A backlash against dehumanising refugees has begun – we must seize the moment

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/07/dehumanising-refugees-migrants-aylan-kurdi

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Aylan Kurdi has shaken us from a national stupor. The image of the three-year-old, face down in the sea, has finally made visible the fact we have so often ignored – that thousands of refugees die in their desperate attempts to reach safety.

Related: Families of refused asylum seekers to be stripped of automatic right to financial support

Before we were overwhelmed by the current catastrophe, many believed the politicians. They intimated that, when it came to refugees, we were powerless to do anything differently and appealed to the basest image of ourselves, as solely self-interested individuals. The message and media mood music was constant – the migrants are coming for your homes, jobs and taxes – and as a result, the experience of those seeking asylum in the UK has, for a long time, been one of dehumanisation and poverty; it has also often included immigration detention. But now there is a fever of activity, proving the politicians wrong, which should lead to a questioning of all the brutal structures currently in place. The outpouring of compassion over the past few days, and the sense of global citizenship it has fostered, shows that we finally see the “swarms” of “migrants” as people, human beings, just like us, but in need of help.

We shouldn’t be surprised that, for a while, the government’s approach to the refugee crisis seemed to be to ignore it altogether. If you can act like it doesn’t exist then you can pretend you have no responsibility. This is why last October Baroness Anelay, minister of state of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, could, with a straight face, declare: “We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean. We believe that they create an unintended ‘pull factor’, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths.” Here, not being present to save people somehow magically leads to not needing to save them at all. To call this circular reasoning would be putting it kindly. When the same government announced last week that it intended to strip the benefits from families whose asylum applications had been rejected, we shouldn’t have been shocked. In her book Borderline Justice: The Fight for Refugee and Migrant Rights, Frances Webber notes that “destitution is a weapon” and shunting more people towards it has become permissible. If people are deprived of the basic necessities for living – shelter, food, community – then such degradation works as a deterrent, goes the thinking, to any others who would view the UK as a sanctuary.

We should feel exercised to protest against an immigration system that feels justified in treating people like rubbish

In defence of the move to stop benefits for those whose asylum applications have been rejected, Home Office minister James Brokenshire said this would indicate that the UK isn’t “a land of milk and honey”. This is another example of a politician tugging at our selfishness, invoking the language of economic prudence, making us want to elbow the already traumatised and vulnerable into total destitution. One week it’s skivers; the next migrants – they all sit along a continuum of “threats to the nation”. These people are depicted as no longer helpless, but chancing it. To stop them we must strip away every element of humane treatment, a process that will, of course, strip them of dignity. This is what has been happening, for years, under both Tory and Labour governments. Ban asylum seekers from working and make “them” receive a pittance each week (it now stands at a maximum of £36.95). Don’t give “them” that money in cash but instead load it onto a payment card that isn’t widely accepted in shops and is prone to technical failures. Make “them” feel unwelcome and worthless.

On Thursday I received an email from the Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London (Ramfel). In it, CEO Rita Chadha spelled out the everyday reality of our immigration system: “A woman presented to us on Friday, from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite being here since 2002 and coming in as part of a family of asylum seekers, her family were granted status and she was not. She has been ill served by rogue solicitors and is destitute. She is nine months’ pregnant with her first child and [due any day now]. When she came to us, she had not eaten properly for two weeks, or been to any antenatal check-ups, and was not even registered with a GP. An urgent referral to social services has still not been processed, and the woman is currently in hospital with high blood pressure. When she comes out, she will have nowhere to live and will be destitute, without even clothes for the baby.”

Related: ‘We can’t go back’: families seeking asylum fear destitution | Frankie Mullin

In another Ramfel case a man with sickle cell anaemia has been forced to seek refuge on the floor of a local church. With his asylum application denied, after nearly a decade spent processing it, he has nothing to return “home” to. Both these people have a future of desperate invisibility before them. Itinerant lives in low-paid, unregulated work, potentially falling prey to internal people traffickers or forced into prostitution – take your pick.

In this moment when the humanity of refugees is finally being recognised across Europe, we should feel exercised to argue and protest against an immigration system that feels justified in treating people like rubbish. The Tory proposal to deny unsuccessful asylum seeker families the £36.95 they would otherwise each receive is just another low. Under Tony Blair’s government there was a successful conflation of refugees and criminality – the increase in immigration detention during that period attests to this. At the same time, the treatment of this vulnerable group by the popular press was brutal. Headlines declaring “Asylum war criminals on our streets” and “Asylum: Tidal wave of crime” appeared regularly in the first years of this century. The rhetoric was so pervasive that by 2001, then UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, censured European governments for their attitudes, asking us to “remember that a bogus asylum seeker is not equivalent to a criminal; and that an unsuccessful asylum application is not equivalent to a bogus one”.

We continued, and still do, to detain asylum seekers while processing their applications – a policy Labour was happy to support by substantially expanding immigration detention. Apparently merely seeking asylum erases an individual’s right to freedom; they make up a shameful 60% of immigration detainees. Last month the Chief Inspector of Prisons labelled the notorious detention centre, Yarl’s Wood, “a place of national concern”. There were 99 pregnant women being held there, a direct contravention of the Home Office’s own policy that this should only happen in exceptional cases. In an undercover Channel 4 documentary, employees could be heard referring to the centre’s inmates as “animals”, “bitches” and “beasties”. Guards talked of headbutting the women and beating them. Our politicians may be quick to condemn such dehumanising language and treatment, but they are only made possible by a system that fails to treat people who are asking for refuge humanely.

We seem to be at a turning point where the dehumanising rhetoric and policies surrounding refugees are being challenged. Let’s capitalise on this moment. There exists a shadow community in desperate need, living among us. They shouldn’t remain invisible. We can also help them. We should campaign to shut down immigration detention centres that effectively criminalise those simply seeking a place of safety. We should urge our government to grant asylum seekers the right to work and to become fully part of our communities. We should call for the scrapping of humiliating payment cards and demand that both those whose claims are being processed or have been rejected receive more than a pitiable £36 a week. This past week has shown us that we are better than the survival of the fittest flannel our government likes to serve us. We care.