“This paradox of space and time
With which our consciousness is cursed:
Though sky is the endless paradigm
The tide of time can’t
be reversed…”
- From Paapey Thoo Pope Hein by Bachchoo
Bangladesh owes its existence to nationalism but the mechanism of its liberation entailed a refugee crisis and the intervention of the Indian armed forces. There can be no doubt that Indira Gandhi sent in the troops to divide Pakistan, but her publicly acclaimed reason for the intervention was that millions of refugees were fleeing the terror visited upon East Pakistan by the Army in the wake of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s electoral victory and declaration of independence. India could not absorb them and the root cause of the exodus had to be tackled.
Today the conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and West Asia, the crumbling of states such as Somalia and the repression in Eritrea is causing the biggest refugee crisis that Europe has experienced. Thousands of people fleeing war, terror and repression are paying criminal gangs of people — traffickers — thousands of dollars to escape their homelands and to try and enter Europe.
Sixty per cent of them are Syrians. A considerable number are Afghans, Eritreans and Somalis. The migrants all want to enter the safety and partake of the relative prosperity of Europe. The overland route is via Turkey and Hungary and then attempts to get to Germany, UK or Sweden. The other route is by sea from northern Africa, in unseaworthy boats controlled by the people-traffickers, across the Mediterranean to the islands of Greece or Italy. The boats are sometimes no more than rubber dinghies and thousands have been set afloat in them only to capsize and drown.
Those who succeed in the crossings, helped by coastguards and European naval ships, then camp in the open and attempt to trudge to the cities or are corralled by the local police and taken to badly equipped camps to register and be assessed for asylum. There is no system or coordination of this refugee settlement. For the last one year it has been chaotic.
Today thousands are camped in Hungary, in the Greek islands, in a notorious fenced-off settlement in Calais and on beaches, in fields and next to railway lines or wherever they can find a resting place. Their plight is constantly on Europe’s TV screens and in the news.
It has caused the most urgent debates the European Union has known, both in public forums and now between the governments of the countries in the Union. What should Europe’s response be? The debate is obviously how to handle the crisis. Some governments insist that the solution lies in stopping the boats leaving Africa. Others, including the UK recently, want to discuss UN action to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, remove Bashar al-Assad’s government and pacify Syria. These are long-term plans and there is no consensus.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian and French police battle the refugees who are wary of being registered or entering the camps from where they fear they may be deported back to their countries of origin. Last week, a single photograph went viral and mobilised public sympathy for the refugees like never before. It wasn’t the first news to reach Europe which has been bombarded with reports of suffering, of the decimation of families, of unbelievable cruelty, which one has no option but to believe. There are single parents with infants in their arms, old people whose family members have been killed, teenage and even infant orphans in this horde.
The particular photograph is of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Kurdish boy who drowned after the boat carrying his father, mother and older brother capsized off the Turkish coast. The father attempted to save the members of the family, but lost his wife and sons Ghalib and Aylan, whose body washed up on the coast a day later.
The news of his tragic death and the photograph of the body washed up on the beach galvanised European public sympathy for the plight of these refugees. Thousands of people began to gather food, clothing, shelter, blankets, duvets, tents, sleeping bags and a hundred other items to help them survive till they are given asylum by the European governments. Thousands more volunteered to adopt orphaned refugee children.
The charities that are already addressing the problem of these orphaned children, cautioned the volunteers that undertaking such an adoption would certainly entail caring for the child for 20 succeeding years. Subsequent reports from the charities say that very many of the volunteers had considered such a prospect and were willing to offer themselves to be examined for their suitability as adopters.
The other effect this quantum leap in public awareness has brought is the change of heart, or at least of rhetoric, of some European governments. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has mooted the idea of Europe accepting 500,000 immigrants a year, with Germany, whose actions in the last century caused the last European refugee crisis, taking a large number.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has been more cautious and cagey. He says Britain would be ready to take in a few thousand refugees, but they would not be the ones who had hazarded the journey to crash into Europe, but would be selected for asylum from the millions who were in UN refugee camps on the borders of Syria.
Jean Claude Juncker, the President of the EU, addressed the Strasbourg European Parliament and called for an immediate acceptance of 160,000 refugees based on a quota system allocating a number of refugees to each of the member states.
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, came out in vociferous opposition to Mr Juncker’s proposal. He said Hungary was not willing to accept any Muslim refugees as “tens of millions are coming to a continent in which the natives will end up as the minority.” Mr Orban poses as the bad boy of Europe and the defender of Christian nations against the influx of Islam. Nevertheless, his statistics and alarmist hyperbole are wrong and his attitude would certainly not have been acknowledged by Jesus Christ.
