not until eight hours had passed did I receive my passport and visa – and then whoop-de-doo straight into the democratic state of Israel!”

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Everyone with ties to Palestine is detained, just as the organisers of the field trip were expecting. For the remaining, a bus is waiting outside the airport. From there we’re taken to the city of Ramallah, which is located in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

The field trip’s official program starts three days later, and for the next two days I will be staying with a Palestinian family. They live in Bethlehem, so I move through Ramallah’s main street towards the bus station. Later, we’re told that one of the other participants with Palestinian roots was denied access to the West Bank due to ‘security reasons’. He had attempted to go through Jordan to the West Bank, but the state of Israel controls all Palestinian borders.

BARHOOM AND BETLEHEM 10/4 2014 Barhoom picks me up in a café close to the Church of the Nativity, which is allegedly built right where Jesus was born. He immediately shows me around the church, which is filled with religious mystique and camera-snapping tourists.

We have a lot to talk about and we make friends right away. Barhoom dreams of travelling, especially around Europe, but the Israeli occupation of the West Bank limits his possibilities for going anywhere.

He takes me out of the central part of the city and down a hill. He points towards another hill in front of us – that is where his family’s house is. There are trees, purple flowers, sand coloured houses and wine plants like roofs over small patios. This place, these little homes are magical like childhood fantasies – like a game where you create a little space between bushes and trees.

There are pots and buckets of flowers and the heat of the sun.

Beautiful as it is around here, it is difficult too.

Israeli settlements surround Bethlehem, and the wall is built right through the historical city.

People can’t go where they wish to go. Barhoom can’t visit his cousin who lives in the state of Israel only minutes from here. The cousin can easily visit Bethlehem and Barhoom, but not the other way around.

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“Many individuals support us, but their governments don’t,” Barhoom tells me – obviously disheartened. “At five-o-clock in the morning, in the middle of the winter of 2004, a big group of Israeli soldiers arrived at our house. All together there were one hundred soldiers in our neighbourhood, looking for just one guy. They locked my family and me in a room and scoured the rest of our house. We didn’t move one bone for three hours.

All the while we could hear the soldiers using the toilet and the beds. Why not? It was winter after all. They left their dirty footsteps everywhere – even on the beds. And I was late for my exam.”

Barhoom and his family let me unconditionally into their home for the next two days. They show me their lives as Palestinians in Bethlehem with the enormous difficulties it includes. The two massive water containers on top of their flat roof – to be used for whenever the water supply is cut off for periods at a time – draw attention to one of these challenges.

PALESTINE MARATHON 11/4 2014 Early Friday morning. Bethlehem is beautiful and the sun is visible from the east. Beams of sun grace the mountains across from us – the sky is light, the air is clear, and the runners are getting ready to run either 42, 21 or 10 km through the city. The square by the Church of the Nativity in the city centre has already been filled up with people from all over the world – but especially children and young people from the West Bank. Loud techno music is booming out of massive speakers. Little groups of people have come together to warm up, and the running shoes are tied.

Two Danish women arranged the first marathon a year ago, and this year the success is repeated. The project is basically about freedom of movement.

Because of the wall, the route cannot stretch for 42 km in one go. Those who are in for the full marathon have to go back and forth four times.

We run past the tall boards of the wall that are built on the outskirts of the city. Basque comrades and others have painted solidarity greetings across the concrete. The route continues through small and winding roads through the Aida refugee camp, which was established in 1950. The entrance to the camp has a famous wooden gate, which is characterized by the large key on the top. The key symbolises the Palestinian right to return. According to international law the tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians and their descendants – a total of about 5 million people – have the right to return to their homes both in the occupied territories and in what is now considered the state of Israel. Many of the displaced still have

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the keys to their houses, even though many of the houses don’t even exist today.

We run further into the city's main road, Hebron Road. On the way we meet cheering, surprised, sceptical and smiling faces. Children, young and elderly - alone or in groups. On the way, we also meet Palestinian scouts who give us cold water and pieces of orange. The sweat is pouring from us and our leg muscles are burning, but the city stands still for all of us who run to draw attention to the restriction of movement in the West Bank.

In the evening, the organizers throw a big party just outside of the city. Traditional Palestinian food is served for everyone - freshly made falafel, hummus, baba ganoush, yoghurt, tabbouleh and bread. Afterwards we dance in a circle, and the mood is high and glorious.

CHECKPOINT 13/4 2014 To get to Jerusalem, we have to go through the checkpoint at Qalandiya, which is one of the largest checkpoints in the West Bank. The wall is built on each side of the checkpoint.

For Palestinians, going through checkpoints like Qalandiya is the only option when they need to go to East Jerusalem or '48 – which the state of Israel is called by many Palestinians – to work, go to school, go to a hospital or to visit family, assuming that this is a possibility at all. To cross the wall from the West Bank requires an Israeli permission, which far from everyone is granted. From four o'clock in the morning, Qalandiya is crammed with people, says our guide. The large hall is surrounded by fences, thick barbed wire and surveillance cameras. When we arrive, a couple of birds are flapping around under the very high ceiling.

We enter an area that has approximately six new entries, each of which has a revolving door made by metal bars. It is controlled by a couple of young soldiers. They sit together in small cubicles. Red light - the revolving door is locked. Green light the body swings inward with the door. Red - stop.

The body is enclosed by horizontal and vertical metal, fences and poles. Green light - the body can go.

On the other side you put down your bag, jacket and belt on a tray that runs through a large scanner. Hereafter you walk through another scanner and show your passport and visa or ID card to the soldiers on the other side of the glass. We experience five minutes of the waiting, frustration and humiliation that many Palestinians experience for hours every day.

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BIL'IN 16/4 2014 Bil'in is a small village located on the western part of the West Bank. The village is also located in Area C, which according to the Oslo Accords is under full Israeli control. The wall has appropriated up to 60% of Bil'in's land, which has been and is still used to build Israeli settlements – among others, the ultra-Orthodox Modi'in Illit.

“I wish we could live here – without that wall.

In the past, we could drive from home and all the way out to the sea. We can't do that anymore,” says Iyad Burnat. He and his family have welcomed us into their house in Bil'in. We are standing on their small terrace looking over the wall and the settlements lying behind it. Around the house, crooked olive trees shoot up from the sandy ground.

Bil'in is well known throughout the world, partly because of the many international activists who over the years have visited the village and participated in the weekly Friday protests against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank – with a particular focus on the wall that has been built within the last twelve years. Bil'in is also known because of the award-winning documentary 5 Broken Cameras by Iyad’s brother Emad Burnat.

The film portrays life in Bil'in in 2005, when Emad’s youngest son is born, and the wall begins to be erected through Bil'in. The changes of the city are documented with five different cameras, while the land and the olive groves are appropriated, and the wall is built. Emad’s constantly rolling camera shows everything from children demonstrating to close friends who are wounded and killed at close range by Israeli soldiers.

We drive out of Bil'in's small group of houses.

First stop is the town's cemetery, where used tear gas grenades are scattered around on the ground.

Several of them have been filled with soil and seeds, and green stems and flowers are sprouting up.

Iyad takes us to the area which is now the outskirts of the city, because of the erection of the wall. Here we walk alongside the wall and feel the hard concrete with our hands. Here, where the weekly Friday protests have taken place through the last nine years. Here, where many protesting Palestinians and international activists have been injured and killed by bullets and tear gas grenades.

En af de mange europæiske historier om hvordan man starter en krig af Patrick I 1746 fik den svenske konge Adolph Frederik sit første barn, Gustav Adolph. På denne tid i Europa var det på mode med oplyste monarker, og den svenske kongefamilie var med på moden.

Den unge Gustav studerede Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Racine og Corneille, og han beherskede det franske sprog så godt, at han talte og skrev det bedre end det svenske. Åbenbart havde hans kærlighed til den franske litteratur en afgørende indflydelse på dannelsen af hans eventyrlyst, men det vil vi komme tilbage til senere. Gustav beundrede teatret, og da han blev konge, begyndte han at skrive skuespil. Han elskede Shakespeares sætning: “Hele verden er en scene, og alle mænd og kvinder blot skuespillere”. Alt i alt kom hans liv til at ligne et teaterstykke, eller rettere: en tragikomisk operette.

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Om aftenen den 1. marts 1771, mens han sad i den kongelige loge i Paris' nationale opera, modtog han nyheden om sin fars død. Han vendte tilbage til Stockholm som konge, men en konge, der kun havde ansvar over for det svenske parlament, ‘Riksdagen’. Efter at have modtaget et stort støttebeløb fra Frankrig, organiserede Gustav III et statskup. I skyggen af geværløb modtog Riksdagen den 19. august 1772 en ny pakke med love, der i betydeligt omfang udvidede kongens magt. Det svenske parlament var herefter forvandlet til at være en nyttesløs forsamling af konsulenter.

Fra de første dage i sin regeringstid forberedte Gustav III krig imod Rusland. Allerede i 1775 sagde han til sit følge: “Vi skal, uden at miste et eneste sekund, forberede angrebet. Vi vil angribe Sankt Petersborg og derpå udrydde Rusland fra

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vores kort”. For at undgå krig foreslog Katarina II af Rusland (som faktisk var Gustavs kusine) en militær alliance mellem de to nationer.

I flere år udvekslede de to monarker meget venlige breve fulde af komplimenter. Gustav blev endda modtaget i audiens af Katarina i 1777 i Sankt Petersborg, og hun gengældte besøget i 1783 i Frederikshamn, hvortil hun medbragte en gave på 200.000 rubler. Gustav tog pengene, men blærede sig stadig med sine militære planer.

I 1787 begyndte den russisk-osmanniske krig på Krim. Frankrig og Det Osmanniske Rige sendte Gustav III store pengesummer for at overbevise ham om at slutte sig til dem imod Rusland.

Kongen besluttede, at timen var kommet for hans triumf. Men ifølge den svenske grundlov var det ikke tilladt for kongen at starte en krig, medmindre riget var blevet angrebet.

I foråret 1788 spredte Gustavs agenter et rygte om, at den russiske flåde var ved at angribe Karlskrona. I virkeligheden havde de russiske skibe travlt med at bekæmpe osmannerne i Middelhavet.

På ordrer fra Katarina overdrog den russiske ambassadør i Stockholm på vegne af kejserinden, et papir til den svenske udenrigsminister, hvori hun udbad sig forklaring på Sveriges militære aktion.

Gustav III opfattede beskeden som en “Casus Belli” (grund til at gå i krig). Ifølge svensk lov er det forbudt for den russiske ambassadør at henvende sig til Riksdagen og til befolkningen. Den svenske konge forelagde Rusland et ultimatum: at straffe ambassadøren, at give Sverige hele Finland inklusiv Karelen tilbage, og at tilbagegive Krim til Det Osmanniske Rige. Hvis Rusland ikke mødte de svenske krav, ville Sverige gribe til militær handling.

Det eneste Gustav opnåede var en aftale om fuldstændig ikke-indblanding af russiske diplomater i forholdet mellem kongen og oppositionen. Hvad var ellers nødvendigt? Regenten skrev i stilhed skuespil og lavede opførelser og maskerader. Men Gustav kunne ikke stoppe – umiddelbart efter krigen mod Rusland, begyndte han forberedelserne til krig imod Danmark og ... Frankrig. Men ja, med Danmark var det klart, at han ville indlemme Norge – alle svenske kongers drøm. Men hvordan Gustav ville knuse det revolutionære Frankrig og genindsætte Louis XVI og Bourbonerne på tronen, kan vi kun gisne om.

For det gik hverken værre eller bedre, end at han blev skudt den 16. marts 1792, mens han dansede

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i sprudlende klæder i Stockholms Opera. Den nye konge var Gustav Adolph (1778-1837), søn af den myrdede konge Gustav III. Da hans far døde var Gustav IV Adolph (som hans fulde kongelige navn var) kun omkring 13 år gammel, så indtil 1796 blev landet regeret af hans onkel, den velkendte Carl Södermanland, men det er en helt anden historie.

Gustav var ikke kun kendt for sin militære opførsel, men også for nogle få sjove historier. En dag besøgte han Paris. Dér kom nogle franske videnskabsmænd ham i møde og ærede og takkede kongen for den gæstfrihed, M. Scheele havde modtaget i hans rige (som de virkelig respekterede).

Men sagen var, at Gustav slet ikke vidste hvem M. Scheele var, og før en delegation af videnskabsmænd kunne nå til Sverige, skrev han straks hjem: “Find ud af hvem M. Scheele er, og forbered alt til at udnævne ham til greve”. Men problemet var, at den embedsmand, der modtog dekretet fra kongen, heller ikke vidste, hvem Sheelles var. Den eneste information de kunne finde var: “Chelles er en storslået fyr, løjtnant i artilleriet, jæger, og dertil en vidunderlig billardspiller”. Løjtnanten blev greve. Og ingen fattede mistanke. Carl Wilhelm Scheele, den verdensberømte kemiker, ejeren af et apotek, som foretog mange revolutionerende, kemiske eksperimenter, viede hele sit liv til lanceringen af nye væsker og miksturer og døde uden grevetitel, fattig, ukendt for verden og uden for hoffets interesse. Den heldige, kaldet ‘en vidunderlig fyr’, løjtnant Chelles, døde i luksus.

En dag ville Gustav, som ikke kun var en meget fornuftig regent, men også en nysgerrig person, endegyldigt have slået fast, hvad der var mest skadeligt for den menneskelige sundhed, te eller kaffe. For at foretage eksperimentet, hidkaldte han to tvillinger, der var dømt til døden, og han beordrede den ene at drikke adskillige kopper te om dagen og den anden den samme mængde kaffe.

For at gøre det mere videnskabeligt, inddrog han to medicinske professorer til at overvåge eksperimentet. Reglerne var enkle: Den mest skadelige drik var den, der blev drukket af den af tvilling– erne, der døde først.

Det gik hverken værre eller bedre end, at eksperimentet sluttede sådan her: Først døde den ene professor, derefter den anden, og i 1792 døde Gustav selv. Tvillingerne fortsatte med at deltage i eksperimentet. Den mand, der drak te, døde først. Men på det tidspunkt var han allerede mere end 80 år.

Ingen vandt.

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Et bortgået liv af Mohammad Reza Qasemi fotos af Mohammad Reza Qasemi De følgende billeder blev taget i løbet af seks måneder, da jeg besøgte min ven A.M. I perioder flyttede jeg ind hos ham og fulgte hans hverdagsrutiner.

A.M. og jeg mødtes for første gang, da jeg blev overflyttet fra asylcenteret i Sandholm til Auderød i august 2011. Vi delte værelse og begyndte at åbne vores hjerter og tale om, hvorfor vi havde forladt Iran og om de begivenheder, der førte os væk fra vores familie til et fremmed land. A.M. talte meget om sin far. Han var blevet henrettet efter den islamiske revolution i Iran i 1979. På grund af sin tilknytning til shahen fra det tidligere regime fik han ikke en retfærdig rettergang. A.M. kan knap huske sin far, da han kun var ét år gammel, da han så ham for sidste gang. A.M’s familie fik at vide i et brev, at faderen var blevet dømt og henrettet.

Det var også kun i et brev, at de fik at vide, hvor graven var. De så aldrig liget. "Vi er ikke sikre på, at graven virkelig er min fars," fortalte han mig.

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Familien havde problemer med graven. Hvert år blev den vandaliseret af fremmede. I 2001 blev A.M. arresteret og idømt to et halvt års fængsel af den iranske, islamiske domstol på grund af sine klager over hærværket mod faderens grav. De fandt aldrig de skyldige i gravskændingen. Iran var som et helvede for ham, og ifølge hans læge er han blevet traumatiseret. Nu tager han piller ordineret af en psykiater, men han kan stadig ikke holde op med at tænke på sin fortid. "At ryge hash hjælper mig med at dræbe minderne fra Iran," siger han, "det er en lettelse." * A.M’s fulde navn er redaktionen bekendt.

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Pooyandeh - the book club that never gives up

by Linea Kornum Rask In a small basement in Nørrebro, people are drinking tea and discussing politics and literature while playing chess. The decorations on the walls are a mixture of feminist messages, socialist slogans and faded photos of martyrs. From floor to ceiling the room is covered with shelves of colorful and frayed book spines, but the titles are unreadable to most Danes. The first Persian books were put on the shelves 12 years ago by a small group of Iranians with refugee background.

Since then they have worked to support both political prisoners in Iran and refugees in Denmark.

Mamad Pejam and Ali Azad are among the founders of the association, which is named after an Iranian author who was executed by the regime.

Here, they speak about their love of books and struggle against oppression.

How did your organization start?

Ali: We frequently met each other at activities in different political associations, and we had many common opinions; against the Islamic regime, pro-democracy, against executions and holding political prisoners. We are all socialists, but we do not belong to any particular political party, we are more open, and we agreed that we were missing a common gathering place, a book club.

After a short time we decided that we would also be politically and culturally active as a leftist, anti-nationalist and anti-religious movement fighting for democracy and freedom. We were very politically active, closely following the Iranian situation. New Iranian political refugees continued to arrive in Copenhagen. The labour, women’s and student movements became stronger in Iran, and so did the oppression of the movements on the part of the state. So we started to collaborate with more groups in Iran, such as the support committee for political prisoners and the women's movement.

Mamad: Last year we decided to launch a broader range of activities such as lectures on cultural, social and political issues. This is a place for Iranians with many different opinions, and everyone is welcome, regardless of their background.

The only exception is those who support the Islamic government in Iran, whom we are fighting

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against. We also have members from many different ethnic groups in Iran such as Kurds, Arabs and Baloch. But it is important to emphasize that we do not think that Iranian culture is better than other cultures. We are not only an Iranian club, we are a place for different kinds of people who respect each other. We have a close cooperation with Danish activist groups, such as asylum, women’s and anti-fascist groups. We arrange events together and support each other. We do not agree 100%, but we are close, and we learn a lot from each other.

The forbidden literature In Pooyandeh you can walk in from the street and read or borrow the books in the small library, when it is open every Saturday. Because of the dangerous political situation in Iran, it is not necessary to leave a civil registration number or a full name to borrow the books. It is free, and you register which books you have borrowed yourself.

There is plenty to choose from: Iranian poetry, history, philosophy and social science. Nietzsche, Kant, Tolstoy, Marx and Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

Why was it literature that became the focus of your association?

Ali: We were lacking a library for Iranians all over Denmark. It was very difficult to find Iranian literature, because the freedom of press is so bad in Iran, and many books were illegal. A large number of Iranian literature, political newspapers and magazines exist only abroad. In Iran, a book can be approved by the censors and get published, and then after a year, the regime suddenly renders it illegal if it becomes popular. That is why we are very interested in reading and discussing literature, here where the books are legal. But Iranian books are also very expensive in Europe. When we buy more books together, we get a much better price, so it is important to have a club. We also felt that it is important to support the Iranian writers and publishers, so we buy a lot of books in Persian and sell them very cheaply in Denmark. We do not make money from it, on the contrary, but we do it to support the Iranian people.

Mamad: Most of our books are illegal in Iran, you can be executed for having them, so we buy a lot of them in Sweden and France, but also in Canada

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and the United States. If you are caught in Iran with Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, for example, you'll be executed immediately.

Linguistic safe-space and open wounds What is the importance of the social aspect of your book club?

Mamad: There are many retired or unemployed people, who come here to play chess or backgammon and read newspapers instead of sitting at home alone and feeling sad. People might be more shy and reluctant in social situations when they have to speak Danish. It can be difficult to discuss politics, if you do not speak Danish very well.

There are other members who know much more about politics than I, but still it is often me who presents our arguments in larger groups, because I speak better Danish. When we discuss here, we are on equal grounds.

Ali: We are like a kind of family, since there are many of us who have not seen our own families for many decades, since we fled. It is too dangerous for us to travel back to Iran, and it is almost impossible for our siblings or other family members to get a visa to visit us. For our parents, it is also difficult, and perhaps they are too old or already dead. Iran was a small prison, and sometimes Denmark feels like a big prison.

in Iranian prisons, we accept it because we know that they are using us as a kind of therapy. You cannot give up. Iran is part of our identity, and I will continue to fight for freedom and democracy.

Powerless, not hopeless How do you help new refugees?

Mamad: A lot of people come here for counseling, they need a place to stay or legal aid. Many of them are asylum seekers. There are many Iranian refugees who get into trouble when they seek asylum in Denmark. They do not trust the authorities, because they have such bad experiences with them in Iran, especially with the police.

Therefore, they do not dare to tell the truth about why they fled. It can ruin their chances of being granted asylum. Women in particular are at risk, because many of them have been sexually abused in prison, and they are so ashamed. We provide support and help with information about the rules, and we know many associations and attorneys with different types of expertise.

Mamad: We all have refugee backgrounds. We are from different political parties in Iran, and therefore many of us have been tortured or have lost family and friends. It is quite normal in Iran. But to be honest, sometimes when I talk to newly arrived refugees and hear how they were taken prisoners and tortured in Iran, then I suddenly feel that it is so close to myself. I feel that, okay, I have some things inside me that I have never come to terms with. We think we are so strong, but there are so many things within oneself. Suddenly when they begin to tell the details of how they were tortured, all the memories come back, and I go completely backwards. I cannot go on, cannot stand it. It's almost like a wound. If we are talking about it, the wound opens. Sometimes people prefer not to talk about it. There are many like me - it has been thirty years since I fled, and now I'm thinking, okay, I have a wound inside me, and I will not talk to Ali, maybe he has a different wound. So we also affect each other, we protect ourselves from each other ... for better or worse. We do not talk about the things that happened in Iran many years ago.

Ali: We focus on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, because we have a network and knowledge of the countries, and speak similar languages. We focus on helping young women with children and on the sick. It can be very hard work, because we have no money, and most asylum seekers are in a very bad situation when they come to us. Often they have not been granted asylum, and we try to help them, to get their case reopened. It feels as if you lose friends and family every time someone is deported. I become sad and cannot sleep. The Iranian regime has a lot of money and power, but I am still convinced that we will succeed with time.

I do not feel that the situation is hopeless, but you can feel powerless. When we, for example, have supported a political prisoner in Iran for 6 years, and then one day we turn on the TV and see that he has been executed the day before. Then it feels like you have lost a sister or a brother. When refugees come to us without friends and family, we can give them psychological help, because we are chatting and joking. We provide care and compassion, even though we cannot always solve the problems. But we have a kind of network of knowledge from all the refugees we have met over the years, about what is happening in their home countries, and which countries that are the most likely to grant asylum, and so on. It is a great experience to see the unity between refugees from many different countries.

But even though it can be difficult to talk about the things that the new refugees have experienced

We cannot give up the fight against the Iranian regime, you cannot be indifferent. Happiness is

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not personal – if the community is not happy, I cannot be either. But we are old now, you are the young, you can make a better society than my generation. We forgot the future. I have faith in you

youngsters, but rights are not for free, we must fight for them. We are almost done, it is your turn now!

"There is no future for us here"

by Kiki Hynding Hansen

It is not the first time that Hanan and her husband Mohammad head towards the coasts of Europe, since they both left Syria a little more than a year ago. Six months ago they were caught by the Egyptian police on board a boat with refugees bound for Europe. Now they will try again before Hanan gives birth to their first child.

Hanan is currently planning her second attempt to reach Europe with one of the many boats sailing from the North African shores. The first time they tried, the police caught her and her husband.

The failed escape to Europe last year resulted in 36 days of imprisonment for both of them and not least the baby in Hanan’s belly. At that time you could not tell that Hanan was pregnant, but now her belly is about to burst her waistband. “I don’t want my child to grow up here in Egypt,” she says. She knows that it is dangerous to cross the Mediterranean by boat, and it does not make it less risky that she on top of that is heavily pregnant. But Hanan does not feel that she has a choice.

It is not easy to leave Egypt “It’s my first child, and I would really like to be with my parents, who live here in Egypt. My mother has also asked me not to leave. But my husband cannot stand to stay here anymore,” says Hanan, while she nibbles at the dishes at the best Syrian restaurant in Alexandria.

“I need to feel respected, to feel like a real person,” says Hanan’s husband Mohammad and refers to the stigmatization of Syrian refugees they experience in Egypt. “There are no jobs for us, and many landlords take advantage of our desperate situation and raise the rent as soon as they hear that you are from Syria,” says Hanan. “The Egyptians don’t want us here,” she says, looking at her husband across the table. Mohammad continues: “There is no future for us here. How can we build a future, when you barely have money for rent,” he asks rhetorically. “He was a hairdresser, but now he is unemployed, and I go on maternity leave in a few weeks, and what do we do then,”

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asks Hanan equally rhetorically. They hope that the rent becomes easier to pay and that their child will have a good childhood in Europe.

First attempt failed Hanan and Mohammad met in Egypt after they both fled Syria a little more than a year ago. One day in October last year, he suddenly told her that he would leave for Italy the next day, and if she wanted to go with him, he would marry her on the spot, says Hanan with a smile. ”I went home to my mother and said: I’m leaving for Italy tomorrow and I’m getting married today,” Hanan laughs and looks lovingly at her husband.

The next day the skipper called and told them that the boat was canceled, because the police had gotten wind of it. “Every day in the following weeks we were ready, bags packed, waiting for the call that would give us the green light,” says Hanan. “Suddenly one day, we were informed that now was the time. When we arrived at the boat there were not 150 people on board as we had been told, but more like 400 people. You could not move at all,” says Hanan and shows with her arms, how closely packed they were. She googles an image on her phone, and shows one of the typical media images of a small, overcrowded boat with people’s legs dangling down the sides of the boat.

“That’s the way it is,” she says shaking her head.

“One of my biggest concerns was how I would go to the toilet on the six days long journey,” she says.

But Hanan and Mohammad were only in the boat for a few hours before the Egyptian police caught them. Hanan explains that it costs 3000 USD to take a boat from Alexandria to Italy, but you only pay if you arrive. She and her husband therefore got off cheap paying “only” with their freedom for

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36 days in jail. “But it wasn’t easy,” says Hanan.

“Luckily, we had good people in our network who could help us by sending food, clothes and medicine, while we were in prison.” Hanan’s manager at the international organization Caritas that supports Syrian refugees in Egypt, also helped the couple with legal advice that saved them from deportation, and instead gave them amnesty and allowed them to stay in Egypt with refugee status.

Second time’s a charm Now the little family plans to take the trip by car across the border into Libya and from there take a boat towards Italy. “It costs only 500 dollars for the trip across the country and 1000 dollars for the boat trip,” Hanan explains. It is thus half the price of sailing from Alexandria, and the voyage only lasts one day. “But it is not without danger to cross the Libyan border,” says Mohammad. “Last week seven Egyptian men were found executed.

Libya is lawless. Thieves and murderers have free reins.”

“I’m scared,” says Hanan. “So is he. When we were in prison, he suffered from a rash all over his body, because he was so scared and nervous for me and the baby. Incidentally, I didn’t discover that I was pregnant until I was in prison. It was really a shock. But I decided not to be afraid, for my husband's sake. We had to stick together. It is the same now,” she says. In theory, Mohammad could make the trip across the Mediterranean to Europe on his own and later apply for family reunification; the couple knows several others who have done that. The problem is, Hanan explains, that they do not currently have official documentation of their marriage, because they only have refugee status in Egypt. When their child is born, it will be incredibly difficult for Mohammad to get paternity papers. Therefore, she has decided to leave with him now. “We want to go to the Netherlands,” they both explain. Hanan pulls out her smartphone and shows a picture of a mutual friend in the Netherlands. He is standing with his little son in his arms in a green park. “I want my child to grow up there too” says Hanan, and Mohammad nods and smiles at her.

diately needs to take responsibility. He points out that EU’s economic support to UNHCR is insufficient. Currently, UNHCR estimates that around 150.000 registered Syrian refugees reside in Egypt.

In 2013 the figure was 120.000.

A Dutch baby is born The article above was written in May 2014 before Hanan and Mohammad left. In agreement with the couple, the article would not be published until they both had arrived safely. A few weeks after we said goodbye, my phone received a text message from Hanan: “I am in Libya. There is a lot of action, I’ll tell you more when I get there.”

Two weeks later the next text message arrived: “I’m in Paris. I’ll go to Belgium and then to the Netherlands!!”

And finally two days later came the text: “I'm in the Netherlands. I’m happy.”

A few weeks later more joyful news arrived, when a picture of Mohammad with their newborn daughter in his arms popped up on my phone.

The little family still lives in a refugee camp in the Netherlands, but hope to move out of the camp and into a small house in about four months.

The full names of Hanan and Mohammad are known by the editorial group.

Syrian refugees flee on a large scale to Egypt and Europe In the first half of 2014, more than 75.000 refugees have reached the coastlines of Southern Europe, according to UNHCR. It is 25% more than in 2013. In addition, approximately 800 persons have drowned, also in 2014, in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean. According to George Washdev, project manager for the Syrian operation of Caritas under UNHCR in Alexandria, EU imme-

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As if the disaster isn’t already here

by Athena Farrokhzad

visAvis presents an excerpt from the radio show Sommar i P1, which was broadcast on the public radio channel P1 in Sweden. For each day of the summer, a different person was invited to host the show.

The writer Athena Farrokhzad hosted on July 21st, 2014. She used this opportunity to speak about racism, feminism and the EU migration policy, among other subjects.

3.

“Some time I want to die in a country where people can pronounce my name.” So writes the Swedish poet Jila Mossaed. Were it not for our names, which Sweden never learns how to pronounce, I would have liked to talk to you about death. I would have told you about the people I have lost. About Frida Lo, who wrote the most beautiful poems and one day could not bear to go on. About Babak, who with sixty-two others died in the fire in the disco on Hisingen. Instead I must talk about structural racism.

Racism is a term that is often linked to the apartheid system in South Africa or the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S., that is to say something that exists far away from Sweden. In actuality racism pervades Swedish popular history. The State Institute for Racial Biology was founded in Uppsala in 1921 and conducted experiments with the purpose of eliminating undesirable elements from the social body. In 1934 the Swedish law concerning forced sterilization was passed, which affected women from socially vulnerable groups, for example Sweden’s Roma minority and native Sami population. Labor migrants as well as refugees attest to experiences that provide another picture than that of a country where discrimination does not exist. Few would today call themselves racists.

But this does not mean that they do not profit from racism’s way of categorizing and valuating people, or that they do not perpetuate a colonial thinking. For the person affected the intentions behind a racist act matter less than its consequences. Racism impacts us differently depending on where in society we exist.

Racism means having your housing application sorted out in advance because of your name.

Racism means being denied entry to a night club if you are Afro-Swedish and to be assaulted on the way home for the very same reason. Racism means that the average annual income in the migrant suburb Bergsjön is a half million Swedish crowns less than in the neighborhood Hovås on the other

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side of the city, where the average life span consequently is nine years longer. Racism means to only be represented in the media as oppressed or a terrorist if you look like me or my brother. Racism means having your head scarf torn off while waiting for the bus. Racism means not being able to report the crimes that have been committed against you, since the police will regard you as the perpetrator instead of the victim. Racism means that toddlers can be found in the police registry simply because they are Roma. Racism means being the only brown person at a poetry festival, since it in spite of its claims is an inaccessible space. Racism is the poverty that gives birth to the frustration that sets the suburbs on fire. Racism is when social measures are replaced by police actions. Racism is when I, five years old, get to the front of the line during the Midsummer celebration and hear the woman handing out ice cream say to her colleague, “Those, they eat all the ice cream and then there is nothing left for the Swedish children.”

Racism is when my seven-year-old god daughter says to her mother that she also wants blond hair, like the others in her class. Racism means being stopped by border patrol when you ride the subway, since the color of your skin makes them assume that you are undocumented. Racism means being deported when you are stopped by border patrol, since you are undocumented. Racism means not being able to get a job commensurate with your education. Racism means not having an education since you have to support your siblings when your single mother’s salary isn’t enough, even though she cleans houses seven days a week.

Or in the American poet Gil Scott Heron’s words, “The price of food is going up, An' as if all that shit wasn't enough: A rat done bit my sister Nell. (with Whitey on the moon) Her face and arm began to swell. (but Whitey's on the moon) Was all that money I made last year (for Whitey on the moon?)

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How come there ain't no money here?

(Hmm! Whitey's on the moon) Y'know I just about had my fill (of Whitey on the moon) I think I'll send these doctor bills, Airmail special (to Whitey on the moon)

4.

“I keep trying to speak of loving but all I speak about is acts of war and acts of war and acts of war.” So writes the American poet Juliana Spahr concerning what came to be termed the War on Terror, which has taken millions of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and has made refugees of even more. During the current war in Syria, which has so far resulted in ten million refugees, less than one percent have been granted asylum in the European Union while most have not managed to get past its walls.

Were it not for all this I would have liked to talk to you about love. I would have told you about my loves, and above all about my best friends, the ones who make me laugh during my darkest days, when love has turned to sorrow or the world’s acts of war cannot be kept at bay, those who help me formulate words like these. Instead I must talk about the EU migration policy.

Juliana Spahr continues, “We say that our bed is part of everyone else’s bed even as our bed is denied to others by an elaborate system of fences and passport-checking booths.” We often hear that we have a generous refugee policy and that opening our borders would be a disaster. As if the disaster isn’t already here. Ask those who are losers in the lottery of the asylum process, who would rather go on hunger strike or take their lives than return. Ask those who are locked up and treated like criminals while waiting to be sent back. Ask those whose denied residency applications are celebrated with cake by employees of the Migration Board. Ask those gays and dykes who are deported to countries where homosexuality is punishable, sometimes by death. Ask those who would have gained residency in Sweden if they had not first arrived in another Schengen nation, where they were sent back.

Ask the parents accused of poisoning their children when the asylum process has made them clinically apathetic. Ask those who do dishes in restaurants, who have no one to turn to when their employer refuses to pay out their minimal wages. Ask those women

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who are abused or raped by their husbands, who risk deportation if they report them to the authorities. Ask those between thirtyand fifty-thousand people living undocumented in Sweden. The twenty-thousand who have died at Europe’s borders the past decade you cannot ask.

My parents moved here in the mid-80s, fleeing the repression that followed the Iranian revolution. I still have the postcards my father sent to me in Teheran, when I was a child and he had been forced to leave the country after many years as a political prisoner. Shortly thereafter my mother and I arrived here, with our residency permits already approved. Today it would have been a great deal more difficult. My father would most likely not have been allowed to stay, even though he would have been imprisoned again had he returned. He would probably not even have been able to get here. Frontex, the EU border operation that results in refugee ships foundering in the Mediterranean, with the Swedish coast guard’s involvement, would have done everything to stop him.

Our migration policy is the greatest European disaster of our time. This is why it more than anything also demands our solidarity. If you have a room that is empty you can offer it to someone who is undocumented. If you have legal or medical knowledge you can become involved with organizations that provide legal aid and medical care to those who live here without your rights and privileges. If you have money you can give it to the network No Person Is Illegal (Ingen människa är illegal), which works to practically support those who have been forced to go underground. If you are a Swedish citizen you can marry someone who needs asylum in Sweden. You can do what lies within your power to contribute to the dissolution of the nation state, the structure that is the root cause of the disaster.

5.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.

So writes the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

Were it not for the fact that the Middle East lies in ruins, I would have liked to talk to you about dawn over the bridges in Esfehan, about the catacombs in Alexandria and

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the orange trees in Jericho. Instead I must talk about the blood in the streets of Iran, Egypt and Palestine.

The Persian poet Fateme Ekhtesari writes, “Run towards the victory sign’s two bitter fingers.

Towards the night, our night’s sorrowful continuation.” After Fateme participated in a poetry festival that my friends and I organized in Sweden, she was arrested upon her return to Teheran and spent one month in jail. She is now accused of terrorism, for the simple reason that she is an oppositional poet whose poetry depicts injustices in Iranian society. The infamous Evin Prison, where Fateme was held and where my father was once held, is facetiously called Evin University since it contains so many of the country’s students, journalists and intellectuals. A significant number are Kurds fighting for civil rights. For thirty-five years the regime has terrorized the population, and even though the resistance is massive it has time and again been struck down. The enormous gaps between rich and poor, in one of the world’s most oil-rich nations, is at least as significant a problem as the absence of freedom of speech.

My friend Mahienour El Massry is imprisoned in Alexandria together with tens of thousands of other activists, for protesting against the continued oppression and injustice. Even though more than three years have passed since the Egyptian revolution the military remains in power. Sometimes I think about what Mahienour told me: that on the 20th of January 2011, that is to say five days before millions gathered in Tahrir Square and deposed the dictator Hosni Mubarak, she consoled a despairing friend with the remark that it probably wouldn’t be more than ten years until the revolution. When I despair I think of her story as a promise. That the people can rise anytime again, that revolt is waiting around the corner.

On the other side of the Sinai peninsula, in Gaza, lives my friend the poet Somaya El Sousi together with almost two million people, in the world’s largest outdoor prison. There, as in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, the population lives under occupation. In 1948 hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes to, among other places, refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, where many still live, if the civil wars haven’t forced them to run yet again. Illegal settlements, check points, apartheid laws and ethnic cleansing has since its founding been a fundamental component of the state of Israel’s politics. Against one of the world’s largest military powers stands a Palestinian po-

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pulation with stones and rockets. Now the bombs are falling on Gaza again. Somaya writes, “Those horror films could learn a real lesson if they lived your life for a day. The directors would discard their antiquated ideas and beg, sincerely and tenderly, to get to film just one of your days.” The Swedish poet Lars Mikael Raattamaa replies: “And the sun slowly starts to warm. Israel, murderer.

And some charge their camera batteries. Israel, murderer. And some put their feet on the table.

Israel, murderer. I am tired of that game.”

Somaya, Mahienour and Fateme are three women whose struggles and writing I have the privilege of being familiar with. When I am paralyzed by my own shortcomings I often think of them, of my aunts and my mother, of everyone who has withstood thousands of hardships for the sake of freedom. Some of them live in Sweden, and have crucial knowledge of contemporary political events. But the public is not interested in their stories. It is we who must spread the word about their struggles. Or as the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish writes, “We are still there, even if time has been separated from the place,” and with the Jewish poet Nelly Sachs’ words we hold, instead of homeland, “the transformation of the world.”

7.

My grandmother who died of dreams endlessly rocks the dream that invents her which I invent So writes the Mexican poet Gloria Gervitz, and the Swedish poet Karin Boye replies, I dreamed about swords last night.

I dreamed about battle last night.

I dreamed I fought by your side, armoured and strong, last night.

Were it not for the fact that life in this society in the best case is dull as hell I would have liked to talk to you about the dream of a garden like my grandmother’s, where mint once grew along the streams. Instead I must talk about those at whose side I struggle. To love, celebrate and desire women and queers, to attempt to overthrow the order where we are dependent on men for our livelihood or pleasure, has always been one of the most important things I have known. To me feminism has never been the aspiration to be regarded as the straight man’s equal, but the struggle to destroy the patriarchal grounds on which our knowledge of the world rests.

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Or in the Finnish-Swedish poet Edith Södergran’s words, Beautiful sisters, come high up on the strongest rocks, we are all warriors, heroines, horsewomen, eyes of innocence, heavenly foreheads, rose grubs, heavy breakers and birds flown by, we are the least expected and the deepest red, stripes of tigers, taut strings, stars without vertigo.

10.

I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember the promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in someone else’s blood

means that you do.”

I do not think that poets can change the world.

But I do think that poetry is a medium for exploring these ideological shifts and who pays the price for them. Since the master’s tools, in Audre Lorde’s words, will never dismantle the master’s house, we cannot simply adopt the same rhetorical figures and fill them with our own content. We can, for example, not respond to the debate about how much immigrants cost with the fact that we actually contribute both kebab and ka-ching to the state budget. Instead we must dismiss this kind of reasoning and remind them that people’s right to exist cannot be measured by what they contribute with. Or, in the Swedish poet Mara Lee’s words: “We must refuse to reply when idiocy calls and instead formulate new questions.”

So writes the American poet Audre Lorde. Were it not for this promise I would have liked to talk to you about my first poem. I would have told you about how I as a child understood that a strange rhyme or an unexpected metaphor could place the world in a new light and thereby make someone receptive to meaning she did not know she could espouse. That poetry’s ability to nail down “the quiet spot in constant/displacement,” in the Norwegian poet Eldrid Lunden’s words, remains the reason that I write. That poetry, at its best, is an exploration at the border of meaning and history. Instead I must talk about the struggle over language.

We live in a time when it is said that people exist in a state of outsiderness, as if that were a quality and not a situation they have been placed in.

The policies of the new as well as the old workers’ party impoverish the working class more and more, surveillance is marketed through the rhetoric of safety, stock market crashes are described as if they were natural phenomena, development can only be so sustainable that it doesn’t threaten the growth of capital, and racism becomes xenophobia, which becomes critiques of immigration.

Language is a medium with which we make reality, what things are called has consequences for whose needs determine how society is designed.

Or in the Swedish poet Jenny Wrangborg’s words: “Stockholm: Here the hospital’s venture capitalist firms are registered in tax havens. Freedom is streamlining, effectivity cutbacks. Here the five-year-olds in daycare have learned to speak the language of opposites and we seem to have forgotten that ‘I do not speak the language of opposites’

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