#syrian refugee crisis
Syrian refugees are NOT inherently dangerous people. They’re regular ol’ human beings who got caught in the middle of a complicated, bloody, frightening civil war. I explain more in the video above.
It’s the morning of the election, and I have one last too long post before I go vote. I was involved in a bit of a Facebook comment war on a post about the Conservative’s publicly stating on their website that they would support legislation to repeal same sex marriage in Canada. Somehow that turned into an argument about ISIS. That’s not the first time that’s happened. Recently my mom, who still lives back in Regina, informed me that some of her friends were upset about my post about the economy going (the Canadian version of) viral, because everyone but Harper will, “Let all the terrorists in.” No one saying it really believes it, it’s a distraction.
It really drove home the theme of this entire election:
Rich people tricking poor people into thinking that brown people are a bigger danger to them than a government that has repeatedly proved that it doesn’t give a shit about them or their families.
I have a lot of new followers (yo), so some of you might not know this, but I’m very sick. I spend more time with my doctors than my family. I have a great relationship with them, which is probably a good thing since I need them to keep me alive and functional. Even doctors from my past still get in touch to see how I’m doing.
My former GP, who I was with from ages 15-25, who got me through the really awful diagnostic process is a Kurdish refugee from Iraq. She and her husband fled during Saddam Hussein’s Kurdish genocide during the 90s. She was pregnant when she arrived, and despite having a new born baby, she worked her ass off to get re-certified in Canada. Since then she’s won several awards for her volunteer work helping immigrant and refugee doctors get their certification, and as well as mentoring female doctors. She works in a community clinic and invites med students to shadow her regularly. She frequently gives presentations about the unique health needs of refugees, and is just overall an absolute badass.
The idea that refugees like her are bad for Canada is absurd. The fact that someone could demonize refugees like her as a voting tactic so that they can keep more of their money is nothing short of monstrous. Some of the people who made the above statements know her. They know her family. They were there when her husband had a heart attack. They heard all about how her son won a spelling bee. And they STILL did it. Every time I think about it I’m nauseated all over again.
I’ve spent a solid week being furious and not wanting to say anything for the sake of keeping the peace, but yesterday put me over the edge.
So here are a few arguments which I’m breaking down separate posts because no one will read the whole thing. Please take a break from trolling the ICNA Sisters Canada page to click on the argument that is applicable to you, racist Facebook friends!
3. “We have to protect Canadians”
4. “Niqabs/Hijabs/Whichever inoffensive clothing item I associate with Muslim women is oppressive”
Basically, if you have a family income of over $200 000 a year and you say you’re voting for Harper because of terrorism, you’re a fucking monster.
If you have a family income of under $200 000 a year and you say you’re voting for Harper because of terrorism, you’re a fucking moron.
This particular tactic is actually what turned me into a switch-hitter voter. I’ve avoided making any real statement either way because I don’t think it’s particularly important this election, but I’m a life-long NDP supporter. And I really mean life-long. My grandma went to school with Shirley Douglas, who apparently ate too many grapefruits and was kind of a bitch, but I’ve been hearing stories about what a hero Tommy was my entire life.
Then as an adult, I made the decision based on 3 things, listed in order of priority:
1. Who is best for First Nations people
2. Who is best for healthcare (and I include women’s health under this banner. If you so much as make a face during the word abortion, you’re politically dead to me forever)
3. Who is best for unions (I’m not in a union, for the record, despite a weird internet rumour that made it’s way back to me last week)
But this election, I honestly don’t care. All 3 candidates will be fine. We’re going to hate them 6 months from now any way when they can’t enact change fast enough because they’re still trying to clean up Harper’s mess. At this point, I don’t care if our next PM put us 100 billion dollars in debt turning Ottawa into a Tropical Themed amusement park run by toucans.
Literally every single option is better than letting our country continue to be run by a racist. First the Tamil refugees were terrorists. Then the Roma refugees were ‘bogus’. Then all cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women were were solved when Cindy Gladue was found guilty of her own murder in April. Now the Syrian refugees are terrorists too. Who’s next?
I posted this on Facebookin response to virtually everyone I know sharing the story about a Hungarian camerawoman, Petra Laszlo, kicking Syrian refugees. I should probably post it here too:
I’m seriously glad that so many of my friends are mad about this. You should also be mad that despite what the Canadian government claims, this is exactly the sort of abysmal treatment Roma people receive in Hungary every day. I know this is long as hell, but a lot of Canadians don’t seem to know about it, so please read it regardless.
We have our own refugee crisis in Canada.
We lifted visa requirements on new EU countries in 2008, so in 2009, Roma from Hungary started flocking to Canada. Not wanting to interrupt European trade negotiations by reintroducing visas, the Canadian government immediately started looking for ways to get rid of them. The first way was by designating Hungary as a ‘safe country’, despite the fact that as the refugees were arriving, 6 Roma were killed and 55 were injured in calculated attacks on their communities. The president of Hungary didn’t offer condolences. He said nothing.
The Jobbik party has been gaining membership and is currently the 3rd largest political party in the country. The founder/leader, Gabor Vona, also founded the Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary group created to, “Stop gypsy crime,” (which is also an integral part of Jobbik’s platform). They were forced to disband after repeatedly staging rallies in front of Roma homes in military uniform. A new version has popped up, they’ve started to work with other hate groups, and now in addition to just threatening Roma people, they’ve been creating military training camps. Gabor Vona wore the Hungarian Guard uniform his first day in Parliment.
In 2011, 2000 members of the Civil Guard, a paramilitary group that began when they decided the Hungarian Guard wasn’t radical enough, descended on a town and spent 2 months terrorizing its 450 Roma inhabitants. They brought dogs, lit torches, and whips. The mayor, a member of Jobbik, said they were doing nothing illegal. They went into schools and threatened students. The teachers threatened to invite them back in. Gabor Vona stated that he wanted to deploy similar groups nationwide. The residents had to be evacuated by the Red Cross. The government told the media that nothing was wrong, and that the Red Cross was bringing them on a planned Easter vacation.
In response to Jobbik’s popularity, Fidesz, the current ruling party, has started to go even further right of their initial platform. To put 'further right’ into context, here’s a fun quote from Zsolt Bayer, one of the founders in the party:
“Whoever runs over a Gypsy child is acting correctly if he gives no thought to stopping and steps hard on the accelerator.”
More from him on how Roma shouldn’t be allowed to exist is available here.
In case you were wondering about the official party response, Fedisz said that they wouldn’t make a statement since he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the party at the time, but that anyone who spoke out against his article was “siding with the murderer” (a Roma man).
So what effects do these politics have on the general Roma population?
Roma women are forcibly sterilized. Children are being put into segregated, inferior school systems (and when those aren’t available, immediately sent to special education regardless of their abilities). They make up 3% of the population and 80% of the human trafficking victims. They’re subject to horrific living conditions, are denied adequate access to healthcare (their life expectancy is 10 years lower than other Hungarians, infant mortality rate is much higher, women are 3 times more likely to die of cancer), and are considered unhireable. Hate crimes are frequent, rarely reported, and when they are, they very rarely result in jail time.
So what did Canada do?
We labelled them “bogus-refugees” and made it more difficult to apply, and faster for us to get rid of them. We also took away the standard healthcare and work visas afforded to other refugees. And we were fucking proud of it. Our immigration minister went to Hungary to tell them in person. Canada made pamphlets telling the Roma we could kick them out faster. Then we made a fucking billboard. The mayor of the town where they posted the billboard was very upset. Why? Because he didn’t want the Roma to come back.
They still came to Canada, despite our compelling billboard campaign. For this new/fast/confusing refugee process created specifically for them, they were assigned the shittiest imaginable lawyers. A stand-out in this field, Viktor Hohots represented over 5000 Roma refugees. He won about 1% of his cases. He fully admitted that he didn’t show up to court, didn’t submit or translate documents as evidence, and mixed up clients stories. Literally thousands of people were deported because of him. His punishment? A 5 month suspension.
But, at least a suspension is something. The RCC has been filing similar complaints about other lawyers for years with no response.
On the rare occasion that the plight of Roma refugees is brought up in the Canadian media, it’s always mentioned that a large percent of the refugees withdraw their applications, which is used to fuel the “bogus-refugee” trope. No one ever examines why they just leave. It turns out, it’s because we pay them to. The Canadian government has been telling Roma that they’ll be deported anyway, so they might as well take plane tickets and a few thousand dollars, and not have to deal with the repercussions. It’s not even a bribe, it’s an ultimatum. We’ve given out over 7 million dollars in this scheme.
But some Roma say no and take their chances. And then they’re deported en masse. Kids who worked hard to integrate are being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, terrified, and sent back somewhere profoundly unsafe.
There’s recently (in the past few weeks) been mention in the Canadian media that the percentage of acceptance rates for Roma refugees this year are much higher. That’s because there are much fewer applications. Because Canada now has people on the ground in Hungary, screening them before they have the chance to get on a plane.
In closing, fuck Hungary, and also fuck Canada.
I know this is post is several years long, but here’s some further reading for anyone who’s interested:
No Refuge: Hungarian Romani Refugee Claimants in Canada(Osgoode Hall Law Journal)
Accelerating Patterns of Anti-Roma Violence in Hungary (The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights- Harvard)
Project: Gyongyospata (Pulitzer Center-Jeneen Interlandi)
This isn’t specific to Hungary, but is about anti-Roma sentiment throughout Europe:
Roma people in Europe in the 21st century: violence, exclusion,
insecurity (The European Association for the Defence of Human Rights)
