NEW
BOOK OUT!
Listen to the Refugee's Story: How
UK Investment Creates Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Details of the book
A report of the
book launch party, Dec 2003
For more info on this subject see The
Refugee Project - A UK coalition of environmental, human
rights and development groups - has been working for the
past two years to document such links and to provide a platform
where refugees can voice their own histories.
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The vast majority of refugees today flee conflict,
or social or economic oppression. In
many cases, British companies, taxpayers and the government
directly and indirectly
support the human rights abuses that accompany British investment
and policies
abroad. Many of these abuses ultimately force people to flee
their homes and then their
countries.
This publication includes stories, poems and drawings from
refugees and asylum
seekers, including Kurds, Colombians, Afghans, Nigerians, Burmese
and Somalis, about
why they have been forced to flee their countries. The book
highlights broader links
between enforced migration and global economic processes, poses
key questions about
trade and development policies and corporate accountability,
and addresses the effects
of the current "war on terrorism" on different communities.
The book is now on The
Corner House website in both PDF format, complete with
illustrations, and as a
straightforward html document for reading on screen.
To obtain a printed paper copy, please send a message to The
Corner House
REFUGEE STORIES
"I am on a journey" by Adar
Jiyan
"The persecuted should be protected" by
Fazil Kawani
"Decades of war creates refugees" by
Sami Aziz
"Another Day - Another Life" by
Amna Dumpor
"Financing warlords in Afghanistan" by
Dr Mohamad Akbar Helmandi
"Wishing to have a Kurdish identity can't be that bad" by
Asize Asan
"Small Mirrors (extract)" by
Sherko Bekas
"What use am I to anyone dead?" by
Marta Hinestroza
"They probably hope that we'll die with the weapons they
provided" by Rochelle Harris
"A Tale" by Dieudonnee-Marcelle
Makenga
"Please use your liberty to promote ours" by
Ko Aung
"And I Cried" by Maria Eugenia
Bravo Calderara
"Another migrant forced out of Nigeria by a foreign company" by
Dele Igbinedion
"Victim Number 48 " by Mahmoud
Darwish
"My only crime was to sing in Kurdish" by
Nawroz
"Close to the Truth" by Choman
Hardi
"We should try listening to the refugee's story" by
Benjamin Zephaniah
"Yemma" by Samia Dahnaan
GENERATING REFUGEES
UK AND INTERNATIONAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES
"How UK foreign investment creates refugees and asylum
seekers" by Nicholas Hildyard
"Export credit guarantees and the displacement of people" by
Jean Lambert
"Wars and conflicts create refugees" by
Ann Feltham
"The real democratic deficit: BP, the Baku-Ceyhan oil
pipeline and public funding" by
Anders Lustgarten
"Trouble in the pipeline" by George Monbiot
"Dams and displacement" by Arundhati Roy
"They're all dammed" by George Monbiot
"British-based mining companies displace communities
in Colombia" by Richard Solly
and Aviva Chomsky with Roger Moody
"The dimensions of environmental refugees" by Stuart
M. Liederman
"The environmental and water crisis in the Panjaab" by
Pardeep Singh Rai
"Creating Sri Lankan political refugees" by Yamuna
Bandara
"Refugee women: Victims of the New World Order" by
Maryam Namazie
"The political economy of migration" by Robert Biel
"Calling time on corporate globalisation: Putting people
before profits" by Barry Coates
ISSUES AND CAMPAIGNS
"
The case for the free movement of people" by Teresa Hayter
"The "terrorist" threat and the end of asylum" by
Frances Webber
"Banning "terrorist" organisations gives the
green light for human rights abuses" by Mark
Thomas
"Holding investors to account: The Ilisu Dam Campaign" by
Kate Geary, Nicholas
Hildyard and Kerim Yildiz
"Corporate accountability" by Hannah Griffiths
RESOURCES
“Listen to the Refugee’s Story” is an excellent
and genuinely important book, compiled and edited by Sarah
Sexton of the Cornerhouse, Estella Schmid of the Peace in Kurdistan
Campaign and Rochelle Harris of the Kurdish Human Rights Project.
It is perhaps the first volume to interweave the deeply moving
personal stories of a broad range of refugees with analyses
of the governmental, corporate and institutional policies that
play such instrumental roles in forcing people into flight
from their homes and countries; it also looks at some of the
campaigns that have sprung up to fight these policies and increase
public awareness of them. With such a diverse array of elements
in the book, it was no surprise that the launch was informative,
wide-ranging, powerfully moving at times—and a lot of
fun.
After a brief welcome from Halkevi chair Ibrahim Dogus, Nick Hildyard of the
Cornerhouse began the evening. Nick succinctly laid out the remorseless logic
of policies of ‘economic and social development’. The British Government’s
Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) spends almost half its annual budget
of £4 billion subsidising the arms trade; the weapons they help to sell,
frequently to countries with horrendous human rights records, will be used
in conflicts that destroy communities and livelihoods. The support of governments
and the World Bank for the construction in developing countries of massive
dam projects, whose price tag is often exceeded only by their uselessness in
power generation, has displaced over 80 million people since the Second World
War. Those people have to live somewhere. It is the policies enacted by our
governments, rather than a parasitical instinct for a mythical ‘soft
touch’, which brings migrant people to the UK.
The next set of speakers, all themselves refugees, did us the honour of sharing
their stories with us with honesty and courage. Their stories show the impact
on normal people’s lives of the unholy alliance of Western business interests
and coteries of local government officials taking advantage of the institutional
framework laid down by Western governments and banks. Marta Hinestroza represented
hundreds of farmers whose lands were poisoned by BP’s Ocensa oil pipeline
in Colombia; displaced by state security forces when they protested, many of
her clients lived in shanty towns in the worst kind of poverty. When Marta
tried to get them the rights BP had promised, her aunt was murdered and she
received death threats that forced her to flee the country.
Dele Igbinedion is also personally familiar with the ironies of what analysts
have called “the resource curse”. As he notes, “In Nigeria,
it is bad news if your land is rich in oil or is agriculturally fertile.” Also
a lawyer, he was fired and his house raided by armed men after he represented
a group of villagers whose land was suddenly co-opted without compensation
by the state on behalf of a Belgian multi-national. He was followed on stage
by Ko Aung, who gave a courageous and dignified account of the horrors he was
subjected to after taking part in the Burmese student protests of 1988. The
emotional truth and honesty he showed in sharing his story with us was a far
more eloquent testimony to human resilience than the pinch-faced demonisers
of refugees can ever hope to achieve.
The evening then shifted over to performance. The Mayakovsky’s Circus
Theatre Company, featuring performers from the Halkevi itself as well as from
Austria, Finland and the UK, attempted to render in dramatic form the chain
of events that precipitate flight from political dangers. Less overtly political
were the evening’s youngest participants, a ten year-old Tamil drummer
and his seven year-old sister, whose unwavering seriousness as she shimmered
in an iridescent peacock costume through a series of complex dance steps was
hugely endearing.
After a short break, the renowned Kurdish singer Nawroz, twinkling with good
grace, thundered out a welcome back audible for miles around. He was succeeded
on stage by the evening’s special guest, comedian and activist Mark Thomas,
who delivered his customary combination of feistiness and perspicacity. Mark
was keen to remind the audience, as always, that far from being the chimerical
jetsetters they purport to be, the men who adopt and enact the policies that
bring refugees to this country “are only down the road”.
Afghan poet Karim Meesaq then presented a moving and delicate poem, the English
translation of which was ably performed at very short notice by Romilly of
the Mayakovsky’s Theatre group. He was followed by perhaps the evening’s
most surprising performer, the Somali poet Mohamed Abdulahi Sangub. Mr. Sangub
is a genial man who looks like a middle-aged accountant and performs with a
lyrical swiftness and fluency that would leave Eminem slinking from the stage
abashed. Even before the unfortunate translator tried his best to summarise,
it was possible to understand what had been said without knowing a word of
Somali.
The final contributors to this marathon event were speakers from some of the
many NGOs and campaigns that are striving to correct the wilful misinformation
and ignorance that surrounds the refugee issue. Teresa Hayter, one of the contributors
to Barbed Wire Britain, summarised succinctly and intelligently the case against
migration controls. Hannah Griffiths from Friends of the Earth looked at some
of the environmental disasters caused by infrastructure projects funded by
Western governments, which have resulted in the flow of refugees back to the
West. And George Binette of the Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers and Emma
Sangster from Voices UK offered messages of solidarity and cogent observations.
In all, a really interesting, powerful and enjoyable evening that brought refugee
communities out of their imposed anonymous homogeneity and into individual
life and voice. Get the book and see a multi-faceted world that Blunkett can’t
and won’t.
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