Refugee

A

• My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who's the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn't go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until ... he could go to the refugee camp. ... And he goes there and he says, 'I want to know where my father was buried.' And somebody waved very vaguely and said, 'Oh we buried the people there.' So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he's kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard."
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie On how warfare in Nigeria affected her family in "'Americanah' Author Explains 'Learning' To Be Black In The U.S." NPR (June 27, 2013)

• If you isolate a country, you isolate yourself, as the United States, from being influential and effective in the course of events, unless you are talking about the negative influence, like making the embargo that could kill the people slowly, or launching a war and supporting terrorists that could kill them in a faster way.
  • Bashar al-Assad, in Interview with the CBS News. 2015

• The sanctions on the Syrian people that made the situation much worse and this is another reason for the refugees that you have in Europe now. How do you don't want refugees at the same time you created all the situation or the atmosphere that will tell them: 'Go outside Syria, somewhere else'  ? and of course they'll go to Europe...
  • Bashar al-Assad, Interview with RAI News, (December 2019)

• The events of this decade—and, indeed, those of the past year—indicate very clearly that refugee issues cannot be discussed without reference to security.
  • Mrs. Sadako Ogata, former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, stated in 1999. A World Where Everyone Belongs. Awake! 1/22 2002.

• In some parts of the world, states have collapsed as a result of internal and communal conflicts, depriving their citizens of any effective protection. Elsewhere, human security has been jeopardized by governments which refuse to act in the common interest, which persecute their opponents and punish innocent members of minority groups.
  • Kofi Annan, WOL

B

• Perhaps the most striking Indian policy was something that it did not do. India did not stop masses of Bengali refugees from flooding into India. Unimaginably huge numbers of Bengalis escaped into safety on Indian soil, eventually totaling as many as ten million—five times the number of people displaced in Bosnia in the 1990s. The needs of this new, desperate population were far beyond the capacities of the feeble governments of India’s border states, and Indira Gandhi’s government at the center. But at that overcharged moment, the Indian public would have found it hard to accept the sight of its own soldiers and border troops opening fire to keep out these desperate and terrified people. Here, at least, was something like real humanitarianism. As payment for this kindness, India found itself crushed under the unsustainable burden of one of the biggest refugee flows in world history—which galvanized the public and the government to new heights of self-righteous fury against Pakistan.
  • Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and A Forgotten Genocide (2014)

• The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.
  • Bible, Leviticus 25:23 (KJV)

• Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates.
  • Bible, Deuteronomy 24:14 (KJV)

• …a national policy of the government of Poland to put people into homes as soon as they arrive here, not to put them in refugee centers, or have them stay in the parks or something like that. They’re put in people’s homes and they’re given a stipend.  They’re given access to education. They’re given access to health care, and importantly, they’re given access to the job market.
  • Mark Brzezinski Ambassador Mark Brzezinski’s Interview with CNN (9 April 2022)

E

• Well, I was myself recently also in Afghanistan, and I sat down with the mothers in these displacement camps around Kabul. And I asked them, “What about the future? What do you think of the future?” And they told me very clearly, “We believe we will starve and freeze to death this harsh winter, unless there is an enormous aid operation coming through and unless there is a public sector again that is able to provide services.” It is as acute as that. Forty million civilians were left behind when the NATO countries went for the door in August.
  • Jan Egeland, Hell on Earth”: Millions of Afghans Face Starvation as U.S. & West Freeze Billions in Gov’t Funds, Democracy Now!, (16 November 2021)

• Money should not go to the military political group called the Taliban that took power by force. The money should go to the people, and it is possible. So, number one, there has to be trust funds, as we call it, that is held by U.N. agencies, that funnel money directly to the hospitals, that you just showed, where people are dying at the moment. It can go straight to the teachers that were on the payroll of the World Bank previously, can go straight to them. So, the money can go through us, international organizations, straight to the people.
  Secondly, unfreeze those funds that will enable banks to function again. At the moment, we cannot even buy relief items in Afghanistan. We have to ship them over, take them over from Pakistan and Iran, which means that employment is dying in Afghanistan.
  And thirdly, donors, come down from the fence. See that we are there. We are reliable channels for funding. The money will go to the people. Transmit funding, not just come with pledges. This will not become Switzerland in a long time. You have to share the risk with us to save lives this winter.
  • Jan Egeland, Hell on Earth”: Millions of Afghans Face Starvation as U.S. & West Freeze Billions in Gov’t Funds, Democracy Now!, (16 November 2021)

• The refugees in Germany constitute a substantial proportion of the German population. The United States Government, in planning economic measures of assistance with the authorities of the German Federal Republic, has always taken the refugees into account. Along with the indigenous population, they have in large part contributed to and benefited from the rising level of the German economy. The achievement of economic balance and the expansion of employment opportunities in Germany have been primary objectives of United States measures of assistance to the German economy. The United States Government will persist in these efforts in collaboration with the German Federal authorities. This collaboration has been particularly close and continuous in recent months since the flow of refugees into Berlin has increased.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower; Exchange of Letters Between the President and Queen Juliana of the Netherlands Concerning Refugees Online, The American Presidency Project; 23 April 1953

• Most Westerners have never heard about the Hindu refugee problem, for most journalists including reputed India hands have simply kept it out of the picture.
  • About the Hindu refugees from Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Elst, Koenraad (2014). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 250

G

• Meeting the needs of the world’s displaced people—both refugees and the internally displaced—is much more complex than simply providing short-term security and assistance. It is about addressing the persecution, violence and conflict which bring about displacement in the first place. It is about recognizing the human rights of all men, women and children to enjoy peace, security and dignity without having to flee their homes.
  • The State of the World’s Refugees 2000

• There was not an inch of space to spare in West Bengal for the refugees from East Bengal.
  • Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, in 1950 . quoted in Kamra A. J. (2000). The prolonged partition and its pogroms : testimonies on violence against Hindus in East Bengal 1946-64. pp. 84

• Another exodus is happening halfway around the world as asylum seekers from Central America make the perilous journey to the U.S./Mexico border. There, they face draconian U.S. immigration policies that consign them to "Remain in Mexico."... these migrants live in constant danger in squalid, makeshift refugee camps in Mexican border cities, waiting for a chance at asylum in the United States.... The U.S. government reported a record 210,000 migrant apprehensions along the southern border in July. Many of these people hail from the so-called "Northern Triangle" countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, where widespread inequality, systemic corruption, food insecurity, gang violence and now climate change are forcing people from their homes. These problems have long been exacerbated by U.S. military, economic and political interventions in the region. The United States engaged in "dirty wars" in Central America and has supported coups against democratically elected governments there, from overthrowing the government of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 to actively supporting the coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009. The United States has a responsibility to provide a safe haven for refugees, from Afghanistan, Latin America, or elsewhere, and to cease interventions that fuel these crises and displace so many.
  • From Afghanistan to Central America, US Creates Refugee Crises, Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan, Democracy Now!, August 27, 2021

H

• Look at today’s politicians... keen to be viewed as the virile leaders of their respective countries; eager to inflate their image by harming migrants and refugees, the most vulnerable in society. If there is courage in that, I fail to see it. Authoritarian leaders, or elected leaders inclined toward it, are bullies, deceivers, selfish cowards. If they are growing in number it is because (with exceptions) many other politicians are mediocre... Too busy with themselves, or too afraid to stand up to the demagogues and for others, they seem to shelter in the safety of silence and shuffled papers. Only when they leave public office do some speak up, discovering their courage rather belatedly. Many come and go; no one really notices... In consequence, too many summits and conferences held between states are tortured affairs that lack profundity but are full of jargon and tiresome clichés that are, in a word, meaningless.
  • Zeid Raad Al Hussein, "This is what true leaders look like" - High Commissioner Zeid's parting message, U.N.News, (30 August 2018)

K

• For far too long, American politicians have been sanctions-crazed.... Last month, the Trump administration sanctioned Mexican companies for seeking to supply food to Venezuela.... Three senators introduced a bill designed to punish countries that accept help from Cuban doctors, which would include Italy, Ukraine, Jamaica, and South Africa.... Leaders of countries suddenly facing the threat of punishment for accepting Cuban doctors have reacted with anger and incredulity... it would leave more than 50 countries with the choice of either expelling Cuban doctors at a moment of global pandemic or facing American opprobrium. The prime minister of tiny Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, protested that his country relies on Cuban doctors and pointedly added, “Those who would like us to do otherwise should undertake to fill the breach.” ...Most remarkably, Congress is moving to sanction Germany, a major ally for generations, because it is building a gas pipeline to Russia.
  • Stephen Kinzer, Sanctions-mad America turns on its friends, Boston Globe (12 July 2020)

• Cuba, along with China, is sending doctors and supplies to a number of countries around the world to help them fight the pandemic... Washington is demonstrating the very opposite... removing all of its Peace Corps staff from around the world, and, even worse, increasing sanctions against countries like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Nicaragua during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak. It is accurate to say that the U.S. is weaponizing the virus against these countries...
  As a number of religious scholars have warned, “plagues expose the foundations of injustice” in our societies. The current pandemic is exposing not only our government’s utter failures to protect its own citizens, but also its profound lack of human decency in dealing with other nations
  • Daniel Kovalik and Oliver Stone in 'Sanctions are terribly cruel during a pandemic: The U.S. should loosen the economic vise against Iran and Venezuela, New York Daily News, (4 April 2020)

• Some of the wars America fought were "simply for profit" and the sanctions it has imposed on certain countries have been as destructive as wars... Take Venezuela, which has suffered from U.S. sanctions for over 15 years, as an example. An estimated more than 40,000 people may have died in Venezuela from 2017 to 2018 as a result of U.S. sanctions that made it harder for ordinary citizens to access food, medicine, and medical equipment, according to a report published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, in 2019. The sanctions, Kovalik added, have also prevented Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven oil reserve, from "maintaining its oil industry and maintaining its power grids. Sanction is war by another means...You're just denying the people the economic benefits of their industries, and also, again, you're denying them electricity, other infrastructure, again in much the same way that you could or would through actual military means." However, most Americans don't see sanctions as war and they don't know the consequences so they "tolerate it more" and think the sanctions are "somehow a legitimate form of coercion," according to Kovalik. "When you look at the results, they're the same or similar to actual military warfare, but again, there are means that are more clandestine and do create more consent amongst the population of the Western world that might otherwise protest it," he concluded.
  • Daniel Kovalik interviewed in Interview: Some American wars fought "simply for profit," sanctions also destructive, human rights lawyer says, Xinhua, December 8, 2021

L

• Collective punishment of entire nations is immoral and wrong... Collective punishment can cause the people targeted by it to become more nationalistic, and in countries with a strong nationalist tradition this is even more likely.... When the U.S. government is seeking to make them miserable and poor, Iranians are unlikely to take enormous risks to do Washington’s bidding by toppling their own government. The overuse of sanctions is itself an abuse of power... The impulse to sanction one country after another is the same impulse behind wanting to “do something” militarily against this or that regime: we do it because we can and because we think we have the right to do whatever we want to others. The same arrogance and the same contempt for the sovereignty of other nations are on display. We should be opposed to the interventionists that want to use American military power to cause unnecessary death and destruction in other parts of the world, and in the same way we should reject the capricious and cruel use of economic sanctions to inflict misery and suffering on tens of millions of innocent people.
  • Daniel Larison, The Cruelty And Arrogance Of Sanctions, The American Conservative (25 June 2019)

• When a foreigner lives with you in your land, you must not oppress him. You must regard the foreigner who lives with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God.
  • Leviticus 19:33-34 Holman Christian Standard Bible

• Since refugees are a global problem, the search for solutions must also be global.
  • Gil Loescher, professor of international relations. "A World Where Everyone Belongs." Awake! 1/22/2002.

M

• The Kshatriyas [military caste]... will become the thorns of the earth... attacking and repeating their attacks upon the good and the honest, and feeling no pity for the latter... And men will be filled with anxiety as regards the means of living... overwhelmed with covetousness, men will kill... and enjoy the possessions of their victims... And when men become fierce and destitute of virtue and carnivorous and addicted to intoxicating drinks, then doth the Yuga come to an end... friends and relatives and kinsmen will perform friendly offices for the sake of the wealth only that is possessed by a person... When the end of the Yuga comes, men abandoning the countries and directions and towns and cities of their occupation, will seek for new ones, one after another. And people will wander over the earth, uttering, 'O father, O son', and such other frightful and rending cries. p. 392)
  • Mahabharata, Book 3, Vana Parva, Section CLXL, p. 392, (c. 400 BCE)

• No country in the world has been host to so many refugees as a 'shrinking and shrunken' India has been since the Partition in 1947... According to the estimate of the Government of India, 7.30 million people entered India between 1947-51 from the two wings of Pakistan. Except a few thousand Hindu families in Sindh, almost the entire Hindu and Sikh population were forced to leave their homes... In East Pakistan, the process was slow and systematic. Between 1947-51, the total number of people moving into India was estimated at 2.55 million... While West Pakistan was cleansed of its Kafirs except for a microscopic minority - being reduced from 23% in 1947 to 3% at present, the non-Muslim communities of East Pakistan/Bangladesh were reduced from 29% to 12% of the population. It is estimated that another 2.5 million Hindus fled the eastern wing of Pakistan during 1951-61... One finds that 90% of the total who fled East Pakistan in course of the liberation war of Bangladesh were Hindus... The extent of the missing Hindu population is estimated around 1.22 million during the last inter-censal period of 1981-91... In the Indian subcontinent, wherever the Kafirs become a minority, they are bound to become refugees, a fate which is in store for the Hindus in West Bengal, the north-eastern states and possibly Ladakh and Jammu.
  • Saradindu Mukherji, "Flow of Hindu refugees from Pakistan/Bangladesh to India," Hindustan Times, 13-10-1996, reproduced in Muslim india, Jan 1997, p. 36. , also in in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 814.
  • The article was controversial, e.g. in a letter dd. 14-8-1996 to the Press Council, Syed Shahabuddin demanded "appropriate action" against the article as it "vilifies Islam as a religion to generate feelings of hatred and revenge against Muslim Indians and thus to aggravate communal tensions..." (Muslim india, Jan 1997, p. 36, also Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 814.)

N

• Fled bloodthirsty regime bent on extermination; now shaken and stirred.
  • wikipedia:NationStates, description of the "Ethnic Cleansing Refugees" history.

O

• The events of this decade—and, indeed, those of the past year—indicate very clearly that refugee issues cannot be discussed without reference to security.
  • Mrs. Sadako Ogata, former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, stated in 1999. A World Where Everyone Belongs. Awake! 1/22 2002.

R

• Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee.
  • Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, University of Oxford Twitter, 30 June 2016

• Not long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, 'We don't know how lucky we are.' And the Cuban stopped and said, 'How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.' And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
  • Ronald Reagan, "A Time for Choosing" address, 1964

• The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.
  • Ronald Reagan, Address to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 8 June 1982

S

• In your dream no one is a refugee.
  Everyone has clean sheets.
  • Naomi Shihab Nye Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

• Refugees are the bravest people on earth right now,
  don't dare look down on them. Each mind a universe
  swirling as many details as yours, as much love
  for a humble place.
  • Naomi Shihab Nye Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems (2020)