Fleeing the Nightmares

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

Migration and xenophobia against those seeking a better life has dominated the news about Africa in recent months.

In a speech commemorating Africa Day on 25 May, African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma expressed her concern about the migrants who have died in the Mediterranean. 'We must address the very circumstances that lead our nationals to leave our shores...' she said.

AU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko, in a recent interview with the Institute for Security Studies' Peace and Security Council Report. Kaloko says the AU realises  'We have to make the member states of the AU stable and friendly to the young people who are trekking out to the Mediterranean,' says Kaloko. 'In the 1970s, I was growing up in Sierra Leone and if you asked me to migrate to Europe, I would have said no, because my country was doing well, I was very comfortable.'

Eritrea is a small country and probably would not  attract much attention if it weren’t for the fact that Eritreans account for about a quarter of the migrants trying to reach Europe and are the second-largest group by nation, after Syrians. More than 300,000 people have fled the country since 2000 and 4,000 leave each month—incredible numbers for a country of just 6 million people, despite the government’s shoot-to-kill policy at border crossings.

The U.N. Human Rights Council released a report on abuses by the Eritrean government. The East African dictatorship’s practices, include the training of children to act as spies for the regime, an extortive “coupon system” that maintains government control over nearly every aspect of daily life, and the widespread use of gruesome torture methods against prisoners. “The commission finds that the use of torture is so widespread that it can only conclude it is a policy of the Government to encourage its use for the punishment of individuals perceived as opponents to its rule,” the report states. Isaias Afwerki’s government maintains a conscription system for government service that forces citizens as young as 15 into servitude that can be extended indefinitely. Taken together the policies are designed, according to the commission, to keep the population in a state of permanent anxiety. "It is not law that rules Eritreans—but fear,” the report concludes.

Eritrean migrants are willing to face from their own governments and from transit through war-torn neighboring countries, predatory human traffickers, and the perilous voyage across the Mediterranean. The UN report states that “to ascribe their decision to leave solely to economic reasons is to ignore the dire situation of human rights in Eritrea and the very real suffering of its people. Eritreans are fleeing severe human rights violations in their country and are in need of international protection.”

With the number of those making the perilous crossing regularly breaking records, it’s worth remembering what exactly is driving the exodus. 

Adapted from here 

Migrants they pay a fortune for

10. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Gabon), Borussia Dortmund: 3 million euros per year.

9. Salomon Kalou (Côte d’Ivoire), Hertha Berlin: 3.1 million euros per year.

8. John Mikel Obi (Nigeria), Chelsea: 4.4 million euros per year.

7. Kolo Touré (Côte d’Ivoire), Liverpool FC: 4.9 million euros per year.

6. Samuel Eto’o (Cameroon), Everton and Sampdoria: 4.9 million euros per year.

5. Didier Drogba (Côte d’Ivoire), Chelsea: 5.2 million euros per year.

4. Michael Essien (Ghana), AC Milan: 5.8 million euros per year.

3. Emmanuel Adebayor (Togo), Tottenham: 6.5 million euros per year.

2. Medhi Benatia (Morocco), Bayern Munich: 8 million euros per year.

1. Yaya Touré (Côte d’Ivoire), Manchester City: 13 million euros per year.

South Africa's Afrophobia

This year looks set to be another gloomy one for asylum seekers, as the ANC government makes a renewed attempt to deport and restrict the number of African migrants to South Africa. Black Africans are not welcome anywhere, even as tourists, and must jump through dozens of hoops to apply for visas to enter almost every country in the world to prove their worthiness. It has become fashionable for governments globally to decry the fact that people of colour are seeking asylum when in fact they are 'economic migrants' making contrived claims of persecution. Given the Black South Africans experience indignities when applying for visas to Europe, Australia and North America, it is continually disappointing when the ANC government concocts new ways to keep other Black Africans out of South Africa.

A strange new form for asylum seekers now compels applicants to provide pay slips, details of property owned and to reveal how much money they have. It is still not known what this information will be used for, since governments are only supposed to assess applications for asylum based on the level of persecution faced in the home country - not the amount of money in the applicants' bank accounts. In 2013, only two out of 12 000 applicants were granted asylum and the new 'asylum seekers' form is likely part of government's quest to rid South Africa completely of genuine asylum seekers and allow in only those with money.

In South Africa, an estimated 50 000 Zimbabweans are facing deportation soon for failing to apply for permission to stay in South Africa under the new 'Zimbabwean Special Permit' system. Every four years or so, the South African government attempts to get rid of Zimbabwean migrants but instead succeeds only in creating fear, panic and ultimately highlighting the deficiency of its own systems.

In 2010, the government gave just three months warning that it would end a 'special dispensation' for Zimbabweans. This progressive dispensation was started to allow Zimbabweans free access to South Africa during the Zimbabwean cholera epidemic of 2009, for 90 days at a time without passports and without fearing deportation. But ending the special dispensation failed mainly because the Zimbabwean government would not issue Zimbabwean passports to its citizens in time for them to apply for the permits, and also because the department of Home Affairs could not process the number of applications anyway. Similarly, Home Affairs has already admitted that the new 'Special Permit' system for "regularising" Zimbabweans has been plagued by "a lot of technical glitches", including - again - the failure of the Home Affairs' call centre to answer thousands of calls from those who wanted to apply for permits.

Home Affairs' top officials said in 2010 that they planned to follow the "regularising" of Zimbabwean migrants by documenting Malawians, Angolans, DRC citizens and others from Africa in the same way. This has not materialised, thankfully.

No similar race based country-by-country purge was planned for white migrants from Europe and North America, who are generally prized by the DA and ANC governments for the "skills" they bring to South Africa. Institutional racism is deeply embedded in South Africa with the Commission for Employment Equity's annual report continuing to reveal that whites still occupy most senior management and top management positions. It is for this reason that Black Consciousness activists have pointed out in the past that xenophobia in South Africa is more accurately described as afrophobia, and that the DA and ANC governments are generally afrophobic.

An astonishing tweet by COSATU general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi this week, decrying Asian shop owners in townships, indicates how far the phobia of migrants of colour has spread. "We condemn xenophobia but the current displacement of Africans even in spaza shops mainly by guys from East is not politically sustainable", tweeted Vavi. Being the country's leader of organised workers, Vavi knows better than most that the biggest problem facing the South African Black working class and poor is not Asian spaza shop owners in the townships but the out-dated free market system adopted by the ANC and DA governments. Jobs in manufacturing have been slashed, profits from the mining industry continue to flow to a tiny elite, and the ANC is dead set against nationalising even the unallocated mineral deposits, which could fund the redevelopment of the whole country, let alone the mines themselves.

for Vavi to be tweeting against "guys from the East", is absurd. Migrant workers are not to blame for the high levels of unemployment. Vavi's tweet, although made against Asian migrants, will increase xenophobic sentiment in general, and consequently fuel afrophobia against spaza shop owners from Africa. Criticism of Asian migrants today quickly leads to resentment of African migrants tomorrow. Under South Africa's free market economic system, deporting African migrants and asylum seekers and encouraging xenophobia against Asian migrants will not uplift the Black poor and working class whose lives seem set to continue to deteriorate until the ANC and DA governments are voted out of power completely.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201501070978.html

The Trauma of being a Migrant

"In South Africa this situation of forced labour is typical," explains Marija Nikolovska, project manager of irregular migration programmes for International Organisation for Migration (IOM) South Africa. "Migrants are unaware of their rights and are afraid to go to the police because they don't want to be deported or are afraid the police will not act." The migrants who manage to secure work often face exploitation, Nikolovska adds. "Those who find employment are paid less than South African workers and sometimes have their salaries withheld for months. If they protest they risk losing their jobs or being reported to the authorities."

Recent figures released by the South African authorities show that of the 2,000 illegal migrants repatriated each week, up to 20% are unaccompanied children. About 350-400 Zimbabwean children cross the border each day without passing official checkpoints, according to Save the Children Zimbabwe.

 While some malaishas (taxi drivers/smugglers) operate solely as middlemen, many are part of a network who rob, sexually assault or enslave the migrants.  Girls are sometimes forced to work as prostitutes, says Natalia Perez, programme director of IOM Zimbabwe. "Beitbridge and Musina are busy transit routes, many young girls work in prostitution where the risk of being exposed to HIV is high." Boys are also vulnerable and can be found begging, sleeping rough or in low-paid jobs. They are sometimes targeted by magumagumas (gangs of robbers) and face mistreatment by the police.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical organisation, more than 75% of the 4,000-5,000 migrants they treat each month have been raped while crossing the border, with nearly 60% violated by more than one perpetrator.

From here

Climate Change Refugees

20-year-old Fizer Boa  migrated south to Ghana’s capital, Accra, to work in the local Abobloshie market as a porter or “Kayayei”, a trade often taken up by children and adults from the Northern Region who migrate to southern Ghana in search of a living.
“I agreed with my mother when she advised me to go join my friend who was working as a Kayayei in Accra. I did not object to the idea because … we hardly had three square meals a day,” she told IPS. Reduced rainfall in the Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo district in Ghana’s Northern Region, where Boa comes from, has resulted in low yields for the past two years, leaving her family barely able to survive. Soon after she came here, her two sisters dropped out of school and left their home to follow her and also work as Kayayeis. “My other siblings dropped out of school to join me in Accra because my mother could no longer pay for additional school levies, such as Parent Teachers Association fees, and school materials,” Boa said. Schooling is usually free in this West African nation, though each school charges its own additional costs and administration fees. Combined, the sisters earn up to 30 dollars on a good day.

According to Dr. Wilson Dogbe, a research scientist at the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, one of the major causes of this migration is the changing environment in the north. "It is evident ... that land scarcity and soil infertility are one of the main elements pushing people off the land to seek a safe-haven in the south.” The Northern Region is a predominantly rural-based community, and farmers there have become vulnerable to the impact of climate change. “The problem is that the Northern Region currently is experiencing low rainfall, soil infertility, and increased temperatures as high as 47 degrees Celsius.”

Some of these climate refugees, who are mostly young girls between the ages of 18 and 30 sent by their families to earn an income, fetch water for people, work in chop-bars (local restaurants), and as hawkers and shop attendants. But their existence is a precarious one. Mohammed Awal, NORSAAC’s director, told IPS that the young girls were the most vulnerable of these climate refugees as they had no place to live and mostly slept in open-air truck stops at the mercy of the weather and other threats.

The director of the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC), an NGO,  Mohammed Awal, A lot of these migrants, especially girls, return home to their families with sexually transmitted diseases,” he said, adding that many of the young women who fell pregnant were unable to trace the fathers, or experienced problems with illegal abortions. Boa said she sometimes faced “life-threating situations like sexual harassment from men” and said she too was forced to sleep in open-air truck stops.

Dogbe said the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), established in 2010 by the government to alleviate poverty in Ghana’s north and address the north-south youth migration, had not done much to reduce migration. “It was supposed to provide opportunities for poor peasants, especially women, to own assets … sustain their food crop production and protect the fragile eco-system of the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone. But much has not been done,” he said. He said that 80 percent of the roads in Northern Region remained impassable and farmers still did not have the necessary machines like tractors and harvesters to make their jobs easier.

 Boa and her sisters will keep trying to find ways to earn a living far from home. “Hopefully, we will work hard to save money and send some to our parents,” she said. But she and her sisters dream of having a better life and being more than just porters. They hope to be able to enroll in vocational training “such as fashion design, hair dressing to be able to earn a decent as well as sustainable income.”

The Politics of Human Disposability.

The Mediterranean has been described by Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat as a "graveyard" as migrants from Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, seek to cross over to Europe to flee various hardships partly attributed to the legacies of Eurocentric colonial and neocolonial politics. It is estimated that over the last two decades, around 20,000 people drowned while being smuggled over. The European Union, through its "fortress" politics, centering around the notion of "security," has much to answer for in this continuous human tragedy.

We are witnessing the present rightist discourse of the "foreigners who will take our jobs" and parties that built their identity and electoral success on fear of foreigners. The criminalisation of immigrants serves to fan the flames of racism and xenophobia. The marginalization of immigrants with no access to citizenship rights and social benefits, especially rejected asylum seekers, leads them to eke out a living at the very margins of society, in the "underworld" if need be. This furthers the construction of irregular migrants as given to criminality, promiscuity etc. rather than being victims of a systemic oppressive and ultimately racist structure that encourages abuse of their vulnerability.

 If anything, the target of any anger, where vulnerable working-class employees are concerned, should be those unscrupulous employers who prey on a destitute "reserve army" to considerably cut down labor costs. If one goes by hearsay, they often completely do away with these costs, at best paying the migrant a pittance. But unless these aspects of the migration issue are tackled systematically and backed by robust research by those whose historical function was that of leading the working class through a sustained process of an inclusive workers' education program spanning different media and settings, we are more likely to see a swing toward the right. And by this, I mean not only the emergence of right-wing parties, but also former leftist parties veering towards right of centre.

The dominant discourse centers around "security" on the grounds of the threat of international terrorism rather than foregrounding a person's right to seek asylum and protection, especially in cases where her or his existence is very much in jeopardy. In the majority of cases, we have bona fide breathing human subjects being criminalized for sins not of their making - sins for which Europe itself has a lot to answer. All this attests to the legacies of colonialism in Africa and the Middle East and the Western powers' collusion in the creation of situations characterized by the presence of client tyrannical regimes, not least through the supply of arms by a western-driven arms industry, and, in one specific case, a direct colonial/apartheid regime.

Maria Pisani,  lecturer in Youth and community Studies and founding director of the Maltese NGO, Integra Foundation,   points out that "illegal immigrant" is a nonexistent term in international law. It is bandied about by politicians to justify "illegal legalities," that is to say, the trampling over human rights, basic ones at that. It has unfortunately become part of the popular doxa. She reminds us of the 1951 Geneva Convention that recognizes a person's right to asylum and which allows for possible instances of "irregularity" in recognition of situations that lead to "forced migration." Once again, these policies should be international since we are dealing with international, global phenomena and should therefore not be allowed to be guided by the selfish interest of political and economic powerhouses in Europe and beyond.

Lawyer and activist with regard to immigrant rights, Neil Falzon, said in a recent newspaper interview in Malta Today that there are no legal means that allow "bona fide asylum seekers" to make it to Europe without placing their lives in jeopardy. He points out that flying is out of the question since no visa would be made available by any European country.

Anybody with a modicum of human compassion and who values human life dearly should be outraged by the events occurring at Europe's doorstep. We should protest to highlight the continent's shameful past with regard to treatment of ethnic minorities and sensitize other Europeans to the danger of seeing complex global imperialist issues in myopic nationalistic and mono-cultural terms. Hopefully it would sensitize other Europeans to the complex set of factors that compel people to leave the contexts in which they are rooted, and possibly love dearly, to seek a different life abroad. The reasons for doing this are many, but I would mention some here: civil wars fueled by a Western-based arms industry and exacerbation of tribal conflicts often resulting in rape and being disowned by family; the attempt among women to avoid female genital mutilation; evading religious fundamentalism; the negative effects on African farming of subsidies provided to farmers in other continents; the negative effects of climate change; an impoverished environment (the ransacking of Africa); and a colonial ideology which presents the West as the Eldorado and a context for the "good life," structural adjustment programs, the quest for better employment opportunities . . . and one can go on, perhaps falling prey to western stereotypes and constructions of "Africa."

There is however one major global reason, namely the quest for low-cost labor by corporations and other businesses alike that serves as a "push-and-pull factor." As David Bacon argues (see Illegal People. How Globalization creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, Beacon Press, 2008), hegemonic globalization necessitates migration, but it is the same victims of this process who are rendered "illegal" and criminalized as a result, often victims of the "carceral state." By carceral state, I mean the state that punishes as part of its function in dealing with the excesses of hegemonic globalization, that is neoliberal capitalist-driven globalization or "globalization from above." Detention centers such as those decried by international and local observers over here and Fabrizio Gatti in Lampedusa are institutions that reflect the presence of a carceral state, to borrow Henry A. Giroux's term.

Neoliberal politics with their structural adjustment programs in Africa and other parts of the "majority world" have exacerbated the disparities between South and North. Colonialism has not gone away, but has taken different forms. There is recent talk about providing the right conditions for "investment" (there's the magic word) in Africa not to compel people to move elsewhere.  First we ravage a continent and drain it of its resources and now we attempt to resuscitate it.  In fact, I detect racist overtones in this idea, namely that Africans are to remain in Africa and do not belong elsewhere.

Adapted from this interview of Maltese scholar Peter Mayo, author of, among many other books, The Politics of Indignation (Zero Books, 2012)

The Migrant's Dream

Libya continues to be a gateway for thousands of undocumented African migrants who are willing to risk its violent militias, harsh detention centres and often fatal rides on overloaded, rickety boats to set sail for Lampedusa – for them the closest point in Europe. Even Asians have been found to use Libya as a transit point.

As they dream desperately of greener pastures, the migrants do odd jobs to earn enough to pay for the boat ride. Work is scarce and the competition severe due to the growing number of migrants gathering. The charge for a seat on one of the many boats leaving the Libyan coast is around 1,000 dollars. Even if an exhausting day of work is fully paid for, it could take years to save a sum like that.

 A human trafficker admitted to IPS of to earning around 20,000 euros from each successful trip to Lampedusa.

 Local fishermen know only too well the risk of getting into a packed, fragile, raft-like boat. As Abdala Gheryani, who works at the tiny fishing port of Gargaresh, says, “Every now and then I find corpses trapped in my nets.”

 A detainee at the Libyan detention centre, explains “We were around 50 in the same cell, but at least the guards never hit me. For the black guys, though, it was completely different. They would be tortured and beaten in the most brutal way and on a daily basis.”
Women, he adds, were asked for sex in exchange for their release.

His testimony is corroborated by an Amnesty International (AI) report released last June, where the human rights NGO called on the Libyan government to end indefinite detention of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, including children, who had ended up there solely for immigration purposes. After visiting seven “holding centres”, AI also documented several cases where detainees, including women, were reportedly “subjected to brutal beatings with water pipes and electric cables.”

The New Slave Trade

Malawi is to export up to 100,000 of its young people as migrant workers. It involves sending young Malawian men and women aged between 18 and 25 to jobs in factories and on farms in Korea. Opposition MPs in Malawi have called the deal "slave labour".

"We always cry about brain-drain and encourage Malawians in the diaspora to come back home and yet here we are exporting the cream of our labour force abroad. It doesn't make sense at all," Stevyn Kamwendo, for the DPP, told parliament .

Ethiopian Migrants

In the last six years around 250,000 Ethiopians have made the dangerous journey into Yemen, gateway to the Gulf, a very poor, deeply divided country besieged with internal problems, which has limited resources, the second highest rate of chronic child malnutrition in the world and where 45% of the population live in poverty.

Djibouti city is the first major stage in the harrowing journey to Yemen, here or at sea all possessions, including mobile phones, cash and clothes are stolen, by smugglers, corrupt police or border guards. The journey to Djibouti’s capital is harsh and dangerous, in which many Ethiopian migrants die of starvation, dehydration or are killed by bandits. The Danish Refugee Council report, ‘Desperate Choices’, states, and wait for days or weeks for favourable conditions to cross the perilous waters of the Gulf of Aden, in flimsy boats manned by vicious criminal gangs. The ordeal of women begins in Djibouti, DRC report an Ethiopian man recounting the sea passage when “four Yemeni smugglers were on board the boat. They raped the girls in front of us, we were not able to move or to speak, and those girls were already sold to Yemeni traffickers.” Many are abducted and held captive, sometimes for months on end, their experiences are harrowing in the extreme.

On arrival in Yemen men and women are separated, wives taken from husbands, daughters from Fathers brothers from sisters. Trafficking and multiple rape of women is widespread, IRIN 12/03/12 state “the majority of the approximately 3,000 women held by smugglers in Haradh [on the border with Saudi Arabia] over the past year were raped, many of them repeatedly.”

 Corruption is endemic, with security officials coordinating with smugglers on the border with Saudi Arabia, “a climate of collusion and low political will to apprehend and prosecute smugglers is allowing the trade and abuse of migrants to flourish” (Reuters). The country is run, a military officer on the payroll of the smugglers to the tune of $2,000 a month says, “by tribes not policemen: these people are my friends.” ‘These people’ are turning a bind eye to the murder, rape and trafficking of innocent migrants seeking work to feed their families.

The innocent men women and children from Ethiopia making an impossible choice, with they see no alternatives, are not the villains in this ongoing human tragedy they are the victims trapped in a terrifying nightmare.

Full article here