KOMENTAR

DAYS OF THE FORGOTTEN

According to the non - governmental and other humanitarian organizations there are about 20 million refugees in the world today, but their exact number is hard to establish because of more and more new wars, natural disasters and the growth of hunger in the countries of the Third World. Most of these displaced people live in the refugee camps, which are in many times situated inside war regions and where the drinkable water is almost a ‘miracle’. Many of the refugees and emigrants strive to reach so called developed world, about which they ingenuously believe, it will treat them better than that one they were born in.

We, who live in the so called First World quite justifiably promulgate ourselves for the ‘developed, even civilized’, since we were the first to discover many ‘amazing’ things, that make our lives more interesting and simple: microwave oven, taximeter, frozen food, napalm, 500 different kinds of beer and twice as many kinds of sedatives - for all those times our frozen food burns in our brand new microwave oven and we just can’t get a goddamn taxi, that would give us a lift to our favourite fast food restaurant and we just want to blow something up. We are also distinguished as the ‘developed’ by our stupid habit, that we like to donate special days to all those delicate points we are unable to think about regularly. Like Day of planet Earth, or Day against smoking, or Day of struggle against AIDS, etc.

Thus we find ourselves a couple of times a year - on this or that special Day of whatever - horrified by dramatic statistical data shown on TV, which informs us just how seriously we are killing our planet and eachother. But then the whole thing somehow quiets down the next day and untill next year remains less topical than old revivals of TV’s Ricki Lake. Everything is just a delusion, a collective social ritual through which we try to wash our dirty conscience.

Among other special Days we also know the Day of refugees, which has been set on the 20th June. This is the day we spend getting more or less acquainted with the problems of millions of the violently displaced and others, who had to leave their homes for the sake of bare surviving. And every year on this day we listen to the same story: humanitarian organizations warn, that the problems of refugees and emigrants currently staying in the western countries haven’t been solved properly yet and the governmental spokesmen respond, that the problems have been examined closely and will be solved soon. The public usually accepts the latter rhetoric. It’s easier to switch over to Ricki Lake then. 

This year’s Day of refugees was completely overlooked at the shameful EU summit in Sevilla, Spain. The heads of member states namely discussed first of all about repressive barrage of the river of emigrants, which irrepressibly pours into European Union. There were even proposals at the Summit about various sanctions against those Third World countries, that wouldn’t want to cooperate in obstructing the migrations to the West. European Union therefore wants to barricade itself with its ‘democratic values and interests’ into the Schengen fortress in which there will be no room for the masses of the starving and ragged, who would also like to live under the wings of this self – proclaimed democracy and freedom. And this is faschist and very horrifying.

In Slovenia, the future brick of the Schengen wall, 20th June was earmarked by the Day of opened doors in the so called Asylum Center in Ljubljana, where many asylum seekers wait to be sent back to the countries, from which they have just emigrated. The Day of opened doors was organized by the Ministry of internal affairs in cooperation with the UNHCR. The ‘show’ these people put on disclosed a whole new dimenzion of the meaning ‘shame’. The visitors were able to watch the so called illegal emigrants, who were standind behind rusty bars. There were no opened doors for them that day, or any day for that matter. The whole scene looked like a ZOO. If you had approached the bars, german speaking Kurds for example explained to you, that their rooms have finally been cleaned up (after two and a half months!), that there are usualy about 15 of them sleeping in one small room, some of them are being forced to sleep in a shower room and sometimes they are held in their rooms for over a week with no outdoors exercise. Two Kurds stated they are being sent back to their homeland later that day – on the very Day of refugees! Behind the Asylum Center, on a parking lot of the City’s public transport, about one meter tall fence was set up in the corner. Just in case a cop with a gun guarded the fence. It was hard to guess, who the police officer was protecting – very few and mostly young visitors of the Asylum Center or the emigrant’s children, who were playing on the asfalt behind the fence. When some girl approached the fence and tried to play with – according to our governmental officials – an illegal child, cop stopped her stating: “The fence is the limit!” It was also strictly forbiden to give food to the people living (if that’s the word) inside the Center.

It was more than clear to everybody what was happening. The adminstration of the Center cleaned up the rooms and the hallways just before the 20th June, they brought in cops with friendly and family faces and gave the children, who are along with their parents waiting for the deportation, some balls and rackets. The ‘show’ we have witnessed was the utmost humiliating humanitarian parody, intention of which was to show the citizens of Slovenia, that in Asylum Center in Ljubljana rule only happiness and order. As a journalist for Radio Student, who has been following the living conditions in the Center for a while now, I can testify this is not true - at all. A friend of mine works at the Center as a volunteer, but he decided not to show up there on the 20th June, cause he didn’t want to be a part of the shameful display. I will also bet you my left eye, that while you’re reading this, conditions in the Center are back to their old practises. Since I’m not alone in my concerns, a group of us (about 15 various activists) gathered in front of the Center on the Day of opened doors and my friends hung out three shits, which stated: “Day of opened doors? No exit!”, “For the world of many worlds!” and “Against the system of exclusion!”. We also handed out pamphlets to other visitors, stating that the Center is not a ZOO and that we demand better treatment for the emigrants and refugees.

Another local story is getting an epilogue these days – the trial of the infamous godfather, Josip Loncaric, who organized the transporting of ‘illegal’ emigrants from southern Slovenian border to the Western Europe. Loncaric was already trialed (in absence, though) in Italy and got 14 years of jail. He’s currently in Slovenia, facing another trial here, but he’s not in custody. Furthermore, his lawyer is now delaying the entire legal process because of the alleged Loncaric’s health problems. The godfather has strong chances, he will be let off the hook, or his lawyer will delay the trial until charges against Loncaric go obsolete. One cannot help herself/himself not to ask a question, what about health problems of all those dozens of thousands of people, who are being transported for hundreds of kilometers on trucks, tank lorries, boats, ships, etc. These people, we’re told, are illegal, but the money their transporters make on them is not. It buys them lawyers and gets them out of jails.

Post scriptum: From almost 2500 refugees from Bosnia and Hercegovina, who have been situated in Slovenia for ten years now, only 41 of them have been recognized the status of the refugee. In past ten years thousands of emigrants seeked asylum in my country. About 20 of them were lucky.

Komentar je bil primarno obljavljen v spletnem magazinu Blue Green Earth.

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