visAvis no.1

Issue #1 Summer 2009

– en avis for statsborgere og statsløse borgere i Danmark – a paper for citizens and non-citizens in Denmark

Lige nu // Right now

Church asylum Kirkeasyl

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

En engel vokser op An angel grows up

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

Kolofon // Colophon

Indhold // Content

Illustration: Ditlev Marboe

Redaktion // Editors: Malin Waak, Jeppe Wedel-Brandt og Sylvester Roepstorff Skribenter // Writers: Patrick (Patricks rigtige navn er redaktionen bekendt), Poul Ali (Pouls rigtige navn er redaktionen bekendt), Maureen Ngee Chi, Mia Edelgart, Sofie Holten, Joachim Hamou, Malin Waak, Otman Miloud, Morten Goll, Etiènne Balibar, No Fences, Michael Touber Grafisk tilrettelæggelse // Graphic design: Casper Øbro (www.ditdatdot.dk) Illustration & foto // Illustration & photography: Tina Helen, Ditlev Marboe, Otman Miloud, Misja Krenchel, Veronica Juhl, Mahammad Hamamda, Casper Øbro, Wilhelm Freddie, No Fences, Miriam Hinman Nielsen, Anne Agerskov Jensen Oversættere og korrekturlæsere // translators and proofreaders: Tim Feldmann, Jennie Kaae-Ferrara, Karen Koudahl, Scott Martingell, Heidi Erschbamer, Gita Ghei, Helén Brobeck, Søren Stoklund, Christine Pettersen, Helen Clara Hemsley, Berit Nørgaard, Miriam Hinman Nielsen Presse // Press Christina Wendelboe Ansvarshavende redaktør // Editor responsible under the press law: Joachim Hamou. visAvis-gruppe // group: Selini Halvadaki, Mira Kellermann, Misja Krenchel, Erik Yakubjan, Nabil Darwish, Ziad Kabbani, Poul Ali, Maureen Ngee Chi, Mia Edelgart, Sofie Holten, Joachim Hamou, Malin Waak, Otman Miloud, Jeppe WedelBrandt, Sylvester Roepstorff, Tina Helen, Ditlev Marboe, Mahammad Hamamda, Casper Øbro, Anne Agerskov Jensen, Patrick, Julie Caspersen m.fl.

Tak til // Thanks to Veronica Juhl, Michala Bendixen Alle indtægter går til den selvejende institution ADT (Asyl Dialog Tank)// All profit goes to the independent institution ADT/ (Asylum Dialog Tanken) Donationer // Donations: REG. NR. 8401 ACCOUNT NR. 1528167 Du kan hjælpe visAvis med bifrag og praktisk hjælp så som korrektur læsning oversættelser og ideer.

Se mere på hjemmesiden: www.visavis.dk You can help visAvis with contributions, practical help such as proofreading and translations and ideas and inputs. Check our website: www.visavis.dk visAvis kontakt // visAvis contact Shetlandsgade 3, 4 sal. 2300 København S. Danmark email: contact@visavis.dk www.visavis.dk www.trampolinehouse.dk visAvis er støttet af // visAvis is supported by:

ADT – Asyl Dialog Tanken

Leder Kirkeasyl Irakernes situation Tema: Liv & Død “Lad os gå” – De bevæger sig ikke Selvmord La vie sans vie En engel vokser op Nu du endelig har fået asyl 99 % us citizen De grå sider Historier indefra Interview Et digt Asyl Dialog Tank Kryds og tværs Kunstanmeldelse En personlig beretning

4 6 8 9 10 12 13 14 16 18 20 22 26 27 28 30 31 32

Editorial Church asylum The situation of the Iraqis Theme: Life & Death “Let’s go” – They do not move Suicide La vie sans vie An angel grows up Now that you finally got asylum 99 % us citizen Grey pages Inside stories Interview A poem The Asylum Dialogue Tank Crossword Art review A personal story

Issue #1 Summer 2009

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Billeder indefra // Pictures from within

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

Leder // Editorial

Fra usynlig til deltagende

From invisible to participating

D

T

visAvis er ét blandt flere projekter i forbindelse med Trampolinhuset, der er et kulturhus hvor danskere og asylansøgere kan møde hinanden og arbejde sammen. visAvis og Trampolinhuset er civile projekter, hvor helt almindelige medborgere selv kan gøre en forskel i behandlingen af asylansøgerene.

Ingen asylansøger tjener på at sælge avisen. Alle indtægter går til den selvejende institution ADT (Asyl Dialog Tank), der går til projekter mellem danskere og asylansøgere, statsborgere og statsløse.

visAvis is one amongst several projects in connection with the Trampolinehouse, which is a cultural house for Danes and asylum seekers to meet each other and work together. visAvis and the Trampolinehouse are civilian projects, where ordinary citizens themselves can make a difference in the treatment of our refugees.

None of the visAvis sellers earn from selling the paper. All profits goes to the independent institution ADT (Asylum Dialogue Tank), in order to do constructive projects between Danes and asylum seekers, citizens and non-citizens.

en avis, De sidder med i hånden, har to formål: at oplyse og at samarbejde. visAvis er resultatet af et samarbejde mellem danskere og landets førende eksperter på asylområdet: asylansøgerne.

Der skrives meget om asylansøgerne, men asylansøgerne har - indtil i dag - ikke haft sit eget talerør. Det er visAvis’ mål at være et sådan talerør.

Selv om asylansøgerne har en plads i medierne, er der mange i Danmark, der ikke ved eller har fornemmelse for, hvilke forhold flygtningene lever under i vores eget land. Det søger visAvis at afhjælpe. Jo større uvidenhed, desto større isolation.

Siden slutningen af 1990’erne har Danmark ført en asylpolitik, der som overordnet mål har at gøre Danmark uattraktivt for flygtninge.

Der er ikke behov for medlidenhed, men for kommunikation. Det værste ved at være i en flygtningelejr er nemlig at være isoleret.

De fleste asylansøgere har hverken lov til at udføre lønnet eller ulønnet, hverken frivilligt eller humanitært arbejde og har ikke de mest grundlæggende sociale rettigheder.

At visAvis blever solgt fra gader og stræder, at en flygtning kan stå ansigt til ansigt med en dansker, ligger i forlængelse as visAvisens mål: at bryde isolationen.

Der er ikke behov for hjælp, men der er behov for at kunne arbejde.

Der er ikke så meget behov for at gøre noget for som at gøre noget med flygtningene i Danmark. Der er ikke kun behov for at gøre opmærksom på asylansøgernes situation, men at skabe nye konstruktive og nyttige projekter med asylansøgerne.

he paper you are holding in your hand has two purposes: to enlighten and to cooperate.

The visAvis is a result of cooperation between Danes and the leading experts on asylum in the country: the asylum seekers.

A lot is written about the asylum seekers, but the asylum seekers have - until today - not had their own platform of expression. It is the purpos of visAvis to be such a platform.

Even though the asylum seekers have a place in the media, there are many in Denmark that have no real idea or sense of the conditions under which refugees live in our own country. visAvis seeks to change this. The more ignorance, the more isolation.

Since the end of the 1990s Denmark have led a policy for asylum, with the overall target to make Denmark unattractive for refugees.

There is no need for pity, but for communication. The worst part of being in a refugee camp is exactly being isolated.

Most asylum seekers are not allowed to work neither paid nor unpaid, neither voluntary nor humanitarian work, and do not have the most basic social rights.

The paper beeing sold on the street, for a refugee being face to face with a Dane, is in continuation of the objective of the visAvis: to break the isolation.

There is no need of help, but there is a need of being able to work.

There is not so much a need to do something for, but to do something with the refugees in Denmark. There is not only a need to cause awareness of the situation of the asylum seekers, but to create new constructive and useful projects with the asylum seekers.

Issue #1 Summer 2009

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Næste udgivelse // Next Issue

Åben invitation Open invitation Fra: Michael Thouber <thouber@gmail.com> Dato: Fri, 5 June 2009 08:51:13 +0200 Til: Birthe Rønn Hornbech<inm@inm.dk>, Helle Sjelle <helle.sjelle@ft.dk>, Peter Skaarup<dfalll@ft.dk> , Karen Jespersen <karen.jespersen@ft.dk>, Henrik Dam Kristensen <henrik.kristensen@ft.dk>, Anne Baastrup <anne.bastrup@ft.dk>, Morten Østergaard <morten.ostergaard@ft.dk>, Johanne Schmidt <johanne.schmidt-nielsen@ft.dk> Emne: Invitation

Kære minister, Kære ordførere

Dear Minister, Dear spokesman

Jeg skriver til jer med en åben invitation.

Hereby an open invitation.

Baggrunden er, at jeg er blevet indbudt af en nystartet dansk avis, visAvis, til at

The background is an invitation from a newly started newspaper, visAvis, to write

skrive et indlæg om den igangværende asylpolitik i Danmark. Umiddelbart ikke et

a comment on the present asylum policies in Denmark. It is not a subject I’m very

emne som jeg har mange meninger om, men som vælger og som medlem af Det

familiar with but as a member of the Conservative People Party and a regular

Konservative Folkeparti har jeg valgt at takke ja til invitationen – om ikke andet

elector, I choose to accept the invitation – if not for other reasons than to get

i håbet om at blive klogere på et emne, der fylder meget i dansk dagspresse og

more insight in a subject that takes much focus in Danish media and even more

endnu mere i de berørtes liv.

in the subjects life.

Mit dilemma er, at jeg har svært ved at vurdere om det er rimeligt, at de ud-

I have a dilemma figuring out whether or not there it is reasonable to send the

viste asylansøgere nu bliver sendt tilbage til Irak. Invitationen til jer – på vegne

refugees back to Iraq. My invitation to you – on the behalf of the newspaper – is

af avisen – er derfor, at vi sammen rejser til det område i Irak, som de afviste

therefore to travel together to those parts of Iraq that the refugees are supposed

asylansøgere tænkes hjemsendt til. På den måde kan både I, jeg og resten af

to be sent back to. In this way both you, me and the rest of the Danish population

den danske befolkning få syn for sagen og svar på det helt centrale spørgsmål: Er

can get a first sight of this case and an answer of the central question: Is this area

området klar til en hjemsendelse eller er der stadig for uroligt?

safe for the return of the refugees or are the conditions to insecure?

Jeg ved, at jeres kalendere er hårdt bookede, og jeg stiller mig derfor åben

I know you are very busy and leave it up to you to plan the trip in order to ac-

for at vi planlægger rejsen, når det kan lade sig gøre for jer. Omvendt er jeg også

commodate your time. I’m, on the other hand, also aware of that you have three

bekendt med, at I netop nu har 3 måneders fri fra arbejdet i Folketingssalen, og

month vacation from your duties at the parliament and I expect therefore that

jeg forventer derfor, at vi kan afvikle rejsen inden 1. September 2009, som er

we could engage our travel before the deadline of visAvis, the first of September

deadline for næste udgave af visAvis.

2009.

Ser frem til at høre fra jer og til vores fælles rejse til Irak i nærmeste fremtid.

Looking forward to your answers and our common trip to Iraq in the near future.

Med venlig hilsen

Yours truly,

Michael Thouber

Michael Thouber

Næste udgivelse // Next issue

Tema: Land & Jord // Theme: Country & Soil Det næste nummer af visAvis, som udkommer i September 2009, vil beskæftige sig med modsætningen mellem land og nationalitet. En palæstinenser kan f.eks. være knyttet til Israels jord, men ikke til landet.

Dette problem eksisterer også indenfor Danmarks grænser. Emnet er komplekst men fylder rigtig

meget i mange menneskers hverdag. Pas, medborgerskab og personnummer er ikke noget alle har.

I de danske flygtningecentre bor der vidner til så godt som alle jordens aktuelle konflikter. Hvad kan vi lære af deres erfaringer og hvordan spejler det vores eget forhold til land og jord?

The next issue of visAvis, September 2009, will be focusing on the problems surrounding nation and nationalities. An example is a Palestinian who is connected to the Israeli soil but not to the country.

These problems exist in Denmark as well. The subject is complex and has huge importance for

many people in their daily life.

Passport, citizenship and social security number is not for every one.

In the Danish asylum camps we house witness from almost every current conflict on earth. What could we learn from these witnesses and how does it mirror our own relation to land and earth?

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

Right now // Lige nu

Kirke asyl E

n lille trappe fører ud til en klaustrofobisk gård på bagsiden af Brorsons Kirke i København. Dette er kirken, hvor 120 af de 282 irakiske flygtninge nu gemmer sig, efter den danske og irakiske regering indgik en udvisning-imod-hjælpe-aftale. Den smalle trappe på bagsiden er det eneste rolige sted, så vi laver intereviewet her.

Bisian Avdel er femten år gammel, hun har tandbøjle på, som er så typisk for teenagepiger, og hun holder min mobiltelefon, som er vores optageudstyr. Afraz Naif er 24 og ryger alt for mange cigaretter.

Virkelig fare

Bisian har været her i ti år; hun har studeret i tre år i en dansk skole og har masser af venner. Hendes familie flygtede fra Irak, fordi hendes kurdiske far havde gjort noget, hun ved stadig ikke hvad, og derfor var eftersøgt af Saddam Husseins politikorps. Nu frygter hun, at hendes far vil blive udsat for repressalier både af loyalisterne og af politiet, hvis de vender tilbage til Irak.

Bisian: Ingen ved, hvad der foregår, alle er efter alle.

Afraz: Der er også interesser fra andre lande som Iran og Syrien. Det er total kaos og meget farligt.

Bisian: Måske ved folk her ikke, hvordan det føles at være under sådan et pres, det er derfor, de synes, vi skal tage tilbage. De ser nogle døde mennesker på TV, men de ser ikke det uafladelige myrderi og den konstante vold.

Afraz: Jeg synes det er meget mærkeligt, at danskerne ikke forstår, at så snart vi har et sikkert land, vil alle tage tilbage. Hvorfor skulle vi blive her, hvis ikke det var nødvendigt?

Afraz har været i Danmark i tre år. Han flygtede fra den stigende vold, fordi han ikke ville ende med at dræbe eller blive dræbt af én, han betragtede som en bror.

Afraz: Her i kirken hjælper vi alle sammen hinanden; sådan skulle Irak være. De, der vil adskillelse, er ikke her i kirken, men dér nede, i Irak, hvor tingene er gået så galt. For mange politiske interesser og en korrupt regering er den virkelige fare.

Kan det blive værre?

At være nytteløs

Både Bisian og Afraz er bange for at vende tilbage til Irak. De er begge overbeviste om, at deres liv er i fare, og selv hvis de overlevede, ville de intet have i Irak, og de bringer intet med sig. De er værre stillet nu, end da de forlod Irak.

For Bisian så alt så godt ud for et halvt år siden. Hendes familie fik endelig deres egen lejlighed udenfor lejren, og hun nød det virkelig. Nu kunne hun få venner med hjem og leve et ordentligt liv, selv om hun var flygtning.

Afraz: Jeg foretrækker at leve her i kirken fremfor i centeret. Her er vi i Herrens hus. Politiet træder ikke pludseligt ind og tager dig til lufthavnen. Jeg føler mig mere sikker her, selv om forholdene er dårligere.

Bisian: Jeg har været i kirken i tre dage nu, og jeg har ikke haft et øjeblik alene til at kontakte mine venner. Der er i virkeligheden ikke tid til noget. Du spekulerer bare på, hvad der mon sker i morgen. Jeg vil få det meget vanskeligt, hvis jeg vendte tilbage til Irak. Jeg kender ikke nogen der. Jeg kan knap tale kurdisk, intet arabisk, og jeg kan kun skrive på dansk, mit liv er her. Mine venner er i skole lige nu. Jeg tror der er ok.

Stemningen bliver spændt, Afraz tænder endnu en cigaret. Efter en forvirrende pause tager Afraz kontrollen over samtalen.

… det er tydeligt, at den danske regering ikke bekymrer sig om hvordan vi skal overleve i Irak. … it is obvious that the Danish government doesn´t care about how we are going to survive in Iraq.

Bisian forstår hans pointe. Hun brød sig heller ikke om centeret, hvor man hver eneste dag blev mindet om, hvilken sårbar situation, man var i.

Bisian: Folk forsvandt altid. Hvis ikke de blev deporteret, fik de til sidst en permanent opholdstilladelse og rejste til en eller anden kommune langt væk, hvor man ikke hørte fra dem mere.

Nogle børn løber rundt og leger og afbryder os for femte gang. Det er vanskeligt at sige, at de skal lege et andet sted. Kirken rummer allerede 80 personer og pladsen er alt for lille.

Afraz: Jeg flyttede fra én død til en anden. Den fysiske død er i Irak, den psykologiske død er her. Da jeg kom hertil, ville jeg vise mit værd, men jeg har været afskåret fra at gøre noget som helst, intet arbejde, ingen studier.

Hverken Bisian eller Afraz stoler på den nye regering i Bagdad - eller på den danske.

Bisian: Vi kender ikke aftalen mellem de to regeringer, men det er tydeligt, at den danske regering ikke bekymrer sig om hvordan vi skal overleve i Irak.

Afraz er mere kynisk: Jeg har meget lidt tiltro, vi bliver sendt hjem uanset hvad. Jeg mener, at vi kun er en handels vare i et politisk spil.

Spekulationer

Der er ingen lette løsninger på det fastlåste asylproblem i kirken. Både Bisian og Afraz beder den danske regering om at se på realiteterne i Irak og tilbagekalde beslutningen om at deportere dem. De fleste af dem, der er døde i Irak, er døde efter krigen ophørte, og Saddam blev taget til fange. Hvis forholdene atter bliver gode i Irak, vil vi vende hjem igen.

Rygter og gisninger spreder sig i kirken. Med al den spænding og frygt er det vanskeligt at holde sig i balance.

Bisian: Det er hårdt at være her i kirken, – meget hårdt. Jeg er blevet bange. Jeg vil ikke tage tilbage.

Issue #1 Summer 2009

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Right now // Lige nu

Church asylum A

small stair leads out to a claustrophobic yard on the backside of Brorsons Church in Copenhagen. This is the church where 120 of the 280 Iraqi refugees now hide from deportation. The small stair on the backside is the only calm area so we do the interview here.

Bisian Avdel is 15 years old, she has a dental correction that is so typical for teenage girls and hold my mobile phone which is our recording device. Afraz Naif is 24 and smokes way to many cigarettes.

A real danger

Bisian has been here for 10 years. She has studied three years in a Danish school and has plenty of friends. Her family fled Iraq because here Kurdish father hade done something, she still doesn’t know what, and therefore was wanted by Saddam Hussein’s police force. Now she fear that her father would suffer retaliations from loyalist or even the police if they came back to Iraq.

Bisian: Nobody knows what is going in there everybody is after eachother.

Afraz: There are also interests from other countries like Iran and Syria. It is a total mess and very dangerous.

Bisian: Maybe people here don’t know what it feels like being in such stress, that’s why they think we should go back. They see some dead people on TV but they don’t see the constant murdering and violence.

Afraz: I think it is so strange the Danes don’t understand that as soon we have a secure country everyone is going back. Why should we stay here if it was not necessary?

Afraz has been in Denmark for three years. He fled the rising violence because he didn’t want to end up killing or get killed by someone whom he considers a brother.

Afraz: Here in the church we all help each other; this is how Iraq should be. Those who wish division are not here in the church. But over there, in Iraq, things have gone bad. To many political interests and a corrupt government is a real danger.

Can it get any worse?

Both Bisian and Afraz are afraid of returning to Iraq. They are both convinced there life is in danger and even if they survived they have nothing in Iraq and they brought nothing with them. They are worse off now then when they left Iraq.

fraz har været i Danmark i tre år. Han flygtede A fra den stigende vold, fordi han ikke ville ende med at dræbe eller blive dræbt af én, han betragtede som en bror.

For Bisian everything looked so good half a year ago. Her family finally got an apartment of there own outside the camp and she really enjoyed it. Now she could bring home friends and live a normal life even if they still were refugees.

Afraz have been in Denmark three years.

He fled the rising violence because he didn’t want to end up killing or get killed by someone whom he considers a brother.

Bisian: I have been in the church for three days now and I haven’t had a moment of my own to contact my friends.

There is no time for anything actually, you just speculate on what will happened tomorrow. I will have a very hard time if I have to get back to Iraq. I don’t know any one there, I hardly speak Kurdish, no Arab, and I can only write in Danish, my life is here. My friends are at school right now, I think they are OK...

The situation get tense, Afraz lights another cigarette.

After a confusing break Afraz takes control of the conversation.

Being useless

Afraz: I prefer living here in the church rather then living in the centre. Here we are in the house of the Lord. The police don’t step in here any time and bring you to the airport. I feel more secure here even if the living conditions are tougher.

Bisian understands his point. She also disliked the centre where one got reminded everyday of what a vulnerable situation one lived in.

Bisian: People always disappeared, if not deported they finally got a permanent residence and went to some commune far away never to be herd of again.

Some kids running around and playing interrupting us for the fifth time. It’s difficult to tell them to play somewhere else. The church already hosts about 80 people and the facilities are too small.

Afraz: I moved from one death to another, in Iraq there is the physical death here is a psychological death. When I came here I wanted to prove myself but I have been restrained from doing anything, no work or studies.

Nether Bisian or Afraz trust the new government in Baghdad, nor the government in Denmark.

Bisian: We don’t know what the agreement is between the two governments but it is obvious that the Danish government doesn’t care about how we are going to survive in Iraq.

Afraz is more cynical: I have very little hope, we are being sent home anyway. I think we are just merchandise in a political game.

Speculations

There is no easy way to solve the deadlock in the church asylum situation. Both Bisian and Afraz pray to Danish government to look into the reality of the situation in Iraq and reverse the decision to deport them. Most people who died in Iraq dies after the war were over and Saddam captured. If things finally are turning well in Iraq people will head home again.

Rumours and speculations are flourishing in the church.

With all tension and fear it is difficult to keep one´s mind clear.

Bisian: It is hard being here in the church – very hard. I’m afraid now; I don’t want to go back.

Right now // Lige nu

Magt og magtesløshed: irakernes situation

Power and powerlessness: the situation of the Iraqis

Den 13. maj fik den danske regering endelig afpresset de irakiske myndigheder til at acceptere tvangshjemsendte afviste asylansøgere fra alle dele af Irak. Indtil nu har det kun været muligt at tvinge folk hjem til de nordlige områder. UNHCR fraråder stadig generelt hjemsendelser til det sydlige og centrale Irak, og anbefaler fortsat at folk fra de mest urolige områder får beskyttelsesstatus.

Ud af de 282 afviste irakere i Danmark stammer omkring halvdelen fra de allermest usikre områder.

On May 13 the Danish government finally pressured the Iraqi authorities into accepting the forced repatriation of Iraqi asylum seekers from all parts of Iraq. Until now it has only been possible to force people back to the northern parts. UNHCR still advices against repatriation to the southern and central Iraq, and still advices that people from the most unruly areas receives protective status. Of the 282 rejected Iraqi refugees around half are from the most unsafe areas.

I

T

rakerne appellerer til regeringen om at tage deres sager op igen. Dette kan tage noget tid og er på ingen måde sikkert.

Men det kan tage lang tid at få rejsedokumenter klar til dem alle – nogle kan hjemsendes ret hurtigt, mens andre alligevel ikke kan hjemsendes pga. tvivl om identiteten.

bund uden bolig, penge og arbejde, man er i høj risiko for kidnapninger og afpresning, man har ingen fornemmelse for situationen politisk, religiøst og sikkerhedsmæssigt, og det område, man stammer fra, kan have fået en helt anden etnisk/religiøs sammensætning.

Og endelig er der en række ting, irakerne kan forsøge:

De afviste irakere i Danmark har oven i købet været forhindret i at opretholde deres kompetencer med henblik på arbejde og ansvar for det daglige liv. Mange er blevet decideret psykisk syge af den lange periode i usikkerhed, en del har også oplevet traumatiske ting helt tilbage fra Saddam Husseins tid, som de ikke har fået behandling for.

• Opsøge advokater og frivillige rådgivere, hvis de mener der kunne være en chance for genoptagelse af deres asylsag eller humanitærsag – og skynde sig at få ansøgt.

• Spørge Rigspolitiet om de kan få lov at udrejse frivilligt til et tredje land, hvor de f.eks. har familie, der bor eller har boet der i en periode.

• Alle børnene bør udredes – dvs. undersøges socialt og mentalt for, om de har problemer med udvikling, sprog, traumer, psykiske problemer. Der burde være mulighed for at få en ny praksis igennem for humanitær opholdstilladelse, sådan at børn med særlige problemer ikke skal sendes ud til usikre områder.

• Og endelig kan de forsøge at opbygge et kontaktnetværk i Irak – finde frem til venner, familie og organisationer, som måske kan hjælpe når de vender tilbage. Man kan finde frem til meget via internettet og danske foreninger og organisationer.

Som hjemvendt flygtning er man særligt udsat af flere grunde. Efter lang tids fravær har man mistet sine netværk, man er på bar

Børnene er særligt sårbare. De er opvokset op med den danske kultur og med dansk som deres hovedsprog, en del er født her. Deres skolemæssige niveau er ofte lavt og ikke alderssvarende.

Siden krigen er der kun ankommet relativt få irakere til Danmark, hvoraf langt de fleste er blevet afvist og er taget videre til andre lande. Omvendt i Sverige, som alene i 2007 modtog 18.500 irakere og gav beskyttelse til flertallet. For ikke at tale om nabolandene, hvor alene Syrien har taget imod 1 mio. irakiske flygtninge siden krigens start.

Der er stadig ikke sikkerhed i Irak. Det tydeligste bevis på det, er at den seneste ”fact finding mission” fra bl.a. det amerikanske udenrigsministerium slet ikke turde bevæge sig ind i de usikre områder for at undersøge forholdene! De humanitære organisationer kan heller ikke arbejde i de områder, så man kan ikke engang opbygge et repatrieringsprogram for de hjemsendte.

he Iraqis appeal to the government to take up their cases again. This may take some time, and is by no means certain. But it may take a long time preparing travelling documents for the all – some can be send home pretty fast, but others can not be deported anyway, on grounds of doubt of their identity.

your networks are lost, you are at square one with no housing, money or work, you are at high risk of kidnappings and blackmail, you have no sense of the situation politically, religiously, and security wise, and the area from which you came may have obtained a completely different ethnic/religious composition.

And finally there is a number of things the Iraqis may attempt:

The rejected Iraqis in Denmark have on top of that been hindered in sustaining their competences for work and responsibility for daily life. Many have become outright psychically ill by the long period of uncertainty, and some also have experienced traumatic things all the way back from the time of Saddam Hussein that they have not been treated for.

• Seek out lawyers and voluntary advisers, if there is a chance for a re-evaluation of their request for asylum or humanitarian standing – and hurry up applying.

• Asking the National Police (‘Rigspolitiet’) if they may travel voluntarily to a third, if they for instance have family there or have lived there for a time.

• All the children should be reviewed – that is examined socially and mentally for problems with development, language, traumas, and psychological problems. There should be a possibility for obtaining a new praxis within humanitarian protective status, so that children with particular problems will not be send to unsafe areas.

• And finally they may attempt building a contact network in Iraq – finding friends, family, and organizations that may help when they return. It is possible to find a lot through the internet, and Danish associations and organizations.

As repatriated refugee one is exposed for several reasons. After long times absence

The children are especially vulnerable. They are raised in Danish culture and with Danish as their main language, some are born here.

Their educational level is often low and not at level with .

Since the war only relatively few Iraqis have arrived in Denmark, most of these have been rejected and have left for other countries. On the other hand Sweden, which alone in 2007 received 18.500 Iraqis, gave protection to the majority. Not to mention the neighbouring countries, of which Syria alone have taken 1. million Iraqi refugees in, since the start of the war.

There is still not safety in Iraq. The most obvious proof of that is the last “fact finding mission” of amongst others the American Department of State not even daring to move into the unsafe areas to examine the situation! Nor can the humanitarian organizations work in those areas, so it is not even possible to build a program for repatriation of those send back.

9

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

Kadica Baftari fra Kosovo kom til Danmark for ni år siden. Sammen med sin mand og nevø boede hun i alle de seks danske lejre, inden hun døde af hjerteanfald i Kongelundens Asylcenter d. 8. april i år.

Kadica Baftari from Kosovo came to Denmark nine years ago. Together with her husband and nephew, she stayed in all of the six Danish camps before she died from a hart attack at Kongalunden Asylum Center the 8 of April this year.

Illustration : Mahammad Hamamda

Tema: Liv og død Har man aldrig set en lejr, har man ikke brudt grænsen til det skjulte område i samfundet – om det så er fordi man er tvunget til at opholde sig der eller blot har lært en, der er det, at kende – kan det være svært at have et billede af disse lejre og det liv, der leves i dem. I medierne bliver asylansøgere, flygtninge og migranter oftest beskrevet som et problem eller fremstillet som ofre, men altid uden at være til stede selv.

Debatten behandler oftest asylansøgere som led i en større, og absolut nødvendig, diskussion omkring samfundets indretning, men sjældent med udgangspunkt i deres liv.

Theme: Life and death ‘If you have never seen a camp, if you have never broken the border to that hidden area of society – whether it is because you are forced to stay there, or merly have gotten to know someone that is – it can be difficault to have an image of these camps and the life lived in them.

In the media asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants are most often refered to as a problem or as victims, but always without being present themselves. The debate often treats asylum seekers as a part of a larger, and absolutely necessary, discussion on how the society is organized, but rarely with focus on their lifes.

Det er vigtigt at holde fast i, at der er mennesker i lejrene; mennesker der lever deres liv her – liv, der leves under andre vilkår end andre i samfundet, men ikke desto mindre liv, der deler en lang række basale menneskelige vilkår med alle andre. Med temaet “Liv og død”, ønsker vi at sætte fokus på hvordan en række asylansøgere oplever de mest basale menneskelige erfaringer ud fra lejrens særlige vilkår.

Hvordan opleves det at føde og opdrage en datter i en lejr? At vente på at der skal ske noget, har en særlig betydning for en asylansøger; man ved, hvad man venter på. Men hvad når der går år efter år, uden at det kommer? Og hvad når det pludselig kommer alligevel, hvad når man pludselig får asyl, hvad sker der så? Og hvad når tiden virker uendelig, når håbet er væk og selvmord ligner en udvej? Og hvad når det hele er slut? Hvem er der til din begravelse, hvor bliver man i det hele taget begravet, hvis man ikke har noget statsborgerskab, hvem vil mindes dig, når du er væk?

Svarene i dette tema er lige så forskellige og individuelle, som hvis man stillede enhver anden samme spørgsmål. Mange, der aldrig har set en lejr, vil kunne genkende frygten for døden, bekymringerne for og stoltheden over et barn, eller følelsen af at være ved at give det hele op. Temaet “Liv og død” er erfaringer fra livet i lejren, men det er også simpelthen menneskelige erfaringer.

However it is importaint to insist that there are people in the camps; people living their lifes here – lifes lived under different conditions than others in society, but nevertheless lifes, that shares a long range of basic human conditions with everyone else. With the theme “Life and death”, we wish to focus on how a group of asylum seekers sees the most basic human experiences, from the paticular conditions of the camp.

How is it experienced to give birth to and raise a daughter in a camp?

Waiting for something to happen has a particular meening to an asylum seeker, you know what you are waiting for. But what when year after year passes by, without it happening? And what when it suddenly do after all, what when you suddenly get asylum, what happens then?

And what when time seems infinite, when hope is gone and suicide seems an option? And what when it is all over? Who will come to your funeral, who will remember you, when you are gone?

The answers in this theme are as different and individual, as they would be if anyone else was asked the same questions. Many, who have never seen a camp, will recognize the fear of death, the concerns for and pride in a child, or the feeling of being close to giving up on everything. The theme “Life and death” are experiences of life in the camp, but it is also simply human experiences.

10

Issue #1 Summer 2009

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death Samtale mellem asylansøgerne Patrick, Nabil Darwish og Erik Yakubjan og danskerne Mira Kellerman, Joachim Hamou - og Sofie Holten, der også har arrangeret hele samtalen.

“Lad os gå”– De bevæger sig ikke

Der går ikke en eneste dag uden, at vi venter på et eller andet - stort som småt. Vi venter på uhåndgribelige ting, som vi ikke kan sætte ord på. Nogen gang venter vi helt uden at vide det.

Samuel Beckett skrev sine berømte teaterstykker i efterkrigstidens Europa, hvor en intellektuel efterbearbejdning af krigens mange spørgsmål om moral, psykologi og meningsløshed var sat i gang.

I Becketts skuespil “Mens vi venter på Godot” (1949) findes to karakterer, Estragon og Vladimir, som venter på Godot. Godot viser sig aldrig. Vi får aldrig at vide hvem han er. Det er tematiseringen af det eksistentielle mellemrum og håndteringen af ventetiden, der bliver stykkets centrale handlingsakse.

Beckett på Nørrebro

“Mens vi venter på Godot” har i tidens løb været genstand for mange forskellige læsninger. Vi samledes en søndag aften i en lille lejlighed på Nørrebro for at forsøge at give nye bud på, hvilken tilstand stykket beskriver en samtale mellem tre mennesker der lever frit i det danske samfund og med tre mennesker, der lever indenfor rammerne af det danske asylsystem og dermed erfaringen og effekten af lange ventetider på eget sind og krop.

Den tabte tid

Tiden spiller en central rolle i Becketts stykke. Der er generel forvirring om, hvor lang tid karaktererne Estragon og Vladimir egentligt har ventet på Godot, og de har ingen måder at måle tiden på. Tiden er flydt ud og er blevet til en stor udefinérbar masse. Alle holdepunkter er forsvundet.

Patrick: Det er ret symbolsk.

Vi sidder også og venter, men ingen ved på hvad, hvorfor, hvad der kommer til at ske og

hvordan det vil slutte Nabil: Man venter bare på noget, på denne her fyr Godot eller et eller andet...

Erik: Men hele livet er jo sådan, ikke kun det her system.

Sofie: Karaktererne i stykket ved ikke, hvad der egentligt skal ske, hvis de møder Godot eller hvem det nu er. Det er fuldstændigt abstrakt, og på den måde er ventetiden blevet til selve livet, det at vente er blevet til det at leve.

Mira: Ja, man har noget, man venter på, og så pludselig bliver alt det, der findes “nu”, som er livet, uvirkeligt på en måde. Hvorfor mister nuet sin vigtighed som en konsekvens af ventetiden?

Nabil: I ved, de fleste folk sidder bare og venter. De ved ikke, hvad de venter på, men i løbet af ventetiden mister de alting.... det er deres liv, der forsvinder. Man bliver nødt til at indse, at tiden, mens man venter, også er livet. Det er ikke kun målet, der er vigtigt. Dette sekund af dit liv er ligeså vigtigt som det øjeblik, hvor du får det, du venter på.

Jeg er kun lige begyndt at forstå dette for et par måneder siden. Jeg har været i et sort hul i disse 5 år, og jeg ventede...

Erik: Ja, vi har allesammen brugt fem år i vores sorte huller...

Nabil: Man har ingen beskyttelse, ingen ømhed, ingen udveksling og udvikling af idéer og tanker - i 5 år var alting bare det samme.... jeg ventede...

Søvnen

Karaktererne i stykket har glemt, hvor de kommer fra, og det virker som om, at de endda har glemt hvem de er.

Vi diskuterer om det at glemme og miste tidsfornemmelsen er en konsekvens af det at vente, også udenfor stykkets virkelighed.

Nabil: Jeg tror, at det er en konsekvens af “venten”... det

er i hvert fald den oplevelse, jeg har haft. Jeg husker ikke så mange ting længere - har I det ikke på samme måde?

James: Jeg har det helt klart sådan.

Nabil: Jeg kunne godt lide den del af stykket, hvor de siger “så du månen, så du solen?”...”ja, de er altid der”... nogen gange spørger folk én om, hvorfor man har sovet så længe eller noget lignende. Men hvorfor gå op i det?

For solen og månen er jo altid der... der er ingen forskel, alting er det samme.

Jeg har været her i 6 år Patrick: Yeah? Så er du jo lige kommet...!

Nabil: Og jeg vågnede først for et par måneder siden. Jeg tænker på, hvad jeg har gjort i de 5 foregående år, og jeg kan ikke huske det! Ved I hvor mange dage det er?

Mira: Kan du huske hvad der fik dig til at ændre dit perspektiv på ventetiden?

Nabil: Jeg ved det ikke, jeg vågnede bare, ligesom hvis man er midt i en drøm og så pludseligt vågner. Måske hvis du gør noget, som gør dig virkelig glad. Det kan vække dig - ligesom et vækkeur om morgenen. Jeg havde en virkelig god oplevelse, og jeg blev

Jeg kan huske denne her gamle mand, som fik opholdstilladelse, men så sagde han, at han ikke havde brug for den, han ville gerne blive i lejren I can remember this old man who got his residence permit, but then he said he didn’t need it, that he’d rather stay in the asylum.

meget glad, det var sådan der skete for mig.

Mira: Der er noget med det at sove, i stykket ville Estragon også sove hele tiden...

Sofie: De er ikke sikre på, om de er vågne eller sover, om det er en drøm eller ej. Der er total forvirring.

James: Ved I, at jeg i dag har været i Danmark i et år?

Patrick: Du har en stor fremtid foran dig....

Alle griner.

Handlingsmuligheder

Der er ingen forventninger om, at situationen blot ændrer sig, det kræver store indsatser at blive ved med at beholde sine mål og sin identitet i ventetidens mellemrum. Estragon og Vladimir har heller ingen illusioner. En samtale mtllem dem lyder: Estragon: “Nå, skal vi gå?”

Vladimir: “Ja, lad os gå”.

De bevæger sig ikke.

Deres venten er vedvarende, og selvom de gerne ville videre, kæmper de ikke længere imod.

Mira: Men hvorfor har du egentligt ikke gjort de ting, du gerne ville, Patrick? Jeg ved, at det er et svært spørgsmål...

Patrick: Hvordan skulle jeg kunne gøre dem? Jeg har ikke ret til at gøre noget som helst... vi har ikke mulighed for at gøre noget.

Nabil: Men du gør noget nu, og du har stadig ingen rettigheder...

Patrick: Nu gør jeg noget takket være jer andre...

I starten af stykket spørger Estragon rettet mod Vladimir, om de dog ikke har nogle rettigheder længere. Hvortil Vladimir svarer, at de ikke har mistet dem, men at de har opgivet dem, ladet dem passere. Estragon spørger dog videre, om det så betyder, at de ikke er bundet....

Bundet til hvad, vil Vladimir gerne vide. Bundet til Godot,

svarer Estragon. Det afviser Vladimir blankt. Men Estragon og Vladimir er bundet til deres venteposition.

Erik: Det handler om, hvordan man motiverer sig selv.

Hvis man ikke har en grund til at gøre noget, så er det svært at tvinge sig selv. Måske kan man gøre det en, to, måske ti gange, men hvis man ikke ser nogle resultater begynder hænderne at hænge... For eksempel i en samtale som denne kan man finde nogen ting til sig selv, som man kan bruge, og det giver én en lille smule styrke, så man kan fortsætte på sin vej...

Patrick: Fortsætte med at vente...

Alle griner.

Mira: De snakker i stykket også om at hænge sig selv, fordi de er så trætte af at vente...

Nabil: Vi tænker på det hver eneste dag...

James, Patrick og Erik griner højlydt....

Nabil: Ventetiden dræber dig på en måde, så hvorfor ikke bare gøre det selv?

Hvad venter du på?

Sofie: Stykket er også meget eksistentialistisk og taler om livet generelt for alle, at livet er en slags venteposition...

Patrick: Okay, hvad venter du på? Kan du fortælle mig det?

Nabil: Ja det er godt, vi kan få ram på jer nu...

James: Godt spørgsmål...

Nabil: Drej bordet rundt!

Sofie: Jeg tror at det at vente er forbundet til spørgsmålet om lykke, for alle vil gerne være lykkelige.

Patrick: Så du venter på at blive lykkelig?

Sofie: Ja, sådan noget i den stil...

Mira: Jeg tror at ventetid for mig ofte er forbundet med at være ulykkelig. Jeg hader at vente, jeg vil bare være et andet sted, og jeg spilder min tid. At vente er en utilfred-

stillende og uproduktiv tilstand.

Vi snakker om hvordan det kan være at mange aldrig er tilfredse og venter på noget andet end det de har. Men også hvordan det at vente og være på vej mod et mål, at være undervejs, er to forskellige ting. At vi måske sammenblander “venten” og ambition.

Nabil: Ambition er, at man gør noget, og man er på vej hen til det, man vil nå - men det, vi taler om her, er at vente på ingenting.

Joachim: At føle at man ikke kan gøre noget, at man ikke kan skride til handling. Ligegyldigt hvilke handlinger man foretager sig, ville man ikke rigtigt kunne gøre noget for at ændre på sin situation.

Nabil: Faktisk så tror jeg, at dette stykke handler om os... hvis denne her fyr Godot faktisk dukker op til sidst, vil ingenting være forandret, alting vil forblive det samme. De vil ikke forlade stedet, de kommer til at blive der. De vil ikke rejse længere - hvor skulle de også tage hen efter al den tid? Det ville være meningsløst at tage nogen andre steder hen... De har træet, og de har støvlerne (gennemgående rekvisitter, red.)... Så det er os.

Patrick: Jeg tror også, at det er os.

Erik: Man kan lave en parallel.

Patrick: Jeg kan huske denne her gamle mand, som fik opholdstilladelse, men så sagde han, at han ikke havde brug for den, han ville gerne blive i lejren. Ligesom Estragon og Vladimir, de har ventet så længe, at alt er blevet meningsløst. Jeg spørger mig selv, hvor stærk jeg er, og hvor lang tid jeg kan tage det.

Nabil: Bare rolig, jeg spørger mig selv det samme hver dag.

Mira: Og hvad er dit svar?

Nabil: Jeg er her stadig.

Issue #1 Summer 2009

11 11

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death Conversation between asylum seekers Patrick, Nabil Darwish and Erik Yakubjan and Danes Mira Kellerman, Joachim Hamou - and Sofie Holten, who also orchestrated the discussion.

“Let’s go” – They do not move

Illustration : Misja Krenchel

Not a day goes by without waiting for something – meaningful or not. We wait for indefinable things, which cannot be described. We wait, sometimes without even realising it.

Samuel Beckett wrote his plays in a post war Europe, in the atmosphere of an intellectual search for answers to the morality, psychology and senselessness left behind from the war.

In Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” (1949) are the two characters, Estragon and Vladimir, who are waiting for Godot. Godot never appears.

We never find out who he is.

It is this theme of existential pauses and the management of the waiting situation that becomes the axis of the play.

Beckett in Nørrebro

“Waiting for Godot” has over time become the subject of various interpretations. We met on a Sunday evening, in a small apartment in the Copenhagen boroughs of Nørrebro to try to find new definitions of the human condition described in the play – a conversation between three people living freely in Danish society, and three people living within the confines of the Danish asylum system, and therefore having experienced the effect of extensive waiting, firsthand.

Lost Time

Time plays a central role in Beckett’s play. There is confusion as to how long exactly Estragon and Vladimir have been waiting for Godot, as they have no way of measuring the time. Time has become a fluid and indefinable mass. Any and all points of reference have disappeared.

Patrick: It’s quite symbolic. We also just sit around and wait. But no one knows for what, or why, or what will

happen and how it all may end Nabil: You just wait for something. For this guy Godot, or whatever…

Erik: But life itself is like that, not just this system.

Sofie: The characters of the play don’t know exactly what will happen if they actually meet Godot, or whoever it is.

It’s completely abstract, and in that sense the waiting has become life itself, and the act of waiting has become the act of living.

Mira: Yeah, you have something you’re waiting for, and suddenly everything there is in the ”now” – which is life – becomes surreal in a sense. Why does the ”now” lose its importance as a consequence of waiting?

Nabil: You know, most of the people just sit and wait. They don’t know what they’re waiting for, but in the process of waiting they lose everything…it’s their lives that are disappearing. You have to realise that the time spent waiting is also life. It’s not just the goal that is important. This very second of your life is just as important as the moment you get what you are waiting for. I only just began to understand this a few months ago. I’ve been down in a black hole in these five years, and I waited...

Erik: Yeah, we have all spent five years in our black holes…

Nabil: You have no protection, no sensitivity, no exchange or development of ideas and thoughts – for five years everything was just the same … I waited …

Slumber

The characters of the play have forgotten where they come from, and it would appear that they have even forgotten whom they are.

We discuss if forgetting, and losing sense of time is a con-

sequence of waiting, also outside the reality of the play.

Nabil: I believe it is a consequence of waiting … at least that’s the experience I’ve had.

I can’t remember that much anymore – don’t you all feel the same way?

James: I definitely feel that way.

Nabil: I liked the part of the play where they say, ”Did you see the moon? Did you see the sun?”…”Yes, they are always there.”…sometimes people ask you why you’ve slept in late or some such. But why bother with that? The sun and the moon are always going to be there…there’s no difference, everything is the same.

I’ve been here for six years Patrick: Yeah? So you just arrived then...!

Nabil: And I only just woke up a couple of months ago.

I think about what I’ve been doing for the past five years, and I can’t remember any of it! Do you know how many days that is?

Mira: Do you remember what it was, that changed your perspective on the waiting?

Nabil: I don’t know, I just woke up, like when you’re in the middle of a dream and you suddenly awake up.

Maybe if you do something that really makes you happy.

That can wake you – like an alarm clock in the morning. I had a really great experience, and was very happy, that’s how it happened for me.

Mira: There is something about sleeping, in the play Estragon just wanted to sleep all the time...

Sofie: They’re not sure if they’re awake or sleeping, if it’s a dream or not. It’s total confusion.

James: Did you all know, that I’ve been a year in Denmark today?

Patrick: You have a great future before you....

Everyone laughs.

Courses of Action

There are no expectations that the situation will just change, and it takes a great effort to keep an eye on one’s goals and identity in the pauses of waiting. Estragon and Vladimir have no illusions either. A conversation between them goes: Estragon: “Well, shall we leave?”

Vladimir: “Yes, let’s go”.

They do not move.

Their waiting is continuous, and although they would like to move on, they no longer fight it.

Mira: But why exactly haven’t you done the things you would have liked to, Patrick?

I know that it’s a tough question...

Patrick: How was I supposed to do them? I have no right to do anything…we have no opportunities to do anything.

Nabil: But you’re doing something now, and you still have no rights...

Patrick: But now I do it thanks to you others...

At the beginning of the play, Estragon asks Vladimir if they don’t have rights any longer. To this Vladimir replies, that they haven’t lost them, but they have given them up, let them go. Estragon asks further if that means that they aren’t bound. Bound to what, Vladimir wants to know. Bound to Godot, answers Estragon.

Vladimir denies this. But yet Estragon and Vladimir are bound to their waiting.

Erik: It’s about self-motivation. If you don’t have a reason to do something, then it’s hard to force yourself. Maybe you can do it once, twice, maybe ten times, but if you don’t see results you begin to droop…for example, in a conversation such as this, you

Ventetiden dræber dig på en måde, så hvorfor ikke bare gøre det selv?

The waiting does kill you in a sense, so why not just do it yourself? can find things for yourself, things to apply, and that gives you a little bit of strength, so that you can carry on...

Patrick: And keep waiting...

Everyone laughs.

Mira: In the play they also talk about hanging themselves, because they’re so tired of waiting...

Nabil: We think about it every single day...

James, Patrick og Erik laugh loudly....

Nabil: The waiting does kill you in a sense, so why not just do it yourself?

What are you waiting for?

Sofie: The play is also very existential, and talks about life in general for everyone, that life is a kind of waiting...

Patrick: Okay, what are you waiting for? Can you tell me that?

Nabil: Yeah, that’s a good one, we’ve got you now...

James: Good question...

Nabil: Turn the tables!

Sofie: I think that waiting is connected to a question of happiness, since we all want to be happy.

Patrick: So you are waiting to be happy?

Sofie: Yes, something like that...

Mira: I think that waiting, for me, is connected to being unhappy. I hate waiting, I just want to be somewhere else, and I’m wasting my time.

Waiting is an unsatisfactory and unproductive state of being.

We talk about how it is that so many people are never satisfied, and are waiting for something else than what they already have. But also how it is that waiting and being on the way towards a goal, being underway, are two separate things. That maybe we confuse ”waiting” with ambition.

Nabil: Ambition is, when you do something, and you’re on your way towards something you want to achieve – but what we’re talking about here, is waiting for nothing..

Joachim: Feeling as though you can’t do a thing, can’t scramble into action. No matter what you’re doing, not being able to change the situation.

Nabil: Actually, I think this play is about us...if this guy Godot actually shows up at the end nothing would change, everything would stay the same. They wouldn’t leave the place; they’d stay. They wouldn’t travel anymore – where on earth would they go after all that time? It would be pointless to go anywhere…They have the tree, and they have the boots (continual props, ed.)…So, that’s us.

Patrick: I think that’s us, too.

Erik: You can draw a parallel.

Patrick: I can remember this old man who got his residence permit, but then he said he didn’t need it, that he’d rather stay in the asylum.

Like Estragon and Vladimir, they’ve been waiting for so long that everything’s become meaningless. I ask myself how strong I am, and how long I can take it.

Nabil: Relax. I ask myself that same question every day.

Mira: And what’s your answer?

Nabil: I’m still here.

12

Issue #1 Summer 2009

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

Selvmord Hvor lang tid er 5 år? Hvor lang tid er 10 år? Tid er et relativt koncept. En meget sjov gut med efternavnet Einstein, der opfandt relativitetsteorien, sagde for noget tid siden: Mellem et minut med hånden på en varm pande og et minut tilbragt med en sød og elskværdig person, er forskellen – evighed. For en person, der tilbringer år i usikkerhed og frustration; hvor lang tid tager det? Når du er fanget midt i ingenting uden retfærdighed og uden nogen, der kan tage sig bare en lille smule af din smerte fra dig, er der kun en udvej – selvmord.

Illustration: Ditlev Marboe

Af Patrick

Suicide How long is 5 years? How long is 10 years? Time is a relative concept. A very funny fellow with the second name Einstein, who invented the theory of relativity, said some time ago: Between a minute held on a hot pan and a minute spent with a nice and lovely person, the difference – eternity. For a person who spent years in uncertainty and frustration; how long does it take? When you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere without justice and without somebody who can take from you just a little of your pain, there is only one exit – suicide

By Patrick

Issue #1 Summer 2009

13 13

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

la vie sans vie

livet uden liv // life without life

Saoda blev begravet i Danmark i Juni sidste år. Hun døde af AIDS kun 31 år gammel. Københavns Kommune betalte hendes begravelse, da hun var en af de heldige der havde fået opholdstilladelse.

Saoda was buried in Danmark in june a year ago. She died from AIDS only 31 years old. Københavns kommune paid for her funeral since she was lucky enough to have gotten asylum.

No man is an island, entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.

John Donne Jeg skriver dette om en der aldrig fandt ud af om han kunne blive i Danmark. Jeg har selv boet i Danmark i 10 år, og skønt jeg endnu ikke har fået opholdstilladelse føles det som var jeg født her. Livets forskellige momenter kan gøre ondt. Indtil nu har jeg set det meste, både godt og skidt. Nogle gange smiler jeg for mig selv når jeg tænker på mine oplevelser, men jeg føler mig aldrig trist. Livet tilbyder både gode og dårlige oplevelser og jeg har mødt nogle fantastiske mennesker i mit.

død. Efter han døde lå han på sit værelse i en uge før der var nogen der opdagede det. Mange folk er døde. Jeg ved ikke hvordan. Fateh, David fra Armenien, Saoda fra Afrika og en kurdisk mand. Alle var unge. Vi andre kan ikke vide os sikre på ikke at lide deres skæbne.

Jeg havde en ven i Sandholmslejren i 2000.

Han hed Mohammed Fateh og var uddannet læge fra Sudan. Han talte 3 sprog og var en stor mand der var fuld af liv. Vi delte mange skønne oplevelser sammen, men nu er han

Men jeg er bange for at dø her. Hvor ville jeg blive begravet? Hvem ville vide at jeg er her?

Livet indeholder at miste alt det du elsker.

Jeg er aldrig ked af de gode og dårlige oplevelser - c´est la vie.

Af Otman Miloud

I’m writing this about someone who never found out whether he would be allowed to stay in Denmark or not. Me, myself have lived here for 10 years, and now it feels as if I was born here, though I still haven´t got asylym. Any moment of life can hurt, and by now I’ve seen everything good and bad.

Sometimes I smile to myself when I think about my memories, but I never feel sad. Life gives you both good and bad things and I’ve met some fantastic people in my life.

moments. But now he is dead. After he died he was lying in his room for a week before anyone noticed. Many people died, I don’t know how, Fateh, David from Armenia, Saoda from Africa, and one Kurdish guy. All of them were young. We can´t be sure not to share their destiny.

In 2000, in Sandholmslejren, I had a friend called Mohammed Fateh, a doctor from Sudan. He spoke three languages and was a big man full of life, we shared some great

But I am afraid of dying here, where would I be buried? Who would know that I am here?

Life is just losing everything you love. But I never feel sorry for the good and bad things – c´est la vie.

By Otman Miloud

14

Issue #1 Summer 2009

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

En engel vokser op Når musikken spiller, og børnene løber forvirrede rundt, glemmer man et øjeblik, at man er i en flygtningelejr. Men når der er brug for en ekstra stol, og man kommer ud i det fælles køkken, på den anden side af døren, brydes illusionen.

I dag fylder Nabila Saidis datter, Malak, tre år. Venner, naboer og familie er samlet til fest i det ydmyge rum i asylcentret Kongelunden i Dragør.

Malak Saidi, 220306–7014

Englen

D. 22/3 2006 blev Malak Saidi født på Rigshospitalet. Malak fik sit danske personnummer, mens Nabila blev registreret som flygtning og dermed gjort statsløs: “Jeg kunne jo ikke dansk, jeg havde kun været her i 6 måneder, men jordmødrene var opfindsomme, når der skulle kommunikeres. En havde været i Egypten et stykke tid og kunne rudimentært arabisk, en anden kunne fransk og en tredje tegnede illustrationer.”

Nabila er, som de fleste flygtninge udmærket klar over, hvor svagt hun står i det danske samfund. Et samfund, der har frataget hende hendes rettigheder, påtvunget hende regler og “disciplinære pligter”, som hun kalder det: “Jeg bekymrer mig over hvad, der vil ske med Malak, hvis der hænder mig noget. Jeg har jo ingen legal status her.”

Malak betyder engel på arabisk. Samme dag hun fødtes, blev Nabila udvist af Danmark.

Hendes søster blev kørt til lufthavnen, men kunne ikke sendes ud af landet, da hun som 15-årig skulle have følge af en myndig værge:

Tre lyserøde lagkager med tre tændte lys i hver køres ind på en madvogn.

Efter, at de tre fødselsdagssange, på tre forskellige sprog, er sunget færdige, løftes Malak op for at blæse lysene ud. I dag er det godt tre år siden, at Nabila kom til Danmark.

Marokko

Nabila og hendes søster er opvokset på et børnehjem i Marokko. Et par år efter faderen forlod familien for at gifte sig med en dansk kvinde, gav moderen dem fra sig. Det er 15 år siden, og Nabila havde næsten ingen kontakt til faderen, før begivenhederne førte dem sammen igen.

Mens Nabila boede på børnehjemmet, forelskede hun sig i en mand. De to indledte et hemmeligt forhold, der resulterede i, at Nabila blev gravid. Børnehjemmets administration fik nys om situationen, hvorefter Nabila blev sat på gaden. Ifølge marokkansk lov skulle Nabilas kæreste forsørge hende, men han forlod hende, og den dengang 17-årige Nabila var tvunget til at handle hurtigt. Hun fik fat i en marokkansk kvinde, som boede i Danmark.

Kvinden fandt hendes far og skaffede Nabila og hendes lillesøster flybilletter til Danmark.

Danmark

I Danmark blev Nabila mødt med mistænksomhed. Hun turde ikke fortælle sin far om graviditeten, før det var alt for åbenlyst.

Søsteren nægtede at tale med ham og det var en svær periode, hvor de alle tre skulle forsones. En periode, der endte med Malaks fødsel.

Malaks morfar, Nabilas far, sidder på en stol ved siden af kagerne og klapper energisk i hænderne i takt med den skranttende musik. Han rækker ud efter Malak og løfter hende så hurtigt, at hun hviner og griner forskrækket. Den ubekymrede kærlighed mellem en morfar og hans barnebarn er befriende smitsom. Festen griber om sig og, de øvrige beboere fra centeret bliver lokket til af larmen.

“Man kan jo undre sig over, hvorfor de skulle køre hende hele vejen til lufthavnen. De burde vel selv kende reglerne?”, siger Nabila.

Nabilas ansigt vidner om, at det er en blandet fornøjelse at mindes denne periode.

Under og efter Malaks fødsel blev Nabila overvåget af en kvinde fra kommunen, der påstod at være hendes kontaktperson: “Det var temmelig ubehageligt, da hun blev ved med at udspørge mig om min mor. Jeg vidste jo ingenting, det kunne børnehjemmet bekræfte. Alligevel sagde kvinden, at hun troede, at jeg meget vel vidste, hvor min mor var og sikkert kunne bo hos hende, hvis jeg kom tilbage til Marokko.”

“Senere kom der en person fra en forening, som sagde, at jeg kunne efterlade min datter hos dem.

De ville finde en adoptivfamilie til hende. Som om jeg ikke ville beholde min datter?!”

Det er langt fra den eneste gang, at Nabila har fået den slags tilbud. Op til flere gange har folk fra forskellige myndigheder foreslået hende, at hun kunne give sin datter fra sig.

Nabila fik lov til at blive på Rigshospitalet i to uger efter fødslen, da hun ikke havde nogen til at hjælpe sig eller et sted at være.

Da de to uger var gået, blev hun hentet af en taxa og eskorteret til Kongelunden af kontaktkvinden fra kommunen.

Babylon

Som en ung, sekulariseret, marokkansk enlig mor til et barn født uden for ægteskab, kan det være vanskeligt at havne i en tætpakket flygtningelejr: “Det var hårdt i starten, da jeg kom i konflikt med de beboere, der er mere traditionelt orienterede. Nu har jeg lært mig at ignorere gnidninger og være selektiv i min bekendtskabskreds, men det var hårdt i starten… virkeligt hårdt.”

Traditionerne er mange til Malaks fødselsdagsfest. En kinesisk familie tænder fyrværkeri i gården, så en svag lugt af krudt kryber ind i festlokalet, hvorefter en stor gruppe rygere går udenfor.

Da Nabila blev ført til Kongelunden, turde hendes far ikke blande sig i sagen, formentlig af frygt for sin egen status i Danmark. Nabilas lillesøster ville ikke bo i Kongelunden, hvor der overvejende bor voksne og småbørn, men valgte at flytte til Center Gribskov i Græsted.

Af den grund er det særligt festligt, at den lille familie er samlet fra nær og fjern for at fejre Malak.

Otman, en nabo fra Algeriet, slutter sig til vores samtale. Nabila fortæller om procedure-

Photo: Otman Miloud

“Hvad ville du ønske dig nu Nabila?” “ Stabilitet, og at jeg kan blive boende her i Danmark. Malak er født her, min far bor her og nu har jeg fået venner her.

Jeg håber, min datter får lov til at vokse op her … med mig.”

“What would you wish for now Nabila? “ Stability - and that I can stay here in Denmark. Malak is born here, my dad lives here and I’ve got friends here now.

I hope my daughter will be allowed to grow up here … with me.”

forhalingerne i sin asylansøgning: “Det, der sker, er, at politiet kontakter én præcis inden, der er gået 18 måneder. Så skal man ind og skrive under på en deportationskontrakt, så de kan forny hele sagen i yderligere 18 måneder. Anden gang jeg kom derind, nægtede jeg at skrive under, det gør jo ingen forskel”.

Otman ryster på hovedet: “Jeg har skrevet under på det der 6 gange allerede, og nu er der gået 10 år. Jeg spurgte engang en politimand om, de ikke kunne være søde at lade være med at kontakte mig inden, de 18 måneder var gået. Han svarede, at det ikke var noget, han kunne kontrollere, at det er ren automatik… Det var det, han sagde: ‘Ren automatik’!”

Nu skal Malak fotograferes igen, hun stråler i sin kyllingegule kjole og visker for et øjeblik familiens bekymringer væk.

Jeg spørger Nabila, hvad hun ønsker sig for fremtiden, og hun svarer uden tøven: “Stabilitet, og at jeg kan blive boende her i Danmark. Malak er født her, min far bor her og nu har jeg fået venner her. Jeg håber, min datter får lov til at vokse op her… med mig.”

Af Joachim Hamou

Issue #1 Summer 2009

15 15

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

An angel grows up When the music plays and the kids are all over the place, you forget that you are in a refugee camp. But when an extra chair is needed, and you walk out into the common kitchen on the other side of the door, the illusion is gone.

Today the daughter of Nabila Saidi, Malak, turns three years old. Freinds, neighbours and family is gathered for a party in the humble room at the asylumcenter Kongelunden in Dragør. Nabila was in her eighteenth year then.

Malak Saidi 220306–1407

On March 22. 2006 Malak was born at Rigshospitalet. Malak got a Danish social security number, while Nabila got registered as a refugee and thus became stateless: I could´t speak Danish, i had only been here for 6 months, but the midwifes was inventive, when they had to communicates. One had been in Egypt for a while and could rudimentary arabic, another one spoke french and a third one made illustrations.

Like most refugees, Nabila is perfectly aware of her weak position in the society. A society that both strips her of her rights and forces her to comply with its rules and “disciplinary obligations,” as she calls them: ”I am worried about what will happen to Malak if anything happens to me. I have no legal status here.”

Three pink birthday cakes with a candle in each are wheeled in on a trolley borrowed from the kitchen staff. After three different birthday songs in three different languages have finally finished, Malak is lifted up to blow out the candles. It is also three years ago since Nabila arrived here.

Morokko

A few years after her father had left the family to marry a Danish woman, Nabila’s mother surrendered Nabila and her sister to an orphanage. This was 15 years ago. Nabila had almost no contact with the father, and would not have sought him out if the turn of events had not brought them together again.

While living in the orphanage Nabila met a man and fell in love. The two of them started a relationship, which led to her becoming pregnant. As soon as the administration of the orphanage found out, she was thrown out.

According to Moroccan law, it was now the boyfriends responsibility to take care of her, but he left her, and the 17-year-old Nabila had to act fast. Nabila got in touch with a Moroccan woman who lived in Denmark. The woman found her father and got tickets for Denmark for Nabila and her little sister.

Denmark

In Denmark Nabila was met with suspicion.

Nabila did not dare tell her father about the pregnancy before it became all too obvious; and her sister refused to speak with him at all.

It was a difficult period, where all three had to heal their wounds and regrets. It was a short and intense period that ended with the birth of Malak.

Malak’s grandfather, Nabila’s father, is very proud. He is sitting on a chair next to the cakes, clapping enthusiastically in rhythm to the distorted music. Malak comes within his reach, and he lifts her up so fast that she whines and lets out a startled laugh. The untroubled love between a man and his granddaughter is infectious and

cathartic. The party picks up even more.

Residents from the centre now show up, attracted by the noise.

The angel

Malak means angel in Arabic. The same day she was born, Nabila was expelled from Denmark. Her sister had already bee taken to the airport, but they could not send her out of the country, because she was only 15 and could not be expelled without being accompanied by an adult custodian.

“ Op til flere gange har folk fra forskellige myndigheder foreslået hende, at hun kunne give sin datter fra sig.” “ Several people from various authorities have suggested she should give up her daughter.”

”It makes you wonder why they had to drive her all the way to the airport, shouldn’t they know the law?” Nabila asks. It is with mixed emotions that she recalls this period.

A woman from the city council, who claimed to be her caseworker, came to the hospital all the time.

“It was rather unpleasant, because she spent a lot of time interrogating me about my mother. I did not know anything and the orphanage could confirm that. Yet the woman said that she believed, I knew very well where my mother was, and that I probably could live with her if went back to Morocco.” ”Then a man came from this association, I can’t recall the name, he said that I could leave my daughter with them. They would find an adoptive family for her. As if I did not want to keep my own daughter!?”

It was not the last time Nabila received such an offer. Several people from various authorities have suggested she should give up her daughter.

Nabila was allowed to stay at Rigshospitalet for two weeks, because she did not have anybody to or a place to stay. her. After the two weeks, a taxi took her to Kongelunden, escorted by the woman from the city council.

Babylon

When you are a young, secular, Moroccan woman and the single mother of a child born outside of wedlock, it can be hard to end up in a crowded refugee camp.

“It was hard in the beginning; I had conflicts with other residents, who had a more traditional outlook. Now, I have learned to ignore friction and be more selective with my acquaintances. But it was tough in the beginning... really tough.”

There are many traditions at Malak’s birthday. A Chinese family have started a small fireworks display in the yard outside, and a whiff of gunpowder has crept into the room - indulging a large group of smokers to step outside.

When Nabila was led to Kongelunden, her father did not dare interfering, maybe becau-

Photo: Otman Miloud

se he was uncertain about his own status in Denmark. Nabila’s little sister did not want to live in Kongelunden, where it was only adults and small kids, she felt more comfortable in Center Gribskov in Græsted. Therefore, it is an extra special occasion that the family have gathered from near and far to celebrate Malak.

Otman, a neighbour from Algeria, has joined the conversation. Nabila has just begun to tell us about the procedural negotiations concerning an application for an asylum.

“What happens is that the police will contact you just before 18 months have passed. Then you have to go over there and sign a deportation contact. Then they can renew the case for an additional 18 months. The second time I went there, I refused to sign. It doesn’t make any difference, you know.”

Otman laughs bitterly. “I have signed 6 times already, and 10 years have passed by now. I once asked the police whether they would be so kind as to not contact me until the next 18 months were to expire. He answered that it was out of his control, that it was all automatic... That was what he said: ‘All automatic!”

It is time to take pictures again! Malak is beaming in her chicken-yellow dress, and for a moment the party drives all worries away.

I ask Nabila of her hopes for the future, and she answers without hesitation: – “Stability - and that I can stay here in Denmark. Malak is born here, my dad lives here and I’ve got friends here now. I hope my daughter will be allowed to grow up here... with me.”

By Joachim Hamou

16

Issue #1 Summer 2009

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

Nu du endelig har fået asyl Jeg havde nær opgivet at få kontakt til ham, Kumar fra Sri Lanka. Kun én gang havde jeg mødt ham, og denne ene gang var nok til at gøre et stort indtryk.

Jeg var på grupperundvisning i Kongelunden asylcenter. En af beboerne ledsagede os gennem tomme korridorer og køkkener, tv-stuer og døde haver. Vi endte i kantinen. Her var en smule liv.

Midt det i institutions-prægede rum stod Kumar og to andre. Han smilede til os og vi faldt i snak.

Han var flygtet fra Sri Lanka for år tilbage og var havnet her, fortalte han. Og nu havde han endelig fået positivt svar på sin asylansøgning. Dem, han stod med, nikkede anerkendende. Han gentog det og vi spurgte endnu flere gange, som om ingen af os turde tro det. Men, jo, om en lille måned skulle han flyttes til Fredericia. Jeg så for mig, hvordan den spinkle mand med en sparsom oppakning ville ankomme til den sydjyske by, der oprindeligt var grundlagt som militær fæstning, omkranset af et af Europas mest velbevarede voldanlæg. Jeg spurgte om han kendte til byen?

Nej, men man havde ikke så mange valgmuligheder, faktisk ingen.

Bag hans optimisme kunne man skimte en smule angst, og så sagde han det selv. Han var nervøs. Han kendte jo ikke en sjæl dér.

Her havde han efterhånden

fået venner og bekendte, og selvom de kom og forsvandt var her et socialt liv. Desuden havde han efterhånden ventet så længe, at ventetiden ikke længere føltes som en midlertidig tilstand, men som et grundvilkår. Nu havde han så fået det, som han havde vænnet sig til at vente på og hvad var det så?

Hvad ville det, han så længe havde håbet på, egentlig indebære? De andre jokede lidt om et bryllup i centeret, som han nu ville gå glip af, og der blev grinet. Han grinede med, men man fornemmede en flakken i hans blik.

Et par måneder senere var jeg interesseret i at høre, hvordan det var gået ham. Jeg fik en fælles bekendt til at undersøge mulighederne for at få fat i hans nummer og langt om længe lykkedes det.

En hverdag i april kl. 15.30 ringede jeg op og den ringede ud. Jeg prøvede igen et par timer senere uden held. Klokken ni kom jeg igennem. Jeg skulle lige til at lægge røret, da en forsigtig stemme kunne høres. ”Hallo?” ”Ja, hallo”. Jeg kom med en lang forklaring om at have mødt ham på Kongelunden og om VisAvis.

Der var stille i røret efter min

“ Ikke så meget. Jeg er ikke i stand til så meget og har virkelig meget tid. Tid til at tænke over alting. Det er ikke altid godt!” talestrøm. Jeg ventede og så sagde han ”Arhh, jeg kan ikke huske dig, men okay – hvad var det du ville?” ”Jeg ville bare spørge dig, hvordan det går dig i din nye situation, må jeg det?” Jeg spurgte om jeg skulle ringe igen en anden dag, men han ville gerne tale nu.

Kumar forklarede på den skrattende linie, at han jo var fri nu. I al fald mere fri end før. Han nævnte ordet fri og frihed utallige gange, som skulle han mest overbevise sig selv. Men fri fra hvad?

Fri fra ventetiden og uvisheden om hvor længe den ville vare og hvad dens ophør ville medbringe.

I baggrunden kunne jeg høre nyheder fra et fjernsyn køre. ”I Sri Lanka er der stadig uroligheder. Mange er blevet dræbt. Så er der mere sikkert i Fredericia. Men selvom her er sikkert, er jeg ikke fri for mareridtene. De pla-

ger mig stadig og at sidde i en asyllejr og vente fra man er 25 til 32 år, går altså ikke én uskadt forbi. Jeg fik en stor depression. Det er jo en kæmpe del af min ungdom, der er forsvundet. Det er virkelig ødelæggende, at befinde sig i sådan en håbløs tilstand i så mange år”, sagde han. Han fik selvfølgelig stadig hjælp. Den efterfølgende morgen ville der f.eks. komme en sygeplejerske og tilse ham, og det gik ham også bedre. ”I centeret led jeg ofte af pludselig hukommelsestab og ekstreme træthedsanfald, og min krop kollapsede nærmest ind imellem. Alt dette er en smule på retræte, men jeg er bestemt ikke rask.” ”Hvordan klarer du dig økonomisk?” Han fortalte, at han fik starthjælp. Det var lige nok til at kunne klare sig.

”Men hvad foretager du dig så til dagligt?” ”Ikke så meget.

Jeg er ikke i stand til så meget og har virkelig meget tid. Tid til at tænke over alting. Det er ikke altid godt!”

Jeg spurgte, om han kendte nogen i byen. Det gjorde han oprindeligt ikke, men han havde fået tre danske venner.

Dem havde han mødt i Føtex.

Han var faldet i snak med dem og havde fortalt, at han ingen bekendte havde. Han var ensom. De havde nu taget ham lidt til sig. Jeg åndede lettet op og spurgte, om danskerne da var flinke? Det var de, svarede han og tilføjede, at han egentlig også kan lide byen. ”Har du da tænkt dig at blive boende efter de tre år er gået? ” ”Ja ja.” Og fremtiden?

Puha den var straks værre.

Det virkede som et uoversku-

eligt spørgsmål, og der kom ikke mange fremtidsdrømme på bordet. Han fortalte, at han skulle starte i skole om en måneds tid, indtil videre havde det ikke været overskueligt, men nu så han frem til det. Vi sluttede vores samtale og jeg sagde ”Tak for snakken, jeg håber vi ses.”

Linjen skrattede og den dårlige forbindelse blev afbrudt, efter vi havde sagt farvel et par gange.

Af Mia Edelgart

FAKTABOKS: En flygtning, der får opholdstilladelse i Danmark, og som ikke tidligere har haft dansk opholdstilladelse, er omfattet af reglerne i integrationsloven om boligplacering.

Det betyder bl.a. at Udlændingeservice bestemmer hvilken kommune, flygtningen skal bo i (visitering).

Når Udlændingeservice skal visitere den enkelte flygtning, dvs. afgøre hvilken kommune, han/hun skal bo i, tages der udgangspunkt i det antal flygtninge, den enkelte kommune skal modtage (kvoter), samt i den enkelte flygtnings personlige forhold. kilde: nyidanmark.dk

Issue #1 Summer 2009

17 17

Tema Liv & Død // Theme Life & Death

Now that you finally got asylum I almost had given up to get into contact with him. Kumar of Sri Lanka. I only met him once – a meeting which somehow made a big impression on me.

It was at a group teaching at Kongelunden asylum center. One of the asylum seekers, guided us through empty corridors and kitchens, tv-rooms and empty gardens.

We stopped in the cafeteria where there at least was some activity. Here, in the centre of this institutionalized room, stood Kumar together with some other guys. He smiled at us and started talking immediately.

He fled from Sri Lanka a couple of years ago, ended up in Denmark and told me that he finally got asylum in Denmark. The other people surrounding him nodded. He repeated it several times and we asked him several times, as if none of us actually believed in what he was trying to tell us. And yet, one month later, he should be transferred/ he should move to Fredericia. I just could imagine, how he without knowing anybody, would arrive in this town in Southern Denmark, which originally was built as a military fortress surrounded by one of Europe’s best preserved moats. When I asked him if he knew anything about Fredericia or anybody living there he answered: ”no, but there is nothing to choose between”.

But he was not purely opti-

” Not that much.

I’m not able to do much, but I really do have much time.

Time to think about everything, which not always is good!” mistic he seemed scared as well, which he also told me.

He was nervous. He didn’t know anybody there. He had friends and acquaintances, even if they appeared and left again. Furthermore had he waited for his permit such a long time that the waiting no longer seemed to be a temporary situation, but the basis of his being; kind of the meaning of his life. Now he had received what he had been waiting for so long, but what now? What did this mean, this he so long had been waiting for? The other guys fooled around, talking about a marriage in the asylum centre he now couldn’t participate in. Everybody laughed, but I noticed a doubt in his eyes.

A couple of months later I was interested in hearing how he was. I contacted a common acquaintance, which helped me getting Kumar’s tele-

phone number.

One day in April at 3.30 pm I tried to call him. Nobody picked up. I tried again a couple of hours later – without success. At 9 pm finally somebody picked up the phone, I could hear a weak voice in the line. ”Hello?”, yes hello. I told him that we had met at Kongelunden Asylum Centre and about VisAvis. Then there was silence. I waited and then he said: ”Sorry, but I can’t remember you, but could you please tell me again what you are interested to know?”. ”I just wanted to ask you how you are, may I?” I asked him if I should call him another day, but he actually wanted to talk.

Kumar told me, that he was free now. Much more free than he had been before. He mentioned the words ’free’ and ’freedom’ several times, at if he should convince himself of this new state.

Free of waiting and insecurity about how long this waiting would take and what there would happen after it.

In the background I could hear the news. ”There are still upheavals in Sri Lanka. Many civilians have been killed. Fredericia is safer, no doubt about that. But even

if it’s safe here, I’m not free of my nightmares. They are still bothering me – living in an asylum center for seven years, waiting for asylum from the age of 25-32, does have its effects on you. I got a major depression. It’s a big part of my youth, which was just taken from me. It’s devastating to be in this state of hopelessness for so many years”, he told me. He still got help and support of course.

The next morning a nurse was supposed to come by and check up on him. ”In the centre I often suffered of sudden loss of memory and extreme tiredness, my body sometimes just collapsed. It’s better now, but I’m certainly not fully recovered.” ”How is your financial situation?” He told me that he got Start Help. It was

exactly enough money to just get by. ”But what are you doing during the days?” Not that much. I’m not able to do much, but I really do have much time. Time to think about everything, which not always is good!”

I asked him, if he knew somebody in his new hometown.

Actually not, but he got to know three Danish guys. He met them in Føtex, the supermarket. He just happened to talk to them, telling them that he was alone, without friends and acquaintances. He was lonely. They kind of looked after him. I breathed a sigh of relief and asked him what he thought of Danes in general.

He certainly felt he had to tell me ”Of course, they are nice people”, and added that he actually likes his new home-

town as well. ”Would you like stay there after the first three years have gone?” ”Yes, yes”.

And what about your future? ”My future? I don’t know. It’s good to be safe in Denmark, but my future...” It seemed as if this was an incomprehensible question – he couldn’t tell me one single future dream.

He told me, that he is starting school in about one month, until now it simply had not been possible, but that he now was actually looking forward to it. Our conversation ended here. ”Thanks for your time, I hope we’ll see each other”. After saying goodbye a couple of times, we were cut off.

By Mia Edelgart

FACTS: A refugee, who gets residence permit in Denmark, and who has not had Danish residence permit before, is subjected to the laws of residency stated by the Integration law.

That means, that Udlændigeservice, states what municipality the refugee must live in (visitation).

When Udlændigeservice decides in which municipality this single refugee should live in, they must consider the number of refugees each municipality is supposed to absorb (quota), as well as the refugee’s private circumstances. Source: nyidanmark.dk

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

99 Historisk artikel // Historical article

Det er februar i New York, år 2009. Alt er gråt, og ved indløbet til Hudson River slår bølgerne hårdt og uroligt. Frihedsgudinden står kataleptisk og bevogter havet, og dag ud og dag ind står vagten John Dunne under hendes skørte og holder styr på turisterne, som næppe ser ud til at være hverken trætte, fattige eller underkuede.

Han keder sig og fortæller i et hug hele historien om nabo-øen Ellis Island - øen, hvor mange immigranter blev sendt til for at blive kontroleret - og om det amerikanske integrationssystem. ”En procent! Det var kun ÉN PROCENT, der ikke måtte komme ind!”, udråber han, fyldt af en særlig amerikansk patos og løfter stolt pegefingeren mod Lady Liberty´s skridt. For vi ville hjælpe dem!”.

Jeg har bagefter tjekket at, alt, han fortalte, var sandt – alligevel er det et eventyr, renset for detaljer og for blandt andet det faktum, at en brutal forskelsbehandling fandt sted.

Ellis Island blev åbnet d. 1. januar 1892 og lukkede igen d. 29. november 1954. Fra åbningen og indtil 1924 kom der ca. 20 millioner immigranter til USA, hvoraf 14,2 millioner til New York. Af dem blev 80 % lukket ind den samme dag, mens 20 % måtte vente tilbage på Ellis Island i dage og uger. En sørgelig procent af de ventende blev sendt tilbage til, hvor de var kommet fra. Personer, der led af den frygtede øjensygdom trakom, blev afvist allerede på trappen.

Det var dog ikke alle immigranter, som var nødt til at tage turen til Ellis Island. Rejsende på første og anden klasse blev rutinemæssigt undersøgt, allerede da de var undervejs, og langt de fleste af dem kunne trygt stå af ved ankomsten til New Yorks havn. Ræsonnementet, der lå bag, var, at hvis man havde penge nok til at købe en af de bedre pladser, så var risikoen ikke overhængende for, at man ville tære på det amerikanske system, f.eks. sygehuse og fængsler.

Ude på Ellis Island gik det næppe roligt for sig - som oftest var der et fandens spektakel. Før man kom frem til den frygtede sundhedskontrol, skulle man stille sig i en tynd rende – én for børn, én for kvinder og én for mænd – og vente på at få komme til. Hvis inspektørerne fik mistanke om en sygdom, så skrev man en bogstavskode med kridt direkte på tøjet, for at lægen på næste etage hurtigt skulle kom-

%

US CITIZEN

… så blev man serveret det aller fineste, som kunne fås - en skælvende portion Jell-O med frugtsmag. … people were served a wobbly portion of fruit flavoured Jell-O as a “Welcome to America.” me igennem undersøgelsen. For immigranterne selv var koden dog ubegribelig.

Brutalt, ja, til gengæld gik alt i en rasende hastighed. 1907 var et ”top-år”, hvor omkring en million immigranter kom til, sådan cirka 2.700 om dagen. Man kan ikke synes andet end, at det var heldigt, at de allerede så slidte ankomsthaller på Ellis Island brændte ned i 1897 - uden at nogen mistede livet - og blev erstattet af den langt større, ret imposante stenbygning, som står der i dag. Årene mellem 1922 og 1929 var som bekendt vidunderlige for kommercen. Henry Ford lod biler fabrikere på løbende bånd, og økonomien blomstrede. Når man var kommet igennem køerne på Ellis Island, så blev man serveret det aller fineste, som kunne fås - en skælvende portion Jell-O med frugtsmag.

Men med tiden var reglerne alligevel blevet strammet. I slutningen af 1800-tallet var de fleste amerikanere positive overfor indvandring, men med tiden blev loven hårdere. Før det nye århundrede begyndte, blev kinesere forbudt adgang til landet, og i 20’erne indførte man kvotelove, som betød at kun 3 % - og senere kun 2 % - af en nationalitet, som allerede fandtes i landet, måtte komme ind hvert år. Barske løjer og ingen nåde, reglerne var skåret ud i pap, og snart skulle undervisning i engelsk blive et eget fag i skolerne. Det var vigtigt, at fx danskere ikke følte sig som danskere, men som amerikanere.

Frihedsgudinden nyder symbolsk immunitet, og det er åbenlyst, at John Dunne friserede sandheden. Alligevel var det en glæde at lytte til hans fortælling. At han stolt valgte at fortælle ”den gode historie”, som vidner om tolerance og storsind, at næsten alle fik en retfærdig chance.

Af Malin Waak

February 2009 in New York. The skies are grey and the waves are high where the Hudson River begins. The Statue of Liberty stands catatonic, looking at the sea. The guard, John Dunne is standing under her skirts, day in and day out, keeping an eye on all the tourists who hardly seem tired or poor, nor huddled. He is bored and eagerly tells me the story of the neighbour island ”Ellis Island” – the place where many immigrants were sent to get registered – and about the American integration issue. ”One percent! It was only one percent that were not allowed to get in!” he bursts out, – filled with American pathos and pride and points his finger at the crotch of the Lady Liberty – Because we wanted to help them!”

I’ve checked his sources. Everything he told me was true, but at the same time it was just a fairytale, cleansed from unpleasant details and from the fact that people were separated into categories of good and bad.

Ellis Island opened on 1 January 1892 and closed on 29 November 1954. From the opening and until 1924 about 20 million immigrants were let into the States and out of these, 14,2 million arrived in New York. 80 % were let in the same day they arrived, 20 % had to wait on Ellis Island for days or weeks and out of them one sad percent were sent back to where they came from. Those who suffered from the feared eye-disease, Trachoma were not even allowed to ascend the stairs of the building.

But, not everyone had to take the trip out to Ellis Island. First and second-class travellers were briefly surveyed on the ship that they came with and most of them were allowed to enter the mainland via New York Harbour straight away. One reckoned that if a person could afford one of the more expensive boat tickets they probably wouldn’t be a burden to the social health care system or end up in prison.

On Ellis Island it was a mess. Before people reached the feared health control they were put in lines. One for men, one for women and one for children, waiting for their turn. If the inspectors suspected some kind of disease, a coded number was written on a person’s clothes in chalk, so that the doctor on the first floor could perform a health check quickly. It was impossible for the immigrants to understand the meaning of the code.

Cruel? Yes indeed, but on the other hand, the

procedure went very fast. In 1907, immigration was at its peak, about one million foreigners, 2700 per day, arrived. And, since there were so many, it was almost a blessing that the old worn-out wooden building burned down in 1897 – without anyone being seriously injured – and was replaced with a quite impressive stone house that is still there.

Between 1922 and 1929, the American economy boomed. Henry Ford was producing cars on conveyor belts and it was happy years.

After the health check on Ellis Island people were served a wobbly portion of fruit flavoured Jell-O as a ”Welcome to America.”

But, the immigration rules became more and more restricted. By the end of 1800, most Americans were positive about immigration, but then the laws became even stricter.

Before the end of the century chinese people were forbidden to come to America and during the twenties the quotion-laws became a parameter. Basically it meant that only 3 percent, and a few years later,only two, out of the people of the same nationality that already lived here were allowed permission to live in America. No mercy and harsh rules. People were compelled to learn English in school. It was very important that, for example, a swede felt more as an american than as a swede.

The statue of liberty has symbolic immunity and it it quite obvious that John Dunne didn´t tell the whole truth. But it doesn´t matter. It was a joy to hear him wanting to tell the good version. The version in which tolerance and open minds want to give as many as possible a fair chance.

By Malin Waak

…dag ud og dag ind står vagten John Dunne under hendes skørter og holder styr på turisterne, som næppe ser ud til at være hverken trætte, fattige eller underkuede.

John Dunne is standing under her skirts, day in and day out, keeping an eye on all the tourists who hardly seem tired or poor, nor huddled.

Issue #1 Summer 2009

19

Historisk artikel // Historical article

Illustration: Ditlev Marboe

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

De grå sider // Grey pages

Hvad er en grænse?[i] For en fattig person fra et fattigt land bliver grænsen et hjem, hvor han venter på at leve. Et ikke-liv

Af Étienne Balibar Til spørgsmålet “hvad er en grænse?”, hvilket i høj grad er et af de nødvendige indledende spørgsmål for vores diskussion, er det ikke muligt at give et simpelt svar. Hvorfor er det sådan?

Grundlæggende, fordi vi ikke kan tillægge en essens til grænsen, som ville være gyldig på alle steder og til alle tider, i alle fysiske skalaer og tidsperioder, og som på samme vis ville være inkluderet i alle individuelle og kollektive erfaringer. Uden at gå så langt tilbage som til de romerske limes er det klart, at grænserne for et europæisk monarki i det attende århundrede, da begrebet om kosmopolitanisme blev opfundet, ikke har meget til fælles med de grænser, som Schengen-konventionen er så glad for at stramme i dag. Og vi ved alle, at du ikke krydser grænsen mellem Frankrig og Schweiz, eller mellem Schweiz og Italien, på samme måde, når du har et ‘europæisk’ pas, som når du har et pas fra det tidligere Jugoslavien. Det er netop for at diskutere dette spørgsmål, vi er her.

I realiteten er umuligheden af at give et simpelt svar på vores spørgsmål, selvom det komplicerer tingene teoretisk, dog også en mulighed. For hvis vi skal forstå den ustabile verden, vi lever i, har vi brug for komplekse begreber – med andre ord dialektiske begreber. Vi kan måske endda sige, at vi bliver nød til at komplicere tingene. Og hvis vi skal bidrage til at ændre denne verden og dens uacceptable, utolerable aspekter – eller (og dette er i sidste ende samme ting) modsætte os de ændringer, der sker i den verden, som præsenteres for os som uundgåelige – er vi nød til at vende den falske simpelhed i nogle indlysende begreber om.

Tillad mig for et øjeblik at flirte med nogle af mine filosofkollegaers ordspil. Ideen om en simpel definition af hvad, der konsitiuerer en grænse, er, per definition, absurd: at pege en grænse ud er præcis at definere et territorium, at afgrænse det, og således at registrere dette territoriums identitet, eller at overføre en på det. På den anden side er det at definere eller identificerer dog generelt intet andet end at føre en grænse, at tildele afgrænsninger eller grænser (på græsk horos, på latin finis eller terminus, på tysk Grenze, på fransk borne). Teoretikeren, som forsøger at definere, hvad en grænse er, er i fare for at rende rundt i cirkler, da selve repræsentationen af grænsen er forudsætningen for enhver definition.

Denne pointe – der kan virke spekulativ og endda intetsigende – har ikke desto mindre en meget konkret side.

Enhver diskussion af grænser relaterer, præcis, til etableringen af definitive identiteter, nationale eller andre.

Nu er det sikkert, at der er identiteter – eller rettere identifikationer – der i forskellig grad er aktive og passive, frivillige eller påtvungne, individuelle og kollektive. Deres multiplicitet, deres hypotetiske eller fiktive natur, gør dem ikke mindre virkelige. Men det er åbenlyst, at disse identiteter ikke er veldefinerede. Og, som følge heraf, fra et logisk – eller juridisk eller nationalt – synspunkt er de ikke defineret overhovedet – eller rettere, de ville ikke være det, hvis de, på trods af den fundamentale umulighed medfødt i dem, ikke var udsat for en tvungen definition. Med andre ord, deres praktiske definition kræver en ‘reduktion af kompleksitet’, tilføjelsen af en forsimplende kraft, eller af det vi paradoksalt kunne kalde et supplement af simpelhed. Og dette komplicerer naturligvis også mange ting. Staten – som nationalstat og som en Rechtsstaat – er blandt andet en formidabel formindsker af kompleksitet, selvom dens eksistens er en permanent årsag til kompleksitet (vi kunne også sige til uorden), som det så er op til den at formindske.

Alt dette er, som vi ved, ikke kun teoretisk. De voldelige konsekvenser mærkes hver dag; de er konstitutive for det voldens vilkår, som deklarationen udsendt som lancering af denne konference refererer til[ii], i lyset af hvilken vi søger politiske ideer og initiativer, der ikke kun er den ‘Hobbesianske’ reduktion af kompleksitet, som en simpel central autoritet, sanktio-

neret af lov og bevæbnet med monopolet på legitim vold, repræsenterer – hvilket, under alle omstændigheder, er en ineffektiv løsning på det generelle verdensplan, hvor den højest kunne nedlægge en enkeltstående ballademager her eller der… I yderste ligegyldighed over for klare grænser – eller i nogle tilfælde under dække af sådanne grænser – opstår udefinerbare og umulige identiteter forskellige steder, identiteter der, som en konsekvens, bliver anset som ikke-identiteter. Men deres eksistens er, ikke desto mindre, et liv-og-død spørgsmål for store mængder af mennesker. Dette er i stigende grad et problem over alt og spørgsmålet, der kommer ud af rædslerne i det ‘tidligere Jugoslavien’ (selve udtrykket siger uendeligt meget), berører i realiteten os alle, og det berører os indefra og med hensyn til vores egen historie.

For grænser har en historie; selve begrebet grænse har en historie. Og den er ikke den samme alle steder og på alle niveauer. Jeg vil vende tilbage til denne pointe. Fra vores synspunkt, som europæiske mænd og kvinder i den absolutte afslutning af det tyvende århundrede, virker denne historie til at bevæge sig mod et ideal af gensidig appropriation af individer af staten og af staten af individer, gennem ‘territoriet’. Eller rettere, som Hannah Arendt så forbilledligt viste – og vi gør ret i at påkalde hende i denne kontekst – bevæger den sig mod et endepunkt, ved hvilket umuligheden af at opnå dette ideal manifesteres i selve det øjeblik, hvor det virker tættest på realisering. Vi er ved det punkt nu.

Siden den tidligste antik, siden ‘ophavet’ for staten, bystater og imperier, har der været ‘grænser’ og ‘marsker’ – det vil sige linjer eller zoner, striber af land, der er steder af separation og kontakt eller konfrontation, områder af blokering og passage (eller passage mod betaling af told). Faste eller skiftende zoner, kontinuerlige eller brudte linjer. Men disse grænser har aldrig haft den eksakt samme funktion – selv ikke over de sidste to eller tre århundreder, på trods af den kontinuerlige indsats af kodificering lagt i af nationalstaterne. ‘Det nationales tyranni’ – for at bruge Gérard Noiriels udtryk – skifter konstant selv form, inklusiv formen for dens politiering. Det er i gang med at skifte sine funktioner endnu en gang, og gør det for øjnene af os. En af Schengen-konventionens væsentlige implikationer – hvilket sandt at sige er det eneste aspekt af ‘konstruktionen af Europa’, der for tiden skrider fremad, ikke på området omkring statsborgerskab, men omkring anti-statsborgerskab, gennem koordinering mellem politistyrker og også mere eller mindre lovgivende og konstitutionelle ændringer i forhold til retten til asyl og immigrations regulativer, familiesammenføring, tildelingen af indfødsret og så videre – er at fra nu af, bliver hver medlemsstat ved ‘dets’ grænse – eller rettere ved visse fortrukne grænseposter af dets territorium – repræsentanten for de andre. På denne måde bliver en ny model af diskrimination mellem den nationale og den fremmede etableret. Forholdene, under hvilke individer tilhører stater, ændres også i de forskellige – uadskilleligt sammenhængende – betydninger af den term.

Man behøver kun at se på den afsky, med hvilken stater, næsten uden undtagelse, ser på dobbelt statsborgerskab, for at forstå hvor essentielt det er for nationalstaten at opføre sig som ejeren af dens borgere (og i hvert fald teoretisk at foretage en fuldstændig fordeling af individer efter territorier, med ingen talt to gange eller ladt ude). Dette er blot en tilføjelse til princippet om den – i det mindste relative og symbolske – eksklusion af fremmede. Men der kan ikke være tvivl om, at i national normalitet, det nationale borger-subjekts normalitet, bliver en sådan appropriation internaliseret af individer, så det bliver en betingelse, en essentiel reference for deres kollektive fællesskabsfølelse, og således igen for deres identitet (eller for ordenen, rangeringen, gennem hvilken de arrangerer deres multiple identiteter). Som en konsekvens ophører

grænserne med at være udelukkende eksterne realiteter. De bliver også – og måske først og fremmest – hvad Fichte, i hans Reden an die deutsche Nation, på fantastisk vis kaldte ‘indre grænser’ [innere Grenzen]; hvilket vil sige – som han rent faktisk selv siger – usynlige grænser, situeret overalt og ingen steder.

For at forsøge at forstå, hvordan dette fungerer i detalje, vil jeg kort berøre tre væsentlige aspekter af grænsernes tvetydige karakter i historien. Det første vil jeg kalde deres overdetermination. Det andet er deres polysemiske karakter – hvilket vil sige, det faktum at grænser aldrig eksisterer på samme måde for individer, der tilhører forskellige sociale grupper. Det tredje aspekt er deres heterogenitet – med andre ord det faktum, at i realiteten er flere funktioner af demarkation og territorialisering – mellem distinkte sociale udvekslinger og strømme, mellem distinkte rettigheder, og så videre – altid opfyldt samtidigt af grænser.

1. Jeg vil således begynde med det, jeg – for denne diskussions formål – kalder overdetermination. Vi ved, at hver grænse har sin egen historie. Dette er næsten en almindelighed for alle historiebøger. I den historie er kravet om selvbestemmelse og magten eller impotensen af stater kombineret, sammen med kulturelle dimensioner (ofte kaldet ‘naturlige’), økonomiske interesser, og så videre. Det ev r mindre ofte noteret, at ingen politisk grænse nogensinde er den simple afgrænsning mellem to stater, men altid er overdetermineret og i den forstand sanktioneret, reduplikeret og relativiseret af andre geopolitiske divisioner. Denne funktion er på ingen måde tilfældig eller kontingent; den er iboende. Uden den verdens-konfigurerende funktion de udfører, ville der ikke være nogen grænser – eller nogen vedblivende grænser.

Lad os, uden at gå længere tilbage end den moderne tidsalder, give to eksempler på dette, der stadig har betydning i dag. De europæiske koloniale imperier – groft sagt fra Tordesillas traktaten (1494) til 1960’erne – var helt klart vilkåret for tilblivelse, forstærkelse og vedblivelse inden for rammerne af på hinanden følgende verdensøkonomier, for nationalstaterne i Vest-, og selv Øst-, Europa. Som resultat af dette var disse staters grænser med hinanden både, uadskilleligt, nationale grænser og imperiale grænser, med andre grænseområder fortsættende og kopierende direkte ind i ‘mørkets hjerte’ et sted i Afrika eller Asien. Som en konsekvens af dette arbejdede de for at separere forskellige kategorier af ‘nationale’. For de ‘imperiale-nationale’ stater havde ikke kun ‘borgere’; de havde også ‘undersåtter’. Og disse ‘undersåtter’ var, for så vidt den nationale administration var berørt, både mindre fremmede end udlændinge, og samtidig mere anderledes (eller mere ‘udenlandske’) end dem: hvilket vil sige, at i nogle forhold, eller i nogle omstændigheder (som i krigstid), var det nogle gange nemmere for dem at krydse grænser, end det var for udlændinge i den strenge forstand, og nogle gange mere besværligt.

Et andet eksempel er ‘lejrene’ eller blokkene i Den Kolde Krig mellem 1945 og 1990. Hvor ‘opdelingen af verden’ mellem koloniale imperier styrker national suverænitet i nogle tilfælde (mens det simpelt og helt umuliggør det i andre), virker opdelingen i blokke (til hvilken man ikke skal glemme, at skabelsen og operationen af FN var et supplement) til at have kombineret en udvidelse af nationalstatsformen på verdensplan (og som konsekvens af dette, af en – i det mindste teoretisk – national identitet som ‘basis’ identiteten for alle mennesker) med skabelsen af et de facto hierarki mellem nationerne inden for hver blok, og som et resultat mere eller mindre begrænset suverænitet for de fleste af dem. Dette betød, at staters nationale grænser endnu en gang var overdetermineret og, alt efter den konkrete sag, styrket eller svækket.

Det betød også, at der endnu engang i praksis var flere typer af fremme-

de og fremmedhed og flere forskellige former for grænsekrydsning. Når grænsen, eller følelsen af at krydse en grænse, faldt sammen med supergrænserne mellem blokkene, var det generelt mere besværligt at passere, fordi den fremmede i det tilfælde også var en fjendtlig fremmed, hvis ikke endda en potentiel spion. Dette var tilfældet, undtagen når det galt flygtninge, fordi retten til asyl blev brugt som et våben i den ideologiske kamp.

Kan det ikke siges at arrangementerne omkring asylansøgere, der blev til lov i 1950’erne og 1960’erne både i internationale konventioner og nationale konstitutioner, skylder meget af deres formulering og deres teoretiske liberalisme til denne situation? Den tyske lov, der netop er blevet ændret, er et – ekstremt – eksempel, der illustrerer dette meget klart.

Hvis vi ikke havde denne situation i tankene, forekommer det mig, at vi ikke ville forstå begreberne med hvilke spørgsmålet om flygtninge fra Østeuropa (fra det Østeuropa, der pludselig ikke længere er Østeuropa længere, men nærmest en del af den tredje verden) for tiden stiller sig. Vi ville heller ikke kunne forstå problemerne, som det ‘Europæiske Fællesskab’ har med at se sig selv som et fællesskab underbygget af egne interesser, hvor det essentielt var biproduktet og del af mekanismen i Den Kolde Krig – selv så langt som i hvad målet om at udgøre en modvægt til amerikansk hegemonisk magt indenfor den ‘vestlige blok’ galt.

Fortidens koloniale imperier og den nære fortids ‘blokke’ har sat sig dybe mærker i institutioner, love og mentaliteter. Men de eksisterer ikke længere. Det ville dog være naivt at tro, at de var blevet erstattet af en simpel sidestilling af ens nationer. Det, der i dag kaldes nationalstatens krise, er til dels (selvom det ikke kun er) den objektive usikkerhed omkring på den ene side naturen og placeringen af de geopolitiske demarkationer, der kan overdeterminere grænser, og på den anden side hvilken type eller grad af national autonomi disse hypotetiske super-grænser vil være kompatible med, givet deres militære, økonomiske, ideologiske eller symbolske operation. Med spørgsmålet om de indre (etniske, sociale eller religiøse) opdelinger inden for hver nationalstat – og selv inden meget ‘gamle’ sådanne – kan det meget vel være, at dette pinselsfulde, men generelt underkendte, spørgsmål, fyldt med potentiale for konflikt, bliver afgørende i bestemmelsen af hvilke nationale grænser i Europa, der selv sandsynligt vil overleve i en ny periode. Tysklands grænser har allerede ændret sig; også Jugoslavien og Tjekkoslovakiets, ved to meget forskellige processer. Det kan være at andre længere mod vest vil følge.

2. Som det andet kommer jeg til det, jeg, måske på lettere oppustet vis, har refereret til som grænsers polysemiske natur. I praktiske begreber refererer dette ganske simpelt til det faktum, at de ikke har samme betydning for alle. Disse kendsgerninger er bredt kendt og udgør, i sandhed, kernen af vores diskussion her. Intet er mindre som en materiel ting end en grænse, selvom den officielt er ‘det samme’ (identisk med sig selv og derfor veldefineret) lige meget, hvilken vej du krydser den – om du gør det som forretningsmand eller en akademiker rejsende til en konference eller som en ung arbejdsløs person. I dette sidste tilfælde bliver en grænse næsten to forskellige enheder, der ikke har andet til fælles end et navn. Dagens grænser (selvom det har været gældende længe) er i nogen grad designet til at udføre præcis denne opgave: ikke kun at give individer fra forskellige sociale klasser forskellige oplevelser af loven, administrationen, politiet og elementære rettigheder, som bevægelsesfrihed og handelsfrihed, men at aktivt differentiere mellem individer i begreber om social klasse.

Her har staten, baseret på og konstitueret af dens egne grænser, gennem historien spillet en fundamentalt ambivalent rolle, for på den ene side skjuler – og til en vis grad formelt begrænser – den en differentiering, for herved at insistere på begrebet om national borger og, gennem det begreb, en hvis forrang af offentlig autoritet foran sociale antagonismer.

På den anden side, jo mere transnational trafik – om det er af mennesker eller kapital – intensiveres, jo mere formes et transnational politisk-økonomisk rum som konsekvens, og jo flere stater – inklusiv de mest ‘magtfulde’ af dem – tenderer til at operere i tjeneste for en international klasse-

differentiering, og til det mål at benytte deres grænser og kontrolapparater som instrumenter for diskrimination og sortering. Alligevel forsøger de at gøre dette samtidig med at opretholde de mest symbolske kilder til deres folkelige legitimitet. Dette er årsagen til, at de finder sig selv i den selvmodsigende position at måtte både relativisere og forstærke begrebet om identitet og nationalt tilhørsforhold, sammenhængen mellem statsborgerskab og nationalitet.

Der er et double-bind af samme slags medfødt i selve begrebet om cirkulation af folk. Problemet ligger ikke så meget i forskellen mellem behandlingen af cirkulationen af varer og cirkulationen af folk, da begrebet cirkulation ikke bruges på samme måde her.

Det er rettere det faktum, at på trods af computernetværk og telekommunikation, cirkulerer kapital aldrig uden en stor cirkulation af mennesker – nogle cirkulerer ‘opad’ andre ‘nedad’.

Men etableringen af en verdens apartheid, eller et dobbeltregime for cirkulation af individer, rejser massive politiske problemer af acceptabelhed og modstand. Raceskel, der ikke længere kun separerer ‘center’ fra ‘periferi’, eller Nord fra Syd, men løber gennem alle samfund, er af netop denne årsag en ubekvem tilnærmelse til en sådan apartheid. Den faktiske håndtering af dette raceskel om’ har en massiv, men dobbeltsidet, effekt, fordi den forstærker en ukontrollerbar racisme og promoverer usikkerhed – og dette medfører en overdreven grad af sikkerhedsforanstaltninger. For ikke at tale om dem kendsgerning, at mellem de to ekstremer – mellem dem, der ‘cirkulerer kapital’, og dem, ‘som kapitalen cirkulerer’, gennem transnational udflytning af industrifabrikker og ‘fleksibilitet’, er der en enorm uklassificerbar mellemliggende masse.

Det er måske også fra denne synsvinkel, at vi skulle reflektere over et af de mest odiøse aspekter af spørgsmålet om flygtninge og migration, omkring hvilket Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp og hendes venner for nylig har helliget et detaljeret studie: spørgsmålet om ‘internationale zoner’ eller ‘transitzoner’ i havne og lufthavne. Ikke alene har vi her en illustration af tilstanden af generaliseret vold, der nu udgør baggrunden for såkaldt økonomisk migration og for strømmene af flygtninge, anerkendte eller ikke, men vi ser her i materiel realitet den differentielle operation og, så at sige, duplikation af det begreb om grænsen, der allerede var begyndt at træde frem i de forskellige formaliteter, der hørte til krydsningen af grænserne.

Vi må ikke begrænse os selv til en diskussion alene af de juridiske aspekter her; det er essentielt, at vi også foretager en fænomenologisk beskrivelse.

For en rig person fra et rigt land, en person, der tenderer mod det kosmopolitiske (og hvis pas i stigende grad betegner ikke bare simpelt national tilhørsforhold, beskyttelse og retten til statsborgerskab, men et overskud af rettigheder – særligt en verdensret til at cirkulere uhindret), er grænsen blevet en indskibningsformalitet, et punkt for symbolsk anerkendelse af hans symbolske status, der kan passeres i forbifarten. For en fattig person fra et fattigt land, tenderer grænsen dog til at være noget ganske andet: Ikke alene er det en forhindring, der er meget vanskelig at overskride, men det er et sted han løber op mod konstant, passerende og genpasserende gennem det, når han bliver udvist eller bliver tilladt at genforenes med sin familie, så det bliver til sidst et sted, hvor han lever. Det er en ekstraordinært giftig spatio-temporal zone, næsten et hjem – et hjem i hvilket at leve et liv, der er en venten-påat-leve, et ikke-liv. Psykoanalytikeren André Green skrev engang, at det er svært nok at leve på en grænse, men at det er intet sammenlignet med, at være en grænse i sig selv. Han mente dette i forstand af splittelsen af multiple identiteter – migrantidentiteter – men vi må også kigge på den materielle base for fænomenet.

andre steder, hvor som helst selektive kontroller findes, som for eksempel helbreds eller sikkerheds tjek (helbredstjek værende del af hvad Michel Foucault betegnede biomagt). Koncentrationen af alle disse funktioner (for eksempel kontrollen af varer og mennesker – for ikke at nævne mikrober og virusser – administrativ og kulturel adskillelse, osv.) ved et enkelt punkt – langs en enkelt linje, der på en gang var raffineret, komprimeret og uigennemsigtig – var en dominerende tendens gennem en særlig periode, nationalstatens periode (da den virkelig eksisterede i en form tæt på dens ideelle type), men ikke en uomvendelig historisk nødvendighed. I et pænt stykke tid nu, har den, for øjnene af os, måtte give plads for en helt ny allestedsnærværenhed af grænser.

3. Dette ville ret naturligt, hvis jeg havde tid, lede mig til at diskutere min tredje pointe: heterogeniteten og allestedsnærværelsen af grænser eller, med andre ord, kendsgerningen at tendensen for grænser, politiske, kulturelle og socioøkonomiske, til at være sammenfaldende – noget der var mere eller mindre opnået af nationalstater, eller rettere af nogle af dem – tenderer til at falde fra hinanden. Resultatet af dette er, at nogle grænser ikke længere er situeret ved grænserne overhovedet, i den geografisk-politisk-administrative forstand af begrebet. De er

[ii] “Vold er et vilkår for eksistens i samfund af eksil og i samfundene i nord”, Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp, et.al.: Asile-Violence-Exclusion en Europe. Historie, analyse, prospective (Geneve: 1994)

Hvad jeg ville understrege – måske er det en truisme – er, at i den historiske kompleksitet af begrebet om grænser – hvilket for tiden bliver vigtigt for os igen, lige da det igen skifter og antager nye former – er der spørgsmålet om institutionen. Grænsens institution, selvfølgelig, og måderne hvormed grænserne kan blive institueret, men der er også grænsen som mulighedsbetingelsen for en hel række af institutioner. Hvis grænsen var defineret fiktivt på en simpel, forsimplet måde, og hvis, som jeg foreslog i starten, den simpelhed var påtvunget – det vil sige underkastet tvang fra staten – var det præcis af denne grund. Men konsekvensen har været, at grænserne, inden for hvilke mulighederne for et relativt demokrati i nogle tilfælde er blevet vundet, i sig selv altid har været absolut anti-demokratiske institutioner, uden for rækkevidden af enhver politisk forhandling eller praksis.

‘Borgere’ har bosat sig der for mængder af tid, kun med formål om gensidig udryddelse…

Grænser har været den anti-demokratiske forudsætning for det delvise, begrænsede demokrati som nogle nationalstater nød i en særlig periode, klarende deres egne interne konflikter (nogle gange også eksporterende dem, men det er i høj grad en proces, der kræver en grænsedragning). Dette er grunden til, at jeg synes, I har ret i, i jeres deklaration, at tale om et behov for ‘radikalt demokrati’. Så snart grænserne bliver differentierede og multiple igen – når de begynder at skabe et grid svævende over det nye sociale rum, og stopper med at være grænsen for det udenfor – så står alternativet mellem en autoritær og voldelig intensivering af alle former for segregation og en demokratisk radikalisme, der har som sit mål at dekonstruere grænsens institution.

For min egen del ville jeg dog passe på at identificere sådant et radikalt demokrati – hvilket nødvendigvis er internationalistisk eller mere præcist transnationalt – med stræben efter en ‘grænseløs verden’ i den juridiskpolitiske forstand af det ord. Sådan en ‘verden’ ville løbe risikoen for at være en simpel arena for den ubegrænsede dominans af private magtcentre, der monopoliserer kapital, kommunikation, og måske våben. Det er nærmere et spørgsmål om, hvilken demokratisk kontrol, der skal udøves over for grænsernes kontrollanter – det vil sige over stater og supra-nationale institutioner selv. Dette afhænger fuldstændig af om de på begge sider af grænsen en gang opdager fælles interesser og et fælles sprog (fælles idealer). Men det afhænger også af spørgsmålet om hvem, der vil mødes i de ulevelige steder, der ofte er de forskellige grænser.

For at kunne mødes nu behøver man ofte tolke, mediatorere. Utaknemmelig som deres oplevelse er i dag, forekommer det mig, at de, der forsvarer retten til asyl, præcis er at regne mellem disse mediatorere. [i] Paper holdt på konferencen, “Violence et droit d’asile en Europe: Des frontières des États-Nations à la responsabilité partagée dans un seul monde”, Geneve Universitet, 23.-25. september 1993.

Étienne Balibar, f. 1942, fransk filosof, professor emeritus ved Université de Paris X (Nanterre).

Issue #1 Summer 2009

21

De grå sider // Grey Pages

What is a border?[i] ”For a poor person from a poor country the border becomes a home from where he waits to live. A non-life

By Étienne Balibar To the question, ’What is a border?’, which is certainly one of the necessary preliminaries to our discussions, it is not possible to give a simple answer.

Why should this be? Basically, because we cannot: attribute to the border an essence which would be valid in all places and at all times, for all physical scales and time periods, and which would be included in the same way in all individual and collective experience. Without going back as far as the Roman limes, it is clear that the border of a European monarchy in the eighteenth century, when the notion of cosmopolital1ism, was invented, has little in common with those borders the Schengen Convention is so keen to strengthen today. And we all know that you do not cross the border between France and Switzerland, or between Switzerland and Italy, the same war when you have a ’European’ passport as when you have a passport from the former Yugoslavia. It is, indeed, to discuss such a question that we are here.

In reality, however, though it complicates matters theoretically, the impossibility of giving a simple answer to our question is also an opportunity. For, if we are to understand the unstable world in which we live, we need complex notions - in other words, dialectical notions. We might even say that we need to complicate things. And if we are to contribute to changing this world in its unacceptable, intolerable aspects - or (and this perhaps, Comes down to the same thing) to resist the changes occurring in that world, which are presented to us as inevitable - we need to overturn the false simplicity of same obvious notions.

Allow me to flirt for a minute with same of the language play of my philosopher colleagues. The idea of a simple’ definition of what constitutes a border is, by definition, absurd: to mark out a border is, precisely, to define a territory, to delimit it, and so to register the identity of that territory, or confer one upon it. Conversely, how ever, to define or identify in general is nothing other than to trace a border, ’to assign boundaries or borders (in Greek, horos; in Latin, finis or terminus; in German, Grenze; in French, borne). The theorist who attempts to define what a border is is in danger of going round in circles, as the very representation of the border is the precondition for any definition.

This point - which may seem speculative, even idle has, none the less, a very concrete side to it. Every discussion of borders relates, precisely, to the establishment of definite identities, national or otherwise. Now, it is certain that there are identities _ or, rather, identifications - which are, to varying degrees, active and passive, voluntary and imposed, individual and collective. Their multiplicity, their hypothetical or fictive nature, do not make them any less real. But it is obvious that these identities are not well defined. And, consequently, from a logical - or juridical or national - point of view, they are not defined at all - or, rather, they would not be if, despite the fundamental impossibility inherent in them, they were not subject to a forced definition. In other words, their practical definition requires a ’reduction of complexity’, the application of a simplifying force or of what we might, paradoxically, term a sup plement of simplicity. And this, naturally, also complicates many things.

The state - as nation-state and as a Rechtsstaat - is, among other things, a formidable reducer of complexity, though it’s very existence is a permanent cause of complexity (we might also say of disorder)” which it then falls to it to reduce.

All this, as we know, is not merely theoretical. The violent consequences are felt every day; they are constitutive of that con issued to launch this conference refers[ii], in the face of which we are looking for political ideas and initiatives which are not merely that ’Hobbesian’ reduction of complexity which a simple central authority sanctioned by law and armed with the monopoly of legitimate violence represents -

this being, in any case, an ineffectual solution at the general world level, where it could at most put down a particular troublemaker here or there ....

In utter disregard of certain borders or, in some cases, under cover of such borders - indefinable and imposs ible identities emerge in various places, identities wich are, as a consequence, regarded as non-identities. However, their existence is, none the less, a lifeand-death question for large numbers of human beings. This is, increasingly, a problem everywhere, and the question coming out of the horror in the ’former Yugoslavia’ (the very expression speaks volumes) concerns us all in reality, and it concerns us from within, and with regard to our own history.

For borders have a history; the very notion of border has a history. And it is not the same everywhere and at every level. I shall come back to this point. From our point of view, as European men and women at the very end of the twentieth century, this history seems to be moving towards an ideal of reciprocal appropriation of individuals by the state, and of the state by individuals, through the ’territory’.

Or rather, as Hannah Arendt pointed out so admirably - and we are right to invoke her in this con text - it is moving towards a cusp at which the impossibility of attaining this ideal is manifested at the very moment when it seems closest to realization. We are at that point now.

Since earliest Antiquity, since the ’origins’ of the state, of city-states and empires, there have been ’borders’ and ’marches’ - that is to say, lines or zones, strips of land, which are places of separation and contact or confrontation, areas of blockage and passage (or passage on payment of a toll).

Fixed or shifting zones, continuous or broken lines. But these borders have never had exactly the same function not even over the last two or three centuries, despite the continuous effort of codification put in by nation states.

The ‘tyranny of the national’ - to use Gérard Noiriel’s expression - is itse1f constantly changing shape, including the shape of its policing. It is currently changing its functions once again, and doing so before our very eyes. One of the major implications of the Schengen Convention - which is indeed the only aspect of ’the construction of Europe’ that is currently moving forward, not in the area of citizenship, but in that of anti-citizenship, by way of co-ordination between police forces and also of more or less simultaneous legislative and constitutional changes regarding the right of asylum and immigration regulations, family reunion, the granting of nationality, and so on - is that from now on, on ’its’ border - or rather, at certain favoured border points of ’its’ territory - each member state is becoming the representative of the others. In this way, a new mode of discrimination between the national and the alien is being established.

Also changing are the conditions under which individ uals belong to states, in the various - indissociably connected - senses of the term. One has only to, see with what repugnance states, almost without exception, view dual or multiple nationality to understand how essential it is to the nationstate to behave as the owner of its nationals (and, theoretically at least, to undertake an exhaustive division of individuals between territories, with no one counted twice or left over). This is merely an adjunct to the principle of the - at least relative and symbolic exclusion of foreigners. But there can be no doubt that, in national normality, the normality of the national citizen-subject, such an appropriation is also internalized by individuals, as it becomes a condition, an essential reference of their collective, communal sense, and hence, once again, of their identity (or of the order, the ranking, by which hey arrange their multiple identities). As a consequence, borders cease to purely external realities. They become also – and perhaps predominantly – what Fichte, in his Reden an die deutsche Nation, magnificently termed ‘inner borders‘ [inner Gren-

zen]; that is to say – as indeed he says himself – invisible borders, situated everywhere and nowhere.

To attempt to understand how this operates in detail, I shall briefly touch on three major aspects of the equivocal character of borders in history. The first I shall term their overdetermination. The second is their polysemic character - that is to say, the fact that borders never exist in the same way for individuals belonging to different social groups. The third aspect is their heterogeneity - in other words, the fact that, in reality, several functions of demarcation and territorialisation - between distinct social exchanges or flows, between dis tinct rights, and so forth - are always fulfilled simultaneously by borders.

1. I shall begin, then, with what I call - for the purposes of this discussion overdetermination. We know that every border has its own history. Indeed, this is almost a commonplace of history textbooks. In that history, the demand for the right to self-determination and the power or impotence of states are combined, together with cultural demarcations (often termed ’natural’), economic interests, and so on. It is less of ten noted that no political border is ever the mere boundary between two states, but is always over determined and, in that sense, sanctioned, reduplicated and relativized by other geopolitical divisions. This feature is by no means incidental or contingent; it is intrinsic. Without the world-configuring function they perform, there would be no borders - or no lasting borders.

Without going back beyond the modern age, let us give two examples of this which still have effects today. The European colonial empires - roughly from the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) to the 1960s - were most certainly the condition of emergence, reinforcement and subsistence, within the framework of successive world-economies, of the nation-states of Western - and even of Eastern - Europe. As a result, these states’ borders with each other were both, indissociably, national borders and imperial borders, with other frontiers extending and replicating them right into ’the heart of darkness’, somewhere in Arica and Asia.

As a consequence, they served to separate different categories of ’nationals’. For the ’imperial-national’ states did not merely have ’citizens’; they also had ’subjects‘. And those subjects, as far as the national adminis tration was concerned, were both less foreign than aliens, and yet more different (or more ’alien’) than them: which means that in some respects, or in some circumstances (as in times of war), it was sometimes easier for them to cross borders than it was for aliens in the strict sense, and sometimes more difficult.

A second example is that of the ’camps’ or blocs in the Cold War between 1945 and 1990. Whereas the ’division of the world’ between colonial empires strengthens national sovereignty in same cases (while purely and simply preventing it in others), the division into blocs (to which, we should not forget, the creation and operation of the UN was a corollary) seems to have combined an extension of the nationform worldwide (and, consequently, of an - at least theoretical - national identity as the ’basic’ identity for all individuals) with the creation of a de facto hierarchy among those nations within each bloc, and, as a result, more or less limited sovereignty for most of them.

This meant that the national borders of states were once again overdetermined and, depending on the particular case, strengthened or weakened. It also meant that there were once again, in practice, several types of aliens and alienness, and several different modes of border-crossing. When the border, or the sense of crossing a border, coincided with the super-borders of the blocs, it was generally more difficult to pass through, because, the alien in this case was also an enemy alien, if not indeed a potential spy. This was the case except where refugees were con cerned, because the right of asy-

lum was used as a weapon in the ideological struggle. Might it not be said that the dispositions for asylum seekers which passed into law in the 1950s and 1960s, both in international conventions and national constitutions, owe much of their formulation and their theoretical liberalism to this situation? The German law, which has just been changed, is an - extreme example which illustrates this very clearly.

If we did not keep this situation in mind, it seems to me that we would not understand the terms in which the question of refugees from Eastern Europe currently presents itself (from that Eastern Europe which is suddenly no longer Eastern Europe any more, but almost a part of the Third World).

Nor would we understand the difficulties the ’European Community’ has in seeing itself as a community underpinned by specific interests of its own, whereas it was essentially the by-product, and part of the mechanism, of the Cold War - even in so far as the aim of constituting a counterweight to American hegemonic power within the ’Western bloc’ was concerned.

The colonial empires of the past and the ’blocs’ of the recent past have left deep marks on institutions, law and mentalities. But they no longer exist.

It would, however, be, naive to think that they have now given way to a mere juxtaposition of similar nations.

What is today termed the crisis of the nation-state is partly (even if it is not only), the objective uncertainty regarding, on the one hand, the nature and location of the geopolitical demarcations which may overdetermine borders and, on the other, what type or degree of national autonomy these hypothetical super-borders might be com patible with, given their military, economic, ideological or symbolic operation. With the question of the inner (ethnic, social or relig ious) divisions within each nation-state and even within very ’ancient’ ones it might well be that this tormenting but generally unacknowledged question, fraught with potential conflict, will be decisive in determining which national borders in Europe itself are likely to survive into the new historical period. The borders of Germany have already changed; those of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, too, by two very different processes. It could be that others further West will follow.

2. Second, I come to what I have referred to, in a perhaps rather overblown fashion, as the polysemic nature of borders. In practical terms, this simply refers to the fact that they do not have the same meaning for everyone. The facts of this are commonly known, and indeed, form the core of our discussion here. Nothing is less like a material thing than a border, even though it is officially ’the same’ (identical to itself, and therefore well defined) whichever way you cross it - whether you do so as a businessman or an academic travelling to a conference, or as a young unemployed person. In this latter case, a border becomes almost two distinct entities, which have nothing in common but a name. Today’s borders (though in reality this has long been the case) are to, some extent, designed to perform precisely this task: not merely to give individuals from different social classes different experiences of the law, the civil administration, the police and elementary rights, such as the free dom of circulation and freedom of entreprise, but actively to differentiate between individuals in terms of social class.

Here the state, settled on and constituted by its own borders, has, over the course of history, played a fundamentally ambivalent role, for on the one side it conceals - and, up to a point, formally limits - differentiation, in order to insist upon the notion of national citizen and, through that nation, a certain primacy of the public authority over social antagonisms.

On the other hand, how ever, the more transnational traffic - whether of people or of capital - intensifies, the more a transnational politico-economic space has formed as a result, and the more states - including, particularly, the most ’powerful’, among them - tend to operate in the service of an international class differentiation, and, to that end, to use their borders and apparatuses of control as instruments of discrimination and triage.

Yet they attempt to do this while preserv ing to the utmost the symbolic sources of their popular legitimacy. This is why they find themselves in the contradictory position of hav-

ing both to relativize and to reinforce the nation of identity and national belonging, the equation of citizenship with nationality.

There is a double-bind of the, same kind inherent in, the very notion of the circulation of persons. The problem lies not so much in the difference in treatment between the circulation of commod ities or capital and the circulation of people, as the term circulation is not used here in the same sense. It. is, rather, the fact that, in spite of computer networks and telecommunications, capital never circulates without a plentiful circulation of human beings - some, circulating ’upwards’, others ’downwards’. But the establishment of a world apartheid, or a dual regime for the circulation of individuals, raises massive political problems of acceptability and resistance. The’ ’colour bar’, which no longer now merely separates ’centre’ from ’periphery’, or North from South, but runs through all societies, is for this very reason an uneasy approximation to such an apartheid. The actual management of this ’colour bar’ has a massive but double-edged impact, be cause it reinforces an uncontrollable rac ism, and promotes insecurity and this in turn necessitates an excessive degree of security provision. Not to mention the fact that between the two extremes - between those who ’circulate capital’ and those ’whom capital circulates’, through ’transnational reloca tions’ of industrial plant and ’flexibility’, there is an enormous, unclassifiable, intermediate mass.

It is perhaps also from this point of view that we should reflect on one of the most odious aspects of the question of refugees and migration, to which Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp and her friends have recently devoted a detailed study: the question of ’inter national zones’ or ’transit zones’ in ports and airports. Not only do we have here an illustration of the state of generalized violence which now forms the backdrop both to so-called economic migration and to the flows of refugees, recognized or unrecognized, but we see here in material reality the differential operation and, so to speak, duplication of the notion of border which was already beginning to emerge in the different formalities which applied to the crossing of borders.

We must not confine ourselves solely to a discussion of the legal aspects here; it is essential that we also undertake a phenomenological description.

For a rich person from a rich country, a person who tends towards the cosmopolitan (and whose passport increas ingly signifies not just mere national belonging, protection and a right of citizenship, but a surplus of rights - in particular, a world right to circulate unhindered), the border has be come an embarkation formality, a point of symbolic acknowledgement of his social status, to be passed at a jog-trot. For a poor person from a poor country, however, the border tends to be something quite different: not only is it an obstacle which is very difficult to surmount, but it is a place he runs up against repeatedly, passing and repassing through it as and when he is expelled or allowed to rejoin his family, so that it becomes, in the end, a place where he resides. It is an extraordinarily viscous spatio-temporal zone, almost a home - a home in which to live a life which is a waitingto-live, a non-life. The psychoanalyst André Green wrote that it is difficult enough live on a border, but that is as nothing compared with being a border oneself. He meant this in the sense of the splitting of multiple identities migrant identities - but we must also look at the material bases of the phenomenon.

3. This would lead me quite naturally, if I had the time, to discuss my third point: the heterogeneity and ubiquity of borders or, in other words, the fact that the tendency of borders, political, cultural and socioeconomic, to coincide - something which was more or less well achieved by nation-states, or, rather, by some of them - is tending today to fall apart. The result of this is that some borders are no longer situated at the borders at all, in the geografico-politico-administrative sense of the term. They are in fact elsewhere, wherever selective controls are to be found, such as, for example, health or security checks (health checks being part of what Michel Foucault termed bio-power). The concentration of all these functions (for example, the control of goods and people - not to mention microbes and viruses - adminis-

trative and cultural separation, etc.) at a single point - along a single line which was simultaneously refined and densified, opacified - was a dominant tendency during a particular period, the period of’ the nation-state (when it really existed in a form close to its ideal type), but not an irreversible historical necessity. For quite some time now, it has been giving way, before our very eyes, to a new ubiquity of borders.

What I wanted to stress - perhaps it is a truism - is that in the historical complexity of the notion of border which is currently becoming important for us again, just as it is changing and assum ing new forms - there is the question of the institution. The institution of the border, of course, and the ways in which borders can be instituted, but also there is the border as a condition of possibility of a whole host of institutions. If the border was defined fictively in a simple, simplistic way and if, as I suggested at the beginning, that simplicity was forced - that is to say, subjected to forcing by the state - it was precisely for this reason.

But the consequence has been that the borders within which the conditions for a relative democracy have in some cases been won have them selves always been absolutely anti-democratic institutions, beyond the reach of any political purchase or practice. ’Citizens’ have settled there for any length of time only for purposes of mutual extermination....

Borders have been the anti-democratic condition for that partial, limited democracy which some nation-states enjoyed for a certain period, managing their Own internal conflicts (sometimes exporting them too, but that is very much a process which requires a border line). This is why I think you are right in your Declaration to speak of a requirement for ’radical democracy’. As soon as borders become differentiated and multiple once again - once they begin to constitute a grid ranging over the new social space, and cease simply to border it from the outside - then the alternative lies between an authoritarian, and indeed violent, intensification of all forms of segregation, and a democratic radicalism which has as its aim to deconstruct the institution of the border.

For my own part, however, I would hesitate to identify such a radical democracy - which is necessarily internationalist or, more accurately transnational - with the pursuit of a ’borderless world’ in the juridico-political sense of the term. Such a ’world’ would run the risk of being a mere arena for the unfettered domination of the private centres of power which monopolize capital, communications and, perhaps also, arms. It is a question, rather, of what democratic control is to be exerted on the controllers of borders - that is to say, on states and supranational institutions themselves. This depends entirely on whether those on the different sides of the border eventually discover common interests, and a common language (common ideals).

But it depends also on the question of who will meet in those unliveable places that are the different borders. Now, in order to meet, one most often needs interpreters, mediators. Disheartening as their experience is today, it seems to me that those who defend the right of asylum precisely rank among those mediators. [i] Paper delivered to the conference, ’Vlolence et droit d’asiIe en Europe: Des frontieres des Etats-Nations à la responsabilite partagée dans un seul monde’ at the University of Geneva, 23-25 September 1993. ” [ii] ’Violence is a condition of excistence in societies of exile and in the societies of the North’ Marie-Claire CalozTschopp, et.al.: Asile-Violence-Exclusion en Europe. Historie, analyse, prospective (Geneve: 1994) Étienne Balibar, born 1942, french philosopher, emeritus professor at Université de Paris X (Nanterre).

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

Madreportage fra Kongelunden // Food report from Kongelunden

“Welcome to the country of

Der er minusgrader udenfor. Kongelundens flygtningelejr ligger tæt ved havet på vejen til Dragør. De lave, funktionelle bygninger udgør hjemmet for omkring 70 asylsøgere fra forskellige dele af verden og Røde Kors’ flag basker hårdt i blæsten.

I hovedbygningen er det blevet spisetid. Folk fører forsigtigt deres dybe plastiktallerkener med vegetarisk gryderet hen til de små borde, mens udskænkningen ligner noget fra en teltlejr eller Roskildefestivalen. Vi bliver henvist til en barak et stykke derfra. Søstrene Ahlam og Hala Al-Nies, på 21 og 19 år, skal lære Hr. Børge Igor Brandt at lave libanesiske dolmer, og da vi ankommer, har de allerede ingredienser nok til en hel nørrebrosk madbiks. Det kunne have været en idyl. Vi befinder os i et hus med ’næsten-havudsigt’ - Kongelundskroen ligger lige om hjørnet - en huskat sidder udenfor og mjaver, men her ender idyllen så.

Jeg kan ikke helt sætte en finger på, hvad det egentlig er, der gør et køkken til et køkken, men det kvadratiske område mellem to gange, jeg står på nu, er i hvert fald noget andet.

Kokkeikonerne Meyer og Plum må befinde sig i dette land, men dog på en anden planet. Friske krydderurter og eksklusivt havsalt glimter ved sit fravær – og skellet er næsten komisk.

Men hvad har jeg at indvende? Ville gardiner med mønster af tern og kongeligt dansk kunne skjule det faktum, at mennesker har siddet herude i op til syv år for at få adgang til resten af riget? Og så ser Ahlam og Hala jo ud til at være ved godt mod. ”It’s good here,” siger Ashlam, ”Sandholm is much worse”. Lidt nede ad gangen deler søstrene et værelse med to madrasser. Deres forældre døde, da de var små, og resten af deres søskende er nu spredt for alle vinde. ”Nu er det kun mig og min søster,” fortæller Hala, ”vi holder sammen”.

Der går et par timer fra Ashlam begynder at blande ingredienserne sammen i den store skål til alt er klart. Børge, som er fingerfiks og lærenem, har rullet i hvert fald hundrede dol-

mer, Hala har røget mindst hundrede cigaretter og Ashlam har nået at bage brød og ordnet tomater, løg og kartofler, som hun nu fylder med kødfyld. Hun arbejder i et roligt tempo og ligner en, der kunne stå og lave mad indtil verdens undergang. Hala har stegt kylling og venter på besøg fra et par veninder. Da vi sætter os til at spise er det blevet mørkt udenfor.

Fotografen er kørt hjem til sine børn og Børge når lige at smage en lille smule af dagens hverv, før han også må af sted. Tilbage er Hala, Ashlam, veninderne og jeg.

Netop som vi sætter os, kommer ’kontaktpersonen’, som Hala kalder den kvinde, der er ansat på Kongelunden og til daglig arbejder som socialpædagog. Hun bliver også inviteret til at spise med – og maden smager fantastisk! Udenfor mjaver katten stadig. ”Han har været her i atten år,” konstaterer Ashlam, ”født i Danmark og det hele”. Kontaktpersonen, som er sød og venlig, forklarer problemet med at lukke katten ind. ”Når den en gang er kommet ind i varmen og bliver forkælet, så klarer den sig ikke udenfor igen,” konstaterer hun og berører, uden at ane det, asylproblematikken i Danmark, sådan som jeg modvilligt er kommet til at opfatte den. Søstrene Hala og Ashlam har befundet sig i Danmark i flere år. Da jeg lægger sidste hånd på denne artikel, får jeg at vide, at de omsider har fået opholdstilladelse. Jeg håber så at nogen giver dem mulighed for at lave et madlavningsprogram, prime time på dansk tv. De ville være mere underholdende end så mange andre.

Af Malin Waak

Opskrift på libanesiske dolmer til et helt fodboldhold.

Ingredienser:

1 løg, hakket 1 helt hvidløg, presset 1 kg langkornet ris, blødlagt ½ kg hakket oksekød 2 spsk. kabsa-krydderi 2 dl tørret, knust mynte 300 g tomatpuré 1 spsk. karry ½ spsk. citronsyre 2 pakker vinblade 3 dl madolie (fx raps, solsikke) salt & peber

skål. Hvis man vil være sikker på, at krydringen bliver som man ønsker, så vent med at blande med det blødlagte ris og steg i stedet for lidt af kødfarsfyldet og smag på det.

Læg et af de vaskede vinblade med stilksiden nedad og indersiden (med de tydligste nerver) opad.

Lav en tynd rulle af fyldet (½ cm bred og 4-5 cm lang afhængig af bladets størrelse) og læg den på den nederste del af vinbladet. Fold siderne og rul sammen dolmen så stramt som muligt. Fortsæt indtil alt fyldet er brugt op.

Før du begynder med selve madlavningen skal riset ligge i vand i ca. en time. Hæld vandet fra.

Dæk bunden af en stor kasserolle med vinblade, som er godt smurt ind i olie, og placer dolmerne tæt sammen på vinbladene. Når dolmerne er lagt i kasserollen, overhældes de med vand og en tung genstand lægges på dolmerne – tænk på at vælge en genstand der kan klare høj varme uden at sprække, fx et rundt, ildfast fad. Lad dolmerne koge på middelvarme i ½ til 1 time. Tag en dolme op, og smag på den for at se om de er færdige, det kan variere lidt.

Skyl vinbladene omhyggeligt i koldt vand, da de ellers bliver for salte. Pas på, at de ikke går i stykker.

Hak løget og pres hvidløget og bland alle ingredienserne på nær vinbladene i en stor

En dressing af crème fraîche eller yoghurt smagt til med de krydderier, man foretrækker, er lækkert til dolmerne, som i øvrigt smager godt flere dage efter de er lavet – også kolde.v Eat & Enjoy!

Sådan gør du

Issue #1 Summer 2009

23

Madreportage fra Kongelunden // Food report from Kongelunden

passion and luxury”

Photo: Veronica Juhl

It’s below freezing outside. The refugee camp Kongelunden is situated close to the sea on the way to Dragør. The low functional buildings are the homes of about 70 asylum seekers from different parts of the world and the wind is whipping hard on the red-cross flag.

Photo: Miriam Nielsen

It’s time for lunch in the main building. People are carefully carrying their dishes of vegetarian stew to the small tables and the scenery looks like something from a tent camp or the Roskilde festival. We are being shown to a barrack close by. The sisters Ahlam and Hala Al-Nies, 21 and 19 years old, will be teaching Mr. Børge Igor Brandt how to cook Lebanese dolmers, and when we arrive they have already gotten out enough ingredients to fill up a grocery shop in Nørrebro. It could have been idyllic. We are in a house, which almost has a sea view, the Kongelund inn is just around the corner and a cat sits outside meowing – but the idyll ends here.

I can’t really put my finger on exactly what it is that makes a kitchen a kitchen, but the square area between the corridors where I’m standing now, is definitely something else.

Mayer and Plum may be in the country but they are on a different planet. You won’t find fresh herbs and exclusive sea salt here – and the contrast’s almost comical.

But what’s my problem? Would checked curtains and royal Danish porcelain hide the fact that people have been living here for up to 7 years in the hope of getting access to the rest of the country? And apart from that, Ahlam and Hala actually look quite cheerful. ”It’s good here,” Ashlam, says, ”Sandholm is much worse”. A bit further down the corridor lies the sisters’ shared room with two mattresses.

Their parents died when they were young, and the rest of their sisters and brothers are dispersed. ”Now we’re just the two of us”, Hala says, ”we stick together”.

From when Ashlam starts to mix the ingredients in a big bowl until everything is ready a few hours pass by. Børge who’s a quick learner

and good with his hands has rolled up close to a 100 dolmers, Hala has smoked at least a 100 cigarettes and Ashlam has had enough time to make a loaf of bread, help Børge and I rolling up the dolmers and sorted out tomatoes, onions and potatoes that she’s now filling up with meat. She’s working in a steady and mellow pace and looks like she could be cooking food until the end of the world. Hala has fried a chicken and is expecting some girlfriends.

When we finally sit down to eat it’s dark outside. The photographer has gone home to be with her kids and Børge just has enough time to taste the food he has worked so hard on cooking, before he has to leave as well. The only people left are Hala, Ashlam, the girlfriends and I. Just as we’ve sat down for dinner, the ”contact person”, as Hala calls the woman who’s employed in Kongelunden and who usually works as a social worker, arrives. She has also been invited to join us for dinner – and the food tastes fantastic. Outside the cat’s still meowing. ”He has been here for 18 years”, Ashlam states, ”born in Denmark and everything”.

The contact person who’s sweet and friendly explains that it’s problematic to let the cat in. ”Once it has been let in and gotten used to the heat and being spoiled, it wont manage outside again,” she states and without knowing it she describes how I, against my will, have come to perceive the Danish asylum issue. The sisters Hala and Ashlam have been in Denmark for a long time, but just as I’m finishing this article I’m being told that finally they’ve been granted Danish residency. I hope that someone someday will give them the chance to do a cooking programme on Danish TV, prime time. It would be more entertaining than most other programmes.

By Malin Waak

Recipe for Lebanese dolmers for an entire soccer team Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped 1 whole garlic bulb, crushed 1 kg long rice, soaked ½ kg minced meat 2 tbs. kabsa-spice 2 dl dried, crushed mint 300 g tomato pure 1 tbs. curry ½ tbs. citric acid 2 packets of vine leaves 3 dl cooking oil (sunflower, rape seed oil) salt & pepper

spice mixture tastes the way you want it to it’s better to fry a little bit of the meat mixture first and taste it. Then mix in the rice afterwards.

Place one of the washed vine leaves with the outside of the leaf facing down.

Make a small sausage out of the mixture (½ a cm wide and 4-5 cm long depending on the size of the leaf) and place it on the bottom part of the leaf. Fold the sides and roll it as tight as possible. Carry on until the mixture has been used up.

Before you start soak the rice in water in one hour, then drain it.

Cover a large casserole with vine leaves that have been thoroughly covered in oil, and place the dolmers close together on the vine leaves. When the dolmers have been placed in the casserole, cover then with water and place a heavy object on top – please use an object which doesn’t crack when heated op such as a fire proof round pan. Boil the dolmers on medium heat for ½ an hour to 1 hour. Taste one to check if they are done, it varies a little.

Wash the vine leaves thoroughly in water, because they will be too salty otherwise.

Watch out that they don’t tear.

Chop the onion and crush the garlic. Mix all the ingredients except the vine leaves in a large bowl. If you want to make sure that the

A dip made out of yogurt or crème fraiche with spices of your own choice is delicious with the dolmers, that by the way also taste good several days after they’ve been cooked – also cold.

Eat & Enjoy!

How to do it

24

Issue #1 Summer 2009

Historier indefra // Inside stories

Fortælling om En brandudrykning

Story about A Fire-turnout

Photo: Otman Miloud

Hvilke associationer kommer op, når man kigger på en brandudrykning? Hvilke associationer kommer op, når du ser en brandbil i udrykning - et stort ildrødt monster, som afgiver en forfærdelig masse larm? Tja, nok ikke nogle særlig positive af slagsen.

Men kunstskabende øjne ser helt anderledes på ting end den almindelige observatør. Et af beviserne på det er S.O.S.-teatret, en performance på flygtingelejret Kongelunden.

De fortalte os historier - med hjælp af vandslangen - som var sjove og hjertevarmende.

Et tak til de personer, som giver lidt glæde og varme. Særligt på et sted som en flygtingelejr, hvor mennesker ikke har ret meget grund til at grine. En kunst-manifestation, som denne er en stor gave for publikum!

Af Patrick

Which associations arise when you look at a fire-turnout? What associations arise when you have a fire engine – a great fiery monster that also makes a sharp, unpleasant noise?

Well, probably not very positive ones.

But artistic minds grasp things totally different from what ordinary observers can.

One of the proof-statement of this is a performance of “S.O.S theater” in the center for refugees, Kongelunden.

Free calender & guides Filmstationen.

Gratis film, hveranden torsdag.

Næste gang: Torsdag d 18 juni, Lygten Station. - overfor Nørrebro Station. - bus 5A og S-tog lige til døren. www.filmstationen.net

Filmstationen.

Free film every second Thursday.

Next time: Thursday 18th June, Lygten Station, Next to Nørrebro station, Bus 5A and S-train- directly to the door. www.filmstationen.net

Træning og danse-timer i Fælledparken: Træning hver mandag, onsdag og fredag kl. 18.00 - 19.00, juni, juli og august Sted: Fælledparken, bag ved Pavillionen Dans hver mandag, tirsdag, onsdag og torsdag i juni og juli, kl. 19.00-22.00.

Sted: Fælledparken, på hjørnet af Øster Allé og Borgmester Jensens Allé www.friskissvettis.dk

Exercise and dance-lessons in Fælledparken: Exercising every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 18.00-19.00 June, July and August.

Place: Fælledparken, behind the Pavillion Dance: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday- 19.00-22.00 June and July Place: Fælledparken, on the corner of Øster Allé and Borgmester Jensens Allé www.friskissvettis.dk

They told us stories – with the help of fire track- that were funny and warm-hearted.

A thank you to those people who bring in a little joy and warmth. Especially in a place like a refugee camp where people are not having too many occasions for laughter. This kind of manifestation of art is a great gift for it´s viewers!

By Patrick

Kirkeasyl: www.kirkeasyl.dk Tlf.: 61 85 35 11 kirkeasylkontor@gmail.com

Asylret: www.asylret.dk /viewpa ge.php?page_id=2 Integrationsministeriet: www.nyidanmark.dk/da-dk/Ophold/asyl www.sandholm.ning.com initiativet mod statsracisme

Migreurop

europæisk netværk af forskere, o.a. der beskæftiger sig med migration: www.migreurop.org

Bedsteforældre for asyl:

http://www.bedsteforaeldreforasyl.

dk

Issue #1 Summer 2009

25

Historier indefra // Inside stories

Den første virkelige fest En fest! Overraskelse og glæde stod at se i mange ansigter. Noget usædvanligt var i gang i Sandholm lejren. Det skulle være den første fællesorganiserede fest i lejren, under navnet ”Ingen Hegn” og omkring 250 mennesker fra Sandholm og 50 fra København, til dagligt adskilt af Lejrens sære hegn, skulle tilbringe dagen sammen.

Dagens aktiviteter blev annonceret – på engelsk, farsi, dansk, arabisk og kurdisk – under bifald og fløjten. Der var fodboldturnering, bordtennisborde, backgammonspil og bannermaling; Dj’s mixede musik, folk tog mikrofonen og dansegulvet kogte!

Madlavningen begyndte tidligt på dagen i Sandholm. To køkkener blev fyldt og folk arbejdede sammen, eller i mindre grupper, for at forberede deres bidrag til festen: Arabisk kylling, srilankansk karryris, kurdisk lam, somaliske samosaer, afganske qabelli og vegansk salater.

I to måneder op til festen, havde vi holdt møder ugentligt for at tænke og organisere festen. Mange mennesker fra forskellige lan-

de, kulturer og religioner delte deres ideer og ønsker til projektet og efter kort tid havde gruppen vokset sig til mere end tyve engagerede folk, fra begge sider af hegnet.

Dette arbejde og den begejstring blev skabt af og til fordel for de mennesker, der har forladt deres hjemlande, deres minder, venner og familie, for at kunne overleve og i håb om at nå til et sikkert sted, hvor ingen kan gøre dem fortræd og hvor de kan leve et værdigt liv som andre mennesker gør. Men når de kom til Danmark, var det langt fra det drømmeland, de havde håbet på. I stedet er der hegn omkring dem, de vågner til lyden af militærøvelser, uden ret til arbejde eller skolegang,

Photo: No Fences

uden ret til at protestere og med en konstant trussel om udvisning.

Festens formål var at få folk til at mødes og udveksle ideologier, filosofier og skabe viden om vores evner til at nå vores mål – at møde hinanden på trods af adskillelsen og forsøge at forestille os hvordan det ville være, hvis der ingen hegn var.

Det var en rigtig fin fest. Men bagefter, da folk stod tilbage på deres respektive sider af hegnet, meldte der sig en tristhed. Vi var stadig de samme mennesker, under samme betingelser og med samme bekymringer. Og så alligevel: I et par timer den lørdag havde vi håb. Vi

har rent faktisk skabt noget sammen; og folk i Sandholm kunne glemme hegnene mens folk fra København blev mindet om at de er der, og er virkelige.

Festen var et første skridt, og vi vil fortsætt med at finde nye måder at modarbejde hegnet på – fysisk, symbolsk, juridisk. Du må gerne være med.

Tjek no-fences.webs.com for mere information.

The first real party A party! You could see the surprise with happiness on everybody’s face: Something unusual was going on in the Sandholm camp. This was to be the first cooperatively organised party in the camp, by the name of ‘No Fences’.

About 250 people living in Sandholm and 50 people living in Copenhagen, normally on two different sides of the strange fences of the camp, were now spending the day together.

Photo: No Fences

When the announcers explained about all the activities – in English, Farsi, Danish, Arabic, and Kurdish - people started cheering. We had a football tournament, pingpong tables, backgammon games and banners being painted; DJ’s were mixing music, rappers were on the open microphone and the dance floor was on fire! The cooking had begun early in Sandholm. Two kitchens were filled, people cooking together or in small groups, preparing their contribution to the party: Arabic chicken, Srilankan curry rice, Kurdish lamb, Somalian samosas, Afghani qabelli and vegan salad.

For about two months, we’d had meetings weekly in Sandholm, deciding on the party

and organising it. Many people from different countries, cultures, religions, and beliefs joined in and shared their thoughts and wishes on the project. After a short while our group had grown to more than twenty people, from both sides of the fences.

All this work and excitement was held for and by the people who left their countries with all their memories, friends and families just to survive and come to a place where no one could hurt them, where they could live their lives with rights and dignity. But when they came to Denmark , things changed; It was not the dream land they had thought about.

Instead it was fences all around, waking up to

the sounds of military practice, with no rights to work or study, no right to object and with a constant risk of deportation.

The purpose of the party was to get people to meet and exchange their ideology, philosophy and form knowledge of our capabilities to achieve our goals - to meet each other in spite of the segregation and try to imagine what it would be like if there were no fences.

The party was a success. But afterwards, when everyone returned to their different sides of the fence, a feeling of sadness entered. We were still the same people, in the same conditions and with the same worries.

Only we were a little different now: For a few

hours that Saturday, we had hope. We had actually done something real together; to make people in Sandholm forget about the fences, and people in Copenhagen to remember them.

The party was just a small step, and we’ll continue to find new ways to work against the fence – physically, symbolically and juridically. We invite you to join us.

For more information, please visit no-fences. webs.com

26

Issue #1 Summer 2009

Interview // Interview

Interview med Michala Bendixen, Komiteen Flygtninge Under Jorden Kan du forklare, hvem det typisk er, der lever under jorden?

De fleste har søgt asyl og fået afslag. Nogle har fået afslag på familiesammenføring og kan ikke holde ud at skulle forlade deres familie og bliver derfor illegalt i landet.

Og så er der dem, som ikke søger asyl, fordi de godt ved, at de aldrig ville få det. De fleste er enlige, men der er også familier. Vi prøver af al magt at forhindre, at familier med børn er ’under jorden’.

Hvorfor?

Fordi det at leve i en sådan situation går særligt hårdt udover børn. Forældrene er jo ofte utrolig bange og paranoide, hvilket smitter af på børnene, som bliver enormt isolerede og slet ikke har samme forståelse for situationen, som de voksne. Børn har brug for et leve et normalt liv med skole eller børnehave, og de kan ikke klare usikkerheden.

Hvad gør I, når der ikke er noget at stille op?

Ja, altså, vi har sager, som er helt håbløse. Hvor de mennesker, vi har med at gøre, har prøvet alt, men bare ikke får opholdstilladelse. Og hvad skal de så gøre? Det er jo trods alt bedre at leve usikkert liv under jorden i Danmark end at sulte, blive sendt i fængsel eller blive tortureret. Man må se det i forhold til alternativet. Men det er virkelig et dilemma og det er

Under the Danish Ground

Illustration: Tina Helen

Under den Danske jord

Interview with Michala Bendixen from the Committee for Fugitives

utrolig svært at rådgive folk i sådanne situationer.

Kan du kort beskrive flygtningenes plads i det danske samfund?

Rent juridisk befinder de sig nærmest i et apartheidsystem, hvor de ingen rettigheder har i forhold til danskerne. Min oplevelse er, at danskerne ikke forstår, hvad det vil sige at være flygtning. Mange har en ide om, at mennesker flygter for at tjene penge eller for at få en gratis uddannelse. Og det er meget sjældent tilfældet. Jeg kender eksempelvis en kvinde fra det fattige Eritrea i Afrika, der var politisk aktiv kvindeforkæmper, som blev forfulgt og måtte flygte. Selvom hun kom til Danmark fra et af de fattigste lande i verden, ville hun til hver en tid ønske sig tilbage til sit hjemland, hvis det var muligt.

Hun har mistet kontakten til sin søn, og jeg tror det er umuligt at forestille sig, hvor

hårdt det må være at befinde sig i et fremmed land, hvor man ikke er ønsket. Mennesker som hun ville tage hjem, hvis de kunne. Det er rystende, at danskerne ikke har forstået, at det her altså er alvor.

Hvorfor tror du, danskerne har svært ved at forstå det?

Jeg tror simpelthen, vi har det så godt, at vi ikke kan forestille os, hvordan det er at have det så dårligt. Det er de færreste af os, der har prøvet at skulle pakke sine ting på to minutter og flygte ned af en bagtrappe eller at se et familiemedlem blive skudt. Og vi kan sgu ikke være bekendt at sidde på vores egen fede kage og lukke alle andre ude og gøre det til deres egen skyld, at de har problemer. Det er ikke deres skyld. De har ikke valgt det, ligeså lidt som vi har valgt vores heldige liv. Jeg ser det lidt som et lotteri.

Af Mia Edelgart

ent juridisk befinder de sig nærmest i et R apartheid-system, hvor de ingen rettigheder har i forhold til danskerne. Min oplevelse er, at danskerne ikke forstår, hvad det vil sige at være flygtning.

From a purely legal point of view, they find themselves virtually in an apartheid system where, compared to Danes, no-one has any rights. In my experience, Danes don’t understand what it means to be a fugitive.

Can you explain who typically lives ’Underground?’

Mainly, it’s people who have applied for asylum and have been rejected. Some of them have been refused as a family unit and can’t bear to leave their families and so they live illegally in the country. There are also those who don’t apply for asylum because they know full well that they would never get it. Most of them are single, but there are also some families. We try as hard as we can to ensure that families with children don’t live ’underground.’

Why? Because to live in such circumstances is extremely difficult for children.

The parents are often completely scared and paranoid, which gets picked up by the children, who become extremely isolated and who don’t have the same understanding of the situation as adults have. Children need to live a normal life with school or kindergarden, and can’t take insecurity.

What can you do, when there’s nothing to be done about it?

Yes, we’ve also said that it’s totally hopeless. A situation where the people we deal with have tried everything, yet they just can’t get a residence permit. So what to do?

Despite everything, it’s still better to live an uncertain life underground in Denmark than to go hungry, be imprisoned or tortured. You have

Det er jo trods alt bedre at leve usikkert liv under jorden i Danmark end at sulte, blive sendt i fængsel eller blive tortureret.

Despite everything, it’s still better to live an uncertain life underground in Denmark than to go hungry, be imprisoned or tortured. to see their decision in contrast to the alternative. But it’s definitely a dilemma and it’s incredibly hard to advise people in these kinds of situation.

Can you briefly describe the status of refugees in Danish society?

From a purely legal point of view, they find themselves virtually in an apartheid system where, compared to Danes, no-one has any rights. In my experience, Danes don’t understand what it means to be a fugitive. Many have the idea that people take flight so that they can earn money or receive a free education. But it’s very rarely to do with that.

For instance, I know of a woman from poverty-stricken Eritrea in Africa, who was a very politically active campaigner for women’s rights, and who as a consequence had to leave. Even though she came to Denmark from one of the world’s poorest countries, her constant wish is to return to her own homeland if possible. She has lost contact with her son, and for

me it’s impossible to imagine how difficult it must be to find yourself in a foreign land when you don’t really want to be there. People like her want to return if they can. It’s terrible that Danish people haven’t understood this, and it’s also serious.

Why do you think it’s hard for Danes to understand this?

I think we simply have things so comfortable that we can’t envisage how it is to have things so bad. There are very few of us who have had to pack their possessions in two minutes and escape down a back staircase, or who have just seen a family member get shot. And we really shouldn’t be known just as people who sit at our well-stocked tables, keeping everyone else out and saying that, if they have problems, then it’s their own fault. It’s not their fault. They didn’t choose this, just as we haven’t chosen our fortunate life. I see it as a little like a lottery.

By Mia Edelgart

FAKTA

FACTS

Komiteen Flygtninge Under Jorden opstod i 1986, da nogle danskere hjalp en iransk bekendt, der havde fået afslag på asyl, med at få omstødt afgørelsen. Komiteen har siden da hjulpet med sagsbehandling og vejledning til flygtninge, der lever under jorden.Udover asylsager beskæftiger de sig med humanitær opholdstilladelse og familiesammenføring samt lægehjælp til flygtninge under jorden. Komiteen hjælper ikke folk med at gå under jorden, og de skjuler ikke flygtninge. De rådgiver dem, der allerede er under jorden, så de hurtigst muligt kan komme “over jorden” igen.

The Committee for Underground Refugees was founded in 1988, when some Danes helped an Iranian acquaintance, who had had his application for asylum rejected, to reverse the decision. Since then, the Committee has helped with case-handling and guidance to refugees who live underground. Apart from asylum cases, they also devote time to applications for permission to stay for huminatarian reasons and to reunite families, as well as medical help for refugees underground. The Committee doesn’t actually help people to go underground, and they don’t harbour fugitives. Rather, it helps those who are already underground so they can as quickly as possible return ’overground’ again.

Issue #1 Summer 2009

27

Et digt // A Poem

Life in the camp

Camp, camp, camp, - - What a place to live, - - We wake everyday - - and life is just the same, - - like yesterday gone by - - Year after year, nothing changes - - We try to contend ourselves, - - trying to let go, - - But how ? ? ?

We’re growing older - - And children too are growing - - We’re hoping that one day - - - one day - - There will be a change - - It all seems like yesterday - - Gone, gone and gone - - Well, all is by Grace - - Today can never be like Yesterday - - And Yesterday cannot be like Today - - All we hope for is for a better life.

A place where we call our own - - Well, we only have to keep hoping - - For, when there is life, there is hope - - I rest my peace to posterity - - af Maureen Ngee Chi (asylansøger, Kongelunden)

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

ADT til visAvis // ADT to visAvis

Asyl Dialog Tank (ADT): Selvbestemmelse og integration skaber social forandring.

Livsbetingelser for en asylansøger i Danmark: Ingen ret til arbejde Ingen ret til at vælge hvilken lejr man vil bo i.

Voksne asylansøgere kan ikke modtage danskundervisning og har meget begrænset adgang til uddannelse.

Børn går i specielle skoler med et lavere niveau og ingen eksamen (men et stigende antal får nu adgang til folkeskolen) Lægehjælp gives kun ved akut sygdom.

Yderligere stramninger for de afviste asylansøgere: Tvunget ophold i udvisningscentre.

Skal rapportere til politiet to gange ugentligt (hvor politiet spørger: hvorfor rejser du ikke hjem?)

Ingen “lommepenge”, mad udleveres i cafeteriet på udvisningscentret.

Ingen aktivitetsprogrammer Ingen tidsfrist: Hvis Danmark ikke kan deportere dig (mange nationer nægter deres borgere genindrejse), og hvis du ikke har identitetspapirer eller du er statsløs, kan denne tilstand fortsætte evigt. Gennemsnitstiden for ophold i asylcentrene er 3,5 år for voksne. Omkring 800 personer har været her i mere end 4 år.

Photos: Otman Miloud

De danske asylcentre har været udsat for både kritik og politisk debat, men beboerne har sjældent fået fri taletid mening om livet i et dansk asylcenter. ADT blev grundlagt som reaktion på dette. Det formede sig som en serie af workshops i de to danske asylcentre Center Kongelunden og Center Sandholm i januar og februar 2009. Deltagerne var beboere i asylcentrene og studerende fortrinsvis fra Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi. På to workshops udviklede deltagerne kollektivt ideer og strategier for, hvordan man kunne forbedre forholdene for beboere i de danske asylcentre.

Eftersom asylansøgere er udelukket fra samfundet, er det første skridt imod at genoprette en dansk værdighed at skabe en inklusiv social platform, hvorfra man spørger flygtningene i lejrene om at hjælpe danskerne. På en sådan platform skal alle deltagere betragtes som ligeværdige uafhængig af legal status. ADT var sådan en platform. Asylansøgerne blev inviteret som eksperter på asyllov og livet i asylcentrene, mens de studerende og arrangørerne blev inviteret til at lytte og lære. Sammen accepterede vi udfordringen at finde alternative forslag til forbedring af livet for beboerne på asylcentrene.

Er de danske asylcentre designet til at nedbryde folk?

På workshoppene diskuterede vi de danske asylcentres generelle utilstrækkeligheder på baggrund af beboernes mange årige erfaringer fra adskillige centre. Konklusionen var at Dansk Røde Kors, der er udpeget af den danske stat til at administrere centrene, gør et godt stykke arbejde på de givne betingelser. Men så længe de indvilliger i at handle i overensstemmelse med en inhuman flygtningelov, kommer organisationens humanitære virke til kort, når det gælder deres klienters mest grundlæggende behov. Men alligevel gav de asylcenterbeboere, der deltog i ADT, udtryk for, at de godt kunne udholde krænkelsen af deres menneskerettigheder, hvis der blot var sikkerhed for hvornår krænkelserne ophørte.

De danske asylcentre er bygget til at give midlertidigt logi til flygtningene - højest 12-24 måneder, mens de venter på, at deres ansøgning bliver behandlet. Men fakta er, at asylansøgere lever i disse aflukkede og parallelle verdener i op til 12 år. Værelse og forplejning kommer med arbejds-, studie- og integrationsforbud i det omliggende samfund. I de fleste tilfælde foretrækker asylansøgere at arbejde og studere for på denne måde at bidrage til det samfund, de lever i. I stedet møder de isolation, fattigdom og mental handlingslammelse.

Indefra ser det ud, som om de danske asylcentre er designet til at nedbryde mennesker. Selv hvis Danmark besluttede at omforme asylcentrene til femstjernede hoteller, ville beboerne stadig føle sig indespærret, fordi de ikke har den grundlæggende ret til at forsørge sig selv.

Konsekvenserne af det ovenfor nævnte er, at danskerne generelt opfatter asylansøgere som omkostningstunge klienter og snyltere af det danske velfærdssystem frem for som potentielle kollegaer og bidragydere til det danske samfund.

ADTs løsning

ADT, som på dette tidspunkt, i slutningen af februar, talte omkring 20 danskere og 35 asylcenterbeboer, mærkede et stærkt behov for en uafhængig platform fra hvilken asylansøgere og danskere kan arbejde for gensidig integration.

Som resultat heraf besluttede vi at etablere to nye uafhængige institutioner: visAvis, en avis redigeret og skrevet af asylansøgere og danskere til den danske befolkning. Avisen holder De i Deres hænder netop nu!

Trampolinhuset, et kulturhus, organiseret af asylansøgere og danskere.

Begge har til hensigt at fungere som talerør for flygtninge i Danmark og som et middel til socialisering og integration.

Det er ADTs mål at både visAvis og Trampolinhuset i den nære fremtid vil blive permanente ikke-statslige institutioner.

De fundamentale principper i kulturhuset er integration, læring, udveksling, netværk og gensidig respekt. Det vil være en platform for skiftende aktiviteter: café, koncerter, udstillinger og læsegrupper, dansk/fremmedsprogs- eller modermålsundervisning, video workshop, pro bono juridisk hjælp og konsultation, frisørsalon, cykelsmedje m.m. Trampolinhuset er vores mulighed for at organisere og repræsentere os selv på en social platform hvor der ikke er nogen forskel mellem asylansøgere og danskere.

Trampolinhuset åbnede d. 5. marts 2009 som et midlertidigt test-sted i Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis udstillingssted Q. Da det provisoriske sted lukkede d. 15. marts, havde det bevist sin egen nødvendighed. Næste skridt er derfor at rejse penge til etableringen af et permanent hus. I mellemtiden driver vi et nyt midlertidigt Trampolinhus hver mandag i Verdens Kultur Centret på Nørrebro.

ADT er initieret af Morten Goll, Joachim Hamou og Tone Olaf Nielsen.

Af Morten Goll

Fængsling foregår uden tidsbegrænsning, fx på baggrund af mistanke om at du vil forlade landet illegalt eller gå under jorden. De fleste andre europæiske lande har tidsbegrænsning, nogle helt ned til to uger. Men i Danmark har mange siddet fængslet i mere end et år.

Danmark plejede at være den flinke dreng i klassen i forhold til at følge anvisningerne fra FN’s Flygtningehøjkommisariat (UNHCR). Men gennem årene, og mest drastisk efter den nye Udlændingelov i 2002, har vi bevæget os langt væk fra UNHCR’s anbefalinger. Den mest grundlæggende forskel er at du, for at få asyl i Danmark, skal være personligt forfulgt. Det er ikke nok at komme fra et meget farligt sted, eller at tilhøre en forfulgt gruppe.

Denne stramning er ikke i overensstemmelse med FNs definition af flygtningebegrebet. Og hvis man sammenligner med jødernes situation i Nazityskland, så ville de fleste jøder ikke kunne få asyl i Danmark med den nuværende lovgivning. Den økonomiske byrde, forbundet med accepten af flygtninge, betyder tydeligvis mere end det moralske ansvar, vi har for at tilbyde dem sikkerhed.

Asylansøgningsproceduren har undergået store forandringer gennem årene. Den nye Udlændingelov fra 2002 strammede også betingelserne for familiesammenføring, for statsborgerskab og for sociale ydelser til nytilkommere. Resultatet er, at Danmark nu har en af verdens skrappeste udlændingelove – både hvad angår flygtninge og immigranter. Følgende organisationer har siden 2002 gentagne gange kritiseret Danmarks udenrigspolitik i adskillige rapporter: ECRE (European Council on refugees and exiles) ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) CERD (UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Amnesty International LIBE (EU Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) AN INTRODUCTION TO DANISH ASYLUM POLICY

by Michala Clante Bendixen, January 2009

Issue #1 Summer 2009

29

ADT til visAvis // ADT to visAvis

The Asylum Dialogue Tank (ADT): A Process of Empowerment, Agency, and Social Change.

Living conditions as an asylum seeker in Denmark: No right to work No right to live outside the asylum camps, or to choose which one Grown ups cannot follow Danish classes and have very limited access to education Children go to special schools with a lower level and no graduation exam (but a rising number are now allowed in public schools) Health care only for acute diseases And for the rejected asylum seekers also: Forced to live in deportation camps Must report to the police in the camp twice a week (just asking why you are not going home) No pocket money, food in cafeteria (you get 230 DKK a month) No activity programmes

The Danish asylum centers have been subjected to critique and political debate, but the Asylum center residence have rarely been asked directly about their opinion on life in a Danish asylum center. ADT was founded in response to this situation. It took form as a series of workshops in the Danish asylum centers Kongelunden and Sandholm during January and February 2009. The participants were asylum center residents and students mostly from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. During the two workshops, the participants collectively developed ideas and strategies on how to improve the living conditions for asylum center residents in Denmark.

Since the asylum seekers are excluded from society the first step to restore Danish dignity and equality, is to create an inclusive social platform and use it to ask the refugees in the camps to help the Danes. On such platforms, all participants must be considered equal, regardless of their legal status. ADT was such a platform. The refugees were invited as experts on asylum law and asylum center living, while the students and organizers were invited to listen and learn. Together, we all accepted the challenge to find alternative solutions to improve life for asylum center residents.

Are Danish asylum centers designed to break people down?

During the workshops, we discussed the shortcomings of the Danish asylum centers in general, as many of the residents participating in ADT had several of years of experience with many different centers. The conclusion was that that the Danish Red Cross, which has been appointed by the Danish state to run the centers, is doing a good job under the circumstances. But as long as they agree to act according to an inhumane Alien Act, the organization’s humanitarian measures are bound to fall short of their clients most basic needs. However, the asylum center residents who participated in ADT, all expressed that they could endure the disrespect of their human rights, if only there was a set time limit to this situation.

Danish asylum centers were built to accommodate refugees only temporarily – and no more than 12-24 months while waiting for their application to be processed. In reality, asylum seekers live in these enclosed and parallel worlds for up to 12 years. Room and boarding comes with the prohibition of work, education, and integration into the general society. In most cases, the asylum seekers would prefer to work or study, this way contributing to the society they live in. Instead, they face isolation, poverty, and mental paralysis. From the inside it seems that the Danish asylum centers are designed to break people down. Even if Denmark decided to turn the asylum centers into five star hotels, the residents would still feel imprisoned, since they don’t enjoy the basic

rights to a normal self-sustaining life.

No time limit: if Denmark can’t deport you (many countries do not want their citizens back. If you don’t have any ID, or you are stateless you can stay like this forever. The average time of stay in the asylum camps is 3.5 years for an adult. About 800 people have been here for more than 4 years.

The consequence of the above is that Danes generally perceive asylum seekers as costly clients and parasites on the Danish welfare system rather than potential colleagues and contributors to society. But the fact is that they have become so against their own will.

Imprisonment also without time limit, (many have been imprisoned for over a year) only on suspicion that you will leave the country illegally or go under ground.

Most other European countries have time limits, some down to weeks.

ADT’s solution

ADT, which at this point at the end of February counted about 20 Danes and 35 asylum center residents, identified a strong need for an independent platform at which asylum seekers and Danes can work for mutual integration. Consequently, we decided to create two new independent institutions: visAvis, a newspaper controlled and written by asylum seekers and Danes addressing the Danish public. The newspaper is in your hands right now!

The Trampoline House, a drop-in culture house, organized by asylum seekers and Danes.

Both are intended to serve as mouthpieces for refugees living in Denmark and as a means for social justification and integration. It is ADT’s goal that both visAvis and The Trampoline House will become permanent non-government institutions in near future.

The founding principles of the culture house are integration, learning, exchange, networking, and mutual respect. It will serve as a platform for shifting activities: café, concerts, exhibitions, reading groups, Danish/foreign or vernacular languages classes, video workshops, pro bono legal aid and counseling, hair dresser shop, bicycle workshop, etc. The Trampoline House is our possibility to organize and represent ourselves on a social platform where there is no difference between asylum seekers and Danes.

The Trampoline House opened as temporary test site in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts’ exhibition space, Q, on March 5, 2009. The temporary site closed on March 15, but having proved its own necessity, our next step will be to raise money to establish a permanent platform. In the meantime we run a new temporary Trampoline House every Monday in Verdens Kultur Centret on Nørrebro.

ADT is initiated by Morten Goll, Joachim Hamou, and Tone Olaf Nielsen.

Af Morten Goll

Denmark used to be one of the Nice Guys and follow the advice from UNHCR. But over the years, and most drastically with the new Alien Act in 2002, we have moved quite far away from UNHCR. The most fundamental difference is that to get asylum in Denmark you have to be individually in danger of persecution – it is not enough to come from a very dangerous place or belong to a persecuted group. If you read the UN definition again, you will not find a word about this. And if you compare with the situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany, most of them would not be included by the Danish definition. The economic burden of accepting refugees seem to mean more than the moral responsibility to offer them safety.

The asylum procedure in Denmark has been undergoing big changes over the years. The new Alien Act from 2002 also tightened the rules for family reunification, for citizenship and for allowances to newcomers. The result is that Denmark now has one of the world’s toughest laws on foreigners – both refugees and immigrants. The following organizations have since 2002 repeatedly criticized Denmark’s foreign policy in various reports: ECRE (European Council on refugees and exiles) ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) CERD (UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Amnesty International LIBE (EU Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) AN INTRODUCTION TO DANISH ASYLUM POLICY

by Michala Clante Bendixen, January 2009

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Issue #1 Summer 2009

Kryds og tværds // Cross words

W X-ORD Kodeordet er et ordsprog danskere driller fremmede med Dansk:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

The codeword is persons who doesnt live in peace English:

1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Kodeordet er en sund dessert Børn:

1 2 3 4 5 6

Anne Agerskov Jensen, 40 år, er tidligere hjemløs og har arbejdet 7-8 år for Husforbi både som skribent og krydsogtværs-kreatør.

Hun har bidraget med en krydsogtværs til visAvis. Avisen er et projekt, hun hellere end gerne støtter op om.

“DF og de Konservative har så travlt med at cementere det danske. Men hvad er det danske egentlig? Vi har jo vandret siden oldtiden, ellers ville dette lille land jo være en stor omgang indavl. Et af de eneste billeder, vi har på det rigtigt danske, er kongehuset, og det er ikke engang dansk, men tysk! Jeg er virkelig ikke stolt af Danmarks politik på asyl- og indvandrer-området. Man kan da ikke gå i krig, sønderbombe lande, ramme civile og så behandle de flygtninge, der som konsekvens kommer til vores land, som vi gør. Det er mangel på konduite. Der er så meget racisme både i medierne og på gadeplan og det er dybt forkasteligt.

Jeg var kæreste med en mulat på efterskolen og første gang jeg tog ham med hjem, sagde min far: ’Nåh, skal jeg så bygge en negerhytte i baghaven?’ Det var simpelthen så pinligt! Og jeg har bevidst ikke taget den holdning med hjemmefra!”

Anne Agerskov Jensen, 40 years old, is a formerly homeless person, and has worked 7-8 years on the homeless paper Husforbi as a writer and crosswordcreator.

She has contributed with a crossword for visAvis. The paper is a project that she very much would like to support.

“The Danish Peoples Party and The Conservatives are busy consolidating ’the Danish’. But what is in fact ’the Danish’?

We have been migrating since prehistoric time, if we hadn´t done that this little country would have been a big bunch of inbreeds. One of the only pictures we have of the genuine Danish is the Royal House, and that isn’t even Danish but German! I’m really not proud of the Danish Alien and Integration policy. You can’t go to war, bomb countries to pieces, hit civilians and then treat refugees, when they as a consequence come to our country, the way we do. It is a lack of conduit. There is so much racism both in the media and on the streets, and it is utterly despicable.

I dated a mulatto in residential school (’efterskole’), and the first time I brought him home my father said: ’Oh, so do I now have to build a Negro Hut in the backyard?’ That was so embarrassing! And I have deliberately not brought that attitude with me from home!”

Issue #1 Summer 2009

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Kunst anmeldelse // Art review

Painting Wilhelm Freddie

En anmeldelse af Wilhelm Freddies ‘Stik Gaflen I Øjet’ på Staten Museum For Kunst.

Wilhelm Freddie er en de mere kontroversielle repræsentanter for surrealismen i Vesteuropa. Han chokerede og provokerede beskueren. Hans værker blev igen og igen nedtaget fra udstillinger. Han fik bøder og blev arresteret, og det britiske toldvæsen ville ikke tillade hans værker at passere ind i landet.

Det er et håbløst stykke arbejde at beskrive noget, som man ikke kan se, men kun føle: en vildskabens ekstase af menneskekroppe på den anden side af tid og rum, brændt i et barokt miks af frie associationer på grænsen af en panisk følelse af dødens terror og ude af stand til at separere sig selv fra opslugende erotik og blodig massakre.

Hvem er skaberen af dette værk? Genial eller gal? Eller

er begge tilstande manifestationer af det menneskelige sind? Hans kreativitet synes både destruktiv og konstruktiv på en og samme tid. Hvad ønsker han at fortælle os almindelige dødelige? Det får vi aldrig at vide.

Mesteren har forladt os, og med sig har han taget alle mysterierne. Hans surreelle verden eksisterer nu adskilt fra vores almindelige verden og fra vores kunstopfattelse.

En privat association

Jeg kom til at tænke på to græske myter under min tur gennem Wilhelm Freddie-udstillingen. Hans talent er som en flamme, som kan både ødelægge og skabe på samme tid. Den græske myte, som jeg erindrer, forløber således: Herostratos var en ung mand, som satte ild til Artemis-templet i hans begær efter berømmelse. Temp-

let var bygget af marmor og anset som det absolut smukkeste. I stedet for at fralægge sig ansvaret for sin ildspåsættelse, påkaldte Herostratos sig stolt ansvaret for sin gerning i ønsket om at blive udødelig i historiens navn.

Prometheus er kendt for hans snu intelligens og for at stjæle Zeus’ ild og give den til menneskene. Zeus straffede ham for hans forbrydelse ved at binde ham til en klippe, hvor en enorm ørn åd hans lever hver dag. Og hver dag groede en ny lever ud for blot at blive ædt igen og igen.

Jeg beklager denne rodede anmeldelse. Måske er det Wilhelm Freddies indflydelse eller konsekvensen af et næsten håbløst job at forsøge at beskrive noget, som du nødvendigvis må se selv!

Af Patrick

A review of Wilhelm Freddie “Fork in the eye” at Statens Museum of Art. Wilhelm Freddie is one of many controversial representatives of the Surrealism in Western Europe. He shocked and provoked the viewers; his works were repeatedly removed from the exhibitions. He was fined and arrested, and British Custums simply didn’t allow his work into the country.

It’s a hopeless job to try to describe something you can’t see but feel: A frantic ecstasy of human bodies beyond time and space burned in a baroque mix of free associations bordering this panic feeling of mortal terror, unable to separate oneself from engrossing eroticism and bloody massacre.

Who is the author? Genius or mad? Or are both manifestations of the human mind?

His creativity seems both destructive and constructi-

ve at the same time. What does he want to tell us usual mortals? That - we will never know. The master left us, taking with him all his mysteries. He’s surreal world now exists separately from our usual world and our perception of his art.

A private association.

I came to think about Greek mythologies, walking around in the exhibition of Wilhelm Freddie. His talents are like a flame that can destroy and create at the same time. The myth that I remembered was following: Herostratus was a young man who set fire to the Temple of Artemis in his quest for fame.

The temple was constructed of marble and considered the most beautiful. Far from attempting to evade responsibility for his act of arson, Herostratus proudly claimed

credit in order to immortalise his name in history.

Prometheus is known for his wily intelligence, and being the one who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals.

Zeus then punished him for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day.

Sorry for the disordered review, maybe it’s the influence of Wilhelm Freddie or the consequence of a very hopeless job trying to describe something that you need to see yourself.

By Patrick

32

Issue #1 Summer 2009

En personlig beretning A personal story Penge og arbejde

Hvordan kan jeg overleve dér uden penge. Jeg kom som flygtning og uden penge på mig. Jeg bad ikke om asyl blot for at få noget at spise.

Jeg kom her for at lære nyt og opnå mere viden. Sandheden om forholdene chokerede mig. Og jeg har helt sikkert brug for nogen til at råde mig. Dette er en personlig beretning om en flygtning i lejren. Dette er en dag i et liv uden nogen form for penge, uden nogen form for støtte og frem for alt uden tilladelse til at arbejde for at opnå en god eller rimelig løn.

Den daglige kamp

Flygtninge befinder sig dagligt i en kamp med denne form for livsførelse. De undrer sig hver dag over, om dette nogen sinde vil ændre sig. Ønsker Danmark, at de skal leve således? At gøre disse mennesker skøre, hjemløse og tilmed med et mere miserabelt liv end det de allerede har kendt? Denne livsform får selv de stærkeste mennesker til at bryde sammen. De fleste er fortabte efter 2 eller 3 år. Og der er mange flere, der har levet op til 6 år i denne tilstand, hvor al håb er mistet, og de kun

Hvis man af en eller anden grund kommer for sent, får man ikke noget at spise før frokost tid.

If you missed it for any reason, you will end up starving until lunch time. kan vente på deres skæbne.

Ja disse har brug for fysisk og psykisk hjælp.

Et eksempel

Et eksempel herpå er en student, der kom fra Afrika, han havde allerede taget sin bachelor grad. Efter et stykke tid begyndte han at stjæle, da han ikke havde fået lov til at arbejde og kunne knap nok havde penge til sine personlige fornødenheder. Vigtigst er, at han nu bliver benævnt “terrorist”. Asylsøgerne giver i dag politiet mere arbejde, da dagene er ørkesløse.

Lejrstemning

De daglige måltidsrutiner i lejren, der starter med morgenmad tidligt om morgenen, er nok til at stresse enhver indenfor dette system; man skal eksempelvis være der i rette tid i kantinen. Hvis man af en eller anden grund kommer for

sent, får man ikke noget at spise før frokost tid. Det samme problem gør sig gældende ved frokost- og middagstid.

De andre flygtninge

Det er en del af hverdagen at have at gøre med de andre flygtninges problemer; det kunne dreje sig om uenigheder, blandt dem man deler værelse med, om hvad rummet skal bruges til, sågar om TV kanaler, rygevaner, rengøringshold eller mindre slåskampe i madkøen etc.

I en del af disse sager kan politiet ikke stille meget op, så med mindre man flytter ind med nogle venner i et område, hvor politiet ville være i stand til at gøre noget, må man klare sig selv.

“Vi er også mennesker der fortjener beskyttelse og omsorg”.

Af Poul Ali

Money and work

Camp atmosphere

How can I survive there without money? I came as a refugee and empty hand. I didn’t come to ask for asylum so as to only just eat. I came here to learn new things and to acquire more knowledge.The truth shocked me when I saw the situation. And for sure, I need someone to advise me. This is a personal story of a refugee at the camp. This is a day in a life without a source of money, without any support and above all with no permission to work to gain a decent or good salary.

The daily meal routine in the camp starting in the early morning with breakfast is enough to stress any one in this kind of system; for example you have to be at the right time in the canteen. If you missed it for any reason, you will end up starving until lunch time.

This same problem would occure at lunch or dinner.

The daily struggle

Refugees are in constant fight about this way of a life style daily. Daily you wonder if this will ever change. Does Denmark want them to live like that? To make them more crazy human beings and homeless and live a miserable life more than they already have had?

This kind of a lifestyle will make even the strongest human beings lose his/her mind.

Most of the refugees have lost their minds after 2 or 3 years. And there is a lot more who have spent up to 6 years in this kind of state and have lost all hope and only wait for their fate. Yes, they need sociological and mental help.

An example

An example is a student who came from Africa, and he had already done his bachelors degree, after a while, he started to steal because he wasn´t allowed to work yet he couldn´t even get money enough to spend for his other personal social life. Above all he is now being nicknamed “a terrorist”.

Asylum seekers now give police more work to do because days are idle.

The other refugees

It is part of everyday life that you have to deal with other refugees’ problems; it could be about your roommates who had a disagreement about the room role or even about TV channels or a smoking habit, cleaning shifts, or fighting for the food line etc.

The police can’t do much in some of these cases, unless? you move out to live with some friends in an area where the police could care, but a part from that then, you are by your own.

“We are people too who deserve protection and care” Af Poul Ali

Denne livsform får selv de stærkeste mennesker til at bryde sammen.

This kind of a lifestyle will make even the strongest human beings lose his/her mind.