Prime Minister, David Cameron, on the 30th July while speaking to ITV news in Vietnam described the current refugee crisis in Calais as follows:
“you have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs, it’s got a growing economy, it’s an incredible place to live”
Not an overly controversial statement, but notice the word ‘swarm’, and compare this to the semantics of Phillip Hammond’s latest comments:
“So long as there are large numbers of pretty desperate migrants marauding around the area, there always will be a threat to the tunnel security.” … “Europe can’t protect itself, preserve its standard of living and social infrastructure if it has to absorb millions of migrants from Africa.”
These comments, from our Prime Minister, and a senior government minister, are worrying and becoming increasingly frequent; for when it’s not senior government figures, it’s hate-figure Katie Hopkins, “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”, who writes of “aggressive young men at Calais, spreading like norovirus on a cruise ship”. Increasingly sub-human semantics are being used to whip up waves of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment, and their effects are telling – as seen by a recent YouGov poll, with 67% of those surveyed being in support of sending troops to Calais. Such is public opinion that we’re considering militarising our border with France – not to keep the French out mind – but to keep people who have fled war, destitution and god knows what else, to have a chance at the life we lead. It begs the question – are we that selfish, that scared of losing what we have, that we can no longer view them as fellow human beings?
Having recently got back from a month travelling round Europe, the way I see things has changed. Not just in terms of, being more appreciative of a good quality shower and a warm meal, but of other people and their own unique experiences. When you’re sat on a train, rushing towards another foreign country as the sun sets, and everyone rushes to the window to catch sight of the orange sun reflecting off a lake 5 times the size of your home town; when people welcome you into their weird corner of a bespoke Berlin club; or when everyone’s enjoying the free food and cheap beer provided by a hostel, you’re struck by how remarkably similar we all are: and how great this is. Because we’re not that different, you and I, you and a Calais refugee, a Calais refugee and David Cameron – but recently we’ve begun to forget this.
At the Biennale Arts Festival in Venice, each country has their own pavilion, and can choose to do with it whatever they want. Germany had dedicated half of their pavilion to a photography exhibition, highlighting the tough life refugees have in Germany and across Europe. One Eritrean woman blamed the negative nature of her experiences for our unwillingness to do more, “We may intend to tell the truth but the fact is the truth is not always nice” while her next admission serves to only highlight her humanity, “There is a thirst for the infinite in me, a constant anguish that I myself cannot understand”. This is a woman who has fled her home, her family and her culture, to come to an alien country in the hope that she will be accepted and she can find a life there – and at the moment, across Europe, we are failing such refugees and migrants. Adam Bahar, a political activist from Sudan, currently living in exile in Germany and fighting in the refugee movement in Berlin, writes, “Only European citizens enjoy the human rights vaunted by their [our] media” suggesting that, due to their lack of papers, refugees are manipulated in ways which we’d rather not contemplate.
When you spend time away, you always come back with a greater appreciation of languages, and of (if you can) your ability to speak other ones. Languages are great exhibitors of conversation, when you try to speak another language it shows you’re trying to create some sort of connection. Be it a drunken Slovakian teaching you how to say fuck off, or a kind old Italian man trying to explain that the cooker is only slightly broken – languages always have their uses.
Languages always have their uses, and in the case of David Cameron, Phillip Hammond, and Katie Hopkins they are being used in a more insidious and dangerous way than simply making friends with some French people staying in your hostel. Every turn of phrase that dehumanises these refugees brings into question their humanity and their right to exist. In reality what such circle-jerks of ignorance do is create a more insular, intolerant, and isolated society – one in which we’re less likely to teach foreign people English curse words, but at the same time less likely to alleviate the suffering of others or acknowledge our common shared humanity. When people such as Owen Jones – the New Statesman and Guardian columnist – visit the Calais shanty town known as “The Jungle” they see stark humanity. Jones writes that they are neither “marauding bandits” nor “saints”. People are just people: nothing more, nothing less. The language used by Cameron, Hammond and Hopkins fails us, and it fails them, and it has to stop, otherwise it is we who risk losing our humanity.
Words by Harry Coloe