Issue No.588
Opinion
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30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Racism and revenge
Illegal immigrants, mostly from Arab, African and Asian countries, have become a staple of the news in many countries. Hardly a week seems to pass without reports of the authorities uncovering yet another refugee-smuggling network. Ships, overloaded with a human cargo, sink on the way to the shores of Italy and Spain, and duly appear in the headlines. A group of hungry young Arabs are discovered and arrested, and they too are catapulted into the limelight of media publicity. The issue so dominates the Western public that the British government has decided to establish a special air passageway so military planes can transport illegal immigrants back to their countries. Arab governments that have partnership agreements with the EU will be obliged to take back those arrested.
Europeans have made a connection, directly or otherwise, between the flow of immigrants into their countries and the rise of the extreme right which has come, increasingly, to look as if it might be able to achieve an electoral breakthrough. In many European countries, most recently the Netherlands and France, panic has set in at the level of popular support which the parties of the right have been able to muster by espousing xenophobic and clearly racist policies. The groundswell of opinion from which such policies draw their support are expressed not only through socially and culturally oppressing or persecuting Arab, Muslim and non-European minorities but often through direct verbal and physical assaults, justified by claims that the minorities targetted refuse to integrate into the societies in which they live.
More recently there have been attempts to forge a link between such minorities and terrorism, with immigrant populations being tarred with the accusation that they furnish the principal source of support for terrorist organisations based in Europe. Thus they have, by this peculiar twist of logic, become a legitimate target for America's "war on terrorism." No longer are Arab and Muslim minorities held responsible for unemployment, pollution, crime, smuggling and drug trafficking, they are now at the top of the list of parties thought to be conspiring to procure weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, with which to attack civilian populations. In the wake of warnings against a possible terrorist attack on vital American sites, America has accused Arab countries, including Iraq, Libya and Syria, as well as Iran and North Korea, of supplying weapons to the terrorist organisations that were allegedly behind the plans.
The situation is no longer restricted to the heated exchange of accusations and counter-accusations but has begun to impact on essentials areas of everyday life. Far stricter procedures are now in place with respect to the mobility of Arabs and Muslims: students, residents, even naturalised nationals are now subject to arbitrary surveillance measures. The French presidential candidate Jacqes Le Pen, a model for many such extremist politicians, has called for anyone of Arab or Muslim descent to be deprived of French nationality.
Such a constant escalation in hostility cannot be considered a reaction to a temporary emergency. It provides yet another indication that the dynamic that is currently driving international relations is governed by a clash, rather than a dialogue, of civilisations. This dynamic turns globalisation into a new form of colonialism, fomenting discord and increasing volatility. Given the obvious links between such tendencies and the widening gap between north and south -- the developed industrial countries have consistently failed to provide support for those nations with a majority of their populations living in extreme poverty -- the most likely, perhaps the only possible, consequence is increased violence. As is the case in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories and Iraq -- as appears increasingly to be the case in the Indian subcontinent -- military intervention has come to be perceived as the only solution.
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