World Refugee Day: An Appeal by the Peace Lab

June 20, 2010

Joe Abela, Peace Lab Co-ordinator

The advance of science and technology has in many ways made our world smaller, and turned it into a single village. But in this globalised era, not all people have similar opportunities and quality of life. The global village is full of contradictions and discrepancies.

Many injustices are visible and tangible. Every day some people make fortunes, while just as quickly others are reduced to poverty. Some people live in peace and comfort. And rubbing shoulders with them are many others who have no peace and no comfort. There are people living in splendour and opulence, while many others cannot make ends meet.

The globalisation game has winners and losers. Tourists and vagabonds; merchants and slaves; consumers and objects of consumption. Bought and sold just like any other commodity in the global market.

World Refugee Day leads us to look at these ugly truths that we seldom reflect on in the rest of the year. In our hurried lives, filled with work, shopping and entertainment, there is precious little time to spare for those who have nothing to eat, who cannot work, cannot buy, and cannot live in peace; for those people who are persecuted and have to flee their town or country, for those who have no rights. For people living in comfort, such thoughts are just a waste of time. Every year, several thousand people are forced to flee with just the clothes on their back, launched unwillingly on a journey with no clear destination, in the hope of finding somewhere to live in peace. This reality affects us heavily in Malta, thanks to our location in the middle of the sea between Africa and Europe.

We have got used to the sight of boatloads of immigrants, especially in summer, packed like sardines, in search of safety. We are used to complaining about them, and throwing at them any accusation we can think of. Some of the most common allegations are that they bring disease with them, that they’re taking up scarce funds, that they are invading our country. Our politicians find it convenient to tell us how much time and money and effort is taken up because of immigrants, and that they’re doing their utmost to deliver us from this plague.

We have no time to listen to their stories. We don’t care much that the unjust rules of the global markets turned their lives upside down, destroyed their jobs and their economies, and left them with no hope for a better future. The global markets leave them no option but a slow death if they stay in their country. The weak, the poor and the vulnerable have no other choice.

What led to all this?

Millions of people around the world – men, women, young and old – die from hunger, infectious diseases, war, terrorism and other conflicts. Those with enough strength and money do not resign themselves to this cruel destiny, but leave their country clandestinely, hoping for a better future when they reach the countries that control the global markets. The markets that brought them so much suffering. The same markets that brought weapons and conflict to their country, that slaughtered their children and ripped their communities apart. The same markets that made their crops worthless by giving subsidies to the already rich agricultural businesses of Europe and North America.

There is a market that puts a heavy price on the voyage to Europe. All these markets see them only as objects, and not as individuals; they give them no value, and no rights.

world-refugee-day-an-appealSolidarity

In this day that the United Nations has dedicated to refugees, the Peace Lab in Ħal Far stands in solidarity with the in the globalisation game. In solidarity with those people who still believe in life, and therefore rejected the destiny of death and decided to undertake the voyage to Europe in search of a better life.
olidarh individ who lost their life on the voyage between Africa and Europe. In solidarity with those individuals who are locked up in detention centres, their only crime being that of looking for a better life.

An Appeal

On this day, we appeal to the Maltese population to show mercy to the immigrants and refugees, and to look at them not with suspicion, but with love and understanding. Finally, we appeal to the authorities to implement a policy of integration. We appeal for ‘integration’ to be more than just a word bandied about in reports and conferences and then promptly forgotten.

Together we should work to make our country a place where immigrants can live their life with dignity.