~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Almost 600,000 people fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have arrived in Europe so far this year. In September alone, 250,000 passed through the Balkans, that rugged and beautiful area of southeastern Europe that includes Greece and 12 other countries ranging north from the Mediterranean to Austria, Hungary and Ukraine.
Some countries, like Hungary, refuse to let them in or even to pass through to other countries. Countries such as Germany and Sweden are being as humane as possible, figuring out how to house and feed the men, women and children walking thousands of miles to save their lives and what’s left of their families. As they trudge along, all they own on their backs, they meet political hyperbole and self-righteous ill will: Why should you people come here and try to share our life, liberty and budget?
The problem with being a refugee is that you’re punished for fleeing punishment. It’s a terrible Catch-22 and reveals the human race at its worst.
Most of us in this world don’t want to be ex-patriots; we want to live out our lives in the country in which we were born. No matter how we might love traveling, we eventually want to come home. The tragedy begins when your country treats you so savagely you have to run from it. The continuation of the tragedy is how the places you run to refuse you and treat you like scum.
The U.S. was originally populated by refugees fleeing one thing or another. As the decades rolled on, millions abandoned their beloved countries because of famine and slaughter and being attacked for their religious beliefs. Often under terrible conditions, they made it to America. As each succeeding wave of immigrants washed up here, earlier immigrants — now the settled and comfortable — treated the newcomers as if they were diseased dogs. It appears to be a human behavior after securing one’s own freedom to want to shut the gates against anyone else who is needy, especially the ones who are different looking and speak a weird language. It all really stinks.
Hungary refusing people who will be killed if they stay in Syria is pure hypocrisy: how many countries took in Hungarians when they fled the Communist takeover of their country in the 1950s?
There is goodness happening, however. Europe is trying to behave as if it is “a continent of values, a continent of solidarity,” as Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, said at a meeting in Brussels of European Union and Balkan leaders. At this meeting these folks agreed they have to cooperate. (Wow, what a concept.) They have started by figuring out how to manage the flow of refugees making their way through Turkey, Greece and the western Balkans to reach welcoming places such as Germany and Scandinavia before winter. They talked about insuring humane reception to the asylum seekers (no longer calling them refugees) and how to distribute the families and individuals around Europe so as not to be a burden on any one country. “The immediate imperative is to provide shelter,” said a member of the summit. “It cannot be that in the Europe of 2015 people are left to fend for themselves, sleeping in fields.”
This warmed my heart even as Hungarian and Croatian and Serbian leaders acted as if they’d never needed help.
I think of the “Oakies,” Oklahomans who fled to California from their Dust Bowl state in the 1930s and how badly they were treated in their own country because they were refugees. It seems the compassion gene is ill-developed in humans. The suspicious selfishness of us is staggering. But I see glimmers of hope when I hear leaders like Merkel speaking up for the latest in a long march of hurt people that stretches back through our entire human history.
Each country that lines up to help is noble. That the Middle Eastern countries will not help their own is unforgiveable, but we can’t seem to even shame them into compassion; nothing much to be done there. So far.
To be scared of those in need is dumb when being wary of the powerful and the greedy seems so much more sensible. Stopping the source of the fleeing would be a logical solution, but putting an end to war is a ways off yet. We are accustomed to covering up the source of the pain and dealing only with the symptoms.
But, I think we are changing.
