But it is not just what we are doing to migrants and asylum seekers that should galvanise us. Our treatment of those without papers is the mirror we should hold up to ourselves. In the reflection, we will not only see the macabre ways in which state power and institutional power operates in our societies, but also how our market-driven and celebrity-oriented culture, by encouraging consumerism and envy, drives us away from values based on collectivity, intellectual curiosity (about the inter-connectedness of the world, and hence the reasons for refugee flight) and empathy for the Other. The way in which refugees and migrants are demonised and dehumanised in the media has created a hostile, racist climate in which those of us who try to fight for a Europe underpinned by humanitarian values are derided as weak-minded and unpatriotic individuals, and where those whistleblowers who seek progress, and act out of conscience to expose immoral behaviour, are quickly excommunicated, turned into outsiders, even criminalised. We, in human rights and anti-racist communities, have all the evidence and stories, but our data and reports too often gather dust on the shelves of EU bureaucrats. And even when the evidence of human rights abuses is reported by journalists, the information shocks only for a moment. It is quickly forgotten. For this is the nature of a communication society based on 24-hour news and sensationalist media frameworks.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 17:37:59 +0000
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