Global Refugee Crises: What are People Fleeing From?
It is 2017. The Syrian Refugee crisis has dragged on for six years, and nearly five million people have fled to other countries. Some are lucky enough to be granted asylum in Germany or Canada. Most languish in crowded camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Stories of boats of people drowned at sea can be found on most news channels and publications, yet in spite of all this, or perhaps because of it, the public has grown apathetic to the plight of refugees. We accept that it is normal for displaced peoples to wander from country to country, knowing they belong nowhere. We accept that it is normal for them to lose their humanity. Sadly, “refugee,” “crisis” and “Syria” have almost become buzzwords, upon the utterance of which we throw our hands up in exasperation, shouting, “Not my fault. What can I do?”
One of the many serious flaws in the media’s portrayal of the refugee crisis is simplifying it to the experience of individuals fleeing the Syrian civil war.
Because of this attitude, casual news readers oftentimes do not bother to research deeper into what is actually happening. One of the many serious flaws in the media’s portrayal of the refugee crisis is simplifying it to the experience of individuals fleeing the Syrian civil war. There is actually no single Refugee Crisis, but a series of refugee situations originating from numerous unstable, violent and oppressive regimes. Syrian nationals make up only one third of the world’s refugees. Though people fleeing from Afghanistan, Eritrea, South Sudan and other countries face just as much danger, their stories receive very little coverage. As the talk focuses on one country, partly because of its implications for global powers, airstrikes in Taliban-threatened Afghanistan, ethnic slaughtering in South Sudan and religious persecution in Myanmar suddenly fade into the background.
When individuals rear in the culture of the global North muse about oppressive regimes, they most likely will think of disenfranchisement, one-party systems and silencing of the press.
The manifold nature of these crises makes it vain for any coalition to come up with a “master plan” to solve the outflux of emigrés. Even during World War II, when masses fled from devastated Europe their numbers did not come close to the 65.3 million United Nations-documented refugees in 2016. More importantly, whatever dangers emigrants then faced subsided once the war ended and stability was once again established in the region. The conflict in Syria has dragged on for six years, matching the duration of World War II, with no signs of concluding. Even if it were to end soon, there would still be all the other isolated dangers that rob rightful citizens worldwide of their freedom. Though identifying the nature of these is no easy task, one could arrange the threats faced by refugees in their home countries into three main categories: military violence, government oppression and targeted persecution.
In Afghanistan, in Somalia, on the Gaza strip, children do not know the definition of peace. Students go to school to see their friends torn to pieces by falling bombs, siblings watch as their brothers and sisters bleed to death from stray bullets. Families desperate enough risk detection, imprisonment and piracy to cross deserts or board rickety boats in search, not of more opportunities, but just a fleeting glimpse of life without constant fear. Though the Vietnamese in 1975 were the first specimens of “boat people,” many have since followed in their footsteps and metamorphosed into the same stinking, wriggling beings crammed onto floating vessels without life jackets. “We have nothing else to lose,” they say. In 2015, news readers gasped upon seeing images of a three-year-old corpse of a boy washed onto the shores of Turkey; what these sheltered Europeans did not realize was that the chance of surviving at sea had always been unpredictable. And good for them, too, because if the ocean had not come to their aid, their turbulent borders would have been plagued by five thousand more refugees every year.
War, terrible as it is, is not the only thing from which refugees flee. When individuals rear in the culture of the global North muse about oppressive regimes, they most likely will think of disenfranchisement, one-party systems and silencing of the press. Yet in Eritrea, a small country on the Horn of Africa, the legitimate power of ruling elites includes indefinite conscription (most boys drafted in their teens serve till their fifties), forced labor and extrajudicial execution.
This is what Eritrea asylum-seekers leave and what they will be doomed to face once nations like the UK and Israel deem their country “safe to return.” Modern Eritrea won independence only twenty-five years ago, after a long and bloody guerrilla struggle with Ethiopia. The guerrilla leader, namely Isaias Afewerki, gained enough support to enter office as Eritrea’s first “democratic” president, only to betray his people’s trust. His party, the only one in the country, is composed of ex-military men, and they reign with an iron fist, to say the least. Human Rights Watch, the UN and Amnesty all condemn the regime, estimating a number of 10,000 political prisoners who are tortured daily in isolated cells. Though Afewerki’s government has tried to deny all allegations and shows no sign of improvement, the international community is unwilling to take on stronger measures due to political and security concerns. The least thing developed countries can do for Eritreans fleeing from oppression is to grant them asylum. Some refuse.
A few thousand miles East of Eritrea, Myanmese refugees escape from Rakhine State due to another reason—religious persecution. Although this small Southeast Asian nation has garnered plenty of media attention recently thanks to Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s political triumph over the ruling military regime, the plight of the Rohingya ethnic group remains largely unknown.
Many anticipated the end of targeted atrocities when Suu Kyi gained power, but not much has changed, and the state press is as reticent as ever about sharing information. But simply witnessing the conditions of Rohingyas who made it to Bangladesh and examining satellite images of destroyed villages leave no room for doubt. The government has alluded to this ethnic minority as “detestable human fleas” and “a thorn to be removed”—typical rhetoric of those perpetrating large scale massacre. Buddhist extremists have pushed for military offensives against unarmed civilians because of their ethnicity and religion (Rohingyas are, unlike the Bamars, Muslim.) The UN still has yet to push for a formal inquiry and ensure safe passage for persecuted Rohingyas into Thailand and Bangladesh. If these do not happen quickly, we might be on the verge of watching another genocide unfold.
There still exists a stigma surrounding refugees and immigrants, a common unspoken belief that these peoples are opportunists clinging onto the generosity of the developed world, usurpers trying to snatch jobs from “the natives.” This narrative is an unacceptable insult to the horrors these survivors underwent, horrors concrete and tangible. With the spread of social media, plain proofs of violence, oppression and massacre are more readily seen than ever. Are these all alternative facts? What more needs to happen for the bystanders’ attitude to change?