Dying to escape death

In the past year the Mediterranean Sea has once again borne witness to the atrocities that mankind has committed against its own race. Thousands upon thousands of people fleeing abuse, poverty and impending death chose to cross the Mediterranean despite the unsafe and overcrowded boats, for the uncertainty of the sea seems more comforting than the certainty of their land’s future.

The UN Refugee Agency reports that more than 219,000 migrants have reached European shores in 2014 and considering the deteriorating situation of their region it is likely to double in the future. The majority of migrants come from corrupt or war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East. The Arab Spring whose seeds failed to bloom anything other than a chaotic mess that requires only blood to grow has contributed immensely to the rising numbers of these migrants. These perilous journeys have seen thousands die at sea and many abused on these boats. The European Union is now being faced with the powerful wave of people approaching its shores and the human rights issues involved in their refusal of granting them entry. Predictions show that this problem is likely to escalate taking into consideration that this great migration has made a profitable business for human traffickers.

The powers that be must realise that the instability and destruction their actions have caused are bound to spill over. Geography should be the ultimate deciding factor for every political dilemma, for proximity to an ailing land is bound to result in one’s infection. It is the natural human survival instinct that drives a person out of a burning building and so when political decisions fail to foresee further into the future and choose to burn entire continents in the process, scours of people will flee and head towards the safety of those nations immune to man-made disasters. When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer.

The EU is looking to increase the number of migrants/refugees granted entry to their countries yet although this is the immediate humane response to the crisis it is another example of governments seeking band-aid solutions based on reactionary decisions rather than long-term ones taken out of a more future-oriented outlook. Taking more people in will not end the increasing flow, as it is the EU is suffering from an ailing economy where bankruptcies and bailouts have become common. Those governments suffering from the war overspill must put pressure on the world to tackle the problem at the source. Taking effective measures to end these raging wars and help these people rebuild their lives is the only permanent solution, for only when the suffering of these nations is lifted these boats will cease to sail.

It is said that for legal purposes governments must distinguish between a migrant and a refugee, the difference being their “motivation”. If one flees a country with the intention of improving their future then he is considered a migrant, if he flees in order to survive then he is a refugee. Governments must label to distinguish, but migrant or refugee, one must not lose sight of the fact that they are people. Men, women and children who board those boats, whatever their motivation, they carry with them hope and considering the risk they are willingly taking it is hard to believe that even one of them does not have the “motivation” of improving their future.

Those 800 who perished when their boat capsized in the Mediterranean were not migrants or refugees, they were not a mere number flashing on our television screens, they were 800 people whose lives were determined for them by a group of politicians whose severing, dissecting and reattaching of their lands has turned their world into a monster that not even its creator can control. Coast guards watched them drown because they were not legally bound to help them and as their bodies sank slowly into the depths of the Mediterranean, the sea took them in knowing that there will be many more to come.

This article was first published in The Gulf Today newspaper June 7, 2015 http://bit.ly/1G3kP26 

Arabic version appeared in Al Khaleej newspaper http://bit.ly/1Gszlnu

Mandela's Boat in Machiavelli's Ocean

The world suffers not wars, famine or injustice but the lack of courage and the sudden death of moral responsibility. We live in a self-involved world governed by greed and guarded by hypocrisy. A crumbling world destroyed by the very reason it was created. It is a world where mirages of courage are glimpsed every so often but alas they are nothing but the trick of a mind longing to quench its thirst. Yet among all the falsities at times we find truth. We hear it in one’s words and witness these words come to life through one’s actions. This is a rarity, an anomaly if you wish, which makes the Mother Teresas, the Gandhis, the Martin Luther Kings and the Mandelas of the world names we will not soon forget. 

The world has lost many of those lone warriors and as I write these words I fear for one of the remaining few as he battles for his life. Nelson Mandela is a man who at a time when the world forced him to remain silent shouted at the top of his lungs, a man who fought oppression and won, a man who for the sake of freedom lived most of his life a prisoner. At 95 years of age many argue that there is not much left he can offer, but it is not what he has yet to give that is at stake, it is what he stands for. 

Today’s world cannot stand to lose the likes of Mandela for without them the future seems even grimmer. A few remain who can inspire us with absolute determination and endless devotion to their beliefs, and even fewer remain who will not falter at the pangs of pain or succumb to the lure of money. For no matter where your faith lies today’s world will find it and either beat it out of you, or buy it from you, it is as easy as that. 

Mandela lived on his land but adhered to a foreign man’s law, he grew up witnessing the marginalisation of his people and the abduction of what was rightfully theirs. On Mandela’s land the white man differentiated, segregated and oppressed on the basis of colour alone. Mandela believed that no man should be silent in the face of injustice yet also understood the grave consequences of such a belief. Undeterred by doubt and propelled by the hope of freedom he took on a journey that no ordinary man can undertake, he walked through the thorny path of freedom and came out the other side bloodied, bruised but free. 

The blood will wash away, the bruises will eventually fade yet the only thing that shall remain is a legacy of a man who unburdened his people, helped them take back their dignity when little was left of it and set them free.

Mandela became South Africa’s first black president in 1999, seems unfathomable for an African nation to get its first black president only 14 years ago but such is injustice, the greater its irrationality the stronger it becomes.

In 2001 Mandela visited Dar Al Khaleej Printing & Publishing in Sharjah and there he recalled his first visit to the United Arab Emirates in 1995. He explained his reluctance to visit a region of which he heard had no freedom, yet after visiting the UAE he told the attendees: “I found the complete opposite, I found a country that treats its people with greater respect than many ‘democratic’ nations in the West.” He pointed out that the great number of women in the audience shows just how progressive the UAE truly is.  

In a world devastated by wars and bled dry by greed people are lost in a sea of Machiavellian grey where only the end matters and nothing else. This dreary fact makes it all the more sad to see the Mandelas of the world perish with little hope of others of their kind surfacing from these murky grey waters. In his quest for his people’s freedom Mandela discovered his hunger for the freedom of all people, he believed that even his oppressor was not free for he too is shackled by the chains of prejudice and bigotry. He sought to free his people and in the process also unshackle his oppressor. The world only hopes that more people would seek justice knowing that it can never be achieved by allowing hate to cloud one’s vision. 

I leave you with Mandela’s words that have never left me: 

“I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”

We wish you well Madiba, may you continue to inspire and enlighten forever.

This article was published in The Gulf Today newspaper on 21 July, 2013. 
An Arabic version of this article appeared in Al Khaleej newspaper on the same date http://bit.ly/158vLt3