visAvis no. 7

No. 7 - 2013

Voices on Asylum and Migration

Indhold / Content

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Kolofon / Colophon Leder / Editorial If the Sea Could Talk – Dady De Maximo First Year Immigrant – Noura Bittar Interview with Mohammad Shoja Tajik, an Afghan Artist – Rasmus Brink Pedersen visAvis at Roskilde Festival 2012 Flygtningemærkatet udsletter den personlige identitet – Rikke Nørgaard Andersen Comic – Jimmy Displacement is the New Translation – Kenneth Goldsmith Found in Translation • Notes on meeting and understanding pain – Ina Serdarević Poems from Syria – Tareq Aljalbr The Refugee Protest March: “Let's walk and see where it takes us” - Liv Nimand Duvå & Nicoline Sylvest Simonsen Coming Out as Undocumented: Notes on Undocubus – Jeppe Wedel-Brandt Welcome to Europe: You are stuck in the laboratory – Kirstine Nordentoft Mose & Mikas Lang Control of Fingerprints • Power over People – Sidsel Rosenberg Bak Opholdstilladelse/afslagsbrev – Thomas Elsted & Sif Bruun Open Letter to Helle Thorning-Schmidt – Hassan M. Said Waiting (for the Right) to Return – Kamal Ahamada On the History of the Powerless – Daniel Palm Cisne 26 Asylcentre i Danmark / 26 Danish Asylum Camps – Thomas Elsted & Tora A. Schultz Larsen Kastrup Lufthavn • Et par ord om immigrantens lod – Alen Mešković Det mærkelige hus / Stående – Alen Mešković Obviously I will be Caught if I go Back – Ismail Suleiman Hvad mener folk i asyllejrene om den nye asylaftale? - Trampolinhuset Daily Life in Avnstrup – Ismail Suleiman

90 En mere human asylpolitik? – Katja Lund Thomsen 95 Translations

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Kolofon / Colophon: visAvis er / visAvis is: Lise Olivarius Sylvester Roepstorff Ismail Suleiman Mia Isabel Edelgart Kirstine Nordentoft Mose Marie Markwardt Diyar Molayi Mira Kellermann Nimish Gautam Tora A. Schultz Larsen Katja Lund Thomsen Karen Ravn Vestergaard Karoline Siemen Sidsel Rosenberg Bak Birte Wedel-Brandt Armon Bunsri Katrine Skovgaard Kamal Ahamada Patrik Mikas Lang Sif Bruun Noura Bittar Søborg Diane Furaha Ganza Kipanga Daniel Palm Cisne Jennie Kaae Ferrara Morten Buchardt Simon Væth Paula Bulling Mohammad Shoja Tajik Jimmy Armsrock Misja Thirslund Krenchel Kristjan Wager Tina Helen Joachim Hamou Riema Ali Brett Bloom Lasse Hørring Christensen Anne Mette Trap Ann Sofie Brink Pedersen Søren Rafn Rikke Nørgaard Andersen

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Redaktion / Editorial Board: Liv Nimand Duvå (ansvarshavende) Paula Nimand Duvå Ina Serdarević Thomas Elsted Nicoline Sylvest Simonsen Rasmus Brink Pedersen Jeppe Wedel-Brandt Laura Na Blankholm Casper Øbro (design & layout) Print: Specialtrykkeriet Viborg Types: Minion Pro Sofia Pro Cover illustration: Paula Bulling Bank Info Bank account / Bankkonto Jyske Bank Reg. Nr. 7851 Kontonr. 3285805 CVR-nr. 33788827 IBAN: DK4978510003285805 SWIFT: JYBADKKK ISSN: 1904-528X Kontakt / Contact Skyttegade 3, 2200 Copenhagen N www.visavis.dk visavis.contact@gmail.com Thanks to: The Trampoline House (physical and mental support) Roskilde Festival (economic support)

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

How to get visAvis visAvis is free of charge.

We are happy to receive any donation on our account.: Reg. Nr. 7851 Accountnumber. 3285805 IBAN: DK4978510003285805 2013 • visAvis № 7

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

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

Her finder du visAvis visAvis er gratis. Vi modtager med glæde donationer på.: Reg. Nr. 7851 Kontonr. 3285805

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Leder #7 Når den europæiske asylpolitik står i stampe, når forholdene for flygtninge generelt forværres, og når den danske regerings asylaftale ikke har ændret synderligt på forholdene for folk, der søger asyl i Danmark, kan det ske, at de berørte træder ind på scenen. Det er netop, hvad der er sket under tilblivelsen af dette syvende nummer af visAvis. Asylansøgere og andre migranter er trådt ud af isolationen, ud af lejrene og ind i offentligheden. Ind på Rådhuspladsen i København, på Oranienplatz i Berlin, i Votivkirken i Wien og på landevejene i Arizona.

Vi har i visAvis ladet os inspirere af de ting, der sker, når en persons eneste mulighed for overlevelse er selv at ændre på vilkårene gennem sådanne modstandsformer. Derfor kan man i dette nummer af visAvis læse om den selvorganisering, man ser i initiativer som Undocubus og Protestmarchen til Berlin, hvor det at gå og være i bevægelse bruges som en kompromisløs protestform, en sidste mulighed for at påkalde sig offentlighedens interesse. Selvorganiseringen og gentænkningen af modstand kan man læse yderligere om, når vi giver en status på eskaleringen af den racistiske vold i Grækenland. Vi ser heri en ny retning i asylaktivismen, der udfordrer traditionel venstrefløjsaktivisme. Det er nemlig ikke alt, vi er enige om, når vi organiserer os sammen. Men det at udfordre måder, hvorpå vi kan arbejde som ligeværdige på trods af vores ulige situationer, bliver vigtigere bestanddele i asylaktivisme og selvorganisering i takt med, at man i fællesskab opnår en læring i kampen mod et system, der ikke anser alle menneskeliv for at være lige meget værd.

Også internt er dette syvende nummer af visAvis blevet til under forandring. Da forrige nummer var kommet på gaden, var vi blevet en mindre gruppe. Vi havde følelsen af kun lige at være kommet i trykken med hovedet oven vande. Da vi ønsker at skabe en kontinuerlig modoffentlighed omkring asyl og migration, var det vigtigt for os at gentænke vores arbejdsform. Vi startede en mobilisering, der skulle munde ud i en ny struktur. Vi indkaldte

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nye kræfter og er kommet frem til, at det skal være muligt at lave visAvis uden at skulle indgå i alle tidsskriftproduktionens faser. Således er ansvaret blevet mere decentralt, vi kan trække vejret lettere, og vores gruppe er blevet beriget med nye ideer, synspunkter og mennesker.

Opstartsfasen har fungeret som en kritisk selvransagning. Strukturen er ny, men vi kan konkludere, at de grundlæggende værdier fortsat er de samme: visAvis skal først og fremmest fungere som talerør for dem, der grundet deres status som flygtninge, ikke har mulighed for at ytre sig. En stor udfordring er til stadighed inddragelsen af folk, der bor i asyllejrene, og hvis vanskelige situationer besværliggør deres muligheder for at deltage på lige fod med andre.

Vi forsøger at nedbryde skellet mellem os, men det er en realitet, at vi er ulige stillet. For ligegyldigt hvor meget vi forsøger at skabe en alternativ måde at arbejde og være sammen på, trænger systemets brutale opgørelse af mennesker ind. Det viser sig i den geografiske placering af lejre langt væk fra byerne, usikkerheden om fremtiden og det faktum, at visAvis-gruppen fra tid til anden formindskes, når en fra gruppen deporteres.

Sådanne hårde realiteter og den interne omstrukturering til trods, vil man i dette nummer af visAvis se, at der stadig har været tid til at dele visAvis’ tanker inden- og udenfor de nationale landegrænser. På dette års Roskilde Festival bidrog vi med at sætte fokus på asylansøgeres forhold. Vores visuelle gruppe har repræsenteret visAvis på tegneseriefestivallen AltCom i Malmø, vores nye lejrgruppe har besøgt en række asyllejre på Sjælland, vi har været i Aalborg og fortalt om vores arbejde til nye kammerater, og så har vi været i Berlin for at dele erfaringer med de aktionerende på Oranienplatz.

God læsning, Redaktionen.

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Editorial #7 When the European asylum policy finds itself at a standstill, when the conditions for refugees are generally worsened, and when the Danish government’s asylum agreement has meant little change for the conditions for people seeking asylum in Denmark, it might happen, that the affected, step onto the stage. It is precisely what has happened during the becoming of this seventh issue of visAvis. Asylum seekers and other migrants have stepped out of the isolation, out of the camps and into the public. Onto the Town Hall Square in Copenhagen, Oranienplatz in Berlin, The Votive Church in Vienna and the country roads in Arizona.

We have in visAvis allowed ourselves to be inspired by the things, that happen, when a person’s only chance of survival is to change the conditions on one’s own through such forms of resistance. It is therefore possible in this issue of visAvis to read about the type of selforganization that one encounters in initiatives such as Undocubus and The Protest March to Berlin, in which walking and being on the move is used as an uncompromising type of protest, one last opportunity to invoke the public interest. The selforganization and the rethinking of resistance can be found in further reading, as we give an account of the escalation of the racist violence in Greece. Here we can see a new direction in asylum activism, which challenges the traditional left-wing activism. For we don’t agree on everything when we organize together. But challenging the ways in which we can cooperate as equals in spite of our uneven situations, is becoming a more important constituent part of asylum activism and self-organization in line with our learning together in the struggle against a system, that doesn’t consider all human lives to be worth the same.

Also internally, this issue of visAvis has come into being under change. When the previous issue appeared on the street, we had become a smaller group of people. We had the feeling of only just having made it into print with our head above water. As we wish to create a continuous counter-public regarding asylum and migration, it is important to us to rethink our work-

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ing ways. We began a mobilization which was supposed to flow into a new structure. We summoned new forces and have reached the conclusion that it must be possible to be part of making visAvis without having to enter into all the phases of the magazine production. In this way, the responsibility has become more decentralized, we are able to breathe more easily and our group has been enriched with new ideas, views and people.

The start-up phase has functioned as a critical soul-searching. The structure is new, but we can conclude that the fundamental values are still the same: the primary task of visAvis is to serve as a mouthpiece for those, who, given their status as refugees, do not have the chance to express themselves. A big challenge is continuously the involvement of people living in asylum camps whose difficult situations make it hard for them to participate on equal term with others. We are trying to break down the division between us but it is a cold fact that we are unequally positioned. Because no matter how much we try to create an alternative way of working and being together, the system’s brutal calculation of people forces its way in. It shows in the geographical location of camps far away from the cities, in the uncertainty about the future and the fact that the visAvis group every now and then diminishes, when someone from the group is deported.

Despite such harsh realities and the internal restructuring, one will find in this issue of visAvis that there has been time after all to share the thoughts of visAvis, within and across the national borders. At this year’s Roskilde Festival we contributed with directing the attention to the conditions of asylum seekers. Our visual group has represented visAvis at the comics festival AltCom in Malmö, our camp group has been visiting a number of camps in Sjælland (Zealand), we have been in Aalborg to tell about our work to new partners and friends and finally, we've travelled to Berlin to share experiences with the activists at Oranienplatz.

Pleasant reading, Editors.

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If the Sea Could Talk Imagine if the sea could talk. Unfortunately it is impossible, but if possible this would be the time to lend our ears to different sounds, cries and songs but also to the many testimonials filled by the endless cries of distress.

by Dady de Maximo • illustration BY Casper Øbro

The journey ends in tragedy I had the time to talk with a friend who has survived in the sea when the boat that brought him to Europe sank. Fortunately, he was rescued by the police but many of his comrades perished in the sea. We cannot imagine what these refugees endure during this long journey that often ends in tragedy. These people who decided to leave their home country to finally live free and happy without war, torture, or persecution. Their dreams die with them.

The testimony of my friend is like an endless cry. For me it is a pain which touches a bottom of the bottom. The way he spoke to me of this story reminds me of these gesticulations which I cannot interpret - and indeed even actors cannot enter into the scenario and play this role better than someone who has lived this horrible story in order to pay tribute to missing people and tell us what happens every day at the sea.

Absolute silence, interrupted by shallow breathing Of this long talk spoken in his unique voice in order to tell me more and help me to understand or guide me so that I can write it, the only thing which I cannot forget is his absolute silence, interrupted by shallow breathing. My friend inspired me with this sentence: ''If the sea could talk.'' So I thought long and hard to find something to write, because I would not have the courage to take up a pen to write his testimony. Even if I did, I cannot write until the end because the horror he survived is so difficult to describe or to find the words to explain.

The only thing I can mention here, is that he survived when the boat sank.

He doesn’t remember how much time he spent in the water. But he remembers that the water was so cold, and he remembers the corpses of his comrades around him, some with babies on their back. Some were swimming without knowing which direction to take because they couldn’t see the land; there was the chance of being discovered by a police patrol boat, but by the time it arrived to their location, most of them had died. The police rescued him miraculously and after that he wasn’t able to move his body. It was too cold.

So today, to pay tribute to the missing and dead, I can only give you the numbers of refugees who have been missing, and who have died, since 2006.

Crossing walls covered with barbed wire; crossing the sea in unseaworthy boats; traveling clandestine or in containers without air. Every day, refugees and migrants risk their lives in the world, every day in a desperate quest to find safety and a better life.

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Each has his or her own history and memories Behind the dramatic headlines and shocking images of human migration that are broadcast in the media are stories of individual courage, tragedy and compassion. Although refugees and migrants use the same routes and the same modes of transport, and share the same history and the same name as refugees, each and everyone has his or her own history and memories.

Some want to join their family members and others are fleeing persecution, conflict or indiscriminate violence occurring in their country. This is why many undertake such travel at the risk of their lives and are forced to travel in inhumane conditions to finally escape war and persecution.

According to the UNHCR, the following are numbers of people who have arrived in Europe via the sea, and the number of people missing and died since 2006 until 2011.

Greece

(peninsular and islands) Arrivals by sea from Turkey: 1 030 (2011) 1 765 (2010) 10 165 (2009) 15 300 (2008) 19 900 (2007) 3 050 (2006) 55,000 people crossed the land border and the Evros River between Turkey and Greece Number of people missing or dead in 2011: 51 2010: 41 2009: 83 2008: not available 2007: 159

Turkey

Number of people missing or dead in 2010: 8 2009: 329 2008: 525 2007:471 According to UNHCR, 1,500 people died during their attempt to cross from Libya to Europe.

Italy

Arrivals by sea from North Africa, Greece and Turkey: 61 000 (2011) 4 348 (2010) 9 573 (2009) 36 000 (2008) 19 900 (2007) 22 000 (2006) 56,000 people have arrived from Libya and Tunisia and 5,000 others from Greece and

Spain

(peninsular and islands) Arrived to Europe by sea from West Africa and the North: 5 443 (2011) 3 632 (2010) 7 285 (2009) 13 400 (2008) 18 000 (2007) 39 000 (2006) Number of people missing or dead in 2011: 198 2010: 74 2009: 127 2008: 120 2007: 360

Malta

Arrivals by sea from North Africa: 1 574 (2011) 28 (2010) 1 470 (2009) 2 700 (2008) 1 800 (2007) 1 800 (2006) According to UNHCR, 1,500 people died during their attempt to cross from Libya to Europe.

Yemen

Arrivals by sea from Somalia: 103 000 (2011) 53 382 (2010) 77 310 (2009) 50 000 (2008) 29 500 (2007) 29 000 (2006) Number of people missing or dead in 2011: 103 2009: 309 2008: 949 2007: 1 400

More people have died because of violence, injustice, discrimination, tragedies, natural disasters, massacres, famine, wars, genocide, persecution, torture, politics, and incompetent politicians who put their interests before those of the population.

We have to be aware that this number will increase. I do not have the solution, but together we can find a solution; today it is them, and tomorrow, who knows? Today it is them who risk their lives to find safety and a place to live, but who knows about tomorrow?

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First Year Immigrant

by Noura Bittar • Illustration by Mia Isabel Edelgart

So it has been a year. God, I feel it has been a thousand years. I had heard a lot about the first year as an immigrant. That it is always the hardest. But this time, my time, the experience is totally different. Because this time while saying goodbye to the people you love, or remembering the people you love but couldn’t say goodbye to, you don’t have the confidence that you can go back whenever you want to, and see them. You’re doomed. Doomed with a thousand questions: When? And how? And are you ever going to go back? You hold yourself back and say: "Yes, I will". But the question comes back again: When you go back, will they have stayed the way you left them? Are you going to see them bald or with gray hair? Because this time you know that going back is not anytime soon.

You ask your parents about the small children in your family, do they still ask about you? You ask your parents to keep reminding them of you, because you keep remembering them, and remember that after this short time they are no longer children. You dream: wishing they could stay children and away from the adults' game.

You look at your parents: they know that you grew. The pain also made you grow old, but one look in their eyes and you turn into a child again.

Stories spin in your head. There are moments when you smell your parents in the last piece of clothing you were wearing when you said goodbye to them. You find your mother’s scarf, the one she took from her neck and put around you when you were feeling cold. You hang on to the small details that might not have meant much to you before: now they mean a lot because they will never come back again.

They told me about immigration and how whenever they wanted, they could just go home or have their family and friends visiting. They told me about immigration and how every time they go back to their houses they find that nothing has changed. My house changed a lot. I look at the few pictures I have left. And I look for an old book that I threw away. I look for a piece of clothing that I once got bored with and put it on. And all the memories I left in the corners. A few videos still left remind me of all the craziness and the wonderful friends. I look for laughs. I don’t want to forget that they still exist. Looking for lovers hiding in the corner, dreaming of tomorrow. I look for myself.

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Yes, it’s been a year. Not that much. I know...

They told about the fascination of the first year. Yes, I have been fascinated.

And while I was watching a new city being built in my heart and mind, the city of my love was being destroyed. And with the fall of its buildings, the years of my life from before that year were falling too.

When I arrived the city was too big. Two blocks away from the house was the end of the world. I found the courage to cross it, and every time I find more courage the city gets smaller.

They tell you that you’re just like them. But every day you have to prove it. Prove that you are just like them; every day there is new challenges, every day you fall. And when you fall, you think of the people who think that you’ll never fall. Or if you'd fall you’d push them all down with you. You think of the people who love to see you falling. You remember your country that refuses to fall. You remember in your city how people fell but rose with a smile.

You think of the people you love; will you be able to help them if you stay on the ground?

You see people from far away. No surprise that some people are still the same, even from a distance. Some people don’t become beautiful when they’re far away. No, their hypocrisy makes them more ugly. But in both ways you still see them as small.

You love the feeling when somebody says "bravo" to you, and you laugh when nobody understands how much you fought to get that "bravo".

Some people love you, enjoy your good news. They use it to reduce their pain, they see some hope in you. Whether they grow or stay at a distance, some people are still the same: pure like drops of dew. Some people think that you find money on trees. They don’t realize that you are still digging the ground to plant a tree.

They take away the right to your home, and they say: "You - the one who’s sitting outside, you keep silent." You understand their pain, but with huge sadness in your heart, you tell them: "I’m sitting, but who says that I am outside? My body is outside, You look at your but my mind, heart, and soul are still inside. My fasisters and friends: mily and friends are still in. The past years of my life are still in. My city is still there. My home is still there. It nevthey grew old so fast. er left me and I never left it."

You look at your sisters and friends: they grew old so The pain made fast. The pain made them grow. Their dreams changed. them grow. Their Some of them are still fighting for their dreams, some lost dreams changed. their dream for our dream, and some went away with the dream. And you miss them all.

You remember your sisters and brothers: your fights and laughter, and you wish that for one hour you could bring all that back.

All of them: in their eyes there is sadness. All of them: in their eyes there is anger. All of them: in their eyes there is loss. All of them: in their laughter there is hope. All of them: their eyes are like yours. All of them: in their eyes there is home.

And me. Who inside myself is home, missing the ones who were my home.

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Interview With Mohammad Shoja Tajik, An Afghan Artist

by Rasmus Brink Pedersen • Photo by amorn bunsri

We are sitting in Mohammad Shoja Tajik's room, in a container behind the former psychiatric hospital, which is now home to the asylum center, Avnstrup.

This center in the countryside is usually the last stop for a person who has been denied asylum before he is deported.

The tiny room is full of paintings, many are portraits of Queen Margrethe II. Mohammad takes out a painting which in style resembles the work of Portuguese artist Paula Rego, in its exaggerated naturalism. The queen of Denmark is portrayed with a long curved neck that stretches to allow her smiling face to fill the center of the canvas.

I heard a lot about your paintings, and maybe even more about the letters that you get in return when you send the paintings? ”Yes, I made a big portrait of the queen, and the staff from the camp helped me to set up a meeting.”

You went to see the queen? ”No, it takes a long time to get to see the queen. The staff helped me to contact the Royal Palace, and after one month the Lord Chamberlain sent a letter saying: 'You can come to the Royal Palace, and you can give the painting to the queen.' But when I went there the queen was not there. I just gave it to the Lord Chamberlain.”

So, you brought the painting... ”Yes, that was a big problem in the bus, on the train and at Nørreport Station.

Everybody wanted to see it and they were like, 'Wow, very big painting... you are an artist' – 'yes, I am an artist.'”

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You walked with the painting from Nørreport to the palace? ”Yes, because I like the queen. She is also an artist. But I did not get a letter signed by the queen, so I tried to contact them again. But the staff said that the queen is very busy.”

Mohammad, tell me a little about yourself? ”I am from Afghanistan, from Nijrab in Kapisa. It is a very small town. There are many mountains; it is a beautiful place. When I was a child my family moved to Iran, after the Russian soldiers invaded Afghanistan in 1979. In Iran I went to primary school, secondary school, and high school. Then, there was a new start, with the government of Karzai, and together with my family I moved back to Afghanistan. My university education took place in Kabul.”

What did you study at the university? ”Fine arts, and I also studied to become a teacher. After that I became a teacher at the Ghulam Mohammad Maimanagi Art Center, teaching children to paint.

I taught there one year, but after some problems I moved back to Kapisa, and started teaching there.”

What were the problems? ”I moved to Kapisa because Taliban was looking for me in Kabul. The problem was that the Taliban says that painting is haram. They went to the school and said, 'Mohammad can't teach tomorrow; he cannot come to the school. Just stay at home. No teaching at the school. And never paint, it is haram and we are going to hurt you if you do.' Then I came to Denmark, one year and eight months ago.”

From a folder Mohammad produces an expensive looking envelope with a letter signed by Helle Thorning Schmidt, thanking Mohammad for a group of portraits that she received from him. It seems very unlikely that she should be in personal contact with anyone out here.

Did you meet the prime minister? ”No. I went there together with an interpreter, and her secretary was there to receive the paintings. Three portraits of Helle Thorning Schmidt and one of the queen. When I was there, I showed the secretary my documents and told him about my problems in Afghanistan. He said, 'I am sorry. I will speak to the prime minister about your problems tomorrow.'”

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Does she mention that in the letter? ”No, she thanks me for the paintings and thanks the staff from the camp.

Nothing about my case. The police have told me that I have to leave Denmark.

Sometimes I don't sleep at night, because I think about all the problems I have in Afghanistan.”

So, the police know that you are here, and now also the prime minister and the queen? ”Yes, but I am always very sad. My case is closed in Denmark, but I try everyday to get them to open it again. I wait.”

In a way your art is about becoming visible; it has moved beyond the canvas.

Contacting the politicians and the royals becomes part of your work. And when they send you these letters it is like saying, yes, we know that you exist? ”Yes, but then the prime minister says, 'Mohammad, I am sorry. I can not help you to get a positive answer on your application... You have a great talent... you are a big artist, but I cannot help.' Now I am planning to visit Johanne [SchmidtNielsen]. She is a very important person in the parliament of Denmark.”

Mohammad takes out two smaller paintings which do not yet carry his distinctive signature: 'Mohammad Shoja Tajik, An Afghan Artist' – portraits of the Danish politicians, Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen and Villy Søvndal.

You are also planning to meet Villy Søvndal. You keep contacting people like them, party leaders and ministers, to give them portraits? ”Yes, I want to meet the minister of foreign affairs and Johanne to speak about the problems with my case. I need the minister and Johanne to help me. I have gotten two negative replies on my applications for asylum.”

What are you working on at the moment? ”I am working on many paintings. But this is a small room with two beds. It is no good for painting. I can't paint every day.”

Who is the person on the big unfinished portrait over there? ”Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada.”

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Letter from Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt

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Roskilde Festival 2012 In the summer of 2012 visAvis went to the Roskilde Festival.

We wrote articles every day which were then displayed on our newspaper-wall. In this way we were able to maintain a dialogue with the festival-goers. These are some examples of what was produced during the festival.

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Kipanga: How many times have you been at Roskilde Festival?

Jens: It’s my third time here.

Kipanga: For how many days will you stay here?

Jens: All the days. I will stay here eight days in all.

Kipanga: How is it in your camp?

Jens: It’s lovely. The atmosphere is amazing.

Kipanga: Do you know that there is also other kinds of camps in Denmark?

Jens: What?

Kipanga: I am talking about asylum camps, where people can’t do anything.

Jens: Yes, I know. That’s sad.

Kipanga: Would you like to stay in the Roskilde camp for maybe five years, like people do in the asylum camps?

Jens: No, no, no... One week is enough for me. Not more than that.

This is a different kind of camp.

It is not just that the risk of trivialization is very high. It is even worse: To put it bluntly there seems to be a tendency that makes this year’s Poor City look like Asylogical Garden, The Great Asylum Lottery or maybe an Asylum theme park with one ticket for all rides. Don’t miss todays special: “Meet a real asylum-seeker” and “Join the quiz to win the right to asylum in Denmark”. It rings hollow when around the campsite the promise of: “Make isolation history – Go to poor city and make a change” can be seen from orange statements on billboards of 2 by 5 meters.

You are not here because you are running from war. Here you can live for fun.

We were actually just discussing what this is. If the area is only meant for a certain group of people.

There is no way back. The nature of the labyrinth. I get lost and meet the same dead end several times. The blood pressure is rising. Airplanes are rumbling (in the sound-installation) above our heads. I am startled when by chance I run in to a group of refugees moving around the labyrinth. Insecurity. I don’t know what sight awaits me behind the curtain. The back-room of a truck.

The chronicles of Roskilde – part 4 An old Russian proverb says: The things are good only when they end well. In my last essay here on Roskilde, I will try to summarize all the things we have been able to make in this short period of time. It was indeed a real warm-up. On the first day, Roskilde met us with a classic scene from a cheap horror-movie: pouring rain and biting wind. But this does not scare us and we were able to bring the organization of our office to the success, even though 35 mm of rain had fallen this day. But numbers (35 mm for instance) alone does not have any meaning, unless you are occupied with money (like some individuals are). And it was all done on time. All these days we have tried to share our feelings and experiences with our readers. After I started to write this article, I suddenly realized, that my mission is impossible. This atmosphere is impossible to convey into words - it must be experienced. Therefore, I would like to end by saying thank you, my lovely and beautiful visAvis team for the collaboration and supporting each other. vis(Avis) Love, Patrik.

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translation page 102

Flygtningemærkatet udsletter den personlige identitet Når et individ med ét forvandles til en ”flygtning” har det store konsekvenser for den måde, det omgivende samfund opfatter personen på. På trods af vidt forskellige personligheder og baggrunde skildres flygtninge som en gruppe af ensartede mennesker med én fælles skæbne. De bliver på denne måde reduceret til identitetsløse individer.

Af Rikke Nørgaard Andersen • Photo by: amorn bunsri

Den typiske fremstilling af flygtninge i mediebilledet er gennem billeder af kvinder og børn drevet på flugt, udsultede og bedrøvede. Komplet offergjorte.

“Flygtninge ophører med at være specifikke personer og bliver rene ofre: universal mand, universel kvinde, universelt barn, samlet universel familie”, skriver antropologen Liisa Malkki (Malkki 1996) om den objektivisering, som kategorien ”flygtning” medfører for det enkelte individ. Det er en identitet, mennesker træder ind i.

Denne karakteristik giver genklang, når tanken falder på den danske asyldebat og omtalen af flygtninge og asylansøgere. Alle, politikere som diverse organisationer, synes ubetinget at måtte udtale sig om flygtninge, som var der tale om en ensartet masse af identiske individer. Men hvornår hører vi flygtningene selv, de mennesker det hele handler om? At deres ansigter sjældent ses og stemmer høres i den offentlige debat betyder, at gruppen bliver usynlige. I diskussioner tales der om dem eller på vegne af dem - ikke til og med dem. Således udelukkes de fra at have indflydelse på de forhold, kun de lever under.

Men hvordan gør flygtningemærkatet individerne til universelle identiteter? I det følgende vil nogle af Liisa Malkkis teorier inddrages for at beskrive konsekvenserne for det enkelte individ i den måde, flygtninge kategoriseres på.

Flygtningen er et patologisk individ Den hjemløse tilstand flygtninge er i udfordrer grundlæggende ”tingenes nationale orden”, som Malkki beskriver det tankesæt nationalisme idag er funderet på. Hun forklarer dette ud fra begrebet om en stedbunden metafysik

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(Malkki 1992), der betyder, at nationer er grundlagt på opfattelsen af, at kultur og identitet er bundet til et specifikt territorium. Nationen er karakteriseret ved en ubrydelig sammenhæng mellem et fysisk territorium en kulturel og en national identitet, der udspringer fra og er bundet til dette sted samt borgere med fysiske rødder i landet. Flygtninge står i absolut kontrast til denne orden.

Den tvungne forflyttelse river flygtningenes rødder op og dermed samtidig deres kulturelle og nationale identitet, der er bundet til stedet. Forståelsen af den nationale orden udelukker derfor per definition de rodløse flygtninge. I stedet for at forstå flygtningenes tab af fysisk forbindelse til deres hjemland som en konsekvens af sociale og politiske faktorer, opfattes det som et tab af identitet og moral. Malkki citerer i denne sammenhæng et rammende eksempel på denne opfattelse på baggrund af et psykologisk studie af flygtninge i 1950’erne: “Hjemløshed er en alvorlig trussel mod moralen… I det øjeblik flygtningen krydser grænserne for hans egen verden, ændres hele hans moralske udsyn (…) Flygtningens opførsel tydeliggør, at vi har at gøre med individer, der er grundlæggende amoralske uden nogen fornemmelse for personligt eller socialt ansvar (…) De bliver truende, farefulde karakterer, der ikke lader sig stoppe” (Cirtautas citeret i Malkki 1992).

Den rodløse flygtning fremstilles som et individ ude af kurs, hvis tilstand karakterises ved et moralsk sammenbrud. Den personlige identitet udslettes og erstattes med en kategorisering som rodløs, amoralsk flygtning. Flugten fra oprindelseslandet har revet dens rødder op, og det opfattes som en indre patologisk tilstand.

I flygtningelejren sættes livet på standby

Den stedbundne metafysik betyder, at flygtninge opfattes som en trussel, der udfordrer den nationale orden. Flygtningelejre, såvel teltlejre i Afrika som asylcentre herhjemme, kan forstås som et sted, hvor flygtningenes adfærd skal kontrolleres. En kontrol, der indebærer opsyn med og autoritet over rum og bevægelse. Lejrene er som en undtagelsestilstand, hvor beboerne venter på at få deres fremtid afgjort. En undtagelsestilstand, fordi de opholder sig midlertidigt i lejrene og endnu hverken er ekskluderet fra eller inkluderet i et nyt land.

De er ikke nogen, men identitetsløse kun midlertidige personer, der befinder sig mellem nationer. I lejrene er der ikke plads til at blande sig i, udvikle og påvirke det miljø, der omgiver flygtningene – de må blot vente og indordne sig.

Som et tidsløst rum står al udvikling i centrene stille. Livet sættes på standby.

Indlemmes flygtninge undtagelsesvis i samfundet, må de i eksempelvis Danmark gennemgå en længere kultiveringsproces.

Her indgår et kursus i danske samfundsforhold, historie og kultur, der opfattes som en forudsætning for at kunne begå sig.

Det patologiske individ gennemgår derved en intervention – en form for kulturel rehabilitering som baggrund for at kunne indgå i samfundet.

Humanitære organisationer gør individerne til tavse ofre

Konstruktionen af flygtningen som patologisk får den konsekvens, at individet mister autoriteten til at udtrykke sig som individ. Dette synliggøres gennem behandlingen af

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dem i de institutioner og organisationer, de omgives af. Her mødes flygtninge af en forestilling om, at de danner en form for fællesskab, der bygger på en fælles erfaring: flugten. Denne erfaring danner baggrund for forståelsen af den universelle flygtning som et hjælpeløst offer, som organisationerne nu må tage sig af. Denne universelle flygtningeidentitet adskiller dem fra politiske, historiske og kulturelle sammenhænge og reducerer deres liv til den korte historie om flygtningen. De bliver ahistoriske individer, deres fortids tavle viskes ren. I praksis oplever vi dette, når individer oftest kun omtales som flygtninge i medierne, men sjældent som daværende sygeplejersker, købmænd, fodboldspillere, studerende eller andre titler, der tidligere definerede dem. De forvandles til fuldtidsofre. På de danske asylcentre er det faktum, at personalet tildeler beboerne et nummer, hvilket ligeledes er et tydeligt bevis på den objektiviserende opfattelse af individerne, der finder sted. En ny beboer er blot endnu et nummer i rækken.

Det humanitære systems offergørende håndtering synes forståelig umiddelbart efter, at et individ er blevet drevet på flugt og har brug for beskyttelse. Problemerne opstår, når det udvikler sig til langvarige kriser, hvor flygtninge lever årevis i de humanitære systemer. Her er det vanskeligt for personer mærket som flygtninge at bryde ud af den kategori, de er blevet sat i og hævde sig selv som andet end en hjælpeløs flygtning og udtrykke holdninger til de institutioner, hvis beskyttelse og kontrol, de lever under. At de opfattes som adskilt fra politiske og historiske sammenhænge, begrænser muligheden for at få indflydelse på og involvere sig i omgivelserne.

“Forestillingen om hjælpeløshed er vitalt forbundet til tavshed blandt flygtninge: hjælpeløse ofre har brug for beskyttelse, brug for nogen til at tale for dem (…) Deres beretninger diskvalificeres nærmest på forhånd, mens det sprog som tales inden for nødhjælp, videnspolitik og 'udvikling' gør krav på fremstillingen af pålidelige fortællinger om flygtningene”, skriver Malkki (1996).

Fremstilling af flygtningene som hjælpeløse betyder således, at de opfattes som ude af stand til at gengive en sand beretning om dem selv, hvorfor andre må varetage deres behov og tale for dem. Hjælpeløshed og tavshed bindes sammen. De organisationer og institutioner, der omgiver flygtningene er i deres offergørelse derfor samtidig med til at gøre flygtninge tavse.

Mennesker forbindes gennem historie

Hvordan brydes denne kategorisering, der betyder, at samfundets borgere har svært ved at se flygtningene som andet end fremmede og usynlige objekter, der er svære at forholde sig til som rigtige mennesker? Et forhold, der gør det langt nemmere for majoriteten at vende det døve øre til, når systemet beslutter at sende flygtninge tilbage til krigshærgede lande er, når flygtningen italesættes ubetinget som det grundlæggende problem, hvorimod der sjældent stilles spørgsmålstegn ved, om det i stedet er samfundets ekskluderende struktur, der kunne være problemets kerne.

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Malkki argumenterer for at udfordre forståelsen af modsætningsforholdet mellem den nationale orden og den rodløse flygtning. Identitet er ikke stedbunden og stabil, men fleksibel og foranderlig. Identitet skal derfor ikke forstås som evigt bundet til ét sted, men i stedet gennem vores bevægelser og de processor, vi indgår i (Malkki 1992).

At gøre op med forståelsen af flygtninge som tidsløse, universelle individer kræver ligeledes et andet syn på, hvad der forbinder os. Malkki citerer den franske filosof Michel Foucault, der fremhæver, at det er ”mere brugbart at forbinde mennesker gennem historie og historicitet end gennem en menneskelig essens” (Malkki 1996).

I stedet for at forstå flygtninge som en fjern, unik gruppe af patologiske individer, udenfor historiske, kulturelle og politiske sammenhænge skal de netop forstås som personer med en historie, en skæbne, som ethvert menneske kan ende i. Når forhold som krig, konflikter, økonomiske forhold og katastrofer står højt på den politiske dagsorden bør konsekvenserne af disse forhold, nemlig flygtningestrømme, ligeledes gøre det. Ved at forholde os til og involvere flygtningene, bliver vi bevidste om, at deres skæbne er et resultat af den verden vi alle indgår i.

At forbinde mennesker gennem deres respektive historier kan udslette forestillingen om én flygtningeerfaring, der binder flygtninge sammen om en fælles, universel identitet. Der findes nemlig ikke én erfaring, derimod gemmer der sig under mærkningen ”flygtning” kvalitativt forskellige erfaringer, vanskeligheder og personlige fortællinger. Det generaliserede flygtningemærkat kan derfor ikke benyttes til at forstå erfaringer for mennesker drevet på flugt, men kun bruges ”som en bred juridisk eller deskriptiv overskrift, der i sig inkluderer en verden af forskellige socioøkonomiske statuser, personlige historier og psykologiske eller spirituelle tilstande” (Malkki 1995). Ved at få disse fortællinger frem brydes opfattelsen af et unikt bånd mellem flygtningen og flygtningefællesskabet til fordel for bånd mellem unikke individer med erfaringer, historier, interesser og kvalifikationer, der binder os sammen på kryds og tværs af nationale grænser og sociale lag.

At få den personlige identitet frem i de forestillede identitetsløse flygtninge kræver derfor, at der ikke blot tales om flygtningene, men at de aktivt indgår i diskussionen om de forhold, der berører dem. At give dem stemmer i stedet for blot at lade flygtningemærkningen svare for dem. Set i et dansk perspektiv kommer samfundets borgere først til at se ansigterne på asylansøgerne og forholde sig til dem som andet end en kategori, når de bliver en del af hverdagsbilledet i stedet for fjerne, identitetsløse objekter, der er isoleret på asylcentre langt væk fra det etablerede samfund.

Litteratur Liisa Malkki:

- 1992: National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees - 1995. Refuges and exile: From ”Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things - 1996: Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, And De-historicization

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by Jímmy

By Kenneth Goldsmith

Oversættelse side 104

Displacement is the New Translation

Translation is the ultimate humanist gesture. Polite and reasonable, it is an overly cautious bridge builder. Always asking for permission, it begs for understanding and friendship. It is optimistic yet provisional, pinning all hopes on a harmonious outcome. In the end, it always fails, for the discourse it sets forth is inevitably off-register; translation is an approximation of discourse.

Displacement is rude and insistent, an unwashed party crasher – uninvited, poorly behaved, and refusing to leave.

Displacement revels in disjunction, imposing its meaning, agenda, and mores on whatever situation it encounters. Not wishing to placate, it is uncompromising, knowing full well that through stubborn insistence, it will ultimately prevail.

Displacement has all the time in the world.

Beyond morals, self-appointed, and taking possession because it must, displacement acts simply – and simply acts.

Globalization engenders displacement. People are displaced, objects are displaced, language is displaced. In a global circulatory system, components are interchangeable; there is no time and certainly not enough energy for understanding. Instead, there is begrud-

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ging acceptance and a blinkered lack of understanding, ultimately giving way to acceptance. Nobody seems to notice anymore. Translation is outdated.

Advertising signs in ballparks remain in their native languages, addressing a farflung televised, webcast audience; bypassing the local for the global, embracing the unseen, the unknown, the elsewhere.

Displacement is modernism for the twenty-first century, a child of montage, psychogeography, and the objet-trouvé.

Unlike much modernism, displacement doesn't move toward disjunction, it trucks in wholes. Schooled in Photoshop and reared in cut-and-paste, the world is now our desktop. Drop-and-drag architecture: pick up something and plunk it somewhere; it soon becomes natural.

Displacement is Duchamp for architecture. Frank Gehry is a master of architectural displacement; Bilbao, a fantasy displaced off a CAD screen, soon becomes a beloved Basque landmark. Automated recontextualization. Email the plans in, 3D print them elsewhere. Displacement answers to no one, mostly because there's no one on the other end to take the call.

Displacement is magical realism without the magic.

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=/

Odd things appear. Things that I don't understand. Things that I didn't ask for. Things that I find ugly, strange, baffling, offensive. I don't know how they got there.

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Displacement never explains itself, never apologizes. In 2010 at Columbia University's "Rethinking Poetics" conference, poet MĂłnica de la Torre, in the middle of her presentation, broke out, full on, for ten minutes entirely in Spanish, leaving all those who pay lip service to multilingualism and diversity angry because they couldn't understand what she was saying. De la Torre thereafter resumed her talk in English, never mentioning her intervention. No symbols where none intended. Comprehension is optional; displacement is concretely demonstrative.

Translation is quaint, a boutique pursuit from a lost world; displacement is brutal fact. Translation is slow food: a good meal with friends, in a warm environment. Displacement is not being able to read the menu in fluorescent-lit refractivity that appeared out of nowhere onto Main Street. Translation is the faux-nostalgia for the LP; displacement is the torrent-laced MP3: shattered, embodied and disembodied. Displacement is a four-dimensional object, at once expanding and contracting, unified while exploding, devouring everything in its sight.

Odd things appear. Things that I don't understand. Things that I didn't ask for.

Things that I find ugly, strange, baffling, offensive. I don't know how they got there.

They were dropped unbeknownst to me in my midst. How long have they been here? They are under my dining room table. I kick them when I stretch my leg and then only notice them. I don't move them, generally they can't be moved so I live with them. I learn to accept them, even though I might not understand them. But eventually, I grow accustomed to them. I stop seeing them. They blend in. I move around them. I tame them by giving them a name, domesticate them by giving them a home. Placate them by giving them a use. Eventually, they become mine.

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Oversættelse side 105

Found in Translation – Notes on meeting and understanding pain

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To meet another person often means to meet someone you do not fully understand. There is a gap between us. A gap to be bridged if we want to relate to each other in a real sense. This takes labour: the art of translation is exactly this labour of understanding. In this sense we are all translators. But to understand pain, translation into words cannot be enough. It takes a labour of lived experience and involvement to meet the other in pain. The following are reflections on what it means to translate the pain of others, either in a concrete sense or in one that transcends words and the familiar.

By Ina SerdareviĆ • ILlustration by misja thirslund krenchel

“I was thinking not long ago as I was observing the ugly, odd, insane, dirty, begging, hunchbacked crowds in the streets: how sad it is that my, once, home country, my birthplace, my cradle, has turned into something I find interesting for its mere exotic (read: poor) qualities and developing nature. I find myself feeling ‘better’ in the sense of ‘having the prerequisite and surplus mental and financial supplies in order to observe rather than merely be’.

Is it really possible that beauty on a certain level can be reflected in the money? Haven’t I always noticed how desperation translates to the face, the physical features, not only here but everywhere else? It disgusts me a little bit because I know it’s true and because I detect, within myself, a notion of becoming a guardian of many things which are wrong about the way we perceive and mould reality.

I find myself loathing these people for their unyielding expression of misery, the equine hanging faces and the almost sickly submissiveness and resignation: ‘we are the margins of an already marginalized society and we need not to speak nor comb our hair, for what good would a comb do when everything else is lost?’

I stand on the balcony, what used to be a nice green garden in front is now an unauthorized parking-lot, although the police station is just across the street. The constant howling of the tied up dog reminds me of the hellish scenario it would be, if people too would howl. How grateful am I for the fact that they don’t?

What used to be a green alley with trees pointing towards my beloved school is now a row of betting shops and turbo-folk infirmaries for the retarded”.

The above text is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a friend while I resided in Sarajevo a few years ago. A feeling of disgust echoes in the letter and today, this makes me sad. But in searching my conscience and memory to contemplate this disgust, it becomes clear to me that it is pain disguised. A pain triggered by observing the pain of others, which I never allowed to settle and therefore remained in its barren defectiveness.

But is there a way of settling pain and through this, making something of it, maybe even alleviating it?

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*** Quite recently I started working as an interpreter for an interpreting agency in Copenhagen. I do translation and interpretation from Serbo-Croat, Danish, English and some French. My origins are Bosnian and I figured that most of the clients must have come to Denmark with the big refugee wave in the 90’s as I did. This wave is actually what originally initiated my boss to establish the company. That is, almost 20 years ago. At that time all Bosnians were blessed with a quick residence permit and thus managed to earn the reputation of exemplary refugees: hard-working, well-integrated, European, educated, secularized. One may wonder why there still would be people from that wave with absolutely no Danish skills? How can there be Bosnians who still need my help?

The pain of others rouses our curiosity as long as it is kept at a safe distance.

When genocide recurred during the Bosnian war, we, the people of Europe, were reminded that the Balkans should not be considered part of Europe.

Now, in relation to the Balkans or the Bosnian people among us, for instance here in Denmark, it is claimed that they are very European indeed. European in the way they have managed to integrate, adjust, blend in. And all this thanks to the then Danish asylum policy, which granted them residence permits in no time, and thus enabled them to swallow the sorrow and become good citizens. But how does this rosy picture fit with the hundreds of broken individuals (people on social benefits and without any Danish skills) whom I interpret for on a daily basis? Back when the war was at its height, they were sought to be made invisible because they weren’t part of “us,” now they are invisible exactly because they are.

I am not advocating against quick asylum procedures and the granting of residence permits. I am simply pointing out that the opinion mongers, and the agents of the public who are trying to do good by mentioning the Bosnian case in all its glory as a de luxe edition of the refugee condition, are distracting and taking away attention from other matters. A residence permit is only the first step and we can’t leave people at that. This is a matter of a political nature and very important as well, but something beyond the juridical framework has to be addressed. The people left in the cracks between the expressed and the visible. It is not enough to vote for or endorse a good initiative. One must see that it’s followed through on and remember that there is so much pain around us that we do not see, which will reveal itself if one is willing to take it in. Rather than just giving one’s vote at an election in order to come to the rescue of a fellow citizen, one could reach out, one to one, to this very fellow citizen through organized or not so organized social activism. Social activism can take on many forms, which I am not going to discuss here, but the initiative of this very magazine could be one of them.

I speak of the Bosnians here because this is the type of tragedy that I encounter through my work. But let’s not forget that there are infinitely many layers in our society.

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*** In his principal work, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, from 1978, the English social historian Paul Thomson good-humouredly presents a number of arguments for the equality of the personal voice in relation to documents and other relics. Oral testimonies were formerly an important tool for historians and Thomson stresses the new possibilities that arise when one is willing to evade the documents and turn directly to the ones who are creating and living through history. The barriers to understanding thereby collapse and we can reach the unorganized layers, which are seldom heard. The history of the family and the locality comes within reach.

When I speak to my clients (clients are, of course, another word for regular people), I don’t just receive the story in a more or less rough outline. No, I am invited inside people’s home, to parties, cafés, clinics, nurseries, and employment centers, where I have to relate to an utmost complex reality, which opens up a broader perspective of historical realization. This means a renewal and a democratization of the story and of history. I am talking about the force of the single mouth speaking to the single ear.

But this whole “empathy-exercise” is easier said than done. And would I invite myself into this complex reality, which I am talking about, if I didn’t get paid to do it? I would certainly have less time for firsthand solidarity as I probably would be attending another job. In my case, I was thrown into this pain and therefore forced to relate to it, first as a child in the war and now through my paid work.

We are all, in one way or another, confronted with pain, either through our work in institutions, through illness and death in the circle of family and friends, through mediatized pain and the very tangible pain of our own heart and mind. But it is rather rare that we actively seek it out. We take it when it jumps out at us. We swallow it if we have to. Through our jobs or other roles in society, we turn it into moral duty. But what really should be done is to turn this sense of duty into a kind of real compassion or into what the educator and philosopher Khen Lampert refers to as radical compassion. He describes radical compassion as the human state of mind which has developed from old times’ religious duty that compelled us into doing good deeds to a selfless and voluntary social activism. He describes it as an inner imperative to change reality in order to alleviate the pain of others. *** It is as if the conversations with my clients, and their desire to tell and retell their lives, opened some carefully stored away box and brought back the memory of war, which we are taught to ignore, or at least accommodate, so that it doesn’t interfere with our daily functioning in society. The humdrum activities of everyday life distance us from pain, whereas traumatic and shocking experiences seem to be “the touchstone for the elasticity of time - for how things can slow into a deeper experience when the habit of the daily is less firmly in the saddle”, as the writer Chris Agee puts it in his war anthology Scar on the

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Stone. It is exactly this elasticity of time, this slowing into deep experience, which is needed in order to understand pain. To brush up on pain by means of TV and news journalism is not enough. Responses to other people’s pain are innumerable: some cry, some are startled and some numb, some act, some speak, some don’t give a damn. And way too often are the responses automatized residue that stem from emotional paralysis or cynicism. Both paralysis and cynicism can occur if the pain is too much to bear.

Too little empathy and too much empathy can both lead to a blockage of feelings and foster something as negative as a feeling of disgust, like in my opening letter to a friend. *** So, how to approach otherwise indescribable informations and deeply traumatized human beings? Is it necessary with emotional and intellectual distance?

How are the limits of empathy and sympathy drawn? By which mechanisms?

The writer Virginia Woolf argues in her reflections on war in Three Guineas, that we (say the privileged, the more or less safe, well-educated) are not monsters for not being pained at the sight of others in pain. Our failure is one of imagination and empathy and stems from the way we’ve been trained to perceive suffering. No one has told us about the obligations of conscience. No one has stressed enough that regarding pain is only the first step. The second step is, of course, to act. Organized or non-organized activism.

Looking at how Europe sat in front of the television for four years on end and received the Balkan conflict, it amazes and surprises that people even had enough energy to show the slightest bit of interest and empathy. And still, there are many Danish, German, English, well-educated, empathetic people who haven’t really understood the motif and the cost of war, or even registered that circumstances similar to the Holocaust existed in the heart of Europe in the 90’s.

In Sarajevo, it all still seems to be of terribly current interest and the memory of war and the need to scrutinize the foregone still takes up a lot in the day-to-day life of Bosnians. *** In their short film The Old Place, Jean Luc Godard and his partner AnneMarie Miéville speak about the past and the siege in Sarajevo among other things. Miéville remarks that: “It’s the future that decides if the past is alive or not. A man with plans for progress defines his old self as the self that no longer exists and loses interest in it. On the other hand, some people’s plan involves the rejection of time and an identification with the past.”

Our generation is enslaved by future, going forward is its sole important imperative and this leaves no room for pain. One day, I was translating for a woman who’s dying of cancer and the doctor seemed to be less concerned with her pain than annoyed by the fact that she hasn’t managed to learn Danish. He kept questioning her, all the time turned towards me as if her presence didn’t matter, as if he and I were the grown-ups there, ready to make her business

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our own, and belittle her. When asked why she hasn’t learned Danish, she told about how her husband had been flown to Denmark by the Red Cross because half of his face had been blown away and needed instant surgery. She had then spent the following years by his side, trying to share his living hell, frightened by his appearance and heart-broken.

I thought then: is she trying to demoralize us or to make us understand.

The doctor merely replied: “But still.” And then he made an attempt to smooth out his indiscretion with a smile and the reassuring words: “Life goes on.” But does it really go on? And has it, for all the thousands of Bosnians, the presumably exemplary refugees, who came in the 90’s?

There are so many things that we don’t see. Don’t understand. *** They think their case is unique. The clients, the people. They are not aware that their sentences sound like practiced lines at a pension or social benefits audition. I would like to advise them on how to present their traumas, so that the Danish social worker will feel pity enough as to maybe be willing to bend the rules a bit.

One woman says: “I want to work but I can’t. I am sick and devastated. I’ve gone through torture and war. I am not able.” Another one states: “The only solution to my problem is death. I’ve tried to jump off a building but my husband prevented me. My brothers were killed and I don’t rejoice at the sight of my grandchildren.” They don’t know that I just ended translating a web-call from an employment center which echoed the same words.

But just like I weigh their words by comparison to others, they judge the interpreter according to their own criteria. Empathy is the ability of putting oneself in someone else’s shoes. Empathy is all about recognition, comprehension and reenactment. But does it mean that empathy depends on recognition? In many cases, yes. The more equality there is between the observer and the observed, the more likely we are to achieve an empathetic attitude. And the client is fully aware of this and sees how empathy moves through observation, memory, knowledge and reasoning.

The client understands this and tells the doctor: “The previous interpreter, a woman who goes by a Serbian name, is a catastrophe. She misleads, misinterprets and fails to name the organs.” The client who is of Muslim origin rejects help from a Serb interpreter. But I am certain that this is less a question of ethnicity than it is of the experiences that she and I might have in common.

The fact that I am able to share a few details of war of my own makes me, in her eyes, a better candidate for interpreting her pain. What is suggested here is that understanding of trauma can happen more successfully if it is tied to one’s own historical reality.

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*** Try repeating “The tumor has absorbed half of the stomach” or “I vomit blood in the morning” a couple of times a day and you’ll find yourself fighting against nightmares in the night and a heavy gloom during the day - paralyzed to act on it and lacking the will to proceed with your work. This is what happens for most people when confronted with pain.

So how does the interpreter (of language or simply pain) set about grasping and dealing with such harsh situations, especially the ones engorged with pain?

An interpreter must, just like the artist who deals with trauma, take a stand on ways to take in and process something which is otherwise set outside our intellectual scope and the however advanced gamut of emotions.

To an interpreter, the goal is not mere transmission of information but rather the reading of the story, while being totally conscious of the fact that how is as important as what; to try and create a lasting meaning out of narrated incidents. It is crucial to attach weight to the ideas and the feelings behind the story when we are confronted with other people. As an interpreter, one is both a medium and a recipient. One not only transmits within the communicative context but also to oneself. Only then are we really able to take in the pain.

Unlike this thoughtfulness and slow experience of pain, there is news journalism, which depends on efficiency and speed, and which doesn’t harmonize with human psychology and nature.

The observer of pain must see himself in relation to the fundamental and oppressing mechanism behind the power of the photography or the news journalism.

The object is to shake and undermine the stiffness and the reification, which in the end carries the seeds of stupor and indifference. What is at work here is basically a question of ethical watchfulness in relation to the pain of others.

The normal ways, where we simply “let the world inside,” like a vast information flow, don’t allow us to swallow it properly. We have to operate with a breach of the familiar. Pain is not immediately intelligible, especially because it is perceived through a strictly organized reality. Our reactions are given beforehand.

It’s not that we have to invent new reactions, but we have to de-automate the old ones. To understand pain, we have to detach ourselves from everyday life and its mediated intrusiveness and untrustworthiness.

We have to defy general and plain lines of thought, which are kept under surveillance, shaped and adjusted by all kinds of pedagogical as well as ideological pressure. The trick is maybe to isolate the information from reality and their natural context, within which we normally perceive them: TV, shops, books, news, photo reportage, guided discussions in schools and other institutions, even around the dinner table with friends and family, where the expectations are already set. Go to the zoos, the hospitals, the mental institutions, the shelters for the homeless, the orphanages, the refugee camps, the factories, the morgues, the cemeteries (and I could go on, including the offices, the malls, the schools and the gyms, but this is another discussion) and let’s give the (hi)story back to whom it belongs. Let’s have some firsthand solidarity.

Evade the mediatized pain and its dislocation of reality.

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If TV says it all, then we have to listen to what is unsaid. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben speaks of the “lacuna” in his work Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive underlining the significance of “listening to something absent.” The job of the translator (and I think that all people are to be seen as translators) is to locate this lacuna and listen to what is unsaid in order to be able to repeat what is said. Because merely repeating doesn’t make one any more empathetic than a parrot. We have to understand but the truly difficult task here is to facilitate this understanding. Make something of it. *** A film by Jean-Luc Godard, called Je vous salue, Sarajevo (Hail Sarajevo), uses an image (the film consists of still-images), that shows a soldier with a cigarette in his hand, about to kick a woman lying on the ground. The cigarette is a little, infinitely meaningless fragment of culture. The picture clarifies the modern cultural mistake in most societies. In spite of the fact that a crime is being played out right in front of our eyes - whether we participate or not - we tend to force it out of our moral and human conscience and cling to a cigarette.

The cigarette becomes a manifestation of a distanced attitude towards seriousness and responsibility. It is concrete evidence of our overprotected, psychological integrity. Two convictions exist side by side in the Europe of today: the common/western and the non-common/nuanced. The common conviction can also be nuanced, but it is never personal, never understood, never felt and most importantly: never lived.

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Poems from Syria

by Tareq Aljabr

Tareq Aljabr (born 1987) is a Syrian poet and translator living in Damascus. Originally from the Golan Heights, his family was displaced during the occupation by Israel. These poems were written during the last year’s conflict and recent bombings of Damascus.

Tareq Aljabr passed the poems to visAvis via a friend in Denmark. He asked that they be published before he dies.

“I have lived to witness the death of others, and wrote these poems about moments that should not die along with the the people or with me. I have to do anything that makes me think I did something for them, no matter how small a thing. If anything happens to me, I will know it’s the way it should happen.”

, . ,

,

, . ... ... ,

,

-

-

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ,

.

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Oversættelse side 109

Hit Leave your arm and get down …

Try – a bit – to come to me crawling …

Keep your head down and look at me …

I’m your love my friend …

Don’t throw yourself into the arms of your death while I am here …

I am your bread in your life and your weapon in your wars, so get down …

Leave your arm and wait for me …

I AM YOUR ARM right here, my friend, you’re still alive.

Mistake The one who was calling out for his sister or his brother ... he whose voice was cut, perhaps no other voice has answered him …

Or was it just my unsteady sense of hearing that took me away from his harsh words?

Or was it him who held back upon seeing his killers in the bodies of his family?

Maybe I still don’t know what I know or what I will know.

Maybe everyone has been killed, and my killer, still mistaking my body, still doesn't know I’m still inside.

Character Where people are getting killed, and neighbourhoods are trembling from the humming fire …

I see the bird unable to move the body, choosing life as a statue with no bird inside.

I choose a corner overlooking the weapon of death, I hide my eyes so I don’t see snipers shooting into them.

Then, the bird starts playing his tune choosing the sound of the bird inside.

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The Refugee Protest March: "Let's walk and see where it takes us" A suicide at the beginning of 2012 in the southern German asylum camp, Würzburg, triggered off an urge to start a protest among people living in other camps.

An important issue was to prevent the isolation between the camps and the cities. An example of this isolation is the German asylum law, the so-called Residenzpflicht [mandatory residence], which prohibits one from moving out of the town area that the camp is placed in.

Breaking the Residenzpflicht is illegal. The punishment is a fine of 30-100 euros, and it puts the success of one´s application for asylum at an even bigger risk.

by Liv Nimand Duvå and Nicoline Sylvest Simonsen Illustration by Paula bulling

The Tent Action started in the spring of 2012. Tents were raised in areas near the camps to create awareness of the conditions of being a refugee. This led to a big protest march, starting in southern Germany and ending in the northeastern capital, Berlin. The people, in what was to become an entire movement, walked 600 km within one month. They walked around 25 kilometers a day, spending the nights in their itinerant tent camp. On the 6th of October a big protest tent camp was built on Oranienplatz, a public space in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin. When visAvis visited the camp on Oranienplatz at the end of October, around one hundred people were living there. Refugees from the protest march as well as supporters and activist from Berlin had their daily doings in the camp – everything from organizing actions, daily meetings, providing legal support, cooking in the home-made kitchen and guarding the Info Point. All activities took place outdoors, around the fireplace or in the different tents.

Alongside the activities on Oranienplatz, a group of refugees from the same movement were on a hunger strike at Brandenburger Tor. The police were guarding the strike day and night. Especially during the nights, they systematically confiscated the protesters’ warm clothes, blankets and sleeping bags.

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The pros and cons of the different forms of actions – hunger strikes, demonstrations, presence in the media and solidarity actions – were widely debated throughout the meetings. We were only there for a couple of days, but we found ourselves welcomed and included in the meetings. The following pages will give a general impression of the march. After a statement written by Turgay Ula, one day before the protest march began, we conducted two interviews on Oranienplatz in October 2012 where participants from the movement reflected on different aspects of it.

Why we are marching towards Berlin Manifesto by Turgay Ula

Well, we begin a protest march from Würzburg to Berlin on the 8th of September 2012. Why do we do this? We do it because we want freedom and respect. For months on end we have been doing actions, boycotts and hunger strikes. Now we start a long march, which will last for about a month.

We are walking towards Berlin because that is where the power is seated.

Historically, all freedom marches have been directed towards places that represent power and violation of freedom. We do the same thing. Our concrete demands are known to be: suspension of isolation, closing of refugee camps, abolition of the German Residenzpflicht, annulment of all the categories which place us as the lowest-ranking class, no more attempts to subdue us with longstanding asylum procedures, abolish Frontex which is responsible for the death of so many people under flight, no more deportation to capitalist-imperialist war-zones and dictatorships.

As late as yesterday I tried to obtain permission from the relevant authority for the march to Berlin. Because I tried to inquire about the reason why we don’t have the freedom to travel, I was thrown out of the office. Yes, they have taken over all locations. Many still believe the lie about the freedom of movement within the EU, but we see these lies. And noone can stop us. We continue to march and thereby abolish the borders.

We won’t leave it at that, the march. We are trying to build up solidarity and the basis for a collective and alternative life among us. We are trying to maintain and preserve our human qualities, which they have tried to break through isolation and loneliness. We are trying to develop our abilities and build another life by establishing tent camps where a collective life is able to take place. In these tent camps, we support each other, theoretically and practically, mutually in eash of our own further development. Each one of us is trying to support one another in this development.

As late as yesterday, 60 refugees drowned in the sea right off the Turkish coast. We have seen that the border river Meriç, is full of dead bodies. We have seen the beggars in the streets of Athens. We have witnessed young women on the run having to sell their bodies. We have been forced to watch pregnant women being beaten by the police and refugees being belittled. We don’t want to be a part of this crime by keeping quiet about it.

We will not rot in isolation some place. We walk in order to free ourselves.

Walking makes you free. So let us walk and see where it takes us.

(Visit www.visavis.dk to read the entire manifesto)

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Interview with Patrick How is it to be in the camp on Oranienplatz?

I find it good to be here. We have got many supporters, and I have met many refugees. I have found out that all of us are in the same struggle. We are fighting against the same problems. We have meetings every day, both refugees and supporters. Through these meetings we have been able to conduct successful demonstrations all around. It's very interesting, because people are ready to discuss and see a way forward for our movement. That is why I believe that our movement will last.

How did you become politically active?

My local activists explained us all about our rights. This encouraged me to become active in refugee politics. Then I thought, now is my time to stand against these brutal situations we are facing: being treated like animals. We are human beings and we should be treated like that. I became a part of The Karawan and The Voice [German networks made up of refugees, migrants and antiracist groups]. We organized seminars and I started The Voice in Passau, where we organized actions against deportations in front of the town hall and in a shopping mall. And now I'm here, struggling for our rights. Last week we made a demonstration in front of the Nigerian Embassy where many of us were arrested. We have been resisting all kinds of torture – this made us realize that we can really stand against the brutality of the system. We are ready for the struggle.

Today during the meeting, a woman talked about experiences of gender oppression and racism within the camp. What is your stand on this?

I also have such experiences. What I have discovered is that some people don't know why we are here. They don't really understand the major aim – why we are protesting. Not everybody has been involved in politics and activism before, which brings in confusion and misunderstandings. If you really understand why we are here, why would you bring in racism? With solidarity we can overcome this. In solidarity we are one family, and then nationality shouldn't count. We should take the word solidarity very seriously, and remember that we are people, not animals. We speak and we understand each other. If everybody is able to understand the value of our weapon – why we are here and what solidarity means – we can manage to stand against our oppressors.

Do you have a message for refugees around the world?

I call on them to come out of the camps to break their fears. To participate actively in refugee politics, because that is the only way they will understand their rights. That's why I call for my brothers and sisters in Copenhagen to come out, join the movement and stand against all such inhuman situations.

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Interview with Refugee from No Man's Land How did you manage to organize yourselves between the camps?

Through connections between friends. We knew each other from the arrival camps and we had stayed in contact after that. We informed the other camps about what was happening, asking if they wanted to join.

It is not something that just happened 'like that'. It was a long process of communicating through phone and email. We also went to the other tent camps in Germany to support friends and help them to start the movement. We helped them putting up their tents and stayed with them if needed.

We worked like a family.

What was the next step?

A friend pointed out that even though we raised tents in different cities, there would still be the possibility of being locked to a specific place, to be isolated again. So we agreed that we would find a way to really come out. He suggested the march, which would enable us to keep moving, come together and create unity. We started planning how to do it. A lot of people, especially activists and supporters, said that it was impossible. 600 km in Germany is impossible, they said. But the march of the refugees shows that we want to change something and that we are strong enough to do it. We have enough power. We organize ourselves. Coming together was not a problem. That is our biggest message. The march also meant breaking the Residenzpflicht by walking. During the march the police never checked us, because if they did, they would have made us appear bigger, giving us free advertising.

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Now your camp has moved to Oranienplatz in the middle of Berlin. Why is it important to be out in the public?

The people of this country are not our enemies. They all have an idea about us. For instance people think I'm a criminal or a bad guy because that is the image created by the media and the government.

Seriously, maybe I'm a cigarette smoker, but not a criminal, not a drug dealer. We want to break this perception. A lot of Germans don't know what asylum camps are. They don't know what it means to live in there for 20 years... or even one day. They think that Frontex is the hero of Europe.

And why do the refugees come to Europe?

Because Europe is dealing weapons, oil, coal with other countries. And that creates war. Why would I come to Europe if there was no war? And the government advises against going to these countries because it isn't safe. So, why would it be safe for me?

If you are a refugee, you don't have a country. You are from No Man's Land.

Earlier today you were critical towards the obsession with democracy. Can you elaborate on that?

Europe is trying to export democracy to places like the Middle East and North Africa. But have we ever seen a perfect democracy? And are you really sure that your democracy is so good that you want to bring it to other countries, countries you don't even know? Seriously, are you even a part of a real democracy, do you have the right to speak up? As I see it, democracy is the new religion of capitalism.

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So, what is your alternative?

First of all, in our movement we never vote. We discuss. Say, Patrick and I have different ideas at a meeting. Still, we discuss and through discussions we find better ways. Voting would only make us stick to some standard ways; we would never have a chance to be creative in our thinking and solutions. Nobody is in charge here. Maybe we argue and discuss a lot, but we are a unity where everybody, regardless of education and skills, can express their ideas. Our strongest force is that we speak with each other, even though we have so many languages here. Yesterday for instance, the meeting was in English, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, French and German – around six languages in one meeting, and in the end we were still able to make a decision. People from the outside don't see how this is possible. But for us it's possible, because in the end we all have the same problems as refugees. I might be a Christian or a Muslim, a Communist or an Atheist, but we don't care about our personal ideas.

The important thing is to talk about our rights in society. The governments always try to separate you through religions and nationalities, because they are interested in power, in money. And you see people fighting between religions, fighting for nothing.

In which way is your movement a part of this broader struggle?

I see this camp as a symbol of the refugees' fight in general. We crashed the nice face of Germany; that is our power. Our friends who are hunger striking at Brandenburger Tor are doing the same. The police beat them up because Brandenburger Tor is supposed to be the nice face of Berlin. All the tourists go there. At Brandenburger Tor you can't be a human, only a part of a business. And we are not. I hate this superficial peace, this nice face of the city. And that is why I'm here. I want to be the noise in the society.

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How do you see this as a movement, which as the word implies, is moving forward?

If we change something here, it will also change in other countries. If you go to Turkey, Italy, Greece or France you will see that the situation for refugees is like hell.

We are in a better position. I'm not only thinking about myself, but about refugees everywhere. If changes are to be made, we must go very deep. It's a long process, not just a question of one month, two months or even a year. It's much bigger. It's not just about Germany, but about all the people in the world. We should not discuss the isms, such as Marxism, anarchism and socialism, but find each other as human beings.

The isms are just names that the system tags on us. Instead, we should look at who we really are. Of course this movement does not stop here. It will continue.

And who are we really?

If you are a refugee, you are one of the freest persons in the world because you don't have a nationality. No matter what you do as a refugee, the system will tell you that it's not good enough, that you are not integrated enough. But we have power, we stand together and we will use our power.

Be a refugee! Be proud! When you have crossed the borders of maybe seven countries, you are in this fight already. If you are here now, it means that you can fight, that you can find your power again. Remember your way, your energy, your dreams. Then you can make a fight – not a war. In a way, I see all people today as refugees – refugees in our families, in our cities, in our sexuality, our generation. When your teacher, father, mother or anyone in power, tells you what to do, you become a refugee within the norms. We are all refugees. http://refugeetentaction.net http://thevoiceforum.org/about http://thecaravan.org/

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Poster from the Migration Now portfolio by Thea Gahr from Justseeds Artists' Coorperative. For more information see: www.migrationnow.com and www.justseeds.org

Oversættelse side 113

Coming Out as Undocumented: Notes on Undocubus "¡Sin Papeles, Sin Miedo!", "No Papers, No Fear!", with these words a group of illegalized migrants descended from a bus at the Democratic National Convention that was just about to re-elect Barack Obama as their candidate for President of the United States.

by Jeppe Wedel-Brandt

“No Papers, No Fear!” as they were arrested in front of the building hosting the convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, only to be released later. “No Papers, No Fear!” when, earlier that month they were arrested and later released as they disrupted a debate in Birmingham, Alabama on the effects of state-based immigration laws. “No Papers, No Fear!” as they swamped the Sheriff’s Office in Sylvia, North Carolina, where Sheriff Jimmy Ashe has been known to harass undocumented migrants in particular and Hispanics in general; here, as their demand for a meeting was denied, they formed a line to take turns declaring themselves ‘undocumented and wishing to talk to the Sheriff’. “No Papers, No Fear!” as they reminded the world that during its first term, the government of Barack Obama had deported more than one million people.

The campaign is called Undocubus and has been carrying a group of activists on an inter-state bus ride from Phoenix, Arizona, to Raleigh, North Carolina, challenging the immigration laws in a variety of states, manifesting the existence of the activists and many others like them as undocumented migrants, calling for attention and support for their cause. In many ways it can be said to have been fashioned upon the Freedom Riders’ actions as part of the Civil Rights Movement in the sixties, when activists rode inter-state busses throughout the South to challenge the Jim Crow Laws.

This time around, the Undocubus initiative did not target public transport but used an old worn-out bus to travel to Phoenix, Arizona, leaving on July 29th 2012 after two weeks of protest. The group of activists were a varied group of people from all around the country: students, workers, young people fighting for their future, parents fighting for the future of their children. As the one thing all the participants had in common was their lack of official documents, the very public nature of the campaign put each of them in danger, at potential risk of deportation, but they went even further by leading protest and civil

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disobedience actions in the cities they visited. The main aims of the campaign were to share the personal stories of undocumented migrants, draw attention to the issue and trigger a public debate.

“By The Time I Get To Arizona” It is not by chance that the campaign started in Arizona. As documented by the civil rights lawyer and law professor Michelle Alexander in her 2010 book, The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, over the last decade the state became the main breeding ground for ‘tough on crime’ and ‘tough on immigration’ crusades as well as introducing several inhuman and discriminatory actions in these fields. The name of Sheriff Joe Arpaio has become synonymous with measures such as the reinstitution of chain gangs; the humiliation of inmates by forcing them to wear pink underwear; creating the ‘tent city’ prison camp in the middle of the desert under the burning Arizona sun; and more recently for employing racial profiling against Latinos/as in the search for undocumented migrants, authorizing raids and ‘stop and frisk’ tactics in predominantly Latino/a neighbourhoods.

This last practice, which up to this juncture had generally been considered unconstitutional in the US, has now been made law in Arizona via the SB 1070 Bill which makes it illegal to ‘shelter, harbour, or transport’ an undocumented alien, thereby overriding federal immigration laws and drawing censure as a legitimization of racial profiling. To European ears this may all sound rather straightforward, as most nations on this side of the Atlantic have similar laws, but in a US context it is considered an unprecedented expansion of the powers of the state. The Arizona SB 1070 bill has triggered strong protests and indeed, in the words of the African-American scholar and activist Cornel West in a speech given in Phoenix on October 2nd 2010, Arizona has become “ground zero in the struggle for freedom and liberty” and “the frontline in the struggle for justice.” As the lyrics of the 1991 Public Enemy song “By The Time I Get To Arizona” attest, this situation might not actually be new at all - but what is new is the fact that this time around illegalized migrants are increasingly leading the protests.

Coming Out The Undocubus campaign is only the latest in a plethora of campaigns by illegalized migrants in the US over the last years. As chronicled in Eric Huerta’s essay “Undocumented Americans” (published in visAvis #4), the struggle of undocumented migrant students has gained wide support, with their campaign for the DREAM Act, which gives the right of permanent residency to all who have completed two years of military service or the equivalent at an institution of higher learning. This important, if rather reformist legislation has been heard several times in the Senate but has not yet managed to pass.

However there have also been a variety of more general campaigns that focus primarily on establishing the simple fact of the existence of illegalized migrants within American society. Over the course of 2006 a number of independently organized demonstrations gathered under the slogan “¡Aquí Estamos y No Nos Vamos!”, “We’re here and we’re not leaving!” Something of a high point of this campaign was reached on Mayday that year, as “A Day

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Without An Immigrant” called on all illegalized migrants to withdraw their labor for one day to demonstrate the reliance of the economy on this rarely acknowledged sector of the workforce.

“Undocumented and Unafraid”, the slogan coined by the Immigrant Youth Movement in the fight for the DREAM Act, seems a fitting way to sum up an interesting aspect of these recent campaigns. The Undocubus activists themselves refer to their actions as a form of ‘coming out.’ As one activist explains in a campaign video: “I remember being in a class about the sociology of migration. And they were talking about undocumented immigrants, and whether undocumented immigrants had or did not have the right to be in this country, and whether we stole jobs and all of those questions. And I remember sitting there thinking: all these people are talking about me like I’m not in the room. This was back in 2004 and I remember I raised my hand and I said: ‘Just so you know - I’m undocumented. So when you are talking about these issues you are talking about me and my family.’ And that was to me part of starting to think about our stories, because we can’t vote, we don’t count in all of these different ways.

What we have is our stories, our experiences and our bodies and that is what we have been using in the coming out struggle.”

Participation without identification?

In their 2005 book, The Culture of Exception - Sociology Facing the Camp, the Danish sociologists Bülent Diken & Carsten Bagge Laustsen propose that the basic struggle in society today is one between nation states, seeking order through ‘identification without participation’, and dispossessed people such as illegalized migrants and asylum seekers desiring ‘participation without identification’. If you accept identification you are denied participation through deportation or camps, and if you wish to participate without identification you are barred from doing this by citizen and voting laws. But this holds true only to the extent that we buy into the ideology of nation states and formal democracy as the only source through which participation is possible.

The precarious and dangerous situation nation states and the ideology of formal democracy force upon undocumented and dispossessed members of society cannot be denied. But one of the central achievements of the Undocubus campaign is precisely its contradiction of the dogmatic claim that participation can only be reached through formal identification. As noted in “Dignity Beyond Voting: Undocumented Immigrants Cast Their Hopes”, an October 25th article on Undocubus that appeared on colorlines.com: “Voter ID schemes are largely rooted in an unfounded fear about undocumented people casting ballots. Yet, despite a deeply anti-immigrant climate, undocumented immigrants have participated in this year’s electoral process more than ever before.”

But the potential impact of campaigns, such as this focused on ‘coming out’, is even wider than their effect on electoral campaigns. By breaking the taboo and fear of being publicly ‘outed’ as an undocumented migrant they may well be paving the way for exactly that everyday recognition and selfrecognition of the objective presence of illegalized migrants in society. That is recognition of the fact that “illegals” are always already participating in society - they are here, and they are staying!

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Poster from the Migration Now portfolio by Mary Tremonte from Justseeds Artists' Coorperative.

For more information see: www.migrationnow.com and www.justseeds.org

Welcome to Europe: You are stuck in the laboratory

Oversættelse på Side 115

In the south-eastern corner of Europe, Greece is heavily affected by the economic crisis. Greece is used as a laboratory for neoliberal policies that impoverish the population – and create social unrest and confusion. Meanwhile, fascists and neo-Nazis spread hate from Parliament and assault people in the streets, posing a serious danger to migrants.

BY Kirstine Nordentoft Mose & Mikas Lang • Illustration by ARMSrock

Not an unusual story On Monday the 5th of November 2012, 29-year-old Waleed Taleb, an undocumented migrant from Egypt, was found chained to a tree on the Island of Salamina west of Athens. His body bore evidence of a severe and brutal beating. Taleb's boss admitted to tying him up, accusing him of stealing from the bakery he worked in. Taleb, however, had a very different story to tell the police. His boss had attacked him, together with a group of others, in order to take away his wage and the money he was bringing to his colleagues that day.

After this, the Greek perpetrator was allowed to go while Taleb is in prison for not having a legal residence permit.

As the story of Taleb shows, it involves high stakes being a migrant in Greece at the moment. We sat down with members of Crisis Mirror, a Copenhagen based group that includes people experienced with living and struggling in Greece, to get a better grasp of the situation. One of member of the group explained the situation for migrants like this: “I think that being a migrant now in Greece, in Athens, must be one of the worst things you can experience in your life. Greece has become some kind of concentration camp for Europe.”

According to Salinia Stroux, an activist with many years of practical experience working with migrants in Greece, there are several reasons for the current situation for migrants: The economic crisis, the repressive migration policies, and lastly the rise of the neo-Nazis. These factors are reinforced by negative discourse in the media, where migrants are interrelated with “criminality" and "ghettoization”.

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Economic Crisis and Massive Debt As many will know, the Greek state has a massive debt. The so-called “Troika”, consisting of the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continuously lends money and imposes new cut-backs, lay-offs, and other austerity-measures in return for loans. This leads to what the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek in his 2010 essay "A Permanent Economic Emergency" describes as a state of emergency: “We are now entering a period in which a kind of economic state of emergency is becoming permanent: turning into a constant, a way of life.”

Echoing Žižek, a member of Crisis Mirror portrays the situation like this: “Everything is happening so rapidly that you cannot absorb all the changes that are happening. This state of emergency becomes normal with the neoliberal reconfiguration of politics and economy.”

These changes include higher taxes, cuts in wages amounting to a rough average of 33 % as of last year, and public pensions being withheld, while public institutions such as schools and hospitals face dramatic cuts in their budgets. With the latest round of austerity-measures the state introduced a fee for going to the hospital, signalling an end to public welfare in Greece.

The loan-conditions set by the Troika is an example of structural adjustment programmes similar to what countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia faced in the 1980's and 90's, containing widespread privatization and deprivation of public services and goods, and causing several revolts. A part of the Greek debt, like in many countries, especially in Latin America, adheres from a right-wing military dictatorship. Therefore many compare Greece's situation to that of Argentina in the early 2000's. Argentina eventually declared bankruptcy in 2002. Crisis Mirror describes the Greek loans clearly: “The loans are going directly to serve the Greek debts. The money that the EU lends Greece is not going to the Greeks but to pay off the debts, so it actually ends with the banks. The money flow goes through the Greek banks, as the middle men, and then back to the banks, which are mostly European banks; especially German and French banks.”

C R I S I S

M I R R O R

is a multidisciplinary and diverse political group based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their purpose is to produce, share and redistribute counter-information about the capitalist crisis ongoing in Denmark and the rest of the world. By providing political analysis as well as organizing public events and actions, the group aims to mobilize people and show its solidarity to fellow movements, groups and individuals.

S A L I N I A

S T R O U X

has been working in the field of refugee support in Greece for the past six years. She is a member of the network “Welcome to Europe”, the grassroots project “Infomobile Greece”, and co-writer of the Pro Asyl funded reports: “Walls of shame”, “I came here for peace!” and “Human Cargo”.

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That the loans are not helping the economic situation is clear, as the public debt has risen from 127 per cent of GDP in 2009 to 170 per cent in 2011, according to EUROSTAT, the official office of statistics of the European Commission.

Greece sealing the borders The story of the migrant and refugee situation in Greece is strongly interrelated with European migration policies. Here the Dublin II regulation from 2003 comes into play. The Dublin II determines which EU country is responsible for the treatment of asylum-claims. According to the Dublin II, an asylum-claim is to be treated in the first EU country the claimant was registered in. As a consequence of this, the different EU countries send refugees back to the first country they were registered in.

Being a country on the external border of EU, many refugees enter Greece first. Therefore the asylum-system in Greece has been under much pressure in the last decade. In January 2011, The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) consequently stated that the asylum conditions in Greece were so critical that it is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights to deport refugees back to Greece. Since then it has been illegal according to the ECHR to do so. Still many migrants are stuck in Greece, some trying to hide under trucks going further into Europe. On the other hand, according to Salinia Stroux, the Greek government ends up doing the work of the EU: “The Greek government is doing exactly what Europe wants: sealing the borders, arresting everybody, detaining them for as long as possible no matter if their deportation is feasible or not and deporting as many as possible.”

The government is undertaking new measures to arrest and control as many migrants as possible. According to Salinia Stroux, it is clear that there are no limits to what can happen in regard to migration-policies: “On August 4th, 2012 the new government started the 'Xenios Zeus' operation - ironically named after the god of hospitality. Until today the police have temporarily arrested 48.402 migrants of which 3.668 were finally detained.

Only every 13th arrested person could finally be detained because all the others had regular residence permits. In this period the police controlled and arrested migrants not only in public space but also in shops, internet-cafes and in private homes and hotels. They searched 419 houses of migrants.“ Salinia explains how the police usually arrest masses of persons and transfer them to police stations. Then only after hours of detention do they finally control their papers.

Migrants are the cheap labor and the scapegoats In the context of the economic crisis, migrants in Greece ends up being exploited as cheap labor and at the same time blamed for taking the work from supposedly 'Greek people'. Salinia Stroux paints a clear picture of the current social situation: “It becomes more and more difficult – for everybody – to survive in Greece, specifically for the more vulnerable parts of society such as migrants. At the same time there is still no social welfare system for anyone, no functioning reception system for refugees and no integration policy for migrants. People are left to survive by their own means on the streets, without shelter, food or

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basic medical aid. Most people are collecting garbage in order to earn 1-5 Euro a day by recycling – if they are lucky.”

And in the shadow of the economic crisis the exploitation of migrants becomes a means to survive for some. A member of Crisis Mirror explains how farmers exploit migrants: “Migrants were and are still being exploited as cheap labor power. There have been a lot of cases where migrants worked in the fields. Then because the migrants didn't have papers the landowners would call the police: ‘Arrest the migrants and deport them.’ So they would work the whole summer and when the pay-date would come, the landowners would call the police so they wouldn't have to pay them.”

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Facing these massive economic problems and unwilling to admit their own faults or to confront the EU, the political elite in Greece tries to use the migrants as scapegoats: “In the main public discourse by the government and the fascists the migrants are the most important problem of Greece. ‘It is not the crisis – it is the migrants’. For example, the government claims that the migrants living in Athens are a danger to the whole society, because they supposedly carry diseases and are perpetrators of crime. Crime is overemphasized in the production of the image of the supposedly dangerous migrants and not unemployment, as is the case in other EU countries, because the barbaric labour regimes of Greece, particularly those that the migrants have to uptake in the country are widely known. The governments of both socialists and conservatives started the racist campaign against the immigrants, constructing them as a ‘social problem’. The government of Greece legitimises the rhetoric and the murderous practices of the Nazis, who supposedly are better at solving the particular problem that the government produced in order to create a scapegoat and orientate public anger related to the barbarous neoliberal attack against the Greek society.”

This hostile climate in which migrants are easy scapegoats creates the possibility for the escalation of the situation.

Want a job? Greeks only!

In the midst of this economic state of emergency, with its confusion and blaming of migrants, there is Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) an outspoken neo-Nazi party on the rise using a swastika-looking symbol and praising various figures of Nazi Germany. The rhetoric of the party is reawakening the rhetoric of Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. Golden Dawn has 7 % of the seats in parliament at the moment, and their popularity is only increasing. In some of the latest polls they were reportedly getting 12 % of the seats in parliament, according to BBC. A member of Crisis Mirror tells how Golden Dawn present themselves as protectors of the people: “They say that they oppose the austerity-measures; that they oppose the EU and what it is doing. And they put all this into a ‘conspiracy level’, like the New World Order, the Zionists, the Jews, but of course when it comes to privatization and when it comes to what capital wants to do, they never react.

They proclaim that they are going to beat, eventually, the rich. At the same time they beat only the poor.”

The poor, who are beaten, are in this case mostly synonymous with the migrants, as they are the most precarious and marginalized group in Greece. But according to Golden Dawn, this is not the case. Their enemy is clear: Migrants.

Golden Dawn present themselves as being in solidarity with the general population; however, this “accidentally” always coincides with the opportunity to hurt migrants. One never hears of the neo-Nazis attacking corrupt politicians, foreign banks, or other institutions that actually bear responsibility for the Greek problems.

One can see a prime example of this neo-Nazi practice in their job-centres.

The economic crisis has taken a heavy toll on the Greek labour market. The unemployment rate is around 25 % and half of the youth are without jobs, accor-

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ding to Stathis Kouvelakis' article "The Greek Cauldron" from November 2011.

In the face of this, members of Golden Dawn have tried to win popular support by creating private job centres in various cities. This is seemingly a nice display of solidarity. However, these jobs are ”Only for Greeks”. The Golden Dawn definition of a Greek is "a Caucasian with at least one Greek parent,” as members of Crisis Mirror tells. This job service entails that the Golden Dawn thugs, infamous for their violent behaviour, try to persuade or, occasionally, blackmail business-owners to fire migrant workers.

Golden Dawn does not stop at providing this overtly racist “service”. In addition, their gangs of thugs are reported to threaten, rob, and attack shops owned by migrants. Thus, it is clear that their aim is not to get people employed or to better the Greek economy as much as it is to exclude the migrants completely from the labour market and thereby worsen an already difficult condition for the most marginalized groups of the Greek society.

Attacked in their homes In the shadow of the economic crisis and the construction of migrants as scapegoats as a legitimizing factor, violent attacks against migrants are increasing. As of the summer of 2012, there had been more than 500 registered attacks since the beginning of the year. As Salinia Stroux explains, this creates an environment of fear: “All over Athens, but specifically in certain neighborhoods with a higher density of migrant population and a higher activity of the neo-Nazis, one cannot walk relaxed on the street or sit in a park or square as a migrant. You always turn around to watch your back and there is constant fear. Many people are even afraid while they are inside their homes, because fascists have attacked them even in their private space.”

The attacks are escalating, and according to Crisis Mirror the fascists have even started to attack children – exemplified through the story of an Afghan father and his son, who was attacked when going out of their home to find food.

When the attacks on migrants become an everyday phenomena, which no one pays attention to anymore, the state reacts only when it fits its agenda.

According to Crisis Mirror, this is an example of the state of emergency becoming the rule, rather than the exception: “The state is very strong and has good reflexes but it only reacts to particular things. When it comes to immigrants, you can do whatever you want, there is not going to be any consequences. There have been many times, where Nazis were beating migrants. Eventually the police would arrest the migrants that were attacked. The law isn’t working, as it should. It is not about justice, it is about something else.“ In an interview with BBC a member of the Golden Dawn estimated that 60 % of the police force supported the party during the last election. This number is an estimation and, as Crisis Mirror points out, it might be exaggerated to marginalize the police from the rest of the population. Regardless of the specific statistics, the current situation seems to have grave implications for migrants: “This means that even for the ones who have papers and could file a report against a perpetrator of a hate crime to the authorities often cannot do so, because the police just denies to receive it. There have been almost no hate crime

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cases brought to the court in Greece and certainly there is almost no perpetrator who was punished by the juridical system. For this reason the neo-Nazis feel absolutely free to do whatever they like.”

In the meantime, anti-fascist groups and pro-migration grassroot movements try to empower migrants by providing Greek-language, legal assistance, and other kinds of services. Some migrant communities are also building up internal organizational structures, e.g. communal dinners, and other community building activities to protect themselves from attacks from Golden Dawn.

The Laboratory It is illusory to speak of a "Greek" crisis. The EU’s austerity-measures, the Dublin II and the IMF’s involvement prove otherwise. Thus, what we are witnessing is a European, and, in some ways, Global crisis with particular and harsh social impacts in Greece. Tens of thousands of migrants are stuck in Greece as a result of the Dublin-trap, readmission agreements and the – according to Schengen Treaty – illegal control of internal EU-borders. All of Greece strives to maintain some sort of livelihood, with the migrants as the most precarious group in economic and social terms. The neo-Nazis are on the rise, posing a serious danger to migrants, homosexuals, leftists, and others who do not fit in their vision.

At the same time the political and economic elite benefit from the fascist movement, as they help create a public discourse depicting migrants, not capitalism, as the cause of crisis. However, this is not their only function.

The fascists also keep the left preoccupied so that they are not able to focus on the class war that is being waged from above in form of the Troika, the Government, and financial capital.

Crisis Mirror suggests that Greece and the rest of Southern Europe is only the first to experience severe crisis. Greece functions as a form of laboratory, where new neoliberal policies are being tested for future use. What they experience in Greece at the moment, could be a warning for the rest of Europe.

Literature Stathis Kouvelakis: "The Greek Cauldron", New Left Review 72, Nov-Dec 2011 Slavoj Žižek: "A Permanent Economic Emergency", New Left Review 64, JulyAug 2010.

Paul Mason, “Alarm at Greek police 'collusion' with far-right Golden Dawn”, BBC, 17th October 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19976841

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Control of Fingerprints – Power over People In recent years, there has been an increasing use of so-called biometric information (e.g. photograph and fingerprints) in asylum and integration systems. Philosophical reflection calls attention to this tendency and considers it a disturbing characteristic of modern times with the potential to affect all of us.

BY Sidsel Rosenberg Bak • Illustration by Simon Væth

The biopolitical tattoo In the Spring Semester of 2004, the Italian philosopher and scholar Giorgio Agamben cancelled his plans to teach at New York University because he refused to have his fingerprints scanned and checked by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Since the terror attack on the World Trade Center on September 11 2001, American immigration control has tightened its grip, extensively so through the US-VISIT programme. The US-VISIT technological system has since 2004 allowed for mandatory obtaining and verification of biometrics. Such digital biometrics may be used for authentication; meaning that biological traits can establish the identity of a person. When you, in your home country, apply for a visa to visit the United States, a Department of State consular officer will require your fingerprints and photo to be taken. On arrival in the United States, biometrics will once again be collected so that the identity of the visa holder can be confirmed and the chances of fraud diminished. In the future, you will also be asked to provide these data when leaving the country in order that the state can keep track of

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who is entering and leaving the country.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, their main aim is to work towards “a safer, more secure America, which is resilient against terrorism and other potential threats.”

Collecting biometrics is legitimised by reference to national security and the prevention of identity theft of American citizens. Immigration and border control are thus inherently associated with security concerns such as terrorism; the collateral damage being that immigrants are equated with criminals.

The increasing use of biometric information is not only a residual effect of the focus on terrorism over the past decade.

If we are to believe Giorgio Agamben, it is also a distinct feature of modernity that ‘Big Brother is watching’, so to speak. When Agamben refused to visit the United States, he published a newspaper article, "Non au tatouage biopolitique" ["No to Biopolitical Tatooing”], explaining the reasons for his actions. Here, he put forward the notion that the use of biometric data is a widespread phenomenon undermining the politico-juridical status not only of people who are influenced by it,

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but of all citizens of “the so-called democratic states where we live.” The problem is the balance of power: citizens become vulnerable and prone to manipulation when the state collects sensitive information about their health, behaviour etc. For Agamben, upholding liberal standards is not the issue. He does not argue that the practice is a threat to personal freedom; it is a question of respecting the human being. Do we want a society where the more exposed one is, the more vulnerable one gets?

Not just in America It is not just in America that one can observe these trends. European states and the European Union are also promoting the use of biological traits in immigration and criminal justice systems. As free movement across EU borders is made easier via the Schengen cooperation, access for non-EU citizens is hindered. The EU’s Visa Information System, VIS, was established following a decision in 2004 to make the exchange of visa information between EU states easier. When a non-EU citizen enters one of the member countries, their fingerprints are scanned electronically. They are sent to the VIS database and retained for five years. EU states can then use VIS to identify the visa holder and check any criminal antecedents. The European Commission has claimed that registration of entry and exit (among other things) is needed to reduce the number of irregular migrants and make crossings faster for reliable regular travelers from third world countries. The expectation is that VIS will become more global in its scope, being already extended to North African and Arabic countries.

Even though data in the Visa Information System only can be accessed by authorised staff under appropriate conditions, and everyone can ask to see their own record and have errors corrected, the trend is disturbing seen from a biopolitical point of view.

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Biopower – or biopolitics – is a term coined by the French theorist Michel Foucault who defines it as a governance of the human species. “Bio” originates from the Greek word for life, bios. By the 19th century, the societal power structure according to Foucault consisted of a right to let die and to bring about, maybe even produce, life ["droit de faire vivre et de laisser mourir"]. For instance, in medical science the correlation between birth and death rate became of great interest. From that, control mechanisms are concerned with the health of the subjects (nowadays through artificial insemination, genetic engineering and so on). Simply by virtue of being human, you are subjected to biopower. All around the world, issues of ethics in medicine are debated in councils. In some countries, they are established by the governments as independent committees, but nonetheless, securing and improving life (and indeed debating how to) is an integral part of authoritarian domination. Biological traits of the living human being are thus subsumed into the power of the state. By focusing on creating and maintaining life, the counterpart – death – is reaffirmed. In medical terms, ’to let die’ could denote physician-assisted suicide. By letting die, life ceases to be the principal aspect of human life and faire vivre ends.

It is this line of thought that Agamben adopts when criticising what he calls biopolitical tattooing. Both the US-VISIT and VIS are tattooing instances in this aspect. Record-keeping and surveillance are seen as facts of life that aren’t called into question. Agamben questions whether controlling people’s lives is necessarily a legitimised way of exercising sovereign power.

The concept of biopower gives voice to frustration of people at risk. It indicates how not to treat human beings in general, including migrants. One can legitimately ask: Is it fair to put an electronic

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mark on people who are stripped of their rights, e.g. fleeing from persecution in their home country?

European tattoos When applying for asylum, you also meet the biological oriented system. The EU takes precautionary measures to guard against what some refer to as ‘asylum shopping’. The Dublin II regulation states that an asylum request must be considered in the EU country where the asylum seeker has one or more close relatives, already has a visa or a residence permit for, or first filed an application. To implement this regulation, the Eurodac register (a database with the fingerprints of European asylum seekers) means that every case history is personalised and can be accessed by national immigration services. Rejection of an asylum application in one EU country can thereby deny asylum in another EU country. A new EU proposal opens up the possibility of national law enforcement bodies being permitted to search Eurodac for matches. Criminal investigations of human trafficking, terrorists and the like are then connected to asylum procedures. In the beginning of September 2012 Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor, stated in a press release: "Just because the data has already been collected, it should not be used for another purpose which may have a farreaching negative impact on the lives of individuals. To intrude upon the privacy of individuals and risk stigmatising them requires strong justification and the Commission has simply not provided sufficient reason why asylum seekers should be singled out for such treatment."

In this light, the proposal is an "erosion of fundamental rights [that] creeps along". States and supranational entities are deciding the future of migrating people and thus whether they are to be included or excluded from the populations.

It is a kind of power over human bodies.

Laws and regulations control the lives of

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citizens and non-citizens which in turn affect their ability to have an impact on their own future. There is a presumed need to improve documentation and efficiency concerning immigration and state security; it results in an increasing use of biopolitical methods. Thus, the biology of the human being is brought into play and made vulnerable. In a way, it is a game of hide and seek where the loser, for instance the foreigner, is the most dispossessed.

Literature: Giorgio Agamben: "Non au tatouage biopolitique", Le Monde diplomatique, January 10 (2004) European Data Protection Supervisor (Press release): "EURODAC: erosion of fundamental rights creeps along", Press release September 5 (2012), Source: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_EDPS-12-12_en.htm Michel Foucault: Il faut défendre la société, Paris, Gallimard (1997)

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Letters and Rhetoric

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oversættelse side 121

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OPHOLDSTILLADELSE / AFSLAGSBREV Brevmodtagerne er to forskellige personer. Brevene er redigerede og forkortet af hensyn til beskyttelse af personfølsomme oplysninger.

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Alle breve til asylsøgere fra myndighederne i det danske asylsystem – herunder Udlændingestyrelsen, Rigspolitiet, Flygtningenævnet og Røde Kors – fremsendes på dansk.

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RESIDENCE RESIDENCE PERMITPERMIT / REJECTION / REJECTION LETTER LETTER The recipients of theseof letters two are different individuals.

The The recipients theseare letters two different individuals.

The letters have letters been have edited beenand edited abbreviated and abbreviated to protect to sensitive protect sensitive information. information.

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All letters Alltoletters asylum to seekers asylum seekers from authorities from authorities in the Danish in the Danish asylum system – including Immigration Service,Service, NationalNational Police, Police, asylum system – including Immigration the Refugee the Refugee AppealsAppeals Board, and Board, the and Red the Cross – are Red Cross – are sent in sent in Danish. Danish.

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Waiting (for the Right) to Return

by Kamal Ahamada

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As we sat down in the courtyard of the Palestinian Circus School, not far from Birzeit University in Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, to talk with the circus director Shadi about art and theatre, he started by telling his life story. It is not an extraordinary story. It is a story that another five million (or more) Palestinians share, yet, it puts a face on a “statistical refugee”.

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As many of us enjoy freedom of movement, guaranteed by our red cover passports, Shadi showed us his document, which restricts much more than it allows. It’s a document issued by the state of Israel, a substitute for a passport, which allows him to travel. None of the Palestinians have a Palestinian passport, and only a few have the document that Shadi does. A document which might be taken away from him, as it is only given to residents of Jerusalem, and Shadi can no longer live there – his house was demolished and he was forced to move.

The tragedy of not being able to go home continues through generations – Shadi’s family was forced to leave their home in 1947, then he was forced to leave again as his house was demolished. The future of his children is uncertain. This is so even though a 1948 UN resolution states that: “…the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” (UN Resolution 194, passed on 11th of December 1948 and reaffirmed every year since 1948) In the aftermath of the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, that took place just a month ago in November 2012, it is worth remembering that the Palestinian suffering is not limited to a military operation periodically perpetuated by the Israeli Defence Forces. In fact, Israel is not only a colonial state but since its creation it has kept challenging and ignoring The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that it has pledged to honour and respect by being a member of the United Nations. Up to this day, Israel has been condemned more than 65 times by the international community for its violation of human rights towards the Palestinians.

One of the most fundamental rights that is still being violated by Israel, and has been so since 1948, is the right of return for refugees. This right was reaffirmed by the UN resolution cited above. Now, as we are counting the 65th year of this right, Palestinian refugees are still being denied it. Since 1948, the right of return has become not only an essential issue when debating peace, but also a part of the identity of many Palestinian families, and an important part of the history of the Palestinian people. Even today many Palestinian families pass on the keys, from one generation to the next, to their houses in the territories where Israel has established its state.

Who are the Palestinian Refugees?

According to the UN a refugee can be defined as a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protections of that country or return there because there

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is a fear of persecution. Such is the way it is defined in the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees from 1951.

Al nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe or disaster. Palestinians use this word to describe the tragedy that took place in 1948 when three quarters of the Palestinian population (between 750.000-900.000 people) were forced to flee their home, and lost their land and property. Hundreds of them were massacred by the newly established Israeli state and others ran for their lives, believing that one day they would go back. This day has yet to come.

Israeli "new historians" such as Ilan Pappe clearly describe this event as an ethnic cleansing that aimed to depopulate the area of the indigenous population in order to preserve a Jewish state. More than five hundred villages inside the new state and in the West Bank and Gaza were destroyed. Indeed the great majority of Palestinians became refugees and others remained in their homeland, but as internally displaced refugees inside the new Israeli state. As for example, Shadi, the director of the circus school, tells us: “I am originally from Jerusalem, but now I am a refugee in Jerusalem. In ‘67 our family was kicked out, one house was demolished, another house was stolen by Israelis.

My family fled to Jordan and when they came back they decided to live again in Jerusalem. But as refugees.” Many Palestinians face house demolition or forced transfer (especially Bedouin communities), in such a way that they become internally displaced, refugees in their own homeland.

Al Naksa is another Arabic term that describes the second big exodus of the Palestinians that were expelled from their land by force or because of fear of the Israeli army. Since 1967 Israel has continued the expulsion of Palestinians from their land through a wide variety of means. One of the most efficient policies is “voluntary transfer” or “transfer by will”, which functions through creating impossible living conditions, e.g. by destroying Palestinian houses for military or administrative reasons, or through the creation of the hundreds of checkpoints installed within the West Bank. The idea is that these policies will make the life of Palestinians so unbearable that they leave of their “own will”.

Today the Palestinian refugees represent one of the largest communities of refugees in the world, reaching more than five million people.

Why the right of return is an important issue The right of return is a fundamental right for every human being regardless of race and religion. It is deeply rooted in International Law and the different Human Rights Charters. “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country,” article 13(2) of The Universal Deceleration of Human Rights for instance states.

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For Israel, the return of Palestinians is unthinkable as it strongly insists that there was no forced eviction of Palestinians in 1948 and in 1967. By accepting the Palestinians' right to come back to their homeland, Israel would somehow recognize the forced eviction of thousands of Palestinians. This return would also mean that the Jewish people would be outnumbered by Palestinians and it would therefore threaten the identity of the state as Jewish and this is a step that Israel is not ready to concede.

For Palestinians the right of return is non-negotiable and as long as their legitimate right of return to their original home is not enforced, there will always be an obstacle to peace. Indeed together with the dismantlement of the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Jerusalem being a capital of both peoples, the return of the refugees constitutes one of the conditions to ensure peace and justice in the region.

Now does that mean that the five million Palestinian refugees worldwide will all go back to Palestine? This question is simply not relevant now. But anyways this choice only belongs to the Palestinians. Paragraph 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 not only emphasizes this fundamental right but it also states that refugees have the right to choose whether or not they wish to return or receive compensation. The most important thing for the Palestinians is that Israel acknowledges its responsibility and abides by international law, and that the international community after all these years takes concrete measures to enforce the right of return of Palestinians.

Besides being a conflict of narrative, one party claiming to have more right to the land than the other, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has carried decades of violations of humanitarian standards and human rights. Whichever side one chooses to stand for, the right of return of Palestinian refugees is still one of the most critical questions in order to ensure peace and justice in the Middle East. On November 29th 2012, a great majority of the United Nation members finally recognized Palestine as a state. Will the future of the Palestinian refugees be the next major step for peace and justice in the region?

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Poster from the Migration Now portfolio by Santiago Armengod from Justseeds Artists' Coorperative. For more information see: www.migrationnow.com and www.justseeds.org

Oversættelse på Side 125

On the History of the Powerless Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This bon mot was one of the first lessons learned during my studies of political science. But there is a way to escape such a depressing point of view suggesting any person you meet seems only to be the next one to betray you. If we come to understand that powerful people throughout history have played a rather disappointing role, we might consider turning our attention towards those without power: the powerless. In the following, I want to show that there is an attractive story to tell about the powerless.

By Daniel Palm Cisne

The powerless are those excluded from formal ways and procedures, not having any legitimate right to raise claims in the eyes of ruling institutions. We would be mistaken, though, if we think that the powerless do not play their role in shaping laws and institutions. The powerless are not without a bright and long history of influencing institutions and formalized politics. There is a wonderful thought in Saskia Sassen’s book Territory, Authority, Rights discussing those dynamics shaping rights of citizens throughout history: the powerless have always played a significant role in shaping those legal rights and institutions ruling until today. To do so, informal practices have been used quite successfully throughout history, and prevail until today as media for self-empowerment, holding crucial influence in shaping institutions and rights in favor of the underprivileged. I argue that what is needed today is a language of global citizenship, so those institutions and rules that still rely on national citizenships can be transformed in order to cope with that process knocking on each and everyone’s door: Globalization.

But let us start with the origins of citizenship as such. And at the start of the story about citizenship stands a rather confused exercise of authority at the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. Since King and Pope struggled over territories and legitimacy for rule, a historically rare schism of authority was at work in Europe during these times. And it was decisive because there was only fuzzy authority to find, that people living in cities saw their chance to claim

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rights for self-governance. In the very beginning of the history of citizenship stands the construction of urban law. And urban law, in turn, was a product of the formerly powerless in the eyes of questionable authority. Through the language of secularized rights, claims for freedom and justice could be raised, forming a sphere out of reach for the crown and the pope. In order to establish this language, pieces of vulgar republican Roman law as well as folk- and common law were assembled. Newly established local courts then served as institutions to rule over this new form of justice. The outcome of these legal practices was a new historical subject, claiming the right for transparent and evident procedures when exercising authority: The Burgher.

Those migrating from farms and smaller communities into the city came to experience a status of legal freedom not yet seen before. The city became a symbol of this freedom. What happened from there is very well known to history.

Burghers claimed a right for private property. By enforcing the private rights of the Burgher, trade was no longer under the control of church and noblemen, but instead came to be ruled by the privatized rule of the market. Thus the first cornerstone for capitalist society was an emancipating act, cutting former rights of middle ages authorities from having a share of production.

So far, this share had been always perceived as a holy privilege.

With this shift in legality the formerly ruled could use urban law against the rulers. Privatized economics then triggered an explosive dynamic towards legal self-empowerment of the subject, driving European history from there on. In the cities, the Burgher came to support the bureaucratic project of the crown, giving rise to institutions exercising power based on rational logic, thereby enabling transparency and possible objections by the private, tax paying subject. Especially those living in the marginalized spheres of the city pushed the process of secularization forward, and challenged those holy orders, which so far had been ruling Europe. The former powerless informal subject of the servant became a formalized subject, secured by the law of personal rights. Logic of legal rule replaced the logic of a holy rule throughout the European Middle Age. Finally, the state as legal exercise of power emerged, and the subject’s ‘citizenship’ came to be bound to not yet consolidated, but evolving state territories.

From there, the other side of the story has to be told. The project of secularization dismissed religion as some sort of not yet enlightened sense of the world, to be practiced in private. Therefore much of what made sense to the majority of people around the world was longer to be part of political considerations. As imperial capitalism spread over the world, the logic of private, legal trade and ‘strong’ nation-states penetrated not only any territory of slight interest because of resources all around the world, but also proved to be incapable of handling rising conflicts in Europe, leading to two World Wars. Even though the logic of nation-states led to catastrophe, states nevertheless prevailed as the ruling institutions for the post World Wars period. Through the hegemonic rule of Western society, the ‘International System’ spread across the world, implementing the concept of state authority, regardless of particular territorial disputes between several parties, and simply ignoring the fact that a geographical rendering of states does not constitute state power as such.

In the end, if installed states struggled to maintain pro Western order, military interventions came to ‘handle’ the situation.

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Neither markets nor states are in a clear possession of authority. Undoubtedly, disciplinary paradigms of markets, like efficiency and flexibility, have ruled over the private sphere of the citizen throughout the last decades, but their rule over states remains incomplete.

=/

One might tend to think that citizens today are quite powerless towards those elites ruling the state, running administrations and state authority in a rather exclusionary and self-serving way. Somehow, it seems, the project of emancipation via secular rights and political organization has turned against its founders. But one should not be fooled about the fact that within the state, politics of the powerless proceed to influence state institutions. In more recent history, these fights of the powerless mainly were about diminishing discriminations through gender, race, class, colonial power lines, or sexual preferences. There is a long list of the powerless who have shaped law and institutions to their favor using informal practices, like manifesting on the streets – even though it was forbidden – squatting places and buildings, or giving speeches, addressing not yet pictured imaginary worlds. So the state as such is not per se solely the tool of those already in power. It can be challenged and transformed in order to empower those who are suffering under a regime of exclusion. Lately, the state got involved in the process of Globalization. Also this process is actively shaped by some who have not been in charge before, but who managed to transform state and legal procedures in their favor.

Unfortunately, though social forces driving the project of Globalization so far have never actually been the powerless people. Rather, they are a quite wealthy and powerful class ruling corporations and transnational investment funds. Together they have sought to overcome the welfare state ruling in Europe and U.S.A. after World War II, which was oriented towards the success of national capital, and towards wealth distribution throughout ‘their’ citizens. Citizens in these times were defined by a supposedly clear national belonging, patriotic and bound to their country of origin. This nationalistic welfare system proved to be unsustainable for many reasons, which certainly would require a much longer discussion than I can allow myself to elaborate on here. What is nevertheless important to see is that administrations of the welfare state had ruled the ways in which transnational trade was organized in a quite strict manner. High taxes and restricting laws for foreign investments set clear borders for any transaction crossing national territory. With the crisis of the welfare state, informal strategies like lobbying, privatization of key institutions and agencies and others, globally orientated capitalists set free what we recently have come to perceive as global capital. Though not powerless, the class of globally oriented capitalists empowered themselves in the face of state, and now dominate recent politics. Today global market flows accelerated by new technologies of communication and transport, penetrate every single part of the world. But while products and investments flow freely, people in this world keep being bound to national borders. And here is the point: the state plays a quite ambiguous role in this. It enhanced a global market which

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now seemingly overrules the state, and meanwhile, any project of global citizenship seems to be doomed remaining forever unfinished.

One can reasonably say that the powerless today are confronted with a schism of authority very much like people were in Europe back in the Middle Ages. Neither markets nor states are in a clear possession of authority.

Undoubtedly, disciplinary paradigms of markets, like efficiency and flexibility, have ruled over the private sphere of the citizen throughout the last decades, but their rule over states remains incomplete. The state is not the sole agent of global capital; it is still accessible for political claims – from the entitled voters as well as from the struggling powerless. This is, because as such, the neoliberal project of Globalization not only proved to be highly fragile, it is also lacking a sufficiently inclusionary political culture. Protests on the streets are now stronger than they have been in the so often quoted 60’s of last century. Alain Bertho, in his inquiry published in the book Les temps des émeutes concludes that there is a global unrest of the powerless, challenging the rule of markets and questionable political representation. Protest and dissent by those who were ‘forgotten’ or rather systemically excluded from power, have the capacity to transform institutions into yet unknown forms. History bears witness to that.

As globally oriented capitalists have transformed the nation-state in order to realize their interests, it is now upto the world’s citizens to do so too. A codex is to be found, not necessarily written in law, which empowers a right to global citizenship. What is needed is a language, yet informal, through which the needs of the powerless can be addressed and secured. Maybe a look into the history of the former powerless can help to create such a language. The list of inspiring personalities who have fought their fight for empowerment is long: Rosa Luxemburg, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and so many more. They all confronted institutions and procedures which rendered them powerless, but they nevertheless gained crucial victories for their cause. Where would we be today if these people would not have fought their fights despite being powerless? The powerless have a vivid history to tell and hopefully still many stories about to come.

Once again, the city might prove to be the political arena to establish such a new legal frame for global citizenship, as urban space becomes the central stage of social transformation in times of Globalization. And those who already are in the city have a crucial ‘presence’ in this strategically important space. They cannot be reduced to some illegal, marginal subject, vegetating at the borders of public (un)awareness and ignorance. Presence is the first step to overcome powerlessness. From there, the possibilities to exercise informal strategies are only limited by already settled institutions, and by the creativity from the yet powerless in order to transform them.

Literature: Alain Bertho: Le temps des émeutes, Paris: Bayard (2009) David Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2005) Saskia Sassen: Territory, Authority, Rights. From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2006)

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CENTER BROVST II OPHOLDSCENTER CENTER HANSTHOLM OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 97,2 km Kapacitet 250

Afstand til større by 36,4 km Kapacitet 100

CENTER BROVST III OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 37,6 km Kapacitet 200

CENTER BRØNDERSLEV OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 33,4 km Kapacitet 100

CENTER BROVST OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 40,8 km Kapacitet 375

CENTER AGGER BØRNECENTER Afstand til større by 60 km Kapacitet 45

CENTER GRENÅ OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 71,6 km Kapacitet 56 CENTER RANUM OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 54,7 km Kapacitet 200

CENTER VESTERVIG BØRNECENTER Afstand til større by 60 km Kapacitet 40

CENTER EBELTOFT ANNEKS (JELLING) Afstand til større by 55 km Kapacitet 120

CENTER THYREGOD OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 48 km Kapacitet 110

CENTER JELLING OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 11,8 km Kapacitet 292

* CENTER JUELSMINDE MODTAGE- OG UDREJSECENTER Afstand til større by 23,7 km Kapacitet 134

CENTER HOLMEGAARD II OPHOLDSCENTER

CENTER ODENSE MODTAGECENTER Afstand til større by 4 km Kapacitet 200

Afstand til større by 29,8 km Kapacitet 40

* Center Juelsminde lukker 1/1/2013. Et nyt center åbner i Randers * Center Juelsminde will close 1/1/2013. A new 74 set to open in Randers centre

CENTER HOLMEGAARD OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 44,3 № km 7 visAvis Kapacitet 262

• 2013

26 ASYLCENTRE I DANMARK December 2012

26 DANISH ASYLUM CAMPS December 2012

Translations: CENTER AUDERØD

MODTAGE- OG UDREJSECENTER

Afstand til større by 56,1 km Kapacitet 700

CENTER JÆGERSPRIS BØRNECENTER Afstand til større by 50,7 km Kapacitet 46

Opholdscenter Residential Centre Modtage- og udrejsecenter Reception- and Deportation Centre Børnecenter Children’s Centre Kvindecenter Women’s Centre Omsorgscenter Special Care Centre Anneks (Center) Annex (to another Centre) Afstand til større by (over 50.000 indb.) Distance to large city (pop. more than 50,000) Kapacitet Capacity CENTER SANDHOLM MODTAGE- OG UDREJSECENTER

CENTER SJÆLSMARK BØRNECENTER

Afstand til større by 30,3 km Kapacitet 600

Afstand til større by 28,4 km Kapacitet 50

CENTER KONGELUNDEN OMSORGSCENTER Afstand til større by 13,6 km Kapacitet 150 KVINDECENTRET KVINDECENTER

CENTER SIGERSLEV OPHOLDSCENTER Afstand til større by 26,8 km Kapacitet 339

CENTER VIPPERØD MODTAGE- OG UDREJSECENTER Afstand til større by 25,7 km Kapacitet 174

Afstand til større by 13,6 km Kapacitet 59

CENTER AVNSTRUP

MODTAGE- OG UDREJSECENTER CENTER RINGSTED ANNEKS (AVNSTRUP) Afstand til større by 30,7 km Kapacitet 48

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Afstand til større by 19,9 km Kapacitet 608

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Poster from the Migration Now portfolio by Meredith Stern from Justseeds Artists' Coorperative. For more information see: www.migrationnow.com and www.justseeds.org

translation page 127

Kastrup Lufthavn - et par ord om immigrantens lod Af Alen Mešković • illustration af casper øbro

En sommerdag i 1996 landede jeg i Kastrup Lufthavn efter en tre ugers ferie på Balkan. ’Så er vi hjemme’, tænkte jeg – og studsede straks over frasen, som helt spontant var faldet mig ind. For hvad mente jeg egentlig med ’hjemme’?

Var jeg ikke ’fremmed’ her? Kom jeg ikke et helt andet sted fra?

Jeg var 18-19 år dengang og havde kun boet i Danmark i halvandet år.

Inden da boede jeg to år i Kroatien som flytning, og før det 14 år i Bosnien.

Danmark var stadig et fremmed land for mig, Bosnien og Kroatien var langsomt ved at blive det, og selv var jeg en teenager med krig i bagagen og hård rock i høretelefonerne. Alting var stadig fremmed og uudforsket – både omkring mig og inde i mig selv – samtidig med at jeg lærte mig selv og min omverden at kende. Begreber som ’bosnisk’, ’dansk’, ’hjemland’ og ’det fremmede land’ blev mindre faste og mere relative for hver dag der gik. Jeg så det ikke klart for mig, men jeg kunne mærke det. Virkeligheden omkring mig undsagde dem jævnligt.

For eksempel den dag i lufthavnen. Jeg kom nemlig ikke decideret hjemmefra dengang – altså fra Bosnien – men fra Kroatien, hvor mine venner og familie boede som flygtninge. Jeg kom med andre ord hverken hjemmefra eller hjem. Hverken i konkret eller i overført betydning. Til gengæld oplevede jeg for første gang et af de paradokser, som er forbundet med det at have to hjemlande og alligevel intet, at føle sig fremmed og hjemme overalt. Jeg reflekterede ikke meget over det den dag, oplevelsen var som sagt først og fremmest af empirisk karakter. Men siden har jeg ofte tænkt tilbage på denne landing og grublet over situationens tunge symbolik. Den er blevet til mit foretrukne eksempel på den ultimative immigrant-erfaring, immigrantens lod i højeste potens.

Min debutdigtsamling Første gang tilbage (2009) ligger i forlængelse af disse grublerier, og er grundlæggende ikke andet end en stilistisk og tematisk kredsen om denne paradoksale position mellem to steder og to tider, dengang

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og nu. Flere af de centrale digte, er skrevet med udgangspunkt i denne blandede og selvmodsigende følelse af fremmedgørelse og hjemliggørelse, tab og (gen)erobring af sin egen flydende identitet, mens begreber som ’her’ og ’der’, ’dengang’ og ’nu’, ’inde’ og ’ude’, ’du’ og ’jeg’ bytter plads, smelter sammen og bliver vendt og drejet.

Digtsamlingen blev til i kølvandet på en rejse til Bosnien i sommeren 2006 og mit senere bidrag til Gyldendals antologi Nye stemmer (2007), hvori tre af digtene indgår. Det var ikke min første rejse tilbage til min fødeby. Jeg var der faktisk for tredje gang, men trådte for første gang ind i mit barndomshjem, som min far lige havde gjort beboeligt. At træde ind over dørtrinet var en meget speciel oplevelse. Mærkelig, apropos åbningsdigtet ’Det mærkelige hus’.

Samtidig var ’hjemkomsten’ tæt beslægtet med den i Kastrup ti år tidligere.

Nu kunne jeg endelig sige: ’Så er vi hjemme’, uden at studse over det. Eller kunne jeg? For både huset og byen havde forandret sig i de år, jeg var væk. De var blevet mere fremmede for mig, end jeg havde forventet. Der var derfor et misforhold mellem det jeg så og det jeg huskede. Det, jeg længe havde savnet, og det, jeg fik lov til at (gen)se.

Jeg gik rundt i det, der var tilbage af byen, og tænkte på Baudelaires digt Svanen, hvor digter-jeg’et flanerer gennem det renoverede Paris og tænker tilbage på de gamle barakker, som ikke står der mere. ”I mit kære minde lader ingenting sig rokke”, hedder det et sted i dansk oversættelse. Dette digt tænker jeg ofte på, når jeg besøger min fødeby, og det er ikke bare en trodsig ’hilsen’ til krigens sejrherrer med etnisk udrensning på samvittigheden – dem som først bombede og siden genopbyggede byen til ukendelighed. Det er også en nøgtern erkendelse af, at det urokkelige og det hjemlige er noget, der lever stærkest i vores erindring. I myten om ’hjemmet’ og ’hjemlandet’ på den ene side og ’det fremmede land’ på den anden.

I den mere konkrete erfaringshorisont, fjernt fra de abstrakte og oftest politiserede antagonismer, ser tingene heldigvis anderledes ud. Som ethvert menneske, er immigranten også et handlende subjekt. Han eller hun er ikke bare et forstenet og splittet objekt, der står imellem sine to (eller flere) verdner, imellem det hjemlige og det fremmede, det kendte og det ukendte. Nej, han har sin frie vilje og mulighed for at tilegne sig det fremmede, fraskrive sig det hjemlige, kombinere deres enkelte elementer, gøre hvad pokker han vil med dem – og skabe sin egen verden, løsrevet fra de fremmedgørende kategorier og faste begreber. Netop fordi immigranten i sit konkrete erfaringsrum kan forme sig selv og sin identitet, kan han også finde sig et unikt eksistentielt tilhørssted, et hjem i bredere forstand. Dette hjem er kun hans eget – flydende, svævende og altid i forandring. Det befinder sig der, hvor immigranten er, og det flytter altid med.

I den forstand havde jeg ret dengang i Kastrup i 1996, da jeg tænkte: ’Så er vi hjemme’. I hvert fald lige så meget som dengang i Bosnien i 2006.

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translation page 128

Det mærkelige hus Huset, hvor krigen har boet, er et mærkeligt hus. I tre år har tre mennesker åbnet en dør og oplevet at alle vægge forvandles til glas, når man træder ind over tærsklen. Tænder man et lys, blændes alle vinduerne, og taget bliver hængende i luften som en omvendt, åben bog.

Dette sker ved enhver ankomst.

At være udenfor betyder at eje huset. At være indenfor: at huset ejer én. Særligt om sommeren er udsigten over floden og den modsatte bred et syn værd, og om natten kan man høre en stemme fra kvisten, en stemme der hvisker eventyr på vildfremmede sprog, hvorigennem ordet hjem vandrer uforandret, forandrende.

Det sidste jeg selv husker fra dette hus, hvor ingen længere tør læne sig op ad en drøm, er et ansigt og en stemme bag ansigtet der fortæller mig at mit liv, det andet, først nu begynder. Bag ordene men ikke her hænger der et tyndt og stedvist gennemhullet gardin, hvis runde huller forsikrer mig om at jeg står ved et vindue. Vinduet er endnu ikke blevet til en væg, og floden, der bruger hullerne til at smugle lysglimt fra et sprogskib ind i huset, flyder mod nord, hvor vandrende stemmer hvisker forankrende ord: Et hus er ikke et hjem, før det forlades.

Stående Hvis dette var et gammelt brev du fandt i et atlas, mens du ledte efter noget andet – en by eller en vej til en by – ville du måske åbne det og læse det, ligesom jeg måske åbnede og læste dit i dag. Du ville genkende koden i min håndskrift, lugte til papiret der ville dufte af Papiret og folde det ud. Langsomt, langsomt ville du folde det ud og stående tyde ordene, musikken og det vigtigste, selv om hverken ordene, musikken eller det vigtigste står i breve. Selv om vejen fra Mig til Dig ikke er den samme som vejen fra Dig til Mig, snor de sig begge i det samme atlas: At være en del af noget der er delt, men som ikke kan deles med nogen, mindst af alt med papiret der bare dufter af Papiret, er din og min lod. Læs ikke mere. Ordet er dit. Luk atlasset, rejs videre og bliv ved med at sige du ikke rejser, men står urokkeligt – som en herre i eget hus, som et Kære i et brev.

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oversættelse side 128 Obviously I will be caught if I go back

When you are seeking asylum in a country where the government does not recognize the danger you are fleeing from. When a peace agreement does not mean peace. About the difficulty of being Sudanese - seeking asylum in Denmark.

by Ismail Suleiman • Illustration by Rasmus pedersen

After my arrest in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, I was threatened with death if I was contacted by the opposition, headed by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim.

With him and JEM (Justice and Equality Movement) I was fighting for a new Darfur. The authorities suspected me. Even though they had strict control in every airport and seaport, I managed to escape.

Reaching Denmark was a long and difficult journey through Europe.

When first I arrived in Greece, I thought it would be the end of the oppression and persecution I fled from, but I was surprised. Greece was a nightmare.

Likewise, my application for asylum in Denmark was connected with a sense of hope, which has since vanished day by day, living in the Danish asylum camps. It is a difficulty not being familiar with the asylum legislation in a new country. It leads to confusion and insecurity, but the endless waiting is the worst part.

I waited a long time in Denmark just to get final permission to seek asylum. Part of the Dublin Convention was reconsidered, that otherwise dictated that I was to be deported back to Greece as my first European country. I have now been in Denmark for more than two years. Half a year ago I got my final rejection on asylum. The government is closing their eyes to the situation in my country.

The main argument in the rejection of Sudanese asylum applications is the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in Doha in 2005, supposedly between the Sudanese Government and the Darfur Movements. But no such peace agreement took place. The Sudanese Government, the ruling party Zakria and its leader Tijani Sisi, did not invite the Darfur Movements; they only invited their friends. The situation in Sudan has therefore not changed for the better, in spite what the paper of an agreement might tell you.

Sudan is not a safe place to be. Sending Sudanese asylum seekers back to Sudan does not only mean risking their own lives, but also the lives of their family members. The Sudanese authorities still sometimes ask my parents about my location. They say that they don’t know. Obviously I will be caught if I go back. And the Sudanese law says that if you are a threat to the security of the state, you will be executed.

Despite all this, I, along with the majority of Sudanese asylum seekers in Denmark, have been rejected. I ask God to help the Sudanese people in our difficult lives in Denmark. I hope the responsible authorities in this country will reconsider the situation in Sudan and thereby the situation of the Sudanese people in Denmark.

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Hvad mener folk i asyllejrene om den nye asylaftale? af Trampolinhuset • foto af Mark knudsen translation page 129

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Regeringen indgik i oktober 2012 en ny asylaftale med Enhedslisten og Liberal Alliance. Trampolinhuset glæder sig over de forbedrede muligheder for at bo, arbejde og uddanne sig uden for asyllejrene, men er imod opretholdelsen af samarbejdskravet og den fortsatte brug af motivationsfremmende foranstaltninger. Budskabet fra kampagnen Out of the Camps! har dermed ikke ændret sig.

Trampolinhuset er imidlertid et fællesskab af mange forskellige mennesker og rummer derfor et bredt spektrum af meninger og erfaringer. Tre beboere i de danske asyllejre giver her deres holdninger til kende om asylaftalen.

Teksterne er baseret på interviews.

Said

Jeg vil gerne sige noget om de problemer, som jeg ser i lejren. Jeg har set mange, der har taget deres eget liv, men når jeg tjekker nyhederne, ser jeg en anden historie. En fyr fra Center Holmegaard havde fået afslag og havde meget seriøse problemer i Afghanistan. Han satte ild til sig selv. I nyhederne skrev de, at han havde drukket, at han derefter havde tændt en cigaret, og at det var på grund af alkoholen, at der gik ild i ham. Jeg ved, at han slog sig selv ihjel på grund af hans situation. Ingen ville lytte til mig.

En anden fyr i Auderød hang sig selv. Der gik to dage før, der var nogen, der fandt ham. For to uger siden var der en fyr i Sandholm, der begik selvmord. Han var på sit værelse fire dage inden han blev fundet. Jeg så ham. Der kom en lugt ud fra hans værelse. Politiet kom, men ingen sagde noget til os beboere om, at én var død. Ingen forstod, hvad der skete. Der var meget stille.

En ambulance kom og bragte ham til hospitalet. Vi fandt intet om det i aviserne. Jeg kender en historie magen til.

Jeg synes, at det er godt, at folk kan leve, arbejde og studere uden for lejren, men det bør være ens for alle. Fase 1, 2 og 3. De kan ikke forlange, at folk skriver under på at vende frivilligt tilbage. Vi har alvorlige problemer i vores lande.

Vi kan ikke vende tilbage. Hvordan skal vi kunne forlade Danmark, når vi har alvorlige problemer der, hvor vi kommer fra? Med regeringen, med Taliban, med alting? De mænd, som jeg har fortalt om, kunne ikke skrive under. Jeg er sikker på, at de ikke ville skrive under. Måske vil nogle få skrive under, fordi de er bange for at få problemer med den danske stat, men 90% vil ikke skrive under på at vende tilbage til deres land.

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Jeg hørte om aftalen fra en af mine venner. En dag efter skole gik vi forbi en plakat, hvor der stod: “Nu er det tilladt asylsøgere at arbejde!” og at de ville få deres eget hus og alt det der. Så sagde jeg: “Huh! Hvem er det, der giver mig den her information?” Det var New Times [Røde Kors’ asylavis]. Hvem er

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New Times? Hvilken magt har New Times? Jeg spurgte en af mine lærere, om han ville forklare, hvad der stod på plakaten. “Det her gælder ikke for alle,” sagde han til mig.

Det er kun for folk i fase 2. Folk med to afslag skal skrive under på frivillig hjemrejse, ellers vil de ikke give dig arbejde. Hvis du skriver under, kan du arbejde i tre uger, så sender de dig hjem!

Problemet er, at vi er her på grund af politiske problemer, ikke økonomiske problemer, heller ikke for at finde arbejde. Jeg er politisk flygtning. Jeg kom ikke for at finde et job. Jeg havde et godt job i mit land. Jeg kan kun få del i disse rettigheder, hvis jeg skriver under på at vende tilbage. Hvis du samarbejder med politiet, kan du få del i disse rettigheder. Så til hvis fordel er den nye asylaftale? Efter kort tid sender de dig alligevel tilbage, så hvad er meningen? Det er tvang. Mange af os flygtninge havde gode jobs. Vi flygtede kun på grund af situationen i vores hjemlande. Vi beder om beskyttelse. Jeg kan kun sige, at denne lov er lavet for at tvinge folk til at tage hjem.

Måske er det på grund af pres fra EU, at regeringen tænker: ”Lad os gøre det her for at få migranterne til at forlade landet”.

Hvis aftalen kom fra politikernes hjerte, hvis de virkelig ville gøre noget godt for at hjælpe os og lade os leve som mennesker, kunne de gøre meget simple ting. Vi er mennesker ligesom dem. Vi spiser også. Hvis denne aftale kom fra deres hjerter, var det regeringen og udlændingestyrelsen, der burde give os information om aftalen og ikke New Times. De burde sende et brev til hver enkelt asylsøger med information og en arbejdstilladelse. For at bevise, at det er ægte og at de mener det alvorligt! Når de vil flytte dig til en anden lejr, eller hvis du får afslag på din ansøgning om asyl, sender de dig et brev med det samme. De sender politiet, hvis ikke vi vil forlade landet. Ved du hvorfor? Fordi det er de ting, der betyder noget for dem. Selvfølgelig er det godt, at nogle kommer ud af lejren og kan arbejde, men sådan noget skal der være en seriøs og stærk holdning bag.

Jeg mener ikke, at det er en god aftale. Den er ikke til fordel for asylsøgere.

Hvorfor er det New Times, der skal informere os om det, når de laver en ny lov? Det er som om, at aftalen er en hemmelighed. Vi ved intet om den. Jeg vil gerne vide, hvorfor det er sådan? Jeg synes, det er mærkeligt.

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Jeg synes, at det er et skridt i den rigtige retning for os. Som det er nu, er der intet at foretage sig i lejren. Hvis jeg kunne leve uden for lejren og arbejde, ville det virkelig være godt. Jeg vil gerne arbejde. Du ved, som det er nu, føles det som om, at jeg ikke er et menneske. Jeg er bare i lejren. På en måned får jeg 700 kroner to gange - og det er ikke nok. Jeg vil gerne købe tøj, sko og den slags, og det kan jeg ikke. Det dækker kun mad. Det ville være bedre, hvis jeg kunne få et rigtigt job. Så ville jeg kunne tage vare på min fremtid.

Jeg synes, at det er farligt, at de vil have én til at skrive under på frivillig hjemrejse. Jeg er fra Sudan. Den danske regering ved, at situationen i Sudan er meget, meget vanskelig. Jeg havde problemer i mit hjemland. Det er derfor,

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Jeg vil gerne arbejde. Du ved, som det er nu, føles det som om, at jeg ikke er et menneske. Jeg er bare i lejren. På en måned får jeg 700 kroner to gange - og det er ikke nok. Jeg vil gerne købe tøj, sko og den slags, og det kan jeg ikke. Det dækker kun mad.

jeg kom hertil. Det er virkelig farligt for mit liv, hvis de deporterer mig. Jeg vil ud af lejren. Jeg vil vide, om det betyder, at jeg må blive i Danmark, indtil situationen i Sudan er bedre, hvis jeg skriver under? Hvis situationen bliver bedre, vil jeg gerne vende tilbage. Jeg har været her i fire-fem år, og situationen er meget dårlig. Jeg ved ingenting om min familie eller min fremtid. Folk i lejrene er bange, fordi vi ikke ved, hvad det betyder, hvis vi skriver under. Der er en kæmpe forskel på, om de beder mig forlade landet med det samme, eller om jeg kan blive et eller to år. Det er et åbent spørgsmål. EU har besluttet, at de ikke kan sende folk tilbage til Sudan lige nu.

Angående de motivationsfremmende foranstaltninger, så tror jeg ikke på, at de virker. Hver asylsøger ved alt om situationen i hendes eller hans hjemland. Jeg ved ikke meget om andre lande, men jeg ved nok om mit eget.

Situationen er meget vanskelig og systemet er meget hårdt. Jeg er i fase 3. Alle fra Sudan er i fase 3. Kun meget få fra Sudan får asyl sammenlignet med andre nationaliteter. Jeg synes, at det er kriterierne for at opnå asyl, der burde ændres.

Jeg synes, at det er godt, hvis jeg kan komme ud af lejren og arbejde, så ville jeg leve mere som folk her i Trampolinhuset, et normalt liv. Jeg vil gerne starte i skole igen. Jeg vil gerne lære og færdiggøre min uddannelse. I Sudan studerede jeg journalistik på universitetet. Det er derfor, jeg er her nu.

Jeg håber, at der sker noget. Jeg håber at få et normalt liv, hvor jeg kan leve uden for lejren. Som det er nu, føler jeg mig som et undermenneske. Jeg håber, det sker snart. Jeg tror måske, at jeg vil skrive under, fordi jeg er stresset, keder mig og fordi jeg vil udrette noget med mit liv. Når mit land er sikkert igen, vil jeg sige 'mange tak' og vende tilbage. Jeg tror desværre ikke, at det vil ske snart med den nuværende regering i Sudan. Med den regering er du nødt til at støtte op om onde ting. Jeg er fra nord. Regeringen er sindssyg – som en mafia, helt korrupt. De kan ikke stjæle fra folket i stilhed. De slås og slår ihjel.

Jeg håber, at situationen i mit hjemland vil ændre sig. Jeg håber på fred, så jeg kan vende tilbage. Jeg forstår ikke, hvordan jeg er endt i den her situation.

Hvis mit liv i Sudan havde været uden problemer, var jeg naturligvis blevet hos min far, min mor og mine søstre. Jeg synes, at Trampolinhuset forandrer, men mange asylsøgere tror ikke længere på forandringer, fordi de tænker på andre ting. De vil have deres eget hus og leve uden for lejrene, de vil arbejde.

Det er dét, asylsøgere tænker på.

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translation page 131

En mere human asylpolitik?

Med den nye asyllov i 2012 gav regeringen løfte om en mere human asylpolitik: ”Regeringen ønsker en mere human tilgang i asylpolitikken. Kriterierne for hvem, der kan få asyl, ændres ikke. Men de, der søger asyl i Danmark, skal behandles værdigt,” står der i regeringsgrundlaget. Artiklen ser nærmere på, hvordan regeringen opfatter værdighed, og om de lever op til løftet om en human asylpolitik.

Af Katja lund thomsen • illustration af Rasmus Pedersen

Den nye asylaftale indeholder positive tiltag, der blandt andet betyder kortere ventetid på sagsbehandlinger, bedre forhold for børnefamilier samt mulighed for at bo og arbejde uden for lejrene. Ved at inddrage asylansøgere i samfundet og på arbejdsmarkedet skaber regeringen en mindre afstand mellem dem og os og vi bevæger os stille hen imod et inkluderende Danmark, hvor man fra politisk side anerkender, at asylansøgerne er en del af samfundet. Det er første skridt på vejen mod en acceptabel asylpolitik. Men aftalen er desværre også ekskluderende.

Regeringen undgår at forholde sig til, at asylansøgere bliver afvist igen og igen til trods for anbefalinger om at give asyl fra UNHCR. Hvis regeringens ønske er at føre en menneskelig og værdig politik, er det afgørende at de følger både Institut For Menneskerettigheder, UNHCR og Amnestys skarpe opfordringer om at leve op til flygtningekonventionen og menneskerettighederne. Men Danmark vil med den nye asylaftale fortsætte samme hårde kurs vedrørende tildeling af asyl som VKO regeringen. Vi vil fortsætte med at sende mennesker tilbage til humanitære krisetilstande og lande i krig. Det er en alvorlig ansvarsforskydning.

Der burde i et demokratisk retssamfund oprettes en uafhængig instans, der kontrollerer, at Danmark fremover vil overholde menneskerettighederne, som er universelle. Men en sådan instans eksisterer ikke. På nuværende tidspunkt er det flygtningenævnet, der har den afgørende stemme. En værdig behandling af asylansøgere hænger uløseligt sammen med asylansøgeres udsigt til at få asyl. Asylansøgere må i dag leve med bevidstheden om, at de kan blive sendt tilbage til hjemlandet til trods for ret til beskyttelse.

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Undtagelsens regel Med den nye asylaftale får børn stadigvæk ikke en selvstændig sagsbehandling. Dette betyder, at børn kan risikere at leve i centrene i et op til et år, hvis forældrene ikke samarbejder om hjemsendelse. Eksperter vurderer, at børn kan tage alvorlig skade af at leve i centrene i mere end seks måneder.

Uledsagede mindreårige flygtninge kan få afslag på asyl. Hvis hjemlandet opererer med et modtagelsescenter, skal barnet sendes tilbage og bosætte sig her. Hvis den mindreårige er heldig og får opholdstilladelse, ophører denne som udgangspunkt, den dag barnet fylder atten år. Ifølge Børnekonventionen skal barnets interesse altid komme i første række. Politiske eller økonomiske magtinteresser må aldrig underminere barnets ret.

I regeringsgrundlaget står der følgende om humanitær opholdstilladelse: ”Området for humanitær opholdstilladelse skal fortsat være snævert, og det skal være undtagelsen, at der gives humanitær opholdstilladelse.” En syg asylansøger bliver afvist, hvis behandlingen til sygdommen i princippet udbydes i hjemlandet. Virkeligheden for mange mennesker er, at dette ikke kan lade sig gøre af geografiske eller økonomiske årsager. Der er pludselig langt mellem realitet og praksis – langt mellem menneske og system.

I Danmark skal man som udgangspunkt være personligt og individuelt forfulgt for at blive anerkendt som flygtning. Man anerkender ikke, at en forfulgt gruppe har ret til beskyttelse. Det fører i værste fald til masseudvisninger. Fordi flere er lige udsatte, argumenteres der for at ingen kan bevise, at de er særligt udsatte. Det var hvad der skete med de afviste irakiske asylansøgere, der søgte beskyttelse i Brorsons kirken.

Det er altså kun dem, der opfylder helt specifikke krav, som vil blive behandlet menneskeligt. De flygtninge, der ikke opfylder kravene, befinder sig i ingenmandsland med udsigt til at blive hjemsendt til et land, de er flygtet fra.

Er det værdigt?

Muligheder og samarbejde Regeringen åbner op for en ny politisk retning, hvor man vil anerkende asylansøgerne som en del af samfundet. Asylansøgerne har nu retten til at bo og arbejde uden for lejrene. Dette er et skridt væk fra den danske praksis om at usynliggøre asylansøgere og institutionalisere dem i et isoleret liv i de afsides asylcentre. At få lov til at opbygge en hverdag i fællesskab med andre er vigtigt for alle. Men det nye tiltag sætter de afviste asylansøgere i en vanskelig situation. Pludselig bliver de en del af et systematisk spil, hvor ”noget for noget” princippet er reglen. Hvis de siger ja til at vende hjem, så snart de danske myndigheder vurderer, at det er sikkert, kan de få lov til at leve et mere normalt, men samtidig skrøbeligt og øjebliksorienteret liv. Det er svært at overlade sin skæbne til systemet, når politikken lyder, at markant flere afviste skal hjemsendes.

Det er heller ikke alle, der kan samarbejde. Der findes i dag ingen klare retningslinjer med konkrete beskrivelser af, hvad samarbejde indebærer. Ikke alle kan for eksempel skaffe den nødvendige rejsedokumentation, som myndighederne kræver, selvom de gerne vil.

Ingen flygter frivilligt. De færreste, der flygter, vil indgå en aftale om at vende hjem til et land, de har kæmpet sig væk fra. Kun 12-15% af de afviste asylansøgere i Danmark samarbejder om hjemsendelse. Det er der selvfølgelig

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en grund til. Det er ikke til at komme udenom, at man i samarbejde om hjemsendelse bliver bedt om at anerkende den mistænksomhed, ens flugtmotiv er blevet mødt med.

De afviste Regeringen fastslår, at Danmark skal arbejde hårdt, for at få de afviste til at rejse hjem. Ideen bag målrettet og systematisk at forværre en afvist persons liv i Danmark er, at han eller hun frivilligt vil rejse tilbage til sit hjemland. For eksempel anerkender man, at situationen i Syrien er så farlig, at man ikke kan tvangshjemsende syrere. Alligevel bliver syrere nægtet asyl. Den flygtede kan nu se frem til mange år i asylsystemets cirkus med forflyttelser og usikkerhed.

Danmark underkender flygtningens behov og ret til beskyttelse.

Af en rapport fra Embedsmandsudvalget, udfærdiget i juni 2012, fremgår det, at der ikke er lavet empiriske undersøgelser, der bekræfter at motivationsfremmende foranstaltninger har betydning for en asylansøgers medvirken til udrejse efter afslag. Alligevel vurderer udvalget, at i Danmark skal fortsætte med at bruge de motivationsfremmende foranstaltninger: "De motivationsfremmende foranstaltninger skal således sikre en hurtig, mere effektiv og øget udsendelse af afviste asylansøgere."

En af de ”motivationsfremmende foranstaltninger” er at tvangsflytte de afviste asylansøgere til et udsendelsescenter. Udvalget mener, at overflytningen opleves stærkere, hvis der samtidig bliver gjort brug af den såkaldte ”bespisningsordning”. Dette betyder reelt, at man fratager personen muligheden for selv at lave mad. Som led i den systematiske hjemsendelsesproces skal man melde sig ugentligt hos politiet, og asylansøgere kan blive fængslet uden dom i Ellebæk på baggrund af politiets mistanker. Der er tale om strafværktøjer, der virker nedbrydende på mennesker, der ønsker at opbygge et nyt liv. Udvalgets afgørelser bygger udelukkende på politiets erfaringer og vurderinger. Politiet tildeles her en dommers magt. Det er ikke forsvarligt.

En værdig asylpolitik?

Der er sket forbedringer. Men det ændrer ikke på, at det danske asylsystem er baseret på mistillid. Det ændrer heller ikke på, at Danmark bryder med internationale konventioner. Ofte argumenteres der for, at de afviste skal acceptere beslutningen, når ”de er en del” af et retssamfund. Problemet er, at retssamfundet på asylområdet kun kommer systemet til gode. Flygtninge bliver frihedsberøvet og de fængsles uden dom. Danmark foretager administrative udvisninger uden retssag. Kriterierne for, hvem der kan opnå asyl bygger på undtagelsens muligheder. Systemets labyrint skaber forhindring efter forhindring.

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World People, Asylum Seekers, Writers, Painters, Creatives, Photographers – make your mark, unite.

Get your words, thoughts & stories out!

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

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Tegneserie - Jimmy Roskildefestival 2012 Hvis havet kunne tale - Dady de Maximo Førsteårsimmigrant - Noura Bittar Interview med Mohammad Shoja Tajik, en afghansk kunstner - Rasmus Brink Pedersen Refugee Label Obliterates Personal Identity - Rikke Nørgaard Andersen Forflytning er den nye oversættelse - Kenneth Goldsmith Fundet i oversættelse • Noter om at møde og forstå smerte - Ina Serdarević Syriske digte - Tareq Aljabr Flygtningenes protestmarch: ’Lad os gå og se, hvor vi ender’ - Liv Nimand Duvå & Nicoline Sylvest Simonsen At springe ud som udokumenterede: noter om Undocubus - Jeppe Wedel-Brandt Velkommen til Europa: Du er fanget i laboratoriet - Mikas Lang & Kirstine Nordentoft Mose Kontrol over fingeraftryk • magt over mennesker - Sidsel Rosenberg Bak Rejection of Asylum / Residence Permit Mens vi venter på (retten til) at vende tilbage - af Kamal Ahamada De magtesløses historie - af Daniel Palm Cisne Kastrup Airport • a few words about the lot of the immigrant - Alen Mešković The odd house / Standing - Alen Mešković Jeg vil naturligvis blive fanget, hvis jeg vender tilbage - Ismail Suleiman What do People in the Asylum Camps Think of the New Asylum Agreement? - The Trampoline House A more Humane Asylum Policy? - Katja Lund Thomsen

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Roskilde Festival 2012 visAvis var på Roskilde Festival i sommeren 2012, hvor vi skrev artikler hver dag, som blev hængt op på vores avisvæg. Herfra kunne vi være i dialog med festivalgængere. Dette er et uddrag af hvad der blev produceret på festivalen.

Kipanga: Hvor mange gange har du været på Roskilde Festival?

Jens: Det er min tredje gang.

Kipanga: Hvor mange dage kommer du til at være her?

Jens: Alle dagene. Jeg kommer til at være her otte dage i alt.

Kipanga: Hvordan er der i din lejr?

Jens: Der er skønt. Stemningen er fantastisk.

Kipanga: Vidste du at der findes andre slags lejre i Danmark?

Jens: Hvad?

Kipanga: Jeg taler om asyllejre, hvor man ikke kan lave noget som helst.

Jens: Ja, det ved jeg. Det er trist.

Kipanga: Kunne du tænke dig at blive I din Roskilde-lejr I måske fem år, lige som folk I asyllejrene?

Jens: Nej, nej, nej...En uge er rigeligt for mig. Ikke mere end det.

Det her er en anden form for lejr.

Det er ikke blot det, at faren for forfladigelse bliver overhængende. Det er værre endnu: Sat på spidsen er der en tendens til, at Poor City i år mest minder om Asylogisk Have, Det Store Asyllotteri eller måske et Asyltivoli med turpas. Gå ikke glip af dagens særtilbud: ”Mød en rigtig asylansøger” og ”Deltag i quiz’en om at vinde retten til asyl i Danmark”. Og det runger nu så hult, når man rundt omkring på festivalpladsen fra 2x5m store orange statements bliver lovet: ”Make isolation history. Go to Poor City and make a change”.

Du er ikke her fordi du er på flugt fra krig. Her kan du leve for sjov.

Vi sad faktisk lige og diskuterede, hvad det her var for noget. Om området kun er for nogle specielle mennesker.

Der er ingen vej tilbage. Labyrinters natur. Jeg farer vild og møder den samme blindgyde gentagne gange.

Blodtrykket stiger. Fly buldrer (i lydinstallationen) over hovederne på os. Jeg bliver forskrækket, da jeg støder ind i en gruppe flygtninge, der bevæger sig rundt i labyrinten. Utryghed. Jeg ved ikke, hvilket syn, der venter mig bag forhænget. Bagrummet af en truck.

Roskildekrønikerne - del fire

Som et gammelt russisk ordsprog siger: Det er kun godt som ender godt. I min sidste beretning her fra Roskilde, vil jeg prøve at opsumere alt det som vi har nået at lave på denne korte tid. Det var sandelig en rigtig opvarmning. Den første dag på Roskilde mødte os med et klassisk sceneri fra en billig gyserfilm: styrtregn og bidende kold vind. Men det skræmte os ikke og det lykkedes os at gøre organiseringen af vores kontor til en succes, selvom der faldt 35 mm regn den dag. Men tal (35 mm for eksempel) alene har ingen betydning, med mindre man er optaget af penge (som nogle individer er). Og alt skete til tiden.

Alle disse dage har vi forsøgt at dele vores følelser og oplevelser med vore læsere. Efter at være gået i gang med at skrive denne artikel, er det pludselig gået op for mig at min mission er umulig. Denne atmosfære er umulig at beskrive med ord – den skal opleves. Derfor vil jeg slutte med at sige tak til mit vidunderlige og smukke visAvis-hold, for samarbejdet og for støtten til hinanden.

Vis(Avis) Kærligst Patrik

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Hvis havet kunne tale af Dady de Maximo

Forestil dig at havet kunne tale. Desværre er det ikke muligt, men havde det været muligt, ville dette være tidspunktet for at låne vores ører til forskellige lyde, skrig og sange, men også mange vidnedsbyrd fyldte med de endeløse råb om nød.

Rejsen ender i tragedie

Jeg havde tid til at snakke med en ven, der har overlevet i havet, da båden der bragte ham til Europa, sank. Heldigvis blev han reddet af politiet, men mange af hans kammarater omkom i havet. Vi kan ikke forestille os, hvad disse flygtninge går gennem under denne lange rejse, der ofte ender i tragedie.

Disse mennesker, der besluttede at forlade deres hjemlande for endelig at leve frie og glade, uden krig, tortur eller forfølgelse. Deres drømme dør med dem.

Min vens vidnedsbyrd var som et uendeligt skrig. For mig er det en smerte, der rører ved bundens bund. Måden, han talte til mig om denne historie, minder mig om disse gestikulationer, som jeg ikke kan fortolke - og selv ikke skuespillere kan gå ind i dette scenarie og spille rollen bedre end én, der har gennemlevet denne forfærdelige historie, så han kan ære de savnede personer og fortælle os, hvad der hver dag sker i havet.

Absolut stilhed, afbrudt af korte vejrtrækninger

Af denne lange snak, fortalt i hans unikke stemme, for at hjælpe mig til at forstå og guide mig, så jeg kan skrive det, er den eneste ting, som jeg ikke kan glemme, hans absolutte stilhed afbrudt af korte vejrtrækninger. Min ven inspirerede mig til denne sætning: "Hvis havet kunne tale." Så, jeg tænkte længe og grundigt over, hvad jeg skulle skrive, for skulle jeg skrive hans vidnedsbyrd, ville jeg ikke engang have mod nok til at tage pennen i hånden.

Og selvom jeg havde, ville jeg ikke kunne skrive det til ende, for den rædsel, han overlevede, er så svær at beskrive, ja endda finde ord til at forklare det.

Det eneste, jeg her kan nævne, er, at han overlevede, da båden sank. Han husker ikke, hvor længe han var i vandet. Men han husker vandets kulde og ligene af hans kammarater rundt om ham, nogle med babyer på deres ryg. Nogle svømmede uden at vide hvilken retning, de skulle tage, fordi de ikke kunne se land; de havde en chance for at blive opdaget af en politibåd, men da den ankom til deres placering, var de fleste af dem døde. Politiet reddede ham mirakuløst og efter det, kunne han ikke bevæge sin krop, der var så kold.

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Så i dag, for at ære de savnede og døde personer, kan jeg kun give jer tallene for savnede og døde flygtninge siden 2006.

Krydsende mure dækket med pigtråd; krydsende havet i usødygtige både; rejsende i hemmelighed eller i containere uden luft. Hver dag risikerer flygtninge og migranter deres liv i verden, hver dag i en desperat søgen for at finde sikkerhed og et bedre liv.

Hver har sin egen historie og minder Bag de dramatiske overskrifter og chokerende billeder af menneskelig migration, der sendes i medierne, er historier om individuel mod, tragedie og medfølelse. Selvom flygtninge og migranter benytter de samme ruter og former for transport, og deler den samme historie og det samme navn som flygtninge, har hver og én sin egen historie og minder.

Nogle ønsker at samles med deres familie, og andre flygter fra forfølgelse, konflikt eller vilkårlig vold, der foregår i deres land. Dette er grunden til, at mange sætter ud på sådan en rejse på trods af risikoen for deres liv og er tvunget til at rejse under inhumane forhold, for endelig at undslippe krig og forfølgelse.

Følgende ses antallet af mennesker, der er ankommet til Europa via havet, og antallet af mennesker, der er savnede eller døde fra 2006 til 2011, Ifølge UNHCR.

Spanien (fastland og øer)

Ankommet til Europa til søs fra Vest- og Nordafrika: 5 443 (2011) 3 632 (2010) 7 285 (2009) 13 400 (2008) 18 000 (2007) 39 000 (2006) Antal af mennesker savnet eller døde i 2001: 198, i 2010: 74, i 2009: 127, i 2008: 120 og i 2007: 360

Grækenland (fastland og øer)

Ankomster til søs fra Tyrkiet: 1 030 (2011), 1 765 (2010), 10 165 (2009), 15 300 (2008), 19 900 (2007), 3 050 (2006) 55,000 mennesker krydsede grænsen til lands og over Evrosfloden mellem Tyrkiet og Grækenland: Antal af mennesker savnet eller døde i 2011: 51, 2010: 41, 2009: 83, 2008: ikke tilgængelig, i 2007: 159

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Førsteårsimmigrant af Noura Bittar Italien Ankomster til søs fra Nordafrika,

Grækenland og Tyrkiet: 61 000 (2011) 4 348 (2010) 9 573 (2009) 36 000 (2008) 19 900 (2007) 22 000 (2006) 56,000 mennesker er ankommet fra Liben og Tunesien og 5,000 andre fra Grækenland og

Tyrkiet

Antal af mennesker savnet eller døde i 2010: 8 2009: 329 2008: 525 2007: 471 Ifølge UNHCR døde 1,500 mennesker under deres forsøg på at krydse over fra Libyen til Europa.

Malta Ankomne til søs fra Nordafrika:

1 574 (2011) 28 (2010) 1 470 (2009) 2 700 (2008) 1 800 (2007) 1 800 (2006) Ifølge UNHCR døde 1,500 mennesker under deres forsøg på at krydse over fra Libyen til Europa.

Yemen Ankomne til søs fra Somalia: 103 000 (2011) 53 382 (2010) 77 310 (2009) 50 000 (2008) 29 500 (2007) 29 000 (2006) Antal af døde eller savnede mennesker i 2011: 103 i 2009: 309 i 2008: 949 i 2007: 1 400 Flere mennesker døde på grund af vold, uretfærdighed, diskrimination, tragedier eller naturkatastrofer, massakrer, hungersnød, krige, folkemord, forfølgelse, tortur, dårlig politik og inkompetente politikere, der sætter deres egne over befolkningens interesser.

Vi må vide, at dette tal vil stige. Jeg har ikke løsningen, men sammen kan vi finde en løsning, i dag er det dem, hvem kender i morgen? I dag er det dem, der risikerer deres liv for at finde sikkerhed og et sted at leve, men hvem kender i morgen?

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Så, nu er der gået et år. Gud, det føles som var det tusind år. Jeg havde hørt meget om det første år som immigrant. At det altid er det hårdeste. Men denne gang, min gang, er oplevelsen komplet anderledes. Fordi denne gang, mens du siger farvel til folk, du elsker, eller husker folk, du elsker, men ikke kunne sige farvel til, har du ikke troen på, at du kan vende tilbage og se dem nårsomhelst du vil.

Du er fordømt. Fordømt med tusind spørgsmål: Hvornår? Og hvordan? Og vil du nogensinde vende tilbage? Du holder dig selv tilbage og siger: "Jo, jeg vil." Men spørgsmålet vender tilbage igen: Når du kommer tilbage, vil de så stadig være sådan, som da du forlod dem? Kommer du til at se dem skaldede og med gråt hår? For denne gang ved du, at tilbagevenden ikke kommer til at være snart.

Du spørger dine forældre om de små børn i din familie, om de stadig spørger til dig? Du beder dine forældre om at blive ved med at minde dem om dig, fordi du bliver ved med at mindes dem, og at de efter denne korte tid ikke længere er børn. Du drømmer: ønskende at de kunne forblive børn og væk fra de voksnes spil.

Du ser på dine forældre: de ved, at du voksede.

Smerten fik også dig til at blive gammel, men med et blik i deres øjne, bliver du igen et barn.

Fortællinger spinner rundt i dit hoved. Der er øjeblikke, hvor du kan lugte dine forældre i det sidste stykke tøj, du havde på, da du sagde farvel til dem. Du finder din mors tørklæde, som hun tog af sin hals og puttede rundt om dig, da du frøs. Du hænger fast ved de små detaljer, der måske ikke betød så meget for dig før: nu betyder de meget, fordi de aldrig vil komme tilbage igen.

De fortalte mig om immigration, og om hvordan de bare kunne tage hjem, når de ville det, eller få besøg af deres familie og venner. De fortalte mig om immigration, om hvordan hver gang de tager tilbage til deres huse, finder de, at intet har forandret sig. Mit hus forandrede sig meget. Jeg ser på de få billeder, jeg har tilbage. Og jeg leder efter en gammel bog, jeg smed væk. Jeg leder efter et stykke stof, jeg engang blev træt af, og tager det på. Og alle minderne, jeg efterlod i hjørnerne. Nogle videoer, der stadig er tilbage, minder mig om al vanviddet og de vidunderlige venner. Jeg leder efter latter. Jeg vil ikke glemme, at de stadig eksisterer. Kiggende efter elskere, der gemmer sig i hjørnet, drømmer jeg om i morgen. Jeg leder efter mig selv.

Ja, der er gået et år. Det er ikke så meget. Jeg ved det...

De fortalte mig om det første års fascination.

Ja, det har været fascinerende. Og mens jeg så en ny by blive bygget i mit hjerte og mit sind, blev min

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kærligheds by destrueret. Og med dens bygningers fald, faldt også årene af mit liv før den tid.

Da jeg ankom, var byen for stor. To blokke væk fra huset lå verdens ende. Jeg fandt modet til at krydse den, og hver gang jeg finder mere mod, bliver byen mindre.

De fortæller dig, at du er helt ligesom dem.

Men hver dag må du bevise det. Bevise, at du er helt ligesom dem. Hver dag er der nye udfordringer, hver dag falder du. Og når du falder, tænker du på de folk, der tænker, at du aldrig vil falde. Eller at du ville tage dem alle med i faldet, hvis du faldt.

Du tænker på de folk, der elsker at se dig falde. Du mindes dit land, der nægter at falde. Du husker, hvordan folk i din by faldt og igen rejste sig med et smil. Du tænker på de mennesker, du elsker; vil du kunne hjælpe dem, hvis du bliver på jorden?

Du elsker, når nogen siger "Bravo" til dig, og du griner, når ingen forstår, hvor meget du kæmpede for det "Bravo."

Du ser folk langt væk. Det er ingen overraskelse, at nogle folk stadig er de samme, selv på afstand. Nogle mennesker bliver ikke smukkere, når de er langt væk. Nej, deres hykleri gør dem grimmere. Men på begge måder ser du dem som små.

Nogle mennesker elsker dig, nyder dine gode nyheder. De bruger dem til at reducere deres smerte, de ser håb i dig. Nogle mennesker er stadig de samme, om de så vokser eller forbliver på afstand, er de stadig de samme: rene som dråber af dug. Nogle mennesker tror, at du finder penge på træerne. De forstår ikke, at du stadig graver rundt i jorden for at plante et træ.

De tager retten til dit hjem, og de siger: "Dig, der sidder udenfor, du forbliver tavs." Du forstår deres smerte, men med stor tristhed i hjertet fortæller du dem: "Jeg sidder, men hvem har sagt, at jeg er udenfor? Min krop er udenfor, men mit sind, hjerte og sjæl er stadig indefor. Min familie og mine venner er stadig inde. De forgangne år af mit liv er stadig inde. Min by er der stadig. Mit hjem er der stadig. Det forlod mig aldrig, og jeg forlod aldrig det."

Du ser på dine søstre og venner: de blev gamle så hurtigt. Smerten fik dem til at ældes. Deres drømme ændredes. Nogle af dem kæmper stadig for deres drømme, andre mistede deres drøm for vores drøm, nogle gik bort med drømmen. Og du savner dem alle.

Du mindes dine søstre og brødre: jeres skænderier og latter, og du ønsker, at du for en time kunne få det tilbage.

Dem alle: i deres øjne er der tristhed. Dem alle: i deres øjne er der vrede. Dem alle: i deres øjne er der savn. Dem alle: i deres latter er der et håb. Dem alle: deres øjne er som dine. Dem alle: i deres øjne er hjem.

Og jeg. Der inde i mig selv var hjemme.

Savnende dem der var mit hjem.

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Interview med Mohammad Shoja Tajik, en afghansk kunstner af Rasmus Brink Pedersen

Vi sidder i Mohammads værelse, i en container bag det tidligere psykiatriske hospital, der nu er hjem for asylcentret Avnstrup. Dette center, langt ude på landet, er normalt det sidste stop før deportation.

Det lille rum er fyldt med malerier, mange er portrætter af Dronning Margrethe II. Mohammad løfter et maleri ud, der stilmæssigt minder om den portugisiske kunstner Paula Regos værker i sin overdrevne naturalisme. Den danske dronning er portrætteret med en lang buet hals, der strækker sig for at lade hendes smilende ansigt fylde lærredets midte.

Jeg har hørt meget om dine malerier og måske endnu mere om de breve, du får tilbage, når du sender malerierne?

"Ja, jeg lavede et stort portræt af dronningen og personalet fra lejren hjalp mig med at få en aftale om et møde."

Du mødte dronningen?

"Nej, det tager lang tid, at komme til at se dronningen. Personalet hjalp mig med at kontakte Hoffet og efter en måned sendte hofmarskallen et brev, hvor der stod: 'Du kan komme til Hoffet og du kan give dronningen maleriet.' Men da jeg tog derind, var dronningen der ikke. Jeg gav det bare til hofmarskallen.

Så du tog maleriet med...

"Ja, det var et stort problem i bussen, på toget og på Nørreport Station. Alle ville se det og de var sådan: 'Wow, meget stort maleri... du er en kunstner? - 'Ja, jeg er en kunstner.'"

Du gik med maleriet fra Nørreport til slottet?

Ja, fordi jeg kan lide dronningen. Hun er også en kunstner. Men jeg fik ikke noget brev underskrevet af dronningen, så jeg forsøgte at kontakte dem igen. Men personalet sagde, at dronningen er meget travl."

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Mohammad, fortæl mig lidt om dig selv "Jeg er fra Afghanistan, fra Nijrab i Kapisa. Det er en meget lille by. Der er mange bjerge og det er et smukt sted. Da jeg var barn flyttede min familie til Iran, efter de russiske soldater invaderede Afghanistan i 1979. I Iran fik jeg min skolegang fra de første klasser til gymnasiet. Så kom der en ny start med Karzairegeringen, og sammen med min familie flyttede jeg tilbage til Afghanistan. Min universitetsuddannelse fandt sted i Kabul."

Hvad studerede du på universitetet?

Billedkunst; og jeg læste også til at blive lærer.

Bagefter blev jeg lærer på Ghulam Mohammad Maimanagi Center for Kunst og lærte børn at male.

Jeg underviste et år der, men efter nogle problemer flyttede jeg tilbage til Kapisa og begyndte at undervise der.

Hvad var problemerne?

"Jeg flyttede til Kapisa, fordi Taliban ledte efter mig i Kabul. Problemet var, at Taliban siger, at maleri er 'haram'. De tog hen til skolen og sagde: 'Mohammad kan ikke undervise i morgen, han kan ikke komme til skolen. Bare bliv hjemme. Ingen undervisning på skolen. Og mal aldrig, det er 'haram' og vi vil skade dig, hvis du gør det.' Så kom jeg til Danmark for et år og otte måneder siden."

Fra en folder trækker Mohammad en dyrt udseende konvolut med et brev underskrevet af Helle Thorning Schmidt frem, hvori hun takker ham for en gruppe af portrætter, hun modtog fra ham. Det virker meget usandsynligt, at hun skulle være i personlig kontakt med nogen herude.

På en måde handler din kunst om at blive synlig, den har rykket ud over lærrederne. At kontakte politikere og de kongelige bliver en del af dit værk.

Og når de sender dig disse breve, er det som at sige: ' ja, vi ved, du eksisterer'?

"Ja, men så siger statsministeren: 'Mohammad, jeg er ked af det, men jeg kan ikke hjælpe dig med at få et positivt svar på din ansøgning... Du har et stort talent... Du er en stor kunstner, men jeg kan ikke hjælpe.' Nu planlægger jeg at besøge Johanne. Hun er en meget vigtig person i det danske folketing."

Mohammad tager to mindre malerier frem, som ikke endnu bærer hans genkendelige signatur: 'Mohammad Shoja Tajik, en afghansk kunstner' - portrætter af de danske politikere Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen og Villy Søvndal.

Du planlægger også at møde Villy Søvndal. Du bliver ved med at kontakte folk som dem, partiledere og ministre, for at give dem portrætter? ”Ja, jeg vil gerne møde udenrigsministeren og Johanne og tale om problemerne med min sag. Jeg har brug for, at ministeren og Johanne hjælper mig.

Jeg har fået to negative svar på min ansøgning om asyl."

Hvad arbejder du på i øjeblikket?

"Jeg arbejder på mange malerier. Men det er et lille rum med to senge. Det fungerer ikke til at male. Jeg kan ikke male hver dag."

Hvem er personen på det store ufærdiggjorte portræt derovre?

"Stephen Harper, statsminsteren i Canada..."

Mødte du statsministeren?

"Nej. Jeg tog derind sammen med en tolk og hendes sekretær var der til at modtage malerierne.

Tre portrætter af Helle Thorning Schmidt og et af dronningen. Da jeg var der, viste jeg sekretæren mine sagspapirer og fortalte ham om mine problemer i Afghanistan. Han sagde: 'Jeg er ked af det.

Jeg vil snakke med statsministeren om dine problemer i morgen.'"

Nævner hun det i brevet? ”Nej, hun takker mig for malerierne og takker personalet fra lejren. Intet om min sag. Politiet har fortalt mig, at jeg er nødt til at forlade Danmark snart.

Nogle gange sover jeg ikke om natten, fordi jeg tænker på alle de problemer, jeg har i Afghanistan."

Så politiet ved, at du er her og altså nu også statsministeren og dronningen?

"Ja, men jeg er altid meget trist. Min sag er lukket i Danmark, men jeg forsøger hver dag at få dem til at åbne den igen. Jeg venter."

2013 • visAvis № 7

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Refugee Label Obliterates Personal Identity

By Rikke Nørgaard Andersen

When an individual is transformed into a ’refugee,’ great personal consequences follow in terms of the way in which the surrounding society regards this individual. Despite very different personalities and backgrounds, individuals are portrayed as a group of uniform people with a common destiny.

In this way, they are reduced to individuals without identities.

The typical portrayal of refugees in the press and the media comes across through images of women and children driven to flee, starved and miserable – victims through and through. “Refugees cease to be specific people and become nothing but victims: universal man, universal woman, universal child, a universal family”, writes anthropologist Liisa Malkki (Malkki 1996) about the objectification that the category ‘refugee’ means to individuals.

This is an identity that people take on involuntarily.

One recognises this characterisation when one considers the Danish debate on asylum seekers and the way in which refugees and asylum seekers are discussed. Everyone – politicians and various organisations – seems compelled to talk about refugees as if they constituted a uniform mass of identical individuals. But when do we listen to the refugees themselves – the people at the centre of it all? The fact that their faces are rarely seen and that their voices are seldom heard in the public debate means that these people become invisible.

Discussions take place about them or on behalf of them; we do not talk with them. Thus they are excluded from influence on the conditions under which only they live. But how does the refugee label transform these individuals into universal identities? In the following, some of Liisa Malkki’s theories will be used to describe the consequences for individuals of the way in which refugees are categorised.

The refugee is a pathological individual

The state of homelessness in which refugees find themselves fundamentally challenges ‘the national order of things,’ which is how Malkki describes the mindset that is the basis of nationalism today. She explains this employing the notion of a kind of metaphysics that is tied to a specific territory (Malkki 1992), which means that nations are founded on the perception that culture and identity are tied to a specific place. A nation is characterised by an unbreakable correlation between one physical territory and one cultural and national identity, which

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derives from and is tied to this territory, and by citizens with physical roots in a country. Refugees are in direct contrast to this order. The enforced ‘deportation’ tears away refugees’ roots and thereby also obliterates their cultural and national identity, which is connected to a certain place. The notion of the national order therefore by definition excludes the rootless refugees. Instead of understanding the refugees’ loss of a physical connection with their home countries as a consequence of social and political factors, it is perceived as a loss of identity and morals. Here Malkki cites a telling example of this perception on the basis of a psychological study of refugees in the 1950s: “Homelessness is a serious threat to moral behavior. … At the moment the refugee crosses the frontiers of his own world, his whole moral outlook, his attitude toward the divine order of life changes. … [The refugees'] conduct makes it obvious that we are dealing with individuals who are basically amoral, without any sense of personal or social responsibility. … They become a menace, dangerous characters who will stop at nothing” (Cirtautas cited in Malkki 1992). The rootless refugee is portrayed as an individual without a sense of direction and whose condition is characterized by moral breakdown. Personal identity is obliterated and replaced by a categorization as a rootless, amoral refugee. The escape from the country of origin has torn the refugee’s roots away, and this is perceived as an inner pathological condition.

Life on standby in refugee camps

The metaphysics that is tied to a specific territory means that refugees are seen as a threat that challenges the national order. Refugee camps – tent camps in Africa as well as refugee camps in Denmark – can be understood as places where refugees’ behaviour is to be controlled. This control involves surveillance of and authority over space and movement. The camps resemble a state of emergency where residents are in a waiting position until their future has been determined. It is a state

visAvis № 7 • 2013

of emergency because their stay is temporary and because they have not yet been excluded from or included in a new country. They are nobodies, people without identity, temporary people that are ‘in between’ nations. There is no room to mix in the camps or to develop and influence the environment that surrounds the refugees; they simply have to wait and accept the state of affairs. No development takes place at all in the camps as if it was a space outside time. Life is put on hold.

However, if refugees are allowed to be members of society, they must – for instance in Denmark – go through a prolonged cultivation process during which they take a course on Danish social conditions, history and culture, all of which is thought to be a precondition of being able to function in Danish society. The pathological individual thereby goes through an intervention – a kind of cultural rehabilitation – as a basis on which to be a member of the new society.

Humanitarian organizations turn individuals into silent victims

The construction of the refugee as being pathological has the consequence that the individual loses the authority to express himself as an individual.

This becomes visible through the way in which individuals are treated in the institutions in which they live and by the organizations that surround them. Here refugees are met with the perception that refugees form a kind of community, building on a common experience: the fact that they are on the run. This experience forms the basis of the understanding of the universal refugee as a helpless victim whom organizations must now help.

This universal refugee identity separates refugees from political, historical and cultural contexts and reduces their lives to the short story of being a refugee; they become ahistorical individuals. Their slates are wiped clean. In practice we see this when individuals are talked about as refugees in the press and the media. They are rarely referred to as former nurses, grocers, football players, students or anything else that might actually have defined them as people. They are transformed into fulltime victims. In the Danish asylum camps, staff provide residents with a number, which is also an evident example of the objectifying perception of individuals that takes place. A new resident is just one more person in a series.

The humanitarian system’s victimization may seem understandable considering that an individual has been forced to flee and needs protection.

However, problems arise when it turns into longlasting crises where refugees live for years within humanitarian systems. It is difficult for people labelled as refugees to break out of the category into which they have been put, to become something

2013 • visAvis № 7

other than helpless refugees and express views about the institutions under whose protection and control they live. The fact that they are separated from political and historical contexts limits their opportunities for influencing their surroundings and for involving themselves in these surroundings. “The idea of helplessness is vitally tied to silence among refugees: helpless victims need protection, need somebody to talk on their behalf (...).

Their stories are almost disqualified in advance, while the language spoken within relief aid organizations, knowledge politics and ‘development’ claims that it provides reliable stories about refugees”, writes Malkki (1996). The representation of refugees as helpless people thus means that they are perceived as being incapable of presenting a true account of their lives, which is why others have to take care of their needs and speak on behalf of them. Helplessness and silence are tied together. Because of the way in which they victimize refugees, the organizations and institutions that surround refugees contribute to silencing refugees.

People are connected through history

How can this categorization, which means that citizins in Denmark find it hard to view refugees as anything but alien and invisible objects who are difficult to relate to as real people, be broken down. This is a state of affairs that makes it easier to send refugees back to countries plagued by war. Refugees are unconditionally talked about as the fundamental problem, while questions are rarely asked about the exclusive nature of society, although this might actually constitute the core of the problem.

Malkki argues that the notion of the conflict between the national order and rootless refugees should be challenged. Identity is not tied to a place and is not stable; it is flexible and can change; identity should therefore not be perceived as something that is eternally tied to one place; instead it should be understood through our movements and through the processes of which we are a part (Malkki 1992).

Challenging the perception of refugees as being outside time and as being universal individuals requires a different view of what ties people together.

Malkki cites French philosopher Michel Foucault, who maintains that it is “more fruitful to tie people together by means of history and historicism than to do it by means of a human essence.” (Malkki 1996). Instead of understanding refugees as an alien, unique group of pathological individuals outside historical, cultural and political contexts, they should be viewed as people with a history and a destiny that any human being could be subjected to. When things like war, conflicts, economic conditions and catastrophes are high on the political

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agenda, then the consequences of these conditions – the flow of refugees – should also be high on the political agenda. By relating to and involving the refugees, we become aware that their destinies are a part of what the world produces.

Tying people together through their respective stories can remove the notion of a shared experience of being a refugee that ties together refugees in a common universal identity. The fact is that there is not just one experience; on the contrary, the label ‘refugee’ involves qualitatively different experiences, problems and personal stories. The generalizing refugee label can therefore not be used to understand experiences gained by people who have been driven to escape; it can only be used “as a broad legal or descriptive rubric that includes within it a world of different socioeconomic statuses, personal histories, and psychological or spiritual situations” (Malkki 1995). By advancing these stories, the perception of a unique bond between the refugee and the community of refugees is removed and is replaced by a bond between unique individuals with experiences, stories, interests and qualifications that tie people together across national borders and social layers.

Accentuating the personal identity of imagined refugees without an identity therefore requires that we do not talk about refugees, but that they become an active part of the discussion about the conditions that affect them. It is about giving them voices instead of simply letting the refugee label speak on their behalf. In a Danish perspective, society’s members can only see the faces of the asylum seekers and relate to them as something that is not just a category when they become a part of everyday life instead of being remote objects without an identity, isolated in asylum camps far away from established society.

Literature: Liisa Malkki: - 1992: National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees - 1995. Refugees and exile: From ”Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things - 1996: Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and De-historicization

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Forflytning er den nye oversættelse af Kenneth Goldsmith Oversættelse er den ultimative humanistiske gestus. Høflig og fornuftig, den er en overforsigtig brobygger. Altid spørgende om tilladelse tigger den om forståelse og venskab. Den er optimistisk og alligevel provisorisk, hæftende al håb på et harmonisk udfald. I sidste ende fejler den altid, for den diskurs, den fremsætter, er nødvendigvis uden for register; oversættelse er en tilnærmelse til diskurs.

Forflytning er ubehøvlet og insisterende, en uvasket party crasher - uinviteret, uopdragen og nægtende at gå. Forflytning svælger i disjunktion og påtvinger enhver situation, den møder, sin mening, dagsorden og måder at være på. Uden ønske om at formilde, er den kompromisløs og ved udemærket godt, at gennem stædig insisteren vil den i sidste ende sejre. Forflytning har al tid i verden. Hævet over moral og selvudnævnt, bemægtiger den sig, fordi den er nødt til det. Forflyttelses handling er simpel - og simpelthen en handling.

Globalisering afføder forflytning. Mennesker bliver forflyttet, ting bliver forflyttet, sprog bliver forflyttet. I et globalt kredsløb er komponenter udskiftelige; der er ingen tid - og bestemt ikke nok energi - til forståelse. I stedet er der modvillig accept og snævertsynet mangel på forståelse, i sidste ende givende efter for accept. Ingen virker til at lægge mærke længere. Oversættelse er forældet. Reklameskilte på stadioner forbliver på deres oprindelige sprog, adresserende et bredt udspredt tv-seende og webcastende publikum; forbigående det lokale til fordel for det globale, omfavnende det usete, det ukendte, det andetsteds.

Forflytning er modernisme for det enogtyvende århundrede, et barn af montage, psykogeografi, og objet-trouve. Ulig en stor del af modernismen bevæger forflytning sig ikke mod disjunktion, den flytter sig i helheder. Skolet i Photoshop og opvokset i cut-and-paste, verden er nu vores egen bærbare. Drop-and-drag arkitektur: saml noget op og dump det ned et sted; det bliver hurtigt naturligt. Forflytning er Duchamp for arkitektur. Frank Gehry er en mester af arkitektonisk forflytning; Bilbao - en fantasi forflyttet fra en CAD skærm - bliver hurtigt et elsket baskisk vartegn. Automatiseret rekontekstualisering.

Email planerne ind - 3D-print dem et andet sted.

Forflytning svarer ingen, mest fordi der ikke er nogen i den anden ende til at modtage opkaldet.

Forflytning er magisk realisme uden magien.

Forflytning forklarer aldrig sig selv, undskylder aldrig. I 2010, på Columbia Universitys konference

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"Rethinking Poetics", brød digteren Mónica de la Torre midt i sin præsentation ud lige på og hårdt på spansk i ti minutter, efterladende dem, der taler så flot om flersproglighed og diversitet, vrede, fordi de ikke kunne forstå, hvad hun sagde. De la Torre genoptog herefter sin præsentation på engelsk, uden på noget tidspunkt at nævne sin intervention.

Ingen symboler, hvor ingen er tilsigtet. Forståelse er valgfri; forflytning er konkret demonstrativ.

Oversættelse er kuriøst; en butiksjagt fra en glemt verden; forflytning er brutale kendsgerninger. Oversættelse er slow food: et godt måltid med venner i varme omgivelser. Forflytning er ikke at kunne læse menuen i flouriserende lysbrud, der pludselig kom ud ad ingenting på Main Street.

Oversættelse er den falske nostalgi efter LP'en; forflytning er den torrent-snørrede MP3; splintret, legemeliggjort og ulegemeliggjort. Forflytning er en firedimensionel genstand; på samme tid udvi-

dende og sammentrækkende, sammenhængende mens eksploderende, fortærende alt på sin vej.

Besynderlige ting dukker op. Ting, som jeg ikke forstår. Ting, som jeg ikke bad om. Ting, som jeg finder grimme, mærkelige, forbløffende, stødende.

Jeg ved ikke, hvordan de er endt der. De blev uden mit vidende droppet ned i min midte. Hvor længe har de været her? De er under mit spisebord. Jeg sparker til dem, når jeg strækker mit ben og kun da opdager jeg dem. Jeg flytter dem ikke - de kan generelt ikke flyttes - så jeg lever med dem. Jeg lærer at acceptere dem, selvom jeg måske ikke forstår dem. Men før eller siden vænner jeg mig til dem.

Jeg holder op med at se dem. De passer sig ind. Jeg bevæger mig rundt mellem dem. Jeg tæmmer dem ved at give dem et navn, husliggør dem ved at give dem et hjem. Formilder dem ved gøre dem brugbare. Med tiden bliver de mine.

Fundet i oversættelse - Noter om at møde og forstå smerte Af Ina SerdareviĆ

At møde et andet menneske vil ofte sige at møde en, du ikke helt forstår. Der er en kløft mellem os. En kløft, man må slå bro over, hvis man ønsker at forholde sig til hinanden i en virkelig forstand. Dette kræver arbejde: kunsten at oversætte er præcis dette forståelsesarbejde. I den forstand er vi alle oversættere. Men for at forstå smerte, kan oversættelse til ord ikke være nok. Det kræver et arbejde af levet erfaring og engagement at møde den anden, der oplever smerte. Det følgende er refleksioner over, hvad det betyder at oversættte andres smerte, enten i en konkret forstand eller en, der transcenderer ord og det kendte.

"Jeg tænkte for ikke så længe siden, idet jeg observerede de grimme, skæve, sindssyge, beskidte, tiggende, pukkelryggede menneskemængder i gaderne: hvor sørgeligt det er, at mit hjemland, mit fødselssted, min vugge, er blevet forvandlet til noget, jeg finder interessant for dets blotte eksotiske (læs: elendige) kvaliteter og udviklingsland-agtighed.

Jeg fanger mig selv i at føle mig 'bedre' i den forstand, at 'jeg med rette forudsætninger og overskydende mentale og finansielle forsyninger, er i stand til at observere frem for bare at være til.'

Er det virkelig muligt, at skønhed på et vist niveau kan reflekteres i pengene? Har jeg ikke altid lagt mærke til, hvordan desperation oversættes til ansigtet, de fysiske træk, ikke kun her, men alle andre steder? Jeg væmmes en lille smule, fordi jeg ved, det er sandt og fordi jeg opdager inde i mig selv,

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tilblivelsen af en forestilling om at være vogter for mange af de ting, der er galt med den måde virkeligheden opfattes og støbes på.

Jeg fanger mig selv i at afsky disse mennesker for deres urokkelige udtryk for elendighed, de hestelange ansigter og den næsten sygelige underkastelse og resignation: 'vi er udkanten af et allerede udgrænset samfund og vi behøver ikke at tale, end ikke rede vores hår, for hvad skulle en kam kunne gøre godt for, når alt andet er tabt?'

Jeg står på balkonen, det der plejede at være en dejlig grøn have foran, er nu en uautoriseret parkeringsplads, på trods af, at politistationen ligger på den anden side af gaden. Den lænkede hunds konstante hylen minder mig om det djævelske scenarie, det ville være, hvis folk også hylede. Hvor taknemmelig er jeg ikke for, at de ikke gør? Hvad der plej-

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ede at være en grøn allé med træer pegende hen imod min elskede skole, er nu en række bettingshops og turbofolk-sygeafdelinger for retarderede.”

Den ovenstående tekst er et uddrag fra et brev, som jeg skrev til en ven, mens jeg boede i Sarajevo for nogle år siden. En følelse af afsky ekkoer i brevet og i dag gør dette mig ked af det. Men mens jeg gransker min samvittighed og erindring for at beskue denne afsky, bliver det klart for mig, at det er en smerte i forklædning. En smerte, som er blevet udløst af at observere andres smerte, som jeg aldrig tillod at nedfælde sig og derfor forblev i sin blotte mangelfuldhed.

Men er der en måde at lade smerten falde til ro på og derigennem få noget ud af den, måske endda lindre den? *** For nyligt begyndte jeg at arbejde som tolk for et tolkebureau i København. Jeg tolker og oversætter fra serbo-kroatisk, dansk, engelsk og lidt fransk.

Jeg er af bosnisk herkomst og jeg sluttede derfor, at de fleste af mine klienter må være kommet til Danmark med den store flygtningebølge i 90erne, sådan som jeg selv gjorde. Denne bølge er faktisk hvad der oprindeligt fik min chef til at stifte bureauet. Det vil sige, for næsten 20 år siden. På det tidspunkt blev alle bosniere velsignet med en hurtig opholdstilladelse og formåede således at få ry for at være mønsterflygtninge: hårdtarbejdende, velintegrerede, europæiske, uddannede, sekulariserede.

Man kan derfor undre sig over, at der stadig findes folk fra den bølge med absolut ingen danskkundskaber? Hvordan kan der være bosniere, der stadig har brug for min hjælp?

Andres smerte pirrer vores nysgerrighed så længe den holdes på en sikker afstand. Da folkemord viste sig på ny under krigen i Bosnien, blev vi, europæere, mindet om, at Balkan ikke skulle anses som værende en del af Europa.

Nu, når det drejer sig om Balkan eller de bosniske folk mellem os, for eksempel her i Danmark, bliver det hævdet, at de er meget europæiske endda.

Europæiske på den måde, det er lykkedes for dem at integrere sig, tilpasse sig, passe sig ind på. Og alt det takket være den daværende danske asylpolitik, der sikrede dem opholdstilladelse på ingen tid og følgelig gjorde det muligt for dem at sluge sorgen og blive gode borgere. Men hvordan stemmer dette rosenrøde billede overens med de hundrede af ødelagte individer (folk på kontanthjælp og uden nogen danskkundskaber), som jeg tolker for dagligt?

Tilbage da krigen var på sit højeste, blev de søgt gjort usynlige, fordi de ikke var en del af "os", nu er de usynlige, netop fordi de er det.

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Jeg advokerer ikke imod hurtige asylprocedurer og bevilling af opholdstilladelse, jeg påpeger bare, at de meningsdannere og det offentliges agenter, som forsøger at gøre godt ved at nævne den bosniske sag i al sin pragt som en de luxe udgave af flygtningevilkåret, distraherer og flytter opmærksomheden væk fra andre anliggender. Opholdstilladelse er kun det første skridt og vi kan ikke efterlade folk ved det. Der er spørgsmål af politisk natur og det er også meget vigtigt, men der er noget andet udenfor de juridiske rammer, som der må tages fat på.

Menneskene, der bliver tilbage i sprækkerne mellem det udtrykte og det synlige. Det er ikke nok at stemme for eller bakke op om et godt initiativ, man må sikre sig, at der bliver fulgt op på det og huske på, at der er så meget smerte rundt omkring os, som vi ikke ser og som vil åbenbare sig, hvis man er villig til at lukke den ind. Hellere end blot at afgive sin stemme ved et valg for at komme medborgeren til undsætning, kunne man række ud, én til én, til selvsamme medborger. Gennem organiseret eller knap så organiseret social aktivisme. Social aktivisme kan antage mange former, som jeg ikke vil diskutere her, men initiativet bag det her tidsskrift kunne være en af dem.

Jeg taler her om bosniere, fordi det er denne type tragedie, jeg støder på gennem mit arbejde. Men lad os ikke glemme, at der er uendeligt mange lag i vores samfund. *** I sit hovedværk The Voice of the Past: Oral History fra 1978, fremlægger den engelske socialhistoriker Paul Thompson veloplagt en lang række argumenter for den personlige stemmes ligeværd med dokumenter og andre levn. Mundtlige vidnesbyrd var tidligere et vigtigt redskab for historikere og Thompson fremhæver da også de nye muligheder, der åbner sig, når man går udenom dokumenterne og direkte til dem, der skaber og gennemlever historien. Herved kan barrierer for forståelse brydes ned og man kan nå de uorganiserede lag, som sjældent høres. Familiens og lokalitetens historie kommer indenfor rækkevidde.

Når jeg taler med mine klienter (klienter er, selvfølgelig, et andet ord for almindelige mennesker), modtager jeg ikke kun historien i mere eller mindre grove træk, nej, jeg bliver inviteret ind i folks hjem, til fester, på caféer, klinikker, vuggestuer og jobcentre, hvor jeg er nødt til at forholde mig til en yderst kompleks virkelighed, der åbner op for en bredere historisk erkendelse. Dette betyder en fornyelse og en demokratisering af historien.

Jeg taler om styrken ved den enkelte mund, der taler til det enkelte øre.

Men hele denne "empati-øvelse” er nemmere sagt end gjort. Og ville jeg invitere mig selv ind i denne

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komplekse virkelighed, jeg taler om, hvis jeg ikke fik betaling for at gøre det? Jeg ville i hvert fald have mindre tid til førestehåndssolidaritet, da jeg formentlig ville være nødt til at passe et andet arbejde. I mit tilfælde blev jeg kastet ind i denne smerte og derfor tvunget til at forholde mig til den, første gang som barn under krigen og nu gennem mit lønnede arbejde.

Vi er alle, på den ene eller den anden måde, konfronteret med smerte, enten gennem vores arbejde i institutioner, sygdom og død i vores familie- og vennekreds, medieret smerte og den meget følelige smerte i vores eget hjerte og sind. Men det er ganske sjældent, at vi aktivt opsøger den. Vi tager den, når den overrumpler os. Vi sluger den, hvis vi føler os nødsaget. Gennem vores arbejde eller andre roller i samfundet forvandler vi den til moralsk pligt. Men hvad der virkelig burde gøres, er at gøre denne pligtfølelse til en form for virkelig medfølelse, eller til hvad pædagogen og filosoffen Khen Lampert kalder radikal medfølelse. Han beskriver radikal medfølelse som den menneskelige sindstilstand, der har udviklet sig fra gamle dages religiøse pligt, som drev os til at gøre gode gerninger, til en uselvisk og frivillig social aktivisme. Han beskriver det som et indre imperativ om at ændre virkeligheden for at lindre andres smerte. *** Det er som om samtalerne med mine klienter og deres brændende lyst til at fortælle og genfortælle deres liv åbnede op for en eller anden forsigtigt hengemt æske og bragte krigsmindet tilbage, som vi lærer at ignorere eller i det mindste tilpasse på en måde, sådan at det ikke griber ind i vores daglige fungeren i samfundet. Hverdagens trivielle aktiviteter distancerer os fra smerte, hvorimod traumatiske og chokerende oplevelser synes at være "prøvestenen for tidens elasticitet - for hvordan ting kan sagtnes ned til en dybere erfaring, når det dagliges vaner befinder sig mindre fast i sadlen", som forfatteren Chris Agee formulerer det i sin krigsantologi Scar on the Stone. Det er præcis denne tidens elasticitet, denne sagtning ned til en dybere erfaring, som der er behov for, for at forstå smerte. At strejfe smerten gennem TV og nyhedsjournalistik er ikke nok. Der findes utallige reaktioner på andres smerte: nogle græder, nogle forbløffes og nogle lammes, nogle handler, nogle taler, nogle giver pokker i det. Og alt for ofte er reaktionerne automatiserede efterladenskaber fra følelsesmæssig lammelse eller kynisme. Både lammelse og kynisme kan indtræde, hvis smerten bliver for meget.

For lidt empati og for meget empati er begge i stand til at føre til en følesesblokade og fremme noget så negativt som en følelse af afsky, som i mit indledende brev til en ven.

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*** Så hvordan bør man gribe ellers ubeskrivelige informationer og dybt traumatiserede mennesker an?

Er det nødvendigt med følelsesmæssig og intellektuel distance? Hvordan bliver grænserne for empati og sympati trukket op? Og med hvilke mekanismer?

Forfatteren Virginia Woolf argumenterer i sine refleksioner omkring krig i Three Guineas for, at vi (lad os sige de priviligerede, mere eller mindre sikre, veluddannede) ikke er monstre for ikke at smertes ved synet af andres smerte. Vores brist består i vores forestillingsevne og empati, og stammer fra den måde, hvorpå vi er blevet trænet til at opfatte lidelse. Ingen har fortalt os om de forpligtelser, der følger med bevidsthed og samvittighed.

Ingen har understreget nok, at det at betragte smerte kun er det første skridt. Det andet skridt er, naturligvis, at handle. Organiseret eller ikke-organiseret aktivisme.

Hvis man ser på hvordan Europa sad og modtog Balkan-konflikten foran tv'et gennem 4 år, undrer og overrasker det én, at folk overhovedet havde overskud til at udvise den mindste smule interesse og empati. Og stadig, er der masser af danskere, tyskere, englændere, veluddannede, empatiske mennesker, som hverken rigtig har forstået krigens motiv eller pris, måske end ikke registreret, at Holocaust-lignende omstændigheder gjorde sig gældende i hjertet af Europa i midten af 90'erne.

I Sarajevo virker det hele stadig forfærdeligt aktuelt og krigserindringen og behovet for granskning af det forgangne fylder stadig meget i bosniernes dagligdag. *** I deres kortfilm The Old Place, taler Jean Luc Godard og hans partner Anne-Marie Miéville om fortiden og belejringen af Sarajevo blandt andre ting. Miéville bemærker at: "Det er fremtiden, der bestemmer, om fortiden er i live eller ej. En mand med planer om fremskridt definerer sit gamle selv som det selv, der ikke længere findes og mister interessen for det. På den anden side, omfatter nogle menneskers planer afvisningen af tid og en identifikation med fortiden."

Vores generation er slavebundet af fremtiden, at gå fremad er dens eneste vigtige imperativ og dette levner ikke plads til smerte. En dag oversatte jeg for en kvinde, som er ved at dø af kræft, og lægen virkede til at være mindre optaget af hendes smerte, end irriteret over det faktum, at hun ikke har formået at lære dansk. Han blev ved med at udspørge hende, hele tiden vendt mod mig som om

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hendes tilstedeværelse ikke betød noget, som om han og jeg var de voksne der, rede til at blande os i hvad der ikke vedkommer os og forklejne hende.

Da hun blev spurgt om hvorfor hun ikke har lært dansk, fortalte hun om hvordan hendes mand var blevet fløjet til Danmark af Røde Kors, fordi halvdelen af hans ansigt var blevet sprængt væk og han behøvede akut kirurgisk behandling. Hun havde så brugt de efterfølgende år ved hans side med at forsøge at dele hans levende helvede med ham, skræmt af hans udseende og med et knust hjerte.

Jeg tænkte lige der: forsøger hun at demoralisere os eller at få os til at forstå. Lægen svarede blot: "Men alligevel". Og gjorde så forsøg på at udglatte sin taktløshed med et smil og de beroligende ord: "Livet går videre". Men går det virkelig videre? Og har det gjort det for alle de tusinder af bosniere, de antageligt eksemplariske flygtninge, der kom i 90erne?

Der er så mange ting, vi ikke ser. Ikke forstår. *** De tror, deres sag er unik. Klienterne, menneskene.

De er ikke klar over, at deres sætninger lyder som indøvede replikker ved en pensions- eller kontanthjælps-audition. Jeg ville gerne rådgive dem om, hvordan de skal præsentere deres traumer, sådan at den danske socialrådgiver kommer til at føle nok medlidenhed til måske at være villig til at bøje reglerne en smule.

En kvinde siger: "Jeg vil gerne arbejde, men jeg kan ikke. Jeg er syg og fortvivlet. Jeg har været gennem tortur og krig. Jeg magter det ikke." En anden forklarer: "Den eneste løsning på mit problem er døden. Jeg har forsøgt at hoppe ud fra en bygning, men min mand forhindrede mig. Mine brødre blev dræbt og jeg frydes ikke ved synet af mine børnebørn." De ved ikke, at jeg lige er blevet færdig med en web-tolkning for et jobcenter, der ekkoer de samme ord.

Men ligesom jeg vejer deres ord i sammenligning med andre, dømmer de tolken efter deres egne kriterier. Empati er evnen til at sætte sig selv i den andens sted. Empati handler om genkendelse, forståelse og genopførelse. Men betyder det, at empati afhænger af genkendelse? I mange tilfælde, ja. Jo mere lighed, der er mellem iagttager og den iagttagede, jo mere sandsynligt er det, at vi opnår en empatisk indstilling. Og klienten er fuldt bevidst om det og ser, hvordan empati bevæger sig gennem observation, hukommelse, viden og ræsonnement.

Klienten forstår det og fortæller lægen: "Den foregående tolk, en kvinde, der har et serbisk navn, er en katastrofe. Hun vildleder, fejlfortolker og mislykkes i sin benævnelse af organerne." Klienten, der

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er af muslimsk oprindelse, afviser at blive hjulpet af en serbisk tolk. Men jeg er sikker på, at det mindre er et spørgsmål om etnicitet, end det er om de erfaringer, hun og jeg kunne tænkes at have til fælles.

Det, at jeg er i stand til at dele nogle få egne krigsdetaljer, gør mig, i hendes øjne, til en bedre kandidat til tolkningen af hendes smerte. Det, der bliver foreslået her, er, at forståelsen af traume kan gøres mere vellykket, hvis den er bundet til ens egen historiske virkelighed. *** Prøv at gentage "Tumoren har absorberet halvdelen af maven” eller "Jeg brækker blod op om morgenen", et par gange om dagen og du ender med at skulle bekæmpe mareridt om natten og en utrolig tungsindighed om dagen – for lammet til at kunne handle i forhold til det og manglende viljen til at fortsætte med dit arbejde. Det er, hvad der sker for de fleste mennesker, når de konfronteres med smerte.

Så hvordan går en tolk (af sprog eller simpelthen af smerte) i gang med at begribe og forholde sig til sådanne hårde situationer, særligt dem, der er gennemsyret af smerte?

En tolk må, ligesom kunstneren, der behandler traumer, tage stilling til måder at indtage og bearbejde noget på, som ellers er placeret udenfor vores intellektuelle rækkevide og vores nok så avancerede følelsesregister.

For en tolk er målet ikke blot en simpel informationsformidling, men snarere en historieudlægning, som er helt bevidst omkring det faktum, at hvordan er lige så vigtigt som hvad. At forsøge at skabe en varig mening ud af fortalte begivenheder.

Det er afgørende at knytte vægt til ideerne og følelserne bag fortællingen, når vi konfronteres med andre mennesker. Som tolk er man både et medium og en modtager. Man transmitterer ikke kun indenfor den kommunikative kontekst, men også til en selv. Kun sådan er vi virkelig i stand til at indtage smerten.

Ulig denne dybsindighed og langsomme oplevelse af smerte, er der nyhedsjournalistikken, der afhænger af effektivitet og hastighed, og som ikke harmoniserer med menneskelig psykologi og natur. Smerteiagttageren må se sig selv i relation til en grundlæggende og undertrykkende mekanisme bag fotografiet eller nyhedsjournalistikkens magt.

Det gælder om at ryste og underminere stivheden og tingsliggørelsen, der i sidste ende er kimen til sløvhed og ligegyldighed. Det, der er på spil her, er grundlæggende et spørgsmål om etisk lydhørhed i forhold til andres smerte.

De normale måder, hvor vi blot "lader verden ind" som en uhyre informationsstrøm, lader os ikke

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synke den ordentligt. Vi må operere med et brud med det kendte. Smerte er ikke umiddelbart begribeligt, særligt fordi den indoptages gennem en fuldstændig organiseret virkelighed. Vores reaktioner er givet på forhånd.

Det er ikke fordi vi skal opfinde nye reaktioner, men vi er nødt til at deautomatisere de gamle. For at forstå smerte er vi nødt til at afskære os selv fra hverdagslivet og dettes medierede påtrængenhed og utroværdighed.

Vi må trodse generelle og ordinære tankeprocesser, der overvåges, formes og tilpasses af alle mulige former for pædagogiske såvel som ideologiske pres.

Måske er tricket at isolere informationerne fra virkeligheden og deres naturlige kontekst, indenfor hvilken vi normalt opfatter dem: TV, butikker, bøger, nyheder, foto-reportage, guidede diskussioner i skoler og andre institutioner, selv omkring middagsbordet med venner og familie, hvor forventningerne allerede er bestemt. Gå ud i de zoologiske haver, hospitalerne, mentalinstitutionerne, herbergerne for de hjemløse, børnehjemmene, flygtningelejrene, fabrikkerne, lighusene, kirkegårdene (og jeg kunne fortsætte med at inkludere kontorerne, storcentrene, skolerne og sportshallerne, men det er en anden diskussion) og lad os give historien tilbage til dem, den tilhører. Lad os få noget førstehåndssolidaritet. Undvige den medierede smerte og dens forvridning af virkeligheden.

Hvis TV siger det hele, så må vi lytte til det usagte.

Den italienske filosof Giorgio Agamben taler om "lakunen" i sit værk Resterne fra Auschwitz: Arkivet

Syriske digte Tareq Aljabr (født 1987) er en syrisk digter og oversætter bosat i Damaskus. Familien er oprindeligt fra Golanhøjderne, men internt fordrevne siden Israels besættelse af området. Digtene er skrevet under det sidste års konflikt og de nylige bombninger af Damaskus. Tareq Aljabr har sendt digtene til visAvis via en ven i Danmark.

Han ønsker at hans digte bliver trykt inden han dør.

og vidnet og understreger vigtigheden af "at lytte til noget fraværende". Tolkens arbejde (og jeg mener, alle mennesker må ses som tolke) er, at lokalisere denne lakune og lytte til det, der er usagt, for at kunne gentage det, der bliver sagt. For ren og skær gentagelse gør ikke én mere empatisk end en papegøje. Vi er nødt til at forstå, men den opgave, der i sandhed er svær her, er at facilitere denne forståelse. At gøre noget ud af den. *** En film af Jean-Luc Godard, med titlen Je vous salue, Sarajevo benytter et billede (filmen består af stillbilleder), der viser en soldat med en cigaret i hånden, lige ved at sparke en liggende kvinde på jorden. Cigaretten er et lille, uendeligt meningsløst brudstykke af kultur. Billedet klargør den moderne kulturelle fejltagelse i de fleste samfund. På trods af, at en forbrydelse udspiller sig lige for øjnene af os – uanset om vi deltager eller ej - har vi en tendens til at tvinge det væk fra vores moralske og menneskelige bevidsthed og klynge os til en cigaret. Cigaretten bliver en manifestation af en usagt og distanceret attitude overfor seriøsitet og ansvar.

Den er et konkret bevis på vores overbeskyttede psykologiske integritet. To overbevisninger findes side om side i dagens Europa: den generelle/vestlige og den ikke-generelle/nuancerede. Den generelle overbevisning kan også være nuanceret, men den er aldrig personlig, aldrig forstået, aldrig følt og vigtigst: aldrig levet.

af Tareq Aljabr “Jeg har gennemlevet at være vidne til andres død, og skrev disse digte om øjeblikke, der ikke bør dø sammen med folket eller med mig selv. Jeg må gøre alt, hvad jeg kan, for at vide, jeg gjorde noget for dem, uanset hvor lille en ting.

Hvis der skulle ske noget med mig, så ved jeg, at det er meningen at det skulle ske.”

Ramt

Fejltagelse

Karakter

Lad din arm være, og kom ned …

Prøv – lidt – at komme til mig kravlende ...

Hold dit hoved nede og se på mig ...

Jeg er din kærlighed, min ven …

Kast ikke dig selv i armene på din død imens jeg er her ...

Jeg er dit brød i dit liv og dit våben i dine krige, så kom ned ...

Lad din arm være og vent på mig ...

JEG ER DIN ARM lige her, min ven, du er stadig i live.

Han, som kaldte på sin søster eller på sin bror ... han hvis stemme blev afbrudt, måske har ingen anden stemme svaret ham ...

Eller var det blot min usikre hørelse der tog mig bort fra hans barske ord?

Eller var det ham selv, der holdt igen da han så sine mordere i sin families kroppe?

Måske ved jeg stadig ikke hvad jeg véd eller hvad jeg vil vide.

Måske er alle blevet dræbt, og min morder tager stadig fejl af min krop, og forstår stadig ikke jeg er stadig i den.

Hvor mennesker bliver dræbt, og kvarterer skælver under en summende ild ... ser jeg fuglen ude af stand til at bevæge sin krop vælge et liv som statue uden nogen fugl indeni.

Jeg vælger et hjørne med udsigt over dødsvåbenet, jeg lukker øjnene for ikke at se snigskytterne skyde ind i dem.

Da begynder fuglen at spille sin melodi og vælger lyden af fuglen indeni.

2013 • visAvis № 7

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Flygtningenes Protestmarch: ’Lad os gå og se, hvor vi ender’ af Liv Nimand Duvå og Nicoline Sylvest Simonsen Et selvmord i starten af 2012 i den sydtyske asyllejr Würzburg udløste en trang til at iværksætte en protest blandt folk i andre lejre. Et vigtigt punkt på dagsordenen var at gøre noget ved isolationen mellem lejrene og byerne. Et eksempel på isolation er den tyske asyllov, den såkaldte Residenzpflicht, som forbyder folk at bevæge sig uden for det område, hvor lejren befinder sig. Det er ulovligt at bryde sin Residenzplicht. Straffen er en bøde på 30100 euro, og det bringer ens sag i endnu større fare.

I foråret 2012 begyndte teltaktionen. Telte blev rejst i områder nær lejrene for at skabe opmærksomhed omkring flygtninges vilkår. Det førte til en stor protestmarch, der startede i Sydtyskland og sluttede i den nordøstlige hovedstad Berlin. Folk gik 600 km på en måned i det, der snart blev til en hel bevægelse. De gik omkring 25 kilometer om dagen og tilbragte nætterne i deres omrejsende telt-lejr. Den 6. oktober opførtes en stor protestteltlejr på Oranienplatz, en offentlig plads i Kreuzberg.

Da visAvis besøgte lejren på Oranienplatz i slutningen af oktober, boede der omkring 100 mennesker. Flygtninge fra protestmarchen såvel som tilhængere og aktivister fra Berlin havde deres daglige gang og gøremål i lejren – alt fra at organisere aktioner og daglige møder til at yde retshjælp, lave mad i det hjemmebyggede køkken og bemande Infopunktet. Alle aktiviteter fandt sted udendørs, rundt om ildstedet eller i de forskellige telte.

Samtidig med aktiviteterne på Oranienplatz sultestrejkede en gruppe flygtninge fra samme bevægelse ved Brandenburger Tor. Politiet bevogtede strejken dag og nat. Især om natten konfiskerede politiet systematisk folks varme tøj, tæpper og soveposer.

De forskellige aktionsformers fordele og ulemper – sultestrejker, demonstrationer, optræden i medierne og solidaritetsaktioner – blev i vid ustrækning debatteret til møderne. Vi var der kun et par dage, men vi følte os velkomne og inkluderet i møderne.

De følgende sider giver et overordnet indtryk af marchen. Efter en erklæring skrevet af Turgay Ula dagen inden marchen begyndte, bringer vi to interview foretaget på Oranienplatz i oktober 2012, hvori deltagere i bevægelsen reflekterer over forskellige aspekter af bevægelsen.

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Hvorfor vi går mod Berlin Manifest af Turgay Ula

Ja, den 8. september 2012 begynder vi på en protestmarch fra Würzburg til Berlin. Hvorfor gør vi det? Vi gør det, fordi vi vil have frihed og respekt. I månedsvis har vi lavet aktioner, boykottet og sultestrejket. Nu begynder vi på en lang march, der vil strække sig over en månedstid.

Vi går mod Berlin, fordi det er der, magten befinder sig. Historisk set har alle frihedsmarcher været rettet mod steder, der repræsenterer magt og krænkelse af frihed. Vi gør det samme. Konkret kræver vi: At suspendere isolationen, lukke flygtningelejrene, afskaffe den tyske Residenzpflicht, ophæve alle kategorier, der placerer os i de lavest rangerende klasser, ikke flere forsøg på at underkue os med langvarige asylprocedurer, afskaf Frontex, som er ansvarlig for så mange flygtende menneskers død, ikke flere deportationer til kapitalist-imperialistiske krigszoner og diktaturer.

Så sent som i går forsøgte jeg at opnå tilladelse fra den relevante myndighed til marchen til Berlin. Da jeg forsøgte at spørge ind til, hvorfor vi ikke har frihed til at rejse, blev jeg smidt ud af kontoret. Ja, de har overtaget alle steder. Mange tror stadig på løgnen om bevægelsesfrihed inden for EU, men vi ser løgnene. Og ingen kan standse os. Vi fortsætter med at gå, og dermed ophæver vi grænserne.

Vi lader det ikke være ved marchen. Vi forsøger at opbygge solidaritet og grundlag for kollektivt og alternativt liv mellem os. Vi forsøger at opretholde vores menneskelige egenskaber, som de har forsøgt at knække med isolation og ensomhed. Vi forsøger at udvikle vores evner og opbygge et andet liv ved at etablere teltlejre, hvor et kollektivt liv kan udfolde sig. I teltlejrene støtter vi hinanden, teoretisk og praktisk, gensidigt i hver vores udvikling. Vi forsøger alle at støtte hinanden i denne udvikling.

Så sent som i går druknede 60 flygtninge ud for den tyrkiske kyst. Vi har set grænsefloden Meriç fuld af lig. Vi har set tiggerne i Athens gader. Vi har bevidnet unge kvinder på flugt tvunget til at sælge deres kroppe. Vi er blevet nødt til at se på, mens gravide kvinder er blevet slået af politiet og flygtninge blevet nedgjort. Vi vil ikke tage del i denne forbrydelse ved at tie stille om den.

Vi vil ikke rådne op i isolation et sted. Vi vil gå for at befri os selv. At gå gør dig fri. Så lad os gå og se, hvor vi ender.

(Besøg www.visavis.dk for at læse hele manifestet)

visAvis № 7 • 2013

Interview med Patrick Hvordan er det at være i lejren på Oranienplatz?

Jeg er glad for at være her. Vi har mange tilhængere og jeg har mødt mange flygtninge. Jeg har fundet ud af, at vi alle sammen kæmper den samme kamp. Vi kæmper mod de samme problemer. Vi har møder hver dag, både flygtninge og tilhængere.

Ved hjælp af møderne har vi kunnet gennemføre succesfulde demonstrationer over hele linjen. Det er meget spændende, for folk er parate til at diskutere og se en vej frem for vores bevægelse. Det er derfor, jeg tror, vores bevægelse vil vare ved.

Hvordan blev du politisk aktiv?

Mine lokale aktivister forklarede os alt om vores rettigheder. Det tilskyndede mig til at blive asylpolitisk aktiv. Så tænkte jeg, at nu er det tid at stå sammen mod den brutale situation, vi står over for – at blive behandlet som dyr. Vi er mennesker, og vi bør blive behandlet som sådan. Jeg blev en del af The Karawan og The Voice. Vi organiserede seminarer, og jeg startede the Voice i Passau, hvor vi organiserede aktioner mod deportationer foran rådhuset og i et indkøbscenter. Og nu er jeg her og kæmper for vores rettigheder. Sidste uge lavede vi en demonstration foran den nigerianske ambassade, hvor mange af os blev arresteret. Vi har modstået alle mulige former for tortur – det har fået os til at indse, at vi virkelig kan stå sammen mod systemets brutalitet. Vi er klar til kamp.

I dag til mødet snakkede en kvinde om oplevelser af kønsdiskriminiation og racisme i lejren. Hvad synes du om det?

Jeg har også haft sådan nogle oplevelser. Hvad jeg har fundet ud af er, at nogen mennesker ikke ved, hvorfor vi er her. De forstår ikke rigtig det store mål – hvorfor vi protesterer. Ikke alle har været involveret i politik og aktivisme før, og det fører til forvirring og misforståelser. Hvis man virkelig forstår, hvorfor vi er her, hvordan kan man så bringe racismen ind? Med solidaritet kan vi overvinde det.

I solidaritet er vi én familie, og så burde nationalitet ikke betyde noget. Vi burde tage ordet solidaritet meget alvorligt og huske, at vi er mennesker, ikke dyr. Vi taler og vi forstår hinanden. Hvis alle forstår værdien ved vores våben – hvorfor vi er her, og hvad solidaritet betyder – kan vi stå sammen mod vores undertrykkere.

Har du et budskab til flygtninge verden over?

Jeg opfordrer dem til at komme ud af lejrene for at overvinde deres frygt. At deltage aktivt i flygt-

2013 • visAvis № 7

ningepolitik, for det er den eneste måde, de kan forstå deres rettigheder på. Det er derfor, jeg opfordrer mine brødre og søstre i København til at komme ud, slutte sig til bevægelsen og stå sammen mod alle den slags umenneskelige situationer.

Interview med Flygtning fra Ingenmandsland Hvordan har I båret jer ad med at organisere jer mellem lejrene?

Gennem forbindelser mellem venner. Vi kendte hinanden fra modtagelejrene, og vi havde holdt kontakten siden. Vi underrettede de andre lejre om, hvad der skete og spurgte, om de ville være med.

Det er ikke noget, der bare sådan sker. Det var en lang proces med kommunikation via telefon og email. Vi tog også til de andre teltlejre i Tyskland for at støtte venner og hjælpe dem med at starte bevægelsen. Vi hjalp dem med at slå telte op og blev hos dem om nødvendigt. Vi fungerede som en familie.

Hvad var det næste skridt?

En ven påpegede, at selv om vi rejste telte i forskellige byer, ville der stadig være risiko for at blive bundet til et sted, at blive isoleret igen. Så vi blev enige om at finde en måde, vi rigtig kunne komme ud på. Han foreslog marchen, som ville gøre det muligt for os at holde os i bevægelse, samles og skabe en enhed. Vi begyndte at planlægge, hvordan vi skulle gøre det. En masse mennesker, især aktivister og tilhængere, sagde, at det var umuligt. 600 km i Tyskland er umuligt, sagde de. Men flygtningenes march viser, at vi vil ændre noget, og at vi er stærke nok til at gøre det. Vi har magt nok. Vi organiserer os. At samles var ikke noget problem. Det er vores største budskab. Marchen betød også, at vi brød vores Residenzpflicht ved at gå. Under marchen blev vi aldrig checket af politiet, for hvis de havde gjort det, ville de have fået os til at se større ud, givet os gratis reklame.

Nu har lejren rykket sig til Oranienplatz midt i Berlin. Hvorfor er det vigtigt at være ude i offentligheden?

Folk i landet her er ikke vores fjender. De har alle sammen forestillinger om os. For eksempel tror folk, at jeg er kriminel eller skurk, fordi det er det billede, medierne og regeringen har skabt. Helt ærligt, det kan godt være, jeg ryger cigaretter, men jeg er altså ikke kriminel, ikke narkohandler. Vi vil bryde med den opfattelse. Mange tyskere ved ikke, hvad asyllejre er. De ved ikke, hvad det vil sige at bo

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der i 20 år...eller bare en dag. De tror, at Frontex er Europas helt. Og hvorfor kommer flygtningene til Europa? Fordi Europa handler våben, olie, kul med andre lande. Og det skaber krig. Hvorfor skulle jeg komme til Europa, hvis der ikke var krig? Og regeringen advarer mod at rejse til de lande, fordi der ikke er sikkert. Hvorfor skulle det så være sikkert for mig? Hvis man er flygtning, har man ikke noget land. Man er fra Ingenmandsland.

Tidligere i dag var du kritisk over for tvangstanken om demokrati. Kan du uddybe det?

Europa prøver at eksportere demokrati til steder som Mellemøsten og Nordafrika. Men har vi nogensinde set et perfekt demokrati? Og er du sikker på, at dit demokrati er så godt, at du vil transportere det til andre lande, lande, du ikke engang kender? Helt ærligt, er du overhovedet del af et rigtigt demokrati, har du ret til at sige din mening? Som jeg ser det, er demokrati kapitalismens nye religion.

Hvad er så dit alternativ?

For det første stemmer vi aldrig i vores bevægelse.

Vi diskuterer. Lad os sige, at Patrick og jeg har forskellige idéer til et møde. Vi diskuterer alligevel, og ved hjælp af diskussionerne finder vi bedre løsninger. Hvis vi stemte, ville vi bare sidde fast i nogle standardløsninger, vi ville aldrig have mulighed for at være kreative i vores tænkning og løsninger.

Ingen bestemmer her. Måske diskuterer og debatterer vi meget, men vi er en enhed, hvor alle, uanset uddannelse og evner, kan udtrykke deres tanker.

Vores største styrke er, at vi taler med hinanden, selv om vi har så mange sprog her. I går, for eksempel, var mødet på engelsk, arabisk, farsi, urdu, fransk og tysk – omkring seks sprog i ét møde, og vi formåede alligevel at nå til enighed i sidste ende.

Folk udefra forstår ikke, hvordan det er muligt.

Men for os er det muligt, fordi vi, når alt kommer til alt, som flygtninge har de samme problemer. Jeg er måske kristen eller muslim, kommunist eller ateist, men vi er ligeglade med vores individuelle overbevisninger. Hovedsagen er vores rettigheder i samfundet. Regeringerne prøver altid at splitte os ved hjælp af religioner eller nationaliteter, fordi de er interesserede i magt, i penge. Og man ser folk kæmpe mellem religioner, kæmpe for ingenting.

terne tager derhen. Ved Brandenburger Tor kan man ikke være et menneske, kun del af en forretning. Og det er vi ikke. Jeg hader denne her overfladiske fred, byens pæne ansigt. Og det er derfor, jeg er her. Jeg vil være støj i samfundet.

Hvordan ser du det som en bevægelse, der som det ligger i ordet bevæger sig fremad?

Hvis vi ændrer noget her, vil det også ændre sig i andre lande. Hvis man tager til Tyrkiet, Italien, Grækenland eller Frankrig, kan man se, at det er et helvede for flygtninge. Vi står bedre. Jeg tænker ikke kun på mig selv, men på flygtninge over alt.

Hvis vi skal ændre noget, må vi virkelig gå i dybden. Det er en lang proces, ikke bare et spørgsmål om en måned, to måneder eller selv et år. Det er meget større. Det handler ikke kun om Tyskland, men om alle mennesker i verden. Vi bør ikke diskutere ismer, som marxisme, anarkisme og socialisme, men finde hinanden som mennesker.

Ismerne er bare navne, som systemet påhæfter os. I stedet bør vi se på, hvem vi virkelig er. Bevægelsen stopper selvfølgelig ikke her. Den fortsætter.

... og hvem er vi i virkeligheden?

Hvis man er flygtning, er man et af de frieste mennesker i verden, fordi man ikke har en nationalitet.

Ligegyldig hvad man gør som flygtning, vil systemet fortælle en, at det ikke er godt nok, at man ikke er integreret nok. Men vi har magt, vi står sammen, og vi vil bruge vores magt. Vær flygtning, vær stolt!

Når du har krydset grænserne mellem måske syv lande, er du allerede inde i denne her kamp. Hvis du er her nu, betyder det, at du kan kæmpe, at du kan finde din magt igen. Husk din vej, din energi, dine drømme. Så kan du skabe en kamp – ikke en krig. På en måde ser jeg alle mennesker i dag som flygtninge – flygtninge i vores familier, i vores byer, i vores seksualitet, vores generation. Når din lærer, far, mor eller hvem som helst med magt beordrer dig til at gøre noget, bliver du flygtning inden for normerne. Vi er alle flygtninge.

På hvilken måde er jeres bevægelse del af en større kamp?

Jeg ser lejren her som symbol på flygtninges kamp generelt. Vi fik Tysklands pæne ansigt til at krakelere, det er vores styrke. Vores venner, der sultestrejker på Brandenbruger Tor gør det samme.

Politiet tæskede dem, fordi Brandenbruger Tor skal forestille at være Berlins pæne ansigt. Alle turis-

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visAvis № 7 • 2013

At springe ud som udokumenterede: noter om Undocubus AF Jeppe Wedel-Brandt "¡Sin Papeles, Sin Miedo!", "Uden papirer, uden frygt!", med disse ord belejrede en gruppe illegaliserede migranter det demokratiske konvent, der skulle til at genvælge Barack Obama som deres kandidat til præsident for USA. “Uden papirer, uden frygt!”, mens de blev arresteret foran bygningen, der lagde rum til konventet i Charlotte, North Carolina, kun for senere at blive løsladt. “Uden papirer, uden frygt!”, mens de tidligere på måneden blev arresteret (og senere løsladt) i Birmingham, Alabama, da de afbrød en debat om konsekvenserne af delstatsbaserede immigrationslove. “Uden papirer, uden frygt!”, mens de overfyldte sherifkontoret i Sylvia, North Carolina, hvor Sherif Jimmy Ashe er kendt for at chikanere migranter specifikt og Hispanics generelt; da deres krav om et møde med sheriffen blev nægtet, formede de en kø, hvor de skiftedes til at erklære dem selv ‘udokumenterede og ønskende at tale med sheriffen’. “Uden papirer, uden frygt!”, mens de mindede verden om, at under dens første periode har Barack Obamas regering deporteret mere end en million mennesker.

Kampagnen hedder Undocubus og har ført en gruppe aktivister på en bustur på kryds af delstater for at manifestere aktivisternes, og med dem mange andres, eksistens som udokumenterede migranter, samt rejse opmærksomhed om og støtte for deres sag. På mange måde kan den siges at være støbt på de aktioner Borgerrettighedsbevægelsens Freedom Riders udførte i 1960’erne, da aktivister kørte i busser på kryds af delstater i Syden og udfordrede Jim Crow lovene.

I denne omgang, med Undocubus, fandt busturen ikke sted gennem offentlig transport, men i en gammel nedslidt bus, der kørte ud fra Phoenix, Arizona, d. 29. Juli efter to ugers protester der.

Gruppen af aktivister var en blandet gruppe af folk fra hele landet, studenter, arbejdere, unge der kæmpede for deres fremtid, forældre der kæmpede for deres børns fremtid. Selve kampagnens offentlighed satte alle deltagere i fare, da den ene ting, der havde til fælles var ikke at have papirer og dermed være potentielt deportable. Men de gik endnu længere ved at lede protester og civilulydighedsaktioner i de byer, de besøgte. Kampagnens hovedformål var dog at skabe opmærksomhed og dele deres personlige historier som udokumenterede migranter og fremtvinge en offentlig debat om emnet.

2013 • visAvis № 7

“By The Time I Get To Arizona”

Det er ikke en tilfældighed, at kampagnen startede i Arizona. Som dokumenteret af den amerikanske borgerrettighedsadvokat og juraprofessor Michelle Alexander i hendes bog fra 2010, The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, har denne stat over de sidste årtier været stedet for udklækningen af ‘hård mod kriminalitet’ og ‘hård på immigration’ kampagner, såvel som inhumane og diskriminerende tiltag på disse områder.

Navnet Sherif Joe Arpaio er blevet synonymt med tiltag såsom genindførslen af chain-gangs, ydmygelse af indsatte ved at tvinge dem til at have lyserødt undertøj på, og skabelsen af ‘telt byen’ - en fængsels teltlejr midt i ørkenen under den brændende Arizona-sol. Og mere nyligt med påbegynde brugen af ‘racial profiling’-taktikker mod Lationer i jagten på udokumenterede migranter ved at autorisere ‘visitationszone’-taktikker i områder med overvejende Latinobefolkning.

Denne sidste praksis, der generelt er blevet set som ukonstitutionel i USA, er blevet hævet til lov med Arizona SB 1070 loven, der overtrumfer federal immigrationslovgivning og er blevet kritiseret for at tillade racial profiling, såvel som at gøre det ulovligt at ‘skjule, huse eller transportere’ en udokumenteret fremmed. I europæiske ører lyder dette måske relativt banalt, da de fleste europæiske lande har lignende love, men i en amerikansk kontekst anses det for en uhørt styrkelse af de midler, staten har mulighed for at bruge. Arizona SB 1070 har medført stærke protester og, i den amerikanske akademiker og aktivist Cornel Wests ord fra en tale i Arizona d. 2. Oktober 2010, så er Arizona da også blevet “nulpunktet i kampen for frihed” og “frontlinjen i kampen for retfærdighed.” Dette er muligvis ikke nyt, som for eksempel bevidnet af Public Enemys sang fra 1991, “By The Time I Get To Arizona” - men hvad, der er nyt, er, at protesterne i stigende grad anføres af illegaliserede migranter.

At springe ud

Undocubuskampagnen er blot den seneste af en mængde af kampagner blandt illegaliserede mi-

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granter i USA over de sidste år. Som det kunne læses i Eric Huertas tekst i visAvis #4, “Papirløse amerikanere”, har de studerende udokumenterede migranter opnået bred støtte med deres kampagne for The DREAM Act, der giver retten til permanent ophold for alle, der har gennemført to års tjeneste i militæret eller ved en højere læreanstalt. Dette vigtige, men temmelig reformistiske, lovforslag er blevet hørt i senatet flere gange, men er endnu ikke lykkedes vedtaget. Men der har også været forskellige mere generelle kampagner, der mere end noget har fokuseret på at fastslå den simple tilstedeværelse af illegaliserede migranter som faktum. I løbet af 2006 samledes en række uafhængigt organiserede demonstrationer under sloganet “¡Aquí Estamos y No Nos Vamos!”, “Vi er her og vi går ingen vegne!” En form for kulmination på kampagnen blev nået på 1. Maj det år, da et kald gik ud for “en dag uden en immigrant” opfordrende alle illegaliserede migranter at nægte arbejde den dag for at vise økonomiens afhængighed af disse mennesker som arbejdskraft.

“Udokumenteret og ikke bange”, sloganet skabt af Immigrant Youth Movement i kampen for The DREAM Act, virker som en passende måde at opsumere et interessant aspekt ved disse nylige kampagner. Undocubusaktivisterne refererer selv til deres aktioner som en form for ‘at springe ud.’ Her forklaret i en aktivists ord i en kampagnevideo: “Jeg husker at sidde i en time om migrationens sociologi. Og de talte om udokumenterede immigranter og hvorvidt udokumenterede immigranter havde eller ikke havde retten til at være i dette land, og om vi stjal arbejde og alle den slags spørgsmål.

Og jeg husker at sidde der og tænke: alle de folk taler om mig, som om jeg ikke var i rummet. Det var tilbage i 2004 og jeg husker, at jeg rækte hånden op og jeg sagde: ‘Bare så I ved det - jeg er udokumenteret. Og når I taler om de her emner, så er det altså mig og min familie, I taler om.’ Og det var for mig en del af begyndelsen til at tænke på vores historier, fordi vi kan ikke stemme, vi tæller ikke på alle de her forskellige måder. Det, vi har, er vores historier og vores erfaringer og vores kroppe, og det er det, vi har brugt i ‘at springe ud’-kampen.”

gennem deportation og lejre, og hvis du ønsker at deltage uden identifikation, er du afskåret fra dette gennem indføds- og stemmelovgivning. Men dette holder kun i den udstrækning, vi køber ideologien om nationalstater og det formelle demokrati som de eneste kilder, gennem hvilke deltagelse er mulig.

Den prekære og farlige situation, som nationalstater og ideologien om det formelle demokrati påtvinger udokumenterede og udsatte grupper i samfundet, kan ikke nægtes. Men en de vigtigeste fortjenester ved Undocubus er netop i, at de viser det er muligt at bryde denne dogmatiske påstand om, at deltagelse kun kan opnås gennem formel identifikation. Som noteret i en artikel på colorlines.com d. 25. Oktober, “Dignity Beyond Voting: Undocumented Immigrants Cast Their Hopes”, der referer til Undocubus: “Regler for vælgeridentifikation er generelt baseret på en ubegrundet frygt omkring, at udokumenterede mennesker stemmer. Men på trods af et stærkt antiimmigrant klima, har udokumenterede immigranter deltaget i dette års valgproces som aldrig før.”

Men den potentielle indflydelse fra kampagner, som denne, fokuseret på ‘at springe ud’ er endnu større end deres påvirkning på valgkampe. Ved at bryde tabuet og frygten for at være offentligt ‘ude’ som en udokumenteret migrant, kan de meget vel rydde vejen for præcis den hverdagsanerkendelse og selvanerkendelse af den faktiske tilstedeværelse af illegaliserede migranter i samfundet. Det vil sige en anerkendelse af, at illegaliserede mennesker altid allerede deltager i samfundet - de er her, og de bliver her!

Deltagelse uden identificering?

I deres bog fra 2005, The Culture of Exception Sociology Facing the Camp, foreslår de danske sociologer Bülent Diken & Carsten Bagge Laustsen den grundlæggende kamp i samfundet i dag som en mellem nationalstater, der søger orden gennem ‘identifikation uden deltagelse’, og udsatte folk som illegaliserede migranter og asylansøgere, der ønsker ‘deltagelse uden identifikation’. Hvis du accepterer identifikation nægtes du deltagelse

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visAvis № 7 • 2013

Velkommen til Europa: Du er fanget i laboratoriet af Kirstine Nordentoft Mose og Mikas Lang

I det sydøstlige hjørne af Europa er Grækenland hårdt ramt af den økonomiske krise. Grækenland bruges som laboratorium for neoliberale politikker, der forarmer befolkningen og skaber social uro og forvirring. Imens spreder fascister og neo-nazister had fra parlamentet og overfalder folk på gaderne, hvor de udgør en alvorlig fare mod migranter.

En helt almindelig dag

Mandag d. 5. November 2012 blev den 19-årige udokumenterede migrant fra Egypten, Waleed Taleb, fundet lænket til et træ på den græske ø Salamina vest for Athen. Hans krop var mærket af brutale tæsk. Talebs chef indrømmede siden, at han havde bundet ham til træet og beskyldte ham samtidig for at stjæle fra det bageri, hvor han arbejdede.

Talebs havde dog en noget anden historie at fortælle til politiet. Taleb fortalte, at hans chef sammen med en gruppe mænd havde angrebet ham for at tage hans og kollegaernes løn, som Taleb skulle give videre samme dag. De græske gerningsmænd fik lov til at gå, mens Taleb kom i fængsel for ikke at have en lovlig opholdstilladelse.

Som Talebs historie viser, er det for øjeblikket risikofyldt at være migrant i Grækenland. Vi satte os ned og talte med medlemmer af Crisis Mirror, en gruppe med base i København, der bl.a. består af folk, der har erfaring med at leve og kæmpe i Grækenland, for at forstå, hvad der sker i landet.

Et af medlemmerne skitserede situationen for migranter således: ”Jeg tror, at det at være migrant i Grækenland nu, må være en af de værste ting, man kan opleve i sit liv. Grækenland er blevet en slags koncentrationslejr for Europa.”

Ifølge Salinia Stroux, der har arbejdet med migranter i Grækenland i mange år, er der flere årsager til den svære situation for migranter i Grækenland: den økonomiske krise, den repressive migrationspolitik og endelig neo-nazisternes fremmarch.

Disse faktorer forstærkes af den negative mediediskurs, hvor migranter konstant sammenkædes med “kriminalitet” og “ghettodannelse”.

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Gæld og økonomisk krise

Som de fleste vil vide, har den græske stat en enorm gæld. Den såkaldte “Trojka”, bestående af EU, Den Europæiske Centralbank (ECB) og den Internationale Valutafond (IMF), har gang på gange krævet nye besparelser, fyringer og lignende som betingelse for lån. Dette fører til, hvad den slovenske filosof Slavoj Žižek i sit essay fra 2010 “A Permanent Economic Emergency” beskriver som en undtagelsestilstand: “Vi går nu ind i en tid, hvor en slags økonomisk undtagelsestilstand bliver permanent: den bliver konstant, en levemåde.”

Som et ekko af Žižek tegner et medlem af Crisis Mirror følgende portræt af situationen: “Alt sker så hurtigt, at man ikke kan nå at absorbere alle forandringerne. Denne undtagelsestilstand bliver normal med den neoliberale omstrukturering af politik og økonomi.”

Disse forandringer betyder bl.a. højere skatter for den brede befolkning, lønnedgange, der indtil sidste år svarede til et gennemsnit på 33 %, indefrysning af offentlige pensioner og en kraftig nedskæring i skoler og hospitalers budgetter. Med den sidste runde besparelser indførte staten brugerbetaling for at komme på hospitalet, hvilket signalerer en ende på den offentlige velfærd i Grækenland.

Lånebetingelserne stillet af trojkaen er et eksempel på et strukturtilpasningsprogram, der svarer til dem, som lande i Latinamerika, Afrika og Asien stod over for i 1980’erne og 90’erne. Disse programmer indebar massive privatiseringer og udhuling af offentlig velfærd og goder, ligesom de blev anledning til en række optøjer. En del af den græske gæld stammer, som tilfældet også er i mange latinamerikanske lande, fra et højreorienteret militærdiktatur, hvorfor mange sammenligner Grækenlands situation med Argentina lige efter årtusindeskiftet.

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Argentina erklærede statsbankerot i 2002. Crisis Mirror beskriver de græske lån i klare vendinger: “Lånene går direkte til at betale gælden. De penge EU låner Grækenland, går ikke til grækerne, men til at tilbagebetale gæld. Så de ender faktisk hos bankerne. Pengestrømmen går altså igennem de græske banker, der fungerer som mellemmænd, og så tilbage til de europæiske banker, især tyske og franske.”

At lånene ikke hjælper på den græske økonomi er tydeligt, når man ser, at den offentlige gæld er steget fra 127 % af BNP i 2009 til i 2011 at udgøre 170 %, ifølge EU’s officielle statistikbank, EUROSTAT.

Grækenland lukker grænserne

Historien om den græske flygtninge- og migrantsituation hænger snævert sammen med den europæiske migrationspolitik. Her er Dublin II forordningen fra 2003 central. Ifølge denne forordning skal asylansøgninger behandles i det EUland, som ansøgeren først er registeret i. Som en konsekvens af dette har mange EU-lande, især de nordlige, sendt flygtninge tilbage til de lande, de først var registrerede i.

I kraft af Grækenlands placering på kanten af Europa, ved EU’s ydre grænse, ankommer mange flygtninge til Grækenland først. Derfor har asylsystemet i Grækenland været under kraftigt pres det sidste årti. I januar 2011 besluttede den Europæiske Menneskerettighedsdomstol (ECHR) derfor, at betingelserne for asylansøgere i Grækenland var så dårlige, at det er et brud på den europæiske menneskerettighedskonvention at sende flygtninge tilbage til Grækenland. Det har altså siden været ulovligt. Der er dog stadig mange migranter, der er fanget i Grækenland. Nogle forsøger at komme videre ind i Europa, bl.a. gemt under lastbiler. Alligevel ender den græske regering, ifølge Salinia Stroux, med at gøre EU’s arbejde: “Den græske regering gør præcis, hvad Europa ønsker: Den lukker grænserne. Politiet anholder alt og alle og tilbageholder dem så længe som muligt, uagtet om de kan sendes tilbage eller ej – og deporterer så mange som muligt.”

Regeringen har nu indført nye foranstaltninger for at arrestere og kontrollere så mange migranter som muligt. Ifølge Salinia Stroux er det tydeligt, at der ikke er nogen grænser i migrationspolitikken: “Den 4. august 2012 startede regeringen Operation ‘Xenios Zeus’, der på ironisk vis er opkaldt efter guden for gæstfrihed. Indtil videre har politiet midlertidigt tilbageholdt 48.402 migranter, hvoraf 3.668 er blevet arresteret. Det er altså kun hver tret-

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tende person, der kunne tilbageholdes. De andre havde gældende opholdstilladelser. I denne periode har politiet ikke kun kontrolleret og arresteret migranter i det offentlige rum, men også i butikker, på internet-caféer, hoteller og i private hjem.

De har gennemsøgt 419 migranters hjem.”

Salinia forklarer, at politiet sædvanligvis foretager masseanholdelser og tager migranter med ind på stationen. Det er først efter timers tilbageholdelse, deres papirer bliver tjekket.

Migranter som syndebukke og billig arbejdskraft

Under den økonomiske krise bliver migranter i Grækenland udbyttet som billig arbejdskraft. De bliver tillige beskyldt for at tage arbejde fra såkaldte ‘græske mennesker’. Salinia Stroux beskriver den nuværende sociale situation: “Det bliver sværere og sværere – for alle – at overleve i Grækenland. Det gælder især for de mere sårbare dele af samfundet, herunder migranter.

Samtidig er der stadig ikke noget fungerende velfærdssystem for nogen, intet fungerende modtagelsessystem for flygtninge og ingen integrationspolitik for migranter. Folk er overladt til selv at sørge for deres egen overlevelse på gaden; uden tag over hovedet, uden mad og basal medicinsk pleje.

De fleste samler skrald for at tjene 1-5 € om dagen på genbrug – hvis de er heldige.”

For nogle bliver udbytningen af migranter en måde at overleve på under den økonomiske krise.

Et medlem af Crisis Mirror forklarer, hvordan man i landbruget udnytter migranter: “Migranter blev og bliver stadig udnyttet som billig arbejdskraft. Der har været mange sager med migranter som arbejdede i markerne. Fordi de ikke havde papirer ringede deres arbejdsgivere til politiet og sagde: ’Anhold migranterne og deporter dem.’ Så de arbejdede hele sommeren, og når lønnen skulle udbetales, ringede deres arbejdsgivere til politiet og undgik dermed at betale.”

Konfronteret med massive økonomiske problemer og uvillige til at indrømme egne fejl eller at konfrontere EU, prøver den politiske elite i Grækenland at gøre migranterne til syndebukke: “I den offentlige diskurs, regeringen og fascisterne skaber, italesættes migranterne som Grækenlands vigtigste problem: ’Det er ikke krisen, det er migranterne’. Regeringen påstår f.eks., at migranterne i Athen er til fare for samfundet, fordi de angiveligt bærer sygdomme og er kriminelle. I konstruktionen af billedet af de farlige migranter bliver kriminalitet særligt fremhævet. Man

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fokuserer ikke på arbejdsløsheden som tilfældet er i andre EU-lande. Dette skyldes, at de barbariske arbejdsregimer i Grækenland, især dem migranter må underlægge sig, er velkendte. Både socialistiske og konservative regeringer har ført racistiske kampagner mod migranter, der italesættes som et ’socialt problem’. Den græske regering legitimerer nazisternes retorik og morderiske praksis. Nazisterne er tilsyneladende bedre til at løse det partikulære problem, som regeringen selv har skabt for at konstruere en syndebuk, hvor den offentlige vrede, forårsaget af barbariske neoliberale angreb mod det græske samfund, kan blive rettet mod.”

Det fjendtlige klima, hvor migranter er lette syndebukke, skaber muligheder for eskalering af situationen.

Job? Kun for grækere

Midt i denne økonomiske undtagelsestilstand, med dens sociale forvirring og stigmatisering af migranter, vokser Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn), et udtalt neo-nazistisk parti. Golden Dawn anvender hagekorslignende symboler og hylder forskellige figurer fra Nazi-Tyskland; ligesom partiets retorik er et ekko af 1930’ernes Tyskland.

Golden Dawn har i øjeblikket 7 % af pladserne i parlamentet, og deres popularitet er voksende. I nogle af de seneste meningsmålinger er det, ifølge BBC, anslået at partiet vil få 12 % af sæderne i parlamentet. Et medlem af Crisis Mirror fortæller, hvordan Golden Dawn præsenterer sig selv som folkets beskyttere: “De siger, at de er modstandere af de økonomiske stramninger, og at de er imod EU. Alt dette bliver en del af en slags sammensværgelse om den ny verdensorden, zionisterne og jøderne, men når det kommer til privatisering og hvad kapitalen gør, så reagerer de ikke. De erklærer, at de vil slå mod de rige, men på samme tid er det kun de fattige de rammer.”

De fattige, som rammes, er i denne sammenhæng oftest synonymt med migranter, da de er den mest prekære og marginaliserede gruppe i Grækenland.

Golden Dawn mener dog ikke selv, at de rammer de fattige, selvom deres fjende er veldefineret: det er migranterne. Golden Dawn mener selv, at de er solidariske med befolkningen. Denne solidaritet falder imidlertid altid sammen med muligheden for at ramme migranter. Man hører aldrig om, at neo-nazister har angrebet korrupte politikere, udenlandske banker eller andre institutioner, som rent faktisk har ansvar for situationen i Grækenland.

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Et godt eksempel på neo-nazisternes praksis er Golden Dawns jobcentre. Den økonomiske krise har ramt det græske arbejdsmarked hårdt.

Arbejdsløsheden er oppe på 25 %, og halvdelen af ungdommen er, ifølge Stathis Kouvelakis’ artikel “The Greek Cauldron” fra novemer 2011, uden arbejde. I lyset af dette har Golden Dawn forsøgt at vinde popularitet ved at lave private jobcentre i flere byer. Umiddelbart et fint eksempel på solidaritet; jobcentrene er imidlertid kun for ‘grækere’.

Golden Dawns definition på en græker er “en kaukasisk person med mindst en græsk forælder”, fortæller medlemmer af Crisis Mirror. Golden Dawns arbejdsformidling indebærer også, at partiets bøller – berygtede for deres voldelige adfærd – prøver at overtale og til tider afpresser virksomhedsejere til at fyre migranter.

Golden Dawn stopper dog ikke ved denne åbenlyst racistiske “service”. Deres bande af slyngler truer, røver og angriber butikker ejet af migranter. Det er derfor klart, at deres mål ikke så meget er at få flere i arbejde eller forbedre den græske økonomi, som det er at ekskludere migranter helt fra arbejdsmarkedet og dermed forværre en allerede svær tilstand for en af de mest marginaliserede grupper i Grækenland.

Angrebet i eget hjem

I skyggen af den økonomiske krise og med italesættelsen af migranter som syndebukke, som en legitimerende faktor, stiger antallet af voldelige overfald på migranter. Fra nytår til sommeren 2012 er der fundet mere end 500 registrerede angreb sted. Som Salinia Stroux forklarer, skaber dette et miljø af frygt: “Over hele Athen, men især i kvarterer med store migrantgrupper og derfor mere aktivitet fra neonazister, er det praktisk taget umuligt for migranter at gå uforstyrret ned af gaden eller at sidde i en park. Man må altid kigge sig over skulderen.

Frygten er allestedsnærværende. Mange folk er endda bange, når de er indenfor i deres egne hjem, da fascisterne også her har angrebet folk.”

Der er flere overfald, og ifølge Crisis Mirior er fascisterne også begyndt at angribe børn. En afghansk far og hans søn blev eksempelvis angrebet, da de var ude for at finde mad.

Når angrebene mod migranter bliver et dagligdagsfænomen, som ingen længere lægger mærke til, reagerer staten kun, når det passer med dens egen dagsorden. Ifølge Crisis Mirror er dette et eksempel på, at undtagelsestilstanden bliver reglen frem for undtagelsen:

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“Den græske stat er meget stærk og har gode reflekser, men den reagerer kun på bestemte ting. Når det kommer til migranter, kan man gøre hvad som helst; der er ingen konsekvenser. Ofte når nazister har tæsket migranter, har politiet i sidste ende arresteret de migranter, der blev angrebet. Loven virker ikke som den burde. Det handler ikke om retfærdighed - det handler om noget helt andet.”

Et medlem af Golden Dawn har i et interview med BBC anslået, at 60 % af politiet støttede Golden Dawn ved sidste parlamentsvalg. Dette er et skøn og Crisis Mirror påpeger, at det kan være overdrevet for at styrke Golden Dawn og for at isolere politiet fra resten af befolkningen. Uanset de præcise tal, så har den nuværende situation alvorlige konsekvenser for migranter: “Situationen betyder at selv de, som har papirer og derfor kunne anmelde hadforbrydelser til myndighederne, ofte ikke kan gøre det, da politiet nægter at tage imod anmeldelsen. Næsten ingen sager om hadforbrydelser er kommet videre til domstolene i Grækenland og stort set ingen gerningsmænd er blevet straffet. Neo-nazisterne er derfor helt frie til at gøre som det passer dem.”

Samtidig prøver anti-fascistiske grupper og pro-migrations græsrodsbevægelser at styrke migranter gennem græsk sprogundervisning, juridisk bistand og andre støttefunktioner. Nogle migrantfællesskaber bygger også interne organisatoriske strukturer, som f.eks. folkekøkkener og andre fællesskabsskabende aktiviteter, for sammen at kunne beskytte sig mod angreb fra Golden Dawn.

Laboratoriet

Det er en illusion at tale om en ‘græsk’ krise. EU’s økonomiske stramninger, Dublin II og IMF’s involvering viser noget andet. Det vi ser, er en europæisk – og i visse henseender global – krise med særligt barske sociale følger i Grækenland.

Titusinder af migranter er på grund af Dublinfælden, tilbagetagelsesaftaler og den – ifølge Schengen-aftalen – manglende grænsekontrol ved EU’s indre grænser, fanget i Grækenland. De fleste i Grækenland kæmper for at opretholde en eller anden form for almindeligt liv. Migranterne er den mest udsatte gruppe, både økonomisk og socialt. Samtidigt udgør neo-nazisternes stigende popularitet en alvorlig fare for migranter, homoseksuelle, venstreorienterede og andre som ikke passer ind i deres verdensbillede.

På samme tid har den politiske og økonomiske elite gavn af den fascistiske bevægelse, da fascisterne skaber en offentlig diskurs, der peger på migranterne og ikke kapitalismen som årsag til krisen. Dette er dog imidlertid ikke deres eneste funktion. Fascisterne holder også venstrefløjen optaget, så den ikke er i stand til at fokusere på den klassekamp, som føres fra oven af Trojkaen, regeringen og finanskapitalen.

Crisis Mirror mener, at Grækenland og resten af Sydeuropa kun er de første til at opleve de alvorlige følger af krisen. Grækenland fungerer lige nu som et slags laboratorium, hvor nye neoliberale politikker bliver afprøvet for fremtidigt brug. Hvad der i øjeblikket sker i Grækenland, kan være et forvarsel for resten af Europa.

Litteratur

Stathis Kouvelakis: “The Greek Cauldron”, New Left Review 72, Nov-Dec 2011 Slavoj Žižek: “A Permanent Economic Emergency”, New Left Review 64, July-Aug 2010.

Paul Mason, “Alarm at Greek police ‘collusion’ with far-right Golden Dawn”, BBC, 17th October 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19976841

Crisis Mirror

Crisis Mirror er en multidisciplinær og forskelligartet politisk gruppe med base i København.

Gruppen producerer og deler alternativ information om den kapitalistiske krise i Danmark og resten af verden. Ved at levere politiske analyser og organisere offentlige begivenheder og aktioner, forsøger gruppen at mobilisere folk og vise solidaritet med ligesindede bevægelser, grupper og individer.

Salinia Stroux Salinia Stroux har arbejdet med flygtninge i Grækenland de sidste 6 år. Hun er aktiv i netværket, Welcome to Europe og græsrodsprojektet Infomobile Greece. Hun er desuden medforfatter til en række rapporter støttet af Pro Asyl: "Walls of shame", "I came here for peace!" og "Human Cargo".

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Kontrol over fingeraftryk magt over mennesker af Sidsel Rosenberg Bak

I de seneste år er der sket en stigning i brugen af såkaldt biometrisk information (f.eks. fotografier og fingeraftryk) i asyl- og integrationssystemer. Filosofisk refleksion påkalder opmærksomhed omkring denne tendens og ser det som en skræmmende karakteristik ved moderne tider. Og det har da også potentiale til at kunne påvirke os alle.

Den biopolitiske tatovering

I forårssemesteret 2004 aflyser den italienske filosof og akademiker Giorgio Agamben sine planer om at undervise på New York Universitet, fordi han nægter at lade sine fingeraftryk blive skannet og tjekket af United States Department of Homeland Security. Siden terrorangrebene på World Trade Center d. 11. September 2001, har den amerikanske immigrationskontrol strammet grebet, og i høj grad gennem US-VISIT programmet. Det teknologiske US-VISIT system har siden 2004 muliggjort tvungen indsamling og kontrol af biometriske oplysninger. Sådanne digitale biometriske oplysninger kan bruges til autentisering; dette betyder, at biologiske kendetegn kan fastslå en persons identitet. Når man, i sit hjemland, ansøger om et visum for besøg i USA, vil en af konsulatets embedsmænd, ansat af Department of State, kræve, at éns fingeraftryk og foto bliver taget. Ved ankomst til USA vil éns biometriske oplysninger endnu en gang blive indsamlet. På den måde kan identiteten af visumindehaveren bekræftes og mulighederne for bedrageri mindskes. I fremtiden vil man også blive bedt om at tilvejebringe disse oplysninger, når man forlader landet, for at staten kan følge med i, hvem der rejser ind i og forlader landet (i overenstemmelse med hver persons visumaftale).

Ifølge Departement of Homeland Security er deres hovedmål at arbejde for "et tryggere, mere sikkert USA, der er modstandsdygtigt over for terrorisme og andre potentielle trusler." Indsamlingen af biometriske informationer er legitimeret gennem reference til national sikkerhed og forebyggelse af identitetstyveri mod amerikanske statsborgere.

Immigrations- og grænsekontrol er således ufravigeligt associeret med sikkerhedshensyn, såsom terrorisme; hvor det mulige problem er, at immigranter bliver sidestillet med kriminelle.

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Stigningen i brugen af biometrisk information er ikke blot en bivirkning af det sidste årtis fokus på terrorisme. Hvis vi skal tro Giorgio Agamben, er det et særligt kendetegn ved moderniteten, at Big Brother, så at sige, kigger med. Da Agamben nægtede at besøge USA, skrev han en avisartikel, "Non au tatouage biopolitique" (Nej til den biopolitsike tatovering), der forklarede årsagen til hans handling. Her fremsatte han idéen om, at brugen af biometrisk data er et udbredt fænomen, der underminerer den politisk-juridiske status, ikke kun for folk, der påvirkes af den, men for alle borgere i "de såkaldt demokratiske stater, som vi lever i.”

Problemet er magtbalancen. Borgerne bliver sårbare og udsatte for manipulation, når staterne samler sensitive oplysninger omkring deres helbred, adfærd osv. For Agamben er opretholdelsen af liberale standarder ikke det, det handler om. Han argumenterer ikke for, at denne praksis er en trussel mod den personlige frihed. Det er et spørgsmål om at respektere mennesket. Ønsker vi et samfund, hvor man bliver mere sårbar, jo mere udsat man er?

Ikke kun i USA

Det er ikke kun i USA, man kan observere disse tendenser. Europæiske stater og EU fremmer også brugen af biologiske tegn i både immigrations- og retssystemerne. I takt med at fri bevægelighed over EU-grænser gøres nemmere gennem Schengensamarbejdet, hindres adgang for ikkeEU-borgere. EUs Visuminformationssystem, VIS, etableredes på baggrund af en beslutning i 2004, om at gøre udvekslingen af visuminformation mellem EU-stater nemmere. Når en ikke-EU-borger rejser ind i et af medlemslandene scannes fingeraftrykkene elektronisk. De sendes til VIS databasen og gemmes her i fem år. EU-staterne kan så bruge VIS til at identificere visumindehaveren og/eller

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undersøge om han eller hun skulle være kriminel.

Europakommisionen har hævdet, at registrering af ind- og udrejse (sammen med andre ting) er nødvendig for at reducere antallet af irregulære migranter og gøre grænsekrydsningen hurtigere for pålidelige og regelmæssige rejsende fra tredjeverdenslande. Forventningen er, at VIS vil blive mere global i sit omfang, allerede nu dækker det nordafrikanske og arabiske lande.

Selvom informationerne i Visuminformationssystemet kun kan tilgås af autoriseret personale under passende omstændigheder og alle kan ansøge om adgang til optegnelser angående én selv og få fejl rettet, så er tendensen i nogen grad skræmmende set fra et biopolitisk perspektiv.

Biomagt - eller biopolitik - er et begreb opfundet af den franske teoretiker Michel Foucault, der definerer det som en styring af menneskearten. "Bio" stammer fra det græske ord for liv, bios. Ved det 19. århundredes start var samfundenes magtstrukturer, ifølge Foucault, bestående af en ret til at lade dø og til at frembringe, måske endda producere, liv [“droit de faire vivre et de laisser mourir"]. For eksempel udvikledes en stor interesse for sammenhængen mellem fødsels- og dødsraten inden for lægevidenskaben. På den måde er kontrolmekanismer optagede af subjekternes helbred (i dag gennem kunstig befrugtning, genteknologi og så videre). Alene i kraft af at være menneske, er man i dag underlagt biomagt. Overalt i verden diskuteres etik inden for medicin i råd. I nogle lande er der, af regeringerne, etableret uafhængige kommitéer.

Ikke desto mindre er sikringen og forbedringen af liv (såvel som at debatere hvordan dette gøres) en integreret del af autoritær dominans. Det levende menneskes biologiske tegn underlægges således statens magt. Ved at fokusere på at skabe og opretholde liv bekræftes modsætningen - død. I medicinske termer kunne 'at lade dø' denotere lægeassisteret selvmord. Ved at lade dø, ophører livet at være det grundlæggende aspekt ved menneske-lig liv og faire vivre stopper.

Det er denne tankerække Agamben følger, når han i artiklen kritiserer, hvad han kalder, biopolitisk tatovering. Både US-VISIT og VIS er tatoverende instanser i denne forstand. Registrering og overvågning er fakta, der ikke stilles spørgsmål ved.

Agamben forsøger at ændre dette gennem at hævde, at kontrol af folks liv ikke nødvendigvis er en legitim måde at udøve suveræn magt på.

Begrebet om biomagt giver stemme til frustrationen hos folk i fare. Det indikerer hvordan man ikke skal behandle mennesker, f.eks. migranter. Man kan spørge helt legitimt: Er det acceptabelt at sætte et elektronisk mærke på folk, der er afklædt deres rettigheder, f.eks. folk, der flygter fra forfølgelse i deres hjemland?

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Europæiske tatoveringer

Når man søger asyl, møder man også det biologisk orienterede system. EU tager forholdsregler mod – hvad nogle refererer til som - asyl shopping. Dublin II konventionen fastslår, at asylansøgningen skal behandles i det EU-land, hvor asylansøgeren har en eller flere nære familiemedlemmer, allerede har visum eller opholdstilladelse, eller først ansøgte i. At forbinde denne regulation med Eurodacregisteret (der er en database med fingeraftryk fra europæiske asylansøgere) betyder, at hver sag er personaliseret og kan findes af nationale immigrationsmyndigheder.

Naturligvis kan et afslag på en asylansøgning i et EU-land hermed afholde én fra at kunne få asyl i et andet EU-land. Et nyt EU-forslag åbner for muligheden for, at nationale lovudøvende instanser kan søge i Eurodac for matches. Efterforskninger af forbrydelser som menneskesmugling, terrorisme og lignende forbindes således til asylprocedurer.

I begyndelsen af September 2012 udtalte Peter Hustinx, Den Europæiske Tilsynsførende for Databeskyttelse, i en pressemeddelelse: "Blot fordi data allerede er indsamlet, bør det ikke benyttes til andre formål, der kan have en vidtrækkende negativ indflydelse på individuelle liv.

At trænge ind på individers privatliv og risikere en stigmatisering af dem, kræver stærk retfærdiggørelse og Kommisionen har simpelthen ikke fremlagt tilstrækkelig årsag til, hvorfor asylansøgere skulle blive fremhævet til en sådan behandling."

I lyset af dette er forslaget en ”udhulning af fundamentale rettigheder, der sniger sig frem." Stater og supranationale myndigheder bestemmer over fremtiden for folk, der migrerer, og således omkring hvorvidt de inkluderes eller ekskluderes fra befolkningerne. Det er en form for magt over menneskekroppe. Love og regulativer kontrollerer borgere og ikke-borgeres liv, hvilket igen påvirker deres mulighed for at have en indflydelse på deres egen fremtid. Der er et formodet behov for at forbedre dokumentation og effektivitet i forhold til immigration og statssikkerhed; det fører til en stigende brug af biopolitiske metoder. Således sættes menneskets biologi i spil og gøres sårbart. På en måde er det en gemmeleg, hvor taberen, for eksempel den fremmede, er den mest berøvede.

Litteratur:

Giorgio Agamben: "Non au tatouage biopolitique", Le Monde diplomatique, January 10 (2004) European Data Protection Supervisor (Pressemeddelelse): "EURODAC: erosion of fundamental rights creeps along", Press release September 5 (2012), Source: http://europa.eu/rapid/ press-release_EDPS-12-12_en.htm Michel Foucault: Il faut défendre la société, Paris, Gallimard (1997)

visAvis № 7 • 2013

Rejection of Asylum

Immigration Service has decided to reject your application for convention or protection status with reference to the law of immigration § 7.

Consequences

You have the right to stay in Denmark until the Refugee Appeals Board has processed your case.

You can always choose to withdraw your application for asylum. If you do so, you must leave the country immediately, unless you have another permit to stay.

Assessment of evidence

As motive for asylum, you have stated that upon your return to Afghanistan, you fear you will be killed by the Taliban, by family members, as well as by the local population.

To support these allegations, you have informed us that you have been working as an interpreter for the US forces in the period from and up until your departure from Afghanistan on .

Furthermore you have informed us that the Taliban have been dropping several ‘night letters’ on the streets in province and in , wherein your name was mentioned. You have furthermore in the period from and up until the end of , received approximately telephone threats from the Taliban.

You have furthermore informed us that you fear you will be killed by members of the local civilian population who believe that the Afghan interpreters have been forwarding information leading to the killing of civilians.

You have furthermore informed us that family members in the period from and until your departure have been making threatning telephone calls to you, due to the fact that you were working as an interpreter for the infidels.

We have not found ourselves able to base our assessment on parts of your explanation of your motive for asylum.

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We have not found that you, in a convincing manner, have presented your motive for asylum clearly.

The circumstance that family members have made threatning telephone calls to you, cannot lead to another assessment. We have attached importance to the fact that it is based only on your assumption that these are actual death threats, and that the threats have, in fact, never been attempted.

The circumstance that you fear to be killed by the local population is also not sufficient to lead to another assessment. Here we have attached importance to the fact that this is based solely on your own assumption, and that you have never received personal threats from the local population.

The decision of the case

Based on our assessment of the evidence we do not think that there is a risk of you being subjected to persecution in your home country, with reference to the law of immigration § 7, subsection 1.

We also do not think that you, upon your return to your home country, are in risk of death penalty or to be subjected to torture or inhuman treatment or degrading treatment or punishment, with reference to the law of immigration § 7, subsection 2.

We therefore do not believe there is a risk that you will be subjected to persecution in Afghanistan, or that there are any other reasons why deportation should not happen, with reference to the law of immigration § 31.

We therefore decide that the police may deport you to Afghanistan if you do not leave voluntarily.

This is in accordance with of the law of immigration § 30, subsections 1 and 2 as well as 32 a.

We must advise you that it is possible to apply for residence and work permit, insofar as you are offered employment in Denmark that is either covered by the ‘positive list’ or has a yearly salary of at least 375.000 kr. You can get more information about educations covered by the positive list on our website www.nyidanmark.dk.

Best regards

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Residence Permit You have been granted a residence permit in Denmark and shall live in Municipality.

The Immigration Service has in continuation hereof decided that you are covered by the integration efforts for newly arrived foreigners.

Validity period of the residence permit

Your residence is time limited. A foreigner who has had a time limited (temporary) residence permit in Denmark for at least 4 years without interruption may apply for a time unlimited (permanent) residence permit.

In order to obtain a time unlimited (permanent) residence permit you must earn at least 100 points, which can be obtained by fulfilling a number of requirements for a time unlimited. You can read more about the requirements for time unlimited (permanent) residence permit and your possibilities at www.nyidanmark.dk

You can lose your right to stay in Denmark Withdrawal

If it turns out that the basis for your residence is untrue, or no longer valid due to changed conditions in your home country, your residence permit may be withdrawn.

If you leave on vacation or other short term stays in your home country, the Immigration Service will investigate if you no longer need protection in Denmark.

December 6, 2011 informed us that you have no special attachment to specific areas in Denmark, or to persons living in Denmark.

You have furthermore informed us that you frequent The Trampoline House in Copenhagen and teach people Arabic classes.

You wish to live in Copenhagen because there is a university.

The Immigration Service has decided that you will be placed in Municipality, which is situated in Midtjylland Region.

We have, with regard to this decision, attached special importance to the fact that other refugees with a language and cultural background similar to yours, have earlier been assigned to Municipality.

Please note that in connection with decisions regarding assignment, the Immigration Service is responsible for the efficient integration of immigrants, included therein, their even distribution across the country.

No access to complaints

The decision as to which municipality you must live in, cannot be appealed to another administrative authority. This is in accordance with the law of integration § 53, subsection 1.

With best regards,

If you do no longer need protection, and you do also not have any special attachment to Denmark, you can expect your residence permit to be withdrawn or not renewed.

Allocation decision Integration

As of 1 February 2012 the municipality has the responsibility for your integration. This is in accordance with the law of integration § 4, subsection 2.

The municipality will help you become integrated in the Danish society. You will therefore be contacted by an employee of the municipality who will inform you more about what this means to you.

Reason

You have in the home placemement form as of

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visAvis № 7 • 2013

Mens vi venter på (retten til) at vende tilbage af Kamal Ahamada Da vi satte os ned i gården ved Palestinian Circus School tæt på Birzeit Universitet i Ramallah på den besatte Vestbred, for at snakke med cirkusdirektøren Shadi om kunst og teater, startede han med at fortælle sin livshistorie. Det er ikke en bemærkelsesværdig historie. Det er en historie, som han deler med fem millioner andre palæstinensere, hvis ikke endnu flere. Det er en historie, der sætter et ansigt på den ”statistiske flygtning”.

Mens mange af os nyder den bevægelsesfrihed, der er sikret af vores rødbedefarvede pas, viste Shadi os sit dokument, der begrænser langt mere end det tillader. Det er et dokument udstedt af staten Israel, der erstatter det pas, der tillader ham at rejse. Ingen palæstinensere har et palæstinensisk pas, og kun få har et dokument som Shadi. Et dokument, der måske bliver taget fra ham, da det kun bliver givet til indbyggere i Jerusalem og dér kan Shadi ikke længere bo – hans hus blev revet ned og han blev tvunget til at flytte.

Tragedien om ikke at kunne vende hjem fortsætter gennem generationer – Shadis familie blev tvunget til at forlade deres hjem i 1947, så blev han igen tvunget til at forlade sit hus, da det blev revet ned.

Hans børns fremtid er usikker. Det på trods af en FN-resolution fra 1948, der erklærer, at: “…[de palæstinensiske] flygtninge, der ønsker at vende tilbage til deres hjem og leve fredeligt med deres naboer, bør gives tilladelse til at gøre sådan den tidligst gennemførlige dato, og der bør betales kompensation for ejendom til dem, der vælger ikke at vende tilbage samt for tab af eller skade på ejendom, der ifølge folkeretten eller med rimelighed bør erstattes af de ansvarlige regeringer eller myndigheder.” (FN-resolution 194, vedtaget 11. december 1948 og bekræftet årligt på ny siden da) I kølvandet på massakren på palæstinenserne i Gaza, der fandt sted for blot en måned siden i november 2012, er det værd at huske, at palæstinensernes lidelser ikke er begrænset til en militær operation, der med jævne mellemrum genoptages af den israelske hær. I realiteten er staten Israel ikke bare en kolonimagt; den har siden sin grundlæggelse gentagne gange udfordret og ignoreret FN’s Verdenserklæring om Menneskerettigheder, som den har forpligtet sig til at respektere ved at være medlem af FN. Indtil

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nu er Israel blevet dømt mere end 65 gange af det internationale samfund for sine krænkelser af palæstinenseres menneskerettigheder.

En af de mest grundlæggende rettigheder, der stadig bliver krænket af staten Israel - og er blevet det siden 1948 - er flygtningenes ret til tilbagevenden. Denne ret er bekræftet af FN-resolutionen nævnt ovenfor. Nu, mens vi skriver det 65. år for denne ret, bliver den stadig nægtet palæstinensiske flygtninge. Siden 1948 har retten til tilbagevenden ikke bare været et væsentligt spørgsmål, når der diskuteres fred, men også en del af mange palæstinensiske familiers identitet og en vigtig del af det palæstinensiske folks historie. Selv i dag videregiver mange palæstinensiske familier fra en generation til den næste nøglerne til deres huse beliggende i området, hvor staten Israel er etableret.

Hvem er de palæstinensiske flygtninge?

Ifølge FN kan en flygtning defineres som en person, der som følge af velbegrundet frygt for forfølgelse grundet sin race, religion, nationalitet, sit tilhørsforhold til en særlig social gruppe eller sine politiske anskuelser befinder sig uden for det land, hvori hun har statsborgerret, og derfor ikke er i stand til – eller på grund af en sådan frygt ikke ønsker – at søge dette lands beskyttelse eller vende tilbage på grund af frygt for forfølgelse. Sådan defineres det i konventionen om flygtninges retsstilling fra 1951.

Al nakba er det arabiske ord for katastrofe.

Palæstinensere bruger ordet om den tragedie, der fandt sted i 1948, da tre fjerdedele af den palæstinensiske befolkning (mellem 750.000-900.000 mennesker) blev tvunget til at flygte fra deres hjem og mistede deres jord og ejendom. Hundredevis af dem blev massakreret af den nyligt grundlagte israelske stat. Andre flygtede for deres liv i den tro, at de en dag kunne vende tilbage. Den dag er endnu ikke kommet.

Israelske såkaldt “nye historikere” som Ilan Pappe beskriver utvetydigt hændelsen som etnisk udrensning, der havde til formål at udslette den oprindelige befolkning fra området for at bevare en jødisk stat. Mere end fem hundrede landsbyer beliggende i den nye stat samt på Vestbredden og i Gaza blev tilintetgjort. Langt størstedelen af den palæstinensiske befolkning blev flygtninge. Nogle

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af disse blev boende i deres hjemland, men som internt fordrevne flygtninge i den nye, israelske stat.

Som for eksempel Shadi, lederen af Cirkusskolen, fortæller os: ”Jeg er oprindeligt fra Jerusalem, men nu er jeg flygtning i Jerusalem. I ’67 blev vores familie smidt ud, ét hus blev revet ned, og et andet blev stjålet af israelere. Min familie flygtede til Jordan, og da de kom tilbage, besluttede de sig til igen at slå sig ned i Jerusalem. Men som flygtninge.” Mange palæstinensere står over for husnedrivninger eller tvungen forflyttelse (særligt beduinsamfundene), der vil gøre dem internt fordrevne, flygtninge i eget hjemland.

Al Naksa er et andet arabisk udtryk, der beskriver det andet store opbrud, da palæstinensere blev uddrevet fra deres land med magt eller af frygt for den israelske hær. Siden 1967 har staten Israel fortsat fordrivelsen af palæstinensere fra deres jord ved hjælp af en bred vifte af metoder. En af de mest effektive taktikker er 'frivillig forflyttelse' eller 'forflyttelse af egen vilje', der virker ved at skabe umulige levevilkår, ved eksempelvis at ødelægge palæstinensiske huse af militære eller administrative grunde, eller gennem oprettelsen af de hundredevis af checkpoints, der findes på Vestbredden.

Idéen er, at disse taktikker vil gøre palæstinensernes liv så uudholdeligt, at de flytter “af egen fri vilje”.

I dag udgør de palæstinensiske flygtninge en af de største flygtningegrupper i verden og består af mere end fem millioner mennesker.

Hvorfor retten til tilbagevenden er vigtig

Retten til tilbagevenden er en grundlæggende rettighed for alle mennesker uanset race og religion. Den er dybt rodfæstet i folkeretten og i de forskellige menneskerettighedschartre. ”Alle har ret til at forlade ethvert land, inklusiv sit eget, og til at vende tilbage til sit land”, erklærer eksempelvis artikel 13(2) i Verdenserklæringen om Menneskerettigheder.

For staten Israel er palæstinensernes tilbagevenden utænkelig, da den stædigt insisterer på, at der ingen tvungen fordrivelse fandt sted af palæstinensere i 1948 og 1967. Ved at acceptere palæstinensernes ret til at vende tilbage til deres hjemland, ville Israel på den ene eller den anden måde anerkende den tvungne fordrivelse af tusindvis af palæstinensere. Denne tilbagevenden ville også betyde, at palæstinenserne ville være i overtal i forhold til den jødiske befolkning, hvilket ville true staten Israels identitet, og derfor er et skridt, som den ikke er klar til at tage.

For palæstinenserne står retten til tilbagevenden ikke til forhandling, og så længe deres

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lovfæstede ret til at vende tilbage til deres hjem ikke håndhæves, vil der altid være en forhindring for fred. Sammen med afviklingen af bosættelserne på Vestbredden og i Østjerusalem, og Jerusalem som hovedstad for begge befolkninger, udgør flygtningenes tilbagevenden en af betingelserne for sikring af fred og retfærdighed i regionen.

Betyder det, at verdens fem millioner palæstinensiske flygtninge alle vil vende tilbage til Palæstina? Det spørgsmål er simpelthen ikke relevant på nuværende tidspunkt. Men under alle omstændigheder er det et spørgsmål, der er op til palæstinensernserne. Paragraf 11 i FN’s Generalforsamlings Resolution 194 understreger ikke bare denne grundlæggende rettighed, men erklærer også, at flygtninge har ret til at vælge, om de vil vende tilbage eller modtage en kompensation. Det vigtigste for palæstinenserne er, at staten Israel anerkender sit ansvar og retter sig efter international lov, og at det internationale samfund efter alle disse år træffer konkrete foranstaltninger til at gennemtvinge palæstinenserne ret til tilbagevenden.

Ud over at være en konflikt mellem narrativer, hvor den ene part hævder at have mere ret til landet end den anden, har den israelsk/palæstinensiske konflikt ført til årtiers krænkelser af humanitære standarder vedrørende menneskerettigheder.

Uanset hvilken side man vælger, er de palæstinensiske flygtninges ret til tilbagevenden et af de mest afgørende spørgsmål i forhold til at sikre fred og retfærdighed i Mellemøsten. Den 29. november 2012 anerkendte et stort flertal af FN’s medlemsstater langt om længe Palæstina som stat.

Bliver de palæstinensiske flygtninges fremtid det næste store skridt i retning af fred og retfærdighed i regionen?

visAvis № 7 • 2013

De magtløses historie af Daniel Palm Cisne Magt korrumperer, og absolut magt korrumperer absolut. Ordsproget var noget af det første jeg lærte, da jeg læste statskundskab. Man kan dog undgå at blive deprimeret af den tanke, at ethvert nyt bekendtskab bliver dét der forråder dig. Kan vi opnå en forståelse af, at historiens magthavere har spillet en skuffende rolle, kunne vi måske overveje at vende vores opmærksomhed mod dem, der ikke har denne magt, de magt-løse. I den følgende tekst vil jeg vise, at der ligger en besnærende historie i at fortælle om netop de magtløse.

De magtløse er dem, der ekskluderes fra officielle procedurer, da de ikke har legitim ret til at rejse krav hos statsinstitutionerne. Dog ville vi tage fejl, hvis vi troede, at de magtløse ikke spiller en rolle i udformningen af lovforslag og institutioner. De magtløse har en lang og belyst historik hvad angår indflydelse på institutioner og officiel politik.

I Saskia Sassens bog Territory, Authority, Rights (2006) er der en vidunderlig tanke, der diskuterer den dynamik, der op igennem tiderne har været med til at skabe borgerrettigheder: De magtløse har altid spillet en væsentlig rolle i udarbejdelsen af de rettigheder og de institutioner, der har hersket indtil nu. For at muliggøre dette er uofficielle metoder blevet brugt med succes, og bruges stadig, som et middel til større indflydelse og med den nødvendige slagkraft for at kunne skabe institutioner og rettigheder til fordel for de underpriviligerede. Jeg argumenterer for, at der nu er et behov for en diskurs om globalt statsborgerskab, således at de institutioner og regler, der stadig er afhængige af det nationale statsborgerskab, kan blive i stand til at håndtere den proces, der banker på alles dør: Globaliseringen.

Lad os starte med statsborgerskabets ophav. I begyndelsen af dets historie var der en noget forvirret udøvelse af autoritet, i slutningen af middelalderen i Europa. Da konge og pave på det tidspunkt sloges om territorier og magten, var der et historisk sjældent autoritetsskisma i gang. Det var netop pga. denne flydende autoritet, at folk i byerne så deres mulighed for at kræve selvstyre. I denne spæde begyndelse af statsborgerskabets historie blev bystyret indført. Bystyret var et produkt af den forhenværende magtløshed, der kom af den flydende og tvivlsomme autoritet. Igennem den sekulariserede rettigheds-diskurs kunne man kræve frihed og retfærdighed og skabe sin egen sfære uden for kronens og pavens rækkevidde. For

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at kunne etablere denne diskurs blev brudstykker af romerretten såvel som folke- og civillov samlet.

Nyetablerede retssale blev taget i brug som institutioner, der skulle implementere denne ny retsform.

Resultatet af denne retspraksis var en ny historisk rolle, der forbeholdt sig retten til gennemsigtige og åbenlyse procedurer i en autoritetsudøvelse, der hvilede på: Borgeren.

De, der migrerede fra landbrug og mindre samfund til byen, oplevede en tilstand af retslig frihed, man ikke havde set før. Byen blev symbol på denne frihed. Det, der skete fremover, er velkendt.

Borgerne krævede retten til fast ejendom. Og ved at sikre borgerens private rettigheder var handel ikke længere under kirkens og adelens kontrol, men en del af de privatiserede markedskræfter. Det kapitalististiske samfund begyndte som en befrielse og afskar samtidigt de forhenværende autoriteter fra deres andel, som hidtil betragtedes som et helligt privilegium.

Dette skift i loven brugte bystyret, der før blot var undersåtter, imod deres tidligere overmænd.

Den privatiserede økonomi satte skub i en eksplosiv dynamik mod et lovligt selvstyre, som fortsatte igennem europæisk historie. I byerne kom borgeren til at støtte adelens bureaukratiske projekt, hvilket forfremmede de institutioner, der udøvede magt baseret på en rationel tilgang hvorved de banede vejen for gennemsigtighed og indsigelsesret fra private, skattebetalende borgere.

Særligt var det beboerne i byernes randområder, der drev denne sekulariseringsproces fremad, og udfordrede den hellige orden, som tidligere herskede i Europa. Den forhenværende magt- og papirløse undersåt blev en officiel borger, sikret med personlige rettigheder. Den retslige logik afløste den hellige logik op igennem den europæiske middelalder. Staten som den lovmæssige magtudøver opstod og borgerens ’statsborgerskab’ blev forbundet med en stat under stadig udvikling.

Fra det udgangspunkt må den anden side af mønten fortælles. Sekulariseringsprojektet affejede religionen som en endnu ikke oplyst fornemmelse for verden, der skulle forblive i privaten. Dét, der gav flertallet af verdensbefolkingen deres mening med livet, måtte ikke politiseres. I takt med at den koloniale kapitalisme spredte sig verden over, spredtes den privatiserede lovlige handel, og ’stærke’ nationer indtog ethvert territorie med den ressourcemæssigt mindste interesse, men viste sig alligevel utilstrækkelige i at håndtere Europas kriser, hvilket førte til to verdenskrige. Nationalstatens logik førte til katastrofe, men staterne forblev al-

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ligevel de herskende institutioner i efterkrigstiden.

Igennem det vestlige hegemoni spredtes det ’internationale system’ verden over og indførte statsautoriteten som koncept, uanset hvilke eventuelle uenigheder der var om territorier og uden hensynstagen til at geografiske optegninger ikke nødvendigvis konstituerer en statsmagt. Hvis dertil indrettede stater kæmpede med at opretholde en pro-vestlig orden, var militær intervention nødvendigt.

Man kunne være tilbøjelig til at tro, at borgere i dag står fuldkommen uden magt over for den statsstyrende elite, der bestyrer administrationer og statsautoritet i et givetvis eksklusivt og selvtjenende øjemed. Det lader til, at frigørelsesprojektet via sekulære rettigheder og politisk organisering har vendt sig mod sit ophav. Man burde dog ikke lade sig narre af det faktum, at inde i staten selv, er det de magtløses politik, der fortsætter med at sætte dagsordenen for statsinstitutionerne. I den knap så fjerne fortid handlede de magtløses kampe hovedsageligt om at minimere diskrimination, være det køn, race, klasse, koloniale magtparadigmer, eller seksuel præference. Det er en lang række af magtløse, der i deres favør har skabt love og institutioner med uofficielle metoder, såsom gadeprotester – skønt det var forbudt – besættelse af steder og bygninger, eller ved at holde taler, ved at italesætte verdener ingen endnu havde forestillet sig. Staten er ikke som sådan et redskab for dem, der allerede har magten. Den kan udfordres og transformeres for at kunne bemyndige dem, som lider under eklusive regimer. Denne proces dannes aktivt og løbende af folk, der aldrig før har haft magt, men som formåede at transformere statslige og retslige procedurer til deres fordel.

Desværre har det aldrig været de magtløse, der drev globaliseringsprojektet. Derimod har det været den rige og magtfulde klasse, der styrer de store selskaber og transnationale investeringsfonde. Tilsammen har de forsøgt at overvinde den herskende velfærdsstat, der opstod i kølvandet på 2. verdenskrig, hvilket var møntet på at fremme nationalkapitalen og sikre en jævn fordeling blandt statsborgerne. Ved statsborgere skal forstås en nationsbaseret, patriotisk medborger. Dette nationalistiske velfærdssystem viste sig at være ustabilt af flere grunde, hvilket kræver en længere diskussion, end jeg kan udføre her.

Ikke desto mindre er det vigtigt at pointere, at velfærdstatens administration styrede den transnationale handels organisering på stram vis. Høje skatter og restriktive love om udenlandske investeringer satte klare grænser for enhver transaktion over grænserne. Med velfærdstatens krise så man strategier, såsom lobbyismen og privatisering af nøgleinstitutioner og agenturer m.fl., hvor de globalt orienterede kapitalister frigjorde dét, som vi betragter som global kapital. Den

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globalt orienterede kapitalistklasse drog magt til sig overfor staten, og endte med at dominere politik. Det globale markeds ’flow’ accelereres af nye kommunikations- og transportteknologier og infiltrerer alle verdenshjørner. Men mens produkter og investeringer flyder frit, er verdensbefolkningen stadig bundet af nationale grænser. Heri pointen: Statens rolle her er tvetydig. Den begunstigede det globale marked, som nu tilsyneladende underkender staten, samtidigt med at et globalt statborgerskabsprojekt er forhåndsdømt til at mislykkes.

Det er rimeligt at påstå, at nutidens magtløse konfronteres med en autoritetsskisma ikke uligt det i middelalderens Europa. Hverken marked eller stat har den absolutte autoritet. Utvivlsomt er det, at markedsparadigmer såsom effektivitet og fleksibilitet har hersket over medborgerens private sfære igennem de seneste årtier, men deres magt over staten er ufuldkommen. Staten er ikke kun agent for den globale kapital; den er stadig til udbud for politiske interesser, for vælgerne, såvel som de kæmpende magtløse. Det skyldes, at det neoliberale globaliseringsprojekt viste sig ikke kun ekstrem sårbart, men mangelfuldt, idet dets politiske kultur ikke har været tilstrækkelig inklusiv. Gadeprotester er nu stærkere end de var i de hyppigt nævnte 60'ere. I sin undersøgelse i bogen Les temps des émeutes (2009), konkluderer Alain Bertho, at der er en global uro hos de magtløse, som udfordrer markedskræfterne og en tvivlsom politisk repræsentation. Protest og uenighed hos samfundets ’glemte’, dem der systematisk bliver eksluderet fra magten, har potentialet til at forvandle institutioner til nye, endnu ukendte former.

Historien bærer vidnesbyrd om præcis det.

Ligesom de globalt orienterede kapitalister har transformeret nationstaten for at kunne realisere egne interesser, er det nu verdensborgernes tur. Et uskrevet kodeks bemyndiger det globale medborgerskab. Det, der nu mangler, er en uofficiel diskurs, igennem hvilken de forhenværende magtløses behov kan tilgodeses og sikres. Listen over inspirerende personligheder, der har kæmpet for rettigheder, er lang: Rosa Luxemburg, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, m.fl. Alle har de konfronteret de institutioner og procedurer, der gjorde dem magtløse, men alligevel opnåede de afgørende sejre for deres sag. Hvor mon vi ville være i dag, hvis disse mennesker ikke havde kæmpet deres kampe, på trods af deres magtløshed? De magtløse har en levende historie at fortælle, og forhåbentligt flere på vej. Byerne kan igen blive den politiske arena for etableringen af en ny retlig ramme for global statsborgerskab, idet det urbane rum bliver centralt i globaliseringens transformative tider. De mennesker, der allerede er i byen, har en afgørende ’tilstedeværelse’ i dette strategisk vigtige rum. De kan ikke reduceres til at være illegale, marginal-

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iserede genstande for offentlighedens uvidenhed.

Tilstedeværelse er første skridt til at overvinde magtløsheden. Derfra er grænserne kun sat af de etablerede institutioner, og de magtløses kreativitet til at transformere dem.

Kastrup Airport

Litteratur:

Alain Bertho: Le temps des émeutes, Paris: Bayard (2009) David Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2005) Saskia Sassen: Territory, Authority, Rights. From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2006)

- a few words about the lot of the immigrant

By Alen Mešković

One summer day in 1996 I landed at Kastrup Airport after a three-week vacation in the Balkans.

“We are home”, I thought- and was instantly startled at the phrase, which had occurred to me completely spontaneously. Because, what exactly did I mean by “home”? Wasn’t I “a stranger” here?

Hadn’t I come from a totally different place?

I was 18-19 years old at the time and had only been living in Denmark for a year and a half. Before that I stayed in Croatia for two years as a refugee, and before that, 14 years in Bosnia. Denmark was still a foreign country to me, Bosnia and Croatia were slowly becoming it, and me, I was a teenager with war in the baggage and hard rock in the headphones. Everything was still strange and unexplored – both around me and within me, while at the same time I was getting to know myself and my surroundings. Concepts like “Bosnian”, “Danish”, “home country” and “the foreign country” were becoming less fixed and more relative each day. I did not see this clearly but I could sense it. The reality around me regularly threatened them.

For instance that day at the airport. For I wasn’t precisely leaving home back then – that is to say Bosnia – but Croatia, where my friends and family lived as refugees. In other words, I was neither leaving nor coming home. Neither in a concrete nor in a figurative sense. In turn, I experienced for the first time one of the paradoxes which are associated with having two home countries and yet none, with feeling like a stranger and home everywhere.

I did not reflect much on it that day, the experience was, as mentioned, primarily of an empirical nature. But ever since I have often recalled this landing and pondered on the heavy symbolism of the situation. It has become my preferred example of the ultimate immigrant-experience, the lot of the immigrant to the highest degree.

My debut collection of poems Første gang tilbage (First time back) (2009), comes as a continuation of these ponderings and is fundamentally nothing but a stylistic and thematic circling around this paradoxical position between two places and times, then and now. Several key poems have been written by taking as a point of departure this mixed and contradictory sense of alienation and domes-

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tication, loss and (re)conquest of one’s own liquid identity, while concepts like “here” and “there”, “then” and “now”, “inside” and “outside”, “you” and “I” are swapping places, melting together and being tossed and turned.

The collection of poems came about in the wake of a trip to Bosnia in the summer of 2006 and my later contribution to Gyldendal’s antholog Nye stemmer (New Voices) (2007), which three of the poems form part of. It wasn’t my first trip back to my native town. In fact, I was there for the third time, but it was the first time that I stepped inside my childhood home, which my father had just made habitable. Stepping inside over the doorstep was a very special experience. Curious, apropos of the opening poem “The curious house”. At the same time “the homecoming” was closely related to the one ten years earlier. Now I could finally say: ‘We are home’, without being puzzled by it. Or could I? Because both the house and the city had changed in those years, while I was gone. They had become more unfamiliar to me than I had expected. There was therefore a disparity between what I saw and what I remembered. What I had been missing for a long time and what I was allowed to see (again).

I walked around in what was left of the city and thought about a poem by Baudelaire, “The Swan”, in which the poetic self is idling about the renovated Paris and recalling the old shacks, which are no longer there. “In my dear memory, all remains unwavering”, as one of the Danish translations has it. I often think of this poem when I visit my native town, and it’s not just a defiant “regard” to the victors of the war, with ethnic cleansing on their conscience - the ones who first bombed and then restored the city beyond recognition. It is also a sober realization of the fact that the unwavering and the homely are things which live most strongly in our remembrance. In the myth about “home” and “home country” on the one side and “the foreign country” on the other.

In the more concrete horizon of experiences, away from the abstract and most often politicized antagonisms, fortunately things look different. As any human being, the immigrant too is an acting subject. He or she is not just a petrified and divided object, which stands between its two (or more)

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worlds, between the homely and the foreign, the known and the unknown. No, he has his free will and the possibility of acquiring the foreign, renouncing the homely, combining their individual elements, doing whatever the heck he wants with them- and creating his own world, detached from the alienating categories and fixed concepts. The very fact that the immigrant in his concrete sphere of experience is able to mould himself and his iden-

tity, enables him to create a unique existential place of belonging, a home in a broader sense. This home is only his own - liquid, floating and always in transition. It is located there, where the immigrant is, and it always moves along.

In this sense I was right at that time in Kastrup in 1996, when I thought “We are home”. At least just as much as that time in Bosnia in 2006.

The curious house

Standing

The house the war has lived in is a curious house. Over three years, three people have opened the door to find that all walls turn to glass when you step across the threshold. Light a lamp and all the windows will be blinded and the roof will hang in the air like an upturned open book.

If this were an old letter you found in an atlas while looking for something else – a city or a road to a city – maybe you would open it and read it, just as I may have opened and read yours today. You would recognise the code in my handwriting, sniff the paper that would smell of the Paper, and fold it out. Slowly, slowly you would fold it out and, standing there, decipher the words, the music and what matters most, even though neither the words, the music nor what matters most stand in letters. Even though the road from Me to You is not the same as the road from You to Me, they both wind through the same atlas: To have a share in something that is shared up, but cannot be shared with anyone, least of all with the paper that only smells of the Paper, is your lot and mine. Read no more. The word is yours.

Close the atlas, travel on and keep on saying that you do not travel, but stand fast – as a master in his own house, as a Dear in a letter.

This occurs on every arrival.

To be outside is to own the house. To be inside: the house owns you.

Especially in summer the prospect of the river and the opposite bank is a sight worth seeing, and at night you can hear a voice in the attic, a voice whispering tales in outlandish languages through which the word home roams unaltered, altering.

The last thing I remember of this house, in which no one now dares to lean against a dream, is a face and a voice behind the face telling me that my life, the second, begins first now. Behind the words but not here hangs a thin curtain dotted with round holes which assure me that I stand by a window. The window has not yet turned to a wall, and the river, that uses the holes for smuggling glimmers of light from a language ship into the house, flows north, to where roaming voices whisper anchoring words: A house is not a home till it’s left.

Jeg vil naturligvis blive fanget, hvis jeg vender tilbage Når du søger asyl i et land, hvor regeringen ikke anerkender den fare, du flygter fra. Når en fredsaftale ikke betyder fred. Om det vanskelige i at være sudaneser – der søger asyl i Danmark.

Af Ismail Suleiman Efter min anholdelse i Khartoum, hovedstaden i Sudan, blev jeg truet med henrettelse, hvis jeg blev kontaktet af oppositionen, ledet af Dr. Khalil Ibrahim. Med ham og JEM (Bevægelsen for frihed og lighed) kæmpede jeg for et nyt Darfur.

Myndighederne mistænkte mig. På trods af deres skarpe kontrol i alle havne og lufthavne, lykkedes

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det mig at flygte.

At ankomme til Danmark var en lang og hård rej-se gennem Europa. Da jeg ankom til Grækenland, troede jeg, det ville betyde en ende på den undertrykkelse og forfølgelse, jeg flygtede fra, men jeg blev overrasket. Grækenland var et mareridt. På samme måde var min ansøgning om asyl i Danmark forbundet med en følelse af håb, som er forsvundet dag for dag i de danske asyllejre.

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Det er en vanskelighed ikke at være bekendt med asyllov-givningen i det nye land. Det fører til forvirring og usikkerhed, men den endeløse venten er det værste.

Jeg ventede længe i Danmark bare for at få endeligt lov til at søge asyl. En del af Dublinkonventionen blev genovervejet, der ellers dikterede, at jeg skulle sendes tilbage til Grækenland som det første europæiske land, jeg ankom til. Jeg har nu været i Danmark i over 2 år. For et halvt år siden fik jeg mit endelige afslag på asyl. Regeringen lukker øjnene for situationen i mit land.

Hovedargumentet i afslag på sudanesiske asylansøgninger er den omfattende fredsaftale, underskrevet i Doha i 2005, efter sigende mellem den sudanesiske regering og Darfurbevægelserne.

Men ingen fredsaftale fandt sted. Den sudanesiske regering, det førende parti Zakria og dets leder Tijani Sisi, inviterede ikke Darfurbevægelserne,

de inviterede kun deres venner. Situationen i Sudan er derfor ikke ændret til det bedre, på trods af hvad papiret om en aftale måtte fortælle.

Sudan er ikke et sikkert sted at være. At sende sudanesiske asylansøgere tilbage til Sudan betyder ikke blot at risikere deres liv, men også deres familiemedlemmers. De sudanesiske myndigheder spørger stadigvæk mine forældre om, hvor jeg befinder mig. De siger, at de ikke ved det. Jeg vil naturligvis blive fanget, hvis jeg vender tilbage.

Den sudanesiske lov siger, at hvis du er en trussel mod statens sikkerhed, vil du blive henrettet.

På trods af alt dette er jeg, samt majoriteten af sudanesiske asylansøgere, blevt afvist. Jeg beder Gud om at hjælpe sudanesere i vores vanskelige liv i Danmark. Jeg håber, at de ansvarlige myndigheder i dette land vil genoverveje situationen i Sudan og dermed situationen for sudanesiske asylansøgere i Danmark.

What do people in the asylum camps think of the new asylum agreement?

In October 2012 the Government made a new asylum agreement together with Enhedslisten and Liberal Alliance. The Trampoline House welcomes the improved possibilities to live, work, and educate oneself outside the asylum camps but disapproves of the demand of cooperation and the continued use of motivational measures. Thus the message from the campaign Out of the Camps! has not changed. However The Trampoline House is a community of many different people and therefore holds a wide array of opinions and experiences. In the following three residents of the Danish asylum camps share their opinions on the asylum agreement. The texts are based on interviews and the names of the interviewees are given by initials or first name.

By The Trampoline House Said

I would like to say something about the problems I see in the camp. I have seen many people take their own life, but when I check the news I see a different story. One man from Center Holmegaard had gotten a rejection and he had very serious problems in Afghanistan. He lit fire to himself. In the news they wrote that he had been drinking and then had smoked a cigarette, and that it was because of the alcohol he caught fire. I know he killed himself because of his situation. Nobody wanted to listen to me.

Another guy, in Auderød, hung himself. It took two days before anybody found him. Two weeks

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ago there was a guy in Sandholm who committed suicide. He was in his room for four days before he was found. I saw him. There was a smell coming out from his room. The police came, but nobody said anything to us residents about the fact that someone had died. Nobody understood what was happening. It was very quiet. An ambulance came and brought him to the hospital. We didn’t find anything in the newspapers about it. I know another story similar to this.

I think it is good that people can live, work and study outside the camp, but it should be the same for everybody. Phase 1, 2, and 3. They cannot demand that people sign to go back voluntarily. We have real problems in our countries.

We cannot go back. How can we leave Denmark

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when we have serious problems where we are from? With the government, with Taliban, with everything? Those men I have told of, they could not sign. I am certain they did want to sign. Maybe a few people will sign because they don’t want to have problems with the Danish Government, but 90 % will not sign to go back to their country.

J

I heard about the agreement from a friend of mine.

One day after school we passed by this poster that said: “Now asylum seekers are allowed to work!” and that they would get their own house and all this. Then I said: “Huh!” Who is giving me this information? It was New Times [A paper published by the Red Cross]. Who is New Times? Which power does New Times have? I asked one of my teachers if he would explain what the poster said. “This is not for everyone,” he said to me.

It is only for people in Phase 2. People with two negatives have to sign to agree to voluntary readmission or they will not give you work. If you sign, then you will work for three weeks, and then they send you back!

The problem is that we are here because of our political problems, not economic problems, and not to find work. I am a political refugee, I didn’t come here to find a job. I had a good job in my own country. I can only get these rights if I sign to go back. If you cooperate with the police, you get the rights. So in whose favor is the new agreement? After a short while they will send you back so what is the point? This is coercion. Many of us refugees had good jobs and we only fled because of the situation in our homelands. We are asking for protection. I can only say that this law is made to force people to leave.

Maybe it is because of pressure from the EU the government thought “let’s do this to make the migrants leave the country.” If this came from the politicians’ hearts, if they wanted to do something good to help and let us live like human beings they could do very simple things. We are human beings like them. We to must eat. If this agreement was from their hearts, it would be the government and the immigration service that gave us the information about the agreement and not New Times. They should send a letter to every single asylum seeker with the information and a work permit. To prove it is for real and that they are serious! If they want to move you to a different camp or you get a rejection on your application for asylum they send you a letter immediately. If we don’t want to leave they send policemen. You know why? Because these things are real to them. Of course it is good that some people will get out of the camps and work, but such a thing must be based on a serious and strong intention.

I do not think it is a good agreement. It is not

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in favor of asylum seekers. If they make a new law, why is it New Times that has to tell us about it? It’s like it is secret and we don’t know anything about it. I would like to know why? I find it strange.

S I think it is a step in the right direction for us. As it is right now, there is nothing to do in the camp. If I can live outside the camp and work it is very good.

I want to work. You know, as it is right now, it feels like I am not a human being. I am just in the camp.

In a month I get 700 kr. two times - and it is not enough. I want to buy clothes, shoes, and things like that and I can’t. This is just enough for food.

It would be better if I could get a real job. Then I would be able to take care of my future.

I think it is dangerous that they want you to sign to agree to voluntary readmission. I am from Sudan. The Danish Government know that the situation in Sudan is very difficult. I had problems in my home country that is why I came here. If they deport me, it is really dangerous for my life. I want to get out of the camp. I want to know, that if I sign, does it mean that I can stay until the situation in Sudan is better? If the situation gets better I want to go back. I have stayed here four or five years and the situation is very bad. I know nothing of my family or my future. People in the camps are afraid because we don’t know what it means if we sign. It makes a big difference if they tell me to leave right now or if I can stay one or two years.

It’s an open question. EU decided that they cannot send people back to Sudan right now.

About the motivational measures I don’t think they work. Every asylum seeker knows full well about the situation in her or his home country. I don’t know much about other countries but I know enough about my own. The situation there is very difficult and the system is very tough. I am in phase 3. All the people from Sudan are phase 3. Only very few from Sudan get asylum compared to other nationalities. I think it is the criteria to gain asylum which should be changed.

I think it’s good if I can get out of the camp and work, then I would live more like people here in The TrampolineHouse, a normal life. I would like to start school again. I would like to learn and complete my education. In Sudan I studied journalism in the university, that’s why I am here right now.

I hope something happens. I hope to get a normal life, where I can live outside the camp. As it is right now, I feel like a subhuman. I hope it happens soon. I think I might sign because I am stressed, bored, and I want to do something with my life.

When my country is safe again I will say “thank you very much” and return. With the present government in Sudan unfortunately I don’t think it will happen soon. You have to support bad things with this government. I am from the north. This

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government is crazy, like a mafia, just corrupt. They can’t steal from the people in quiet, so they fight and they kill.

I hope that the situation in my country will change. I hope for peace. Then I can return. I do not understand how I have ended up in this situation. If my life in Sudan had been without prob-

lems of course I would have stayed with my father, my mother, and my sisters. I think The Trampoline House changes, but many asylum seekers no longer believe in change, because they think about other things. They want their own house and live outside the camp, they want to start working.

A More Humane Asylum Policy?

The Danish Government promised a more humane asylum policy when they presented the new law on asylum in 2012: “The Government is aiming for a more humane approach to asylum policy. The criteria determining who can have asylum will not be changed. However, those who seek asylum in Denmark are to be treated in a dignified fashion.” This is what it says in the Government platform. Taking into consideration this statement, it is interesting to have a close look at how the Government perceives dignity and if the Government is going to live up to its promise of a humane asylum policy.

By Katja lund thomsen The new agreement on asylum contains positive measures which mean, among other things, that asylum processes will take place faster and that families will be treated better; it also means that asylum seekers will be allowed to live and work outside camps. By involving asylum seekers in towns and in the labour market, we create a smaller distance between us and them, and we move quietly towards an inclusive Denmark where politicians acknowledge the fact that asylum seekers are a part of society. This is the first step towards an acceptable asylum policy. However, the agreement is also exclusive.

The Government avoids relating to the fact that asylum seekers are rejected repeatedly despite recommendations from the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR. If the Government’s aim is to ensure a humane and dignified policy, it is crucial that the Government lives up to the insistent encouragement of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, UNHCR and Amnesty International about abiding by the convention on refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights. However, the new agreement on asylum means that Denmark will continue the same hard line in the field of recognition of refugees as did the VKO Government.

We will continue sending human beings back to countries at war and to countries suffering humanitarian crises. This is a serious shifting of responsibility.

It should be compulsory in a democratic society governed by law to establish an independent authority to ensure that Denmark would live up to universal human rights in the future. Currently, it

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is the refugee council that has the final say. A dignified way of treating asylum seekers is inextricably tied to asylum seekers’ prospect of obtaining asylum. Today asylum seekers are forced to be conscious of the fact that they may be sent back to their home countries despite their right to be protected.

The Rule of Exception

The following examples provide a clear example of Danish asylum policy and some of the criteria you have to meet in order to be granted asylum in Denmark: The new agreement on asylum means that children will still not be processed independently. The consequence is that children risk living in a camp for up to a year if the parents do not cooperate about being sent home. Experts say that children may suffer serious harm if they live in camps for more than six months.

Unaccompanied minor asylum seekers may not be given asylum. If their home country has a ‘reception centre,’ children will be sent back to live there. If a minor is lucky and is granted a residence permit, then the residence permit usually expires on the day when the child turns 18. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a child’s interests must always be the number one priority.

Political or economic power interests must never undermine the rights of a child.

The Government platform says the following about humanitarian residence: “The field of humanitarian residence must continue to be narrow, and it must be the exception that a humanitarian residence permit is granted.” An asylum seeker will be turned down if treatment of an illness is offered in the home country. The reality facing many

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people is that this is not possible for geographical or economic reasons. There is a long way between reality and practical life – a long way between human being and system.

In Denmark you have to be personally and individually persecuted to be recognised as a refugee.

We do not recognise the right of a persecuted group of people to be protected. This is what in the worst case scenario leads to mass expulsions: a lot of people are persecuted to the same extent, and therefore it is argued that it cannot be proved that any of them is being persecuted more than others. This was what happened to the Iraqis who were seeking protection in Brorson’s Church.

In other words, only those people who meet some very specific requirements will be treated in a humane way. Refugees who do not live up to these requirements are in a no man’s land and only have the prospect of being sent home to a country from which they have escaped. Is this dignified?

Opportunities and Collaboration

The Government is going in a new political direction where asylum seekers will be recognised as being part of society. They now have a right to live and work outside camps. This is a step away from Denmark’s policy about making ‘strangers’ invisible and institutionalising them in an isolated life in the remote asylum camps. Being allowed to build up an everyday life together with others is important to all of us. However, the new initiative puts rejected asylum seekers in a complicated situation.

Suddenly, they become part of a systematic game where the quid pro quo principle is the rule. If they agree to go home as soon as the Danish authorities say it safe to do so, they will be allowed to live a more normal life, but also a more unsafe life where you can only live in the moment. It is hard to let the system decide your fate when the political reality is that a markedly higher number of people are to be sent home.

And not everybody is capable of cooperating.

There are currently no clear guidelines that specifically describe what cooperation actually involves.

For instance, not everybody can present the required travel documentation that the authorities demand – although they are willing to do so.

No one flees because they want to. Few people will enter into a deal about returning to a country that they have fought to escape from. Only 12-15 % of rejected asylum seekers in Denmark cooperate about being sent home. And there is obviously a reason for this. We cannot escape the fact that if you cooperate about being sent home, you are asked to acknowledge that there is a good reason for the lack of trust that your motive for fleeing has been met with.

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Rejected People

The Government has said that Denmark must work hard to make those who have been rejected return home. The idea behind purposefully and systematically making a rejected person’s life worse is that he or she will go back to his or her country voluntarily.

For instance, it is acknowledged that the situation in Syria is so dangerous that it is not possible to forcibly send home Syrians. Nevertheless, all Syrians are denied asylum. Those who have fled can now look forward to many years in the asylum system circus, which involves being moved around and living an uncertain life. Denmark overrules refugees’ need and right to be protected.

It says in a report from a Danish Civil Service committee from June 2012 that no empirical studies have been made, which confirm that measures supposed to motivate people to return home are of any consequence in relation to the question of whether an asylum seeker cooperates about returning home after having been rejected. Nonetheless, the committee maintains that we must continue in Denmark to use these measures: “The measures designed to motivate asylum seekers to return home are to ensure fast, efficient and increased success in sending home rejected asylum seekers,” it says in the report.

One of these measures is about forcibly transferring rejected asylum seekers to a centre from which they can be sent home. The committee believes the transfer will be felt more strongly by those who are subjected to it if the so-called ‘feeding scheme’ is in operation. What this really means is that people are robbed of the opportunity to prepare their own food. As a part of the systematic process of sending people home, they must report to the police once a week, and asylum seekers are put behind bars without a trial in Ellebæk – on the basis of police suspicions. This is a tool of punishment that breaks down people who wish to build up a new life. The committee’s position builds entirely on police experience and judgements. The police are provided with the power of a judge. This is indefensible.

A Dignified Asylum Policy?

Improvements have been made. However, this does not change the fact that the Danish asylum system is based on a lack of trust instead of being based on trust. Neither does it change the fact that Denmark’s approach is in contravention of international conventions. It is often argued that rejected asylum seekers must accept the decision because ‘they are part of’ a society based on the rule of law.

The problem is that this ‘society based on the rule of law’ favours only the system. Refugees are detained and imprisoned without a trial. The criteria determining who should be granted asylum build on the possibility of exception. The labyrinthine system creates one obstacle after another. This is not dignified. People are not being treated humanely.

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