Refugeedom: always emotive, always with us

By Gavin Jones

Refugeedom is an emotive, complex subject which brings out the best and worst in people and has done so ever since I can remember.

The statistics are damning: there are approximately 120 million who have been forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence and violations of human rights. This includes refugees and internally displaced people. These two categories in themselves often invoke a two-tier label of worthiness with some thinking that the former is to be viewed more sympathetically than the latter. I disagree. It matters not where one ends up after losing one’s livelihood and being forcibly ejected from one’s home.

Passions are also inflamed when it comes to the status of asylum seekers and economic migrants. The fact of the matter is that people who fall into this net, especially the latter, are very much dependent on the labour market of receiving countries at any given time.

In the case of America, Australia and Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries, the necessity of encouraging an influx of labour and populating virgin lands, the latter albeit by forcibly ‘displacing’ native Americans, Aborigines and indigenous Irish by various violent methods.

The tablet at the base of the Statue of Liberty reads as follows: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’ These noble words have now passed their sell-by date.

The topic of immigration of whatever status has instead become a political football in America, and no more so than in Britain. The riots in July in the latter were a salutary reminder of the antipathy bubbling up in some quarters towards not only immigrants but also foreigners in general. ‘Stop the boats’ was the clarion call of Tory politicians during the run-up to the general election and became the epitome of the immigrant controversy. ‘Immigrant’ has become a dirty word and synonymous with hate to such an extent that Britons living abroad describe themselves as expats in order to disassociate themselves from it. This is patently the case in Cyprus.

As I mentioned above, timing is everything. As a child in 1950s Britain, I witnessed the arrival of West Indian immigrants working on the trolley buses of Wolverhampton as drivers or ticket collectors with their dinky little aluminium machines strapped to their waists. At the same time, Indians and Pakistanis arrived in their thousands with many setting up small corner shops that were open all hours.

All credit to all these people who filled the labour gap and paved the way to show the indigenous population what hard work and thrift could achieve. Prejudice was rife during these days – and still is although to a lesser extent. This was demonstrably evident in July this year when tens of thousands of Britons took to the streets in counter-demonstrations against racist rioters who targeted and attacked asylum hotels, shops and individuals. If nothing else, this showed that the great British public retain their deep sense of tolerance and fair play. Cyprus has not been untouched with riots last year targeting asylum seekers/immigrants in Limassol and Paphos, a stark reminder that this phenomenon is universal. And as in Britain, thousands of Cypriots came out to demonstrate against the racist thugs who brought shame to the island.

The ongoing violence in the Middle East deserves special examination as it concerns not just the region but international power plays. It also encompasses refugeedom on a complex and massive scale as well as engendering passionate viewpoints. Israel came into being in 1948 with approximately 750,000 Palestinians becoming refugees overnight. Those still alive from that era, and many of their heirs, remain in refugee camps or else are distributed far and wide in other countries. At the same time there was a huge influx of Jews from central and eastern Europe who, as newly arrived immigrants, took over the land and properties of the former Palestinian occupants. What we’re now witnessing is in essence the continuing backlash of this historical event.

I now come to matters closer to home. In August 1974 I too became a refugee and ‘decamped’ from Famagusta with tens of thousands of others. In all, approximately 160,000 left the north for the south with 30,000 Turkish Cypriots going in the opposite direction.

Every so often this subject comes up in the press and many of the comments from members of the public display a marked array of negative feelings towards Cypriot refugees. Much is borne of ignorance that refugees allegedly receive monthly payments and other so-called ‘benefits’. This is simply not true.

The original of the species, such as myself, are becoming a dying breed, literally. They either live in Turkish Cypriot properties under licence or else have been granted permission to build modest houses on Turkish Cypriot land, also under licence. Consider this. They neither own where they live and by law are unable to make arrangements with Turkish Cypriots in the north to either buy or swap their properties with one another. In short, they’re in limbo, marooned and are unable to exercise their basic human right to realise their assets and live somewhere else if they so wished. It suits the Republic’s government to keep them in this situation in order to use them geopolitically as pawns and, in their view, halt official partition which in reality already exists de facto if not de jure.

In conclusion, being a refugee has many permutations and consequences. If ever there were a case of ‘There for the grace of God go I’, this surely must be it.