Asylum Seekers: A True Story
“As the British government spreads intolerance and xenophobia, please don’t accept their cruel and distorted narrative.”
Question everything.
The world is rarely what it appears to be at face value.
The truth is there for those who seek - but one must make the effort.
Back in the early 1990’s, there was - as there is now - much talk in the British press about asylum seekers - and a great deal of contentious ‘debate’ over the rights of refugees.
I knew that I was never going to take sides or buy into any particular narrative without first checking the information being fed to me through a questionable media, and politicians with an agenda.
So I decided to take up temporary residence at an asylum seekers centre, in order to discover first hand what was actually going on.
Through the Dutch volunteer organisation SIW, I found a placement at an asylum seekers reception centre in the Netherlands. Even back then, the UK asylum system was severely lacking and the Dutch model was better organised, as you might expect from a civilised nation, traditionally tolerant of new people and ideas.
But it was still a highly challenging place, diverse humanity in a pressure cooker environment.
Suffice it to say that my eyes were opened, and perhaps more significantly, my heart too.
At AZC Middelburg, I had the immense privilege of meeting two hundred amazing and courageous souls, many of whom had witnessed and experienced the worst of human existence.
Among the people seeking refuge were those from Iraq, Kurdistan, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Syria and Lebanon and also from countries that you might consider ‘safe’, like Poland and Turkey. Most were highly educated individuals, some were doctors, teachers, scientists. The truth is that all kinds of good people flee from persecution, sometimes from the most unlikely places, not just those war torn countries we see on the news.
We all know about Ukraine, for example, and the desperation of refugees fleeing war, but persecution doesn’t just happen in times of conflict, it happens anywhere and everywhere, to individuals and groups, to those tormented and oppressed in any country, and for so many reasons.
Those I met, many of them young men, looked for all the world just like the people arriving on the ‘migrant’ boats today.
The people crossing the English channel in dinghies are not all criminals and drug dealers, as the government would have you believe.
They are people.
I’ll repeat that, because it’s important.
They are people.
And nobody can possibly know who these people are unless they take the time to ask and listen.
But the bigots spouting vile rhetoric at asylum seekers today have already passed their judgement, in ignorance and without shame, based on a preconception, a lie that they have chosen to believe.
Desperation, love, suffering, persecution, discrimination - this is what makes people leave the familiar places they know and then risk their lives to try to reach a safe haven.
Everyone has a story.
At the asylum-seekers centre, I heard harrowing accounts of escape, of families torn apart, and I had the most intense conversations with some of the very best people I have ever encountered. It was truly mind expanding. This was a strange, otherworldly place, heavy with emotions. Yet, even here, there was hope mixed with the tears, and sometimes laughter, humanity enduring through despair. And the generosity of these people was at times overwhelming. What little they had, they would share.
The faces of people I met there will forever live on in my mind, though I can never know what became of them, most will have quietly disappeared into the crowd without ceremony and without telling their story for a second time. They are extraordinary people, wanting just to live their lives in peace, because life is difficult enough without being judged by society’s fools.
I returned to the UK knowing much more about myself and the world. It wasn’t an easy journey emotionally - though I had the ultimate luxury of coming home to a place of safety.
I had learnt a lot, much of it completely life changing.
My reason for writing this?
I feel the need to talk about it again, all these years on, because nothing has changed. If anything it has got worse.
In the UK, the government is planning to imprison asylum seekers offshore, on huge recommissioned ‘barges’, actually container ships, as if they were less than animals. From there, the government says it wants to send them to Rwanda to be ‘processed’. It is a shockingly brutal plan and accompanied by appalling rhetoric spewing from government, aimed at people who deserve compassion and kindness. Years of propaganda and manipulation has influenced public opinion, serving to increase fear, suspicion and hatred towards refugees in need of sanctuary.
As the government spreads intolerance and xenophobia, please don’t accept being fed their particularly cruel and distorted narrative. Question everything. Yes everything. The world is rarely what it appears to be at face value.
Governments, politicians, even teachers will want you to believe in a particular way, to ‘fit in’, to repeat an opinion. Received knowledge is an easy path to take, no conflict, no effort - but it doesn’t fulfill or satisfy a mind that seeks truth. Go and find out for yourselves, you will be amazed at how different the world looks from another, kinder, perspective.
