Since the morn of
human existence, people are used to be separated by borders and boundaries. It
looks quite common to us nowadays, but try thinking of a good excuse when a
child asks why. What to say in those questioning eyes that ask you why nobody
talks to this kid at school because he is Albanian, orAfrican
or Pakistani? What is the meaning of those words and who invented them?
21st
century, Greece;
most of the foreigners imagine a paradise on earth: Shiny white houses in the
sun, Mediterranean Sea, blue landscape and
idyllic sunshine next to the coastline. If you also believe in this, it is time
to bring you down to earth.
Literally,
borders and boundaries even exist in human relations, often inspired by (human)
politics. Greece
has become a significant immigrant receiver, hosting a great total number of
immigrants arriving illegally, causing public anxiety and political frictions.
Recently, Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), an extremely right-oriented party has
entered the Greek Parliament. The chief of this party, Mr Karatzaferis is
repeating again and again, directly and indirectly in the Greek Media his
unique and very original migration policy embodied in just a single slogan; Greece for the Greeks."If immigrants don't like it here they should get up
and leave. Illegal immigration cannot be tolerated any more, migrants already living
in Greece
need to respect the country or get out".
The same time,
Greek Media has created a completely non-friendly profile for immigrants whilst
public opinion turns to keep a negative attitude when it comes to immigrants
and foreign people moving in Greece
in order to find a job. At the beginning people started being afraid of
immigrants. When a burglar or a mug was mentioned on the news foreigners were the
first to blame. Currently the situation is even worse. Media propaganda serving
political positions obviously influences more and more Greek public opinion.
Foreigners “steal our jobs, break into our houses and violate the regulations”
are some of the most common arguments anybody would hear. However, few Greeks
find it acceptable to work as builders, cleaners, waiters or pizza deliverers
as they find them non-prestigious for themselves.
Immigration
phenomenon has become more intense during the last years. On the one hand the situation
becomes more complicated when Turkey
appears to have no reaction with regard to illegal immigrants attempting to
reach Greece
through the Turkish shores. Moreover the Greek government has actually not
reached a solution. None of the measures applied have worked and most of all
there has been no integration policy to facilitate the integration of incoming
immigrants. Reception centers around the country are flooded by immigrants who
are struggling to obtain a legal permit to stay in Greece or the EU. Until now, about
250.000 illegal immigrants arriving from Albania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq,
Bangladesh, Somalia and other parts of Africa.
On the other
hand, it would be quite a hard political decision to establish more immigration
centers to alleviate the problem for such a large amount of people, while Greek
society is quite unwilling to accept them as its integral part. “Greeks who
condone and approve the immigration/invasion fiasco are applauding their own
displacement and dispossession”, is a characteristic phrase mentioned in a
blog. Some have implemented a revengeful solution, sending the immigrants
coming from Afghanistan
and Iraq
to England,
considering UK
“as the main responsible that created the problem by bombing these countries”.
Alas, since when Zeus’s descendants became so inhospitable?
The media
propaganda machinery is in full flight. Immigrants constitute a serious threat
on the Greek Media while people are being stuffed propaganda and images of the
"Odyssey" of illegal immigrants in the Aegean
Sea.At the same time, life in Greece is already hard and people
find it difficult to make a living. Therefore, it would be not only throwing
more immigrants into the “land
of Eden”, as it is
presented by those who transport them illegally from their countries to the
coastline of Greece.
It is not a question of the Greek society feeling pity or plight for
immigrants. Incoming immigrants have no idea about the social status or the
impact they have on Greek society. It is definitely not their fault, as they
have no other way but to seek survival no matter where or how. A paperless
migrant is a criminal; the laws of the country are being violated and these
people do not move out creating ghetto slums and additional problems to the
hosting country. This is also because Greece signed up to the so-called
Dublin II Convention, which means illegal immigrants circulating in the EU must
be returned to their original EU country of entry – in this case, Greece.
Motivated by the
celebrations for the breakdown of Berlin’s
wall, we allstarted all kind of brainstorming
and mind-searching about recent and past governing and global political systems
efficiency. Instead, I would challenge you to give a fair answer to all these
people who cannot move or have to confront withgreat
difficulties-in the worst case risk their lives- in order to travel in their
own country of residence. Somalia,
Mexico,
Afghanistan,
Colombia,
Pakistan
-not to forget the unsolved case in the EU- Cyprus.
Some people are close to us and at the same time miles
away. On the other hand, some others remain deep inside us although many or
just few kilometers keep separating us. Since the world started we cross
borders between us. The route is not always pleasant. But usually it worth’s
trying.
Today Βerlin celebrates. Humanity celebrates. The Wall of Berlin is just a (bad) memory. Thousands of blogs, newspapers, channels will broadcast live from the German capital in order to commemorate an event which changed the world as we know it. Many of them will surely speak of the remaining walls which still stand in the planet: Korea, Cyprus, US-Mexico border, Palestine, Nothern Ireland and many more.
However, beyond the above, it seems that there is another Wall, an invisible one, which was built without understanding how and why..''Imperceptibly'' as Constantine P. Cavafy wrote in his own poem ''Walls''.
This wall knows no homeland. Nor a race, a religion or a social status. It exists ''imperceptibly'' in every one of us.
It is the same wall which prevents us from hearing, offering, loving. Look at yourself in the mirror,think for a while and ask yourself: Do I really listen to people when they talk to you, or I just hear? Do I really understand their problems? People do not communicate anymore. Even in pubs, cafes, or wherever you see people socialize, you can notice that actually people do not communicate. They are just having parallel monologues. We do not actually listen to what our fellow has to share with us. What we are thinking, is our own problem, which of course is much more ''serious''. We are the centre of our world. We and our own-problems.
You can test my argument if you just notice, some small ''imperceptible'' things that we do in many cases. You walk in the street and you can notice that nobody watches were the other people are going..That's why when we ''crush'', nobody knows to which direction to head! It is the same ''imperceptible'', slight stare over the beggar, the homeless the migrant, which we unwittingly cast. We ignore the problem and we move on. There is no actual communion between us anymore. Everything spins around our Ego.
The Age of Communication, which is supposed to be the revolution of our era, didnt manage to bring us closer. It actually did it, technically speaking, but the very context of communion changed. It became ''communication'', it was described in quantitative terms. The word communion is made of ''common'' and ''union''. But today, communication is just a series of means; it is know known through various acronyms like WAP, SMS, ADSL, 3G, WIFI, BROADBAND. Human interaction, human relations, are no more interpreted through quality but through quantity: charge per minute, volume of data. A person I love, once wrote that ''when things which cannot be measured, start to appear through digits and numbers, then you can be sure, that we count in reverse to the end..''
We have created a world, were there is only room for one person: ME. All the others, are just people passing through, minor actors in the show..
These are the walls we have to tear down. It is the same walls who prevent us from being tolerant and open. These walls make us ready to through a stone against anything different, instead of embracing it. These walls prevent us of the poor, the immigrant, the opponent. These walls are the very routes of racism, the cornerstone of a new Holocaust.
Berlin Wall is also known as the ''Wall of Shame''. However, even though the Wall has fallen, this doesn't means that shame actually left.
Shame is all around us.
Shame is existant when poverty is a statistics measure, where 1 out of 3 doesnt has access to food. Shame is existant when the victims of a war are regarded as either ''mistakes'', or ''collateral damage'' . Shame is existant when human suffering enters in a TV-box and can generate money for the channels.
Human pain and suffering is non countable.
The refugee who lost his house in Famagusta, Cyprus in 1974, lost the same house as the Darfur-refugee last year. The immigrants from Mexico who are trying to reach the American ''Land of Promise'' have no different intentions to those East-Germans who died in the Berlin Wall, when trying to cross it. The family which found itself half in Pyong Yang and half in a Seoul-suburb is the same family which was divided in 1961 between Eastern and Western Berlin. The mother from Palestine, who holds in her hands the body of her dead child, feels the same pain as the Michaelangelo's known Pieta...
For one thing anyone who has observed the outcome of the greek election can be sure: the absolut winner of the night was G. Papandreou. The Conservative party, faced the worst night since its foundation on 1974. It's decision for early election was a true event of political suicide, a decision which still is not easily comprehendable. From the qualitative characteristics of the results it is more than clear that many citizens voted for the Socialists either because they believed in Papandreou or because via that way they wanted to punish Karamanlis. It is sure that at this very moment, the hopes of many people rallied in the face of George Papandreou. Within the Socialist party, they seem to be realists.They say that they know the problems they are about to face: a spendthrift hydrocephalus state, chronic structural problems of the national economy, corruption. Problems that they faced before as goverment and part of which they inherited to the Conservatives on 2004. Many, in the Socialists, claim to be ready to '' lift the sleeves''and work, following the demand of their president. The announcement of the new government will prove whether or not are we about to move towards a climate of trust which is essential at the moment. The winner of the elections, knows that he stands alone. He knows that next to him, next to the new prime-minister, both the media and the politicians will pretend that they were always supporting him. Papandreou yesterday won a personal bid. He was alone when he became president of the Socialist Party on 2004 where nobody believed him. Alone he led the party to the electoral victory yesterday.
Those who ''inhabit by Jerusalem'' know that the new goverment will be structured upon its prime-minister. Anyone who will find himself close to a ministerial chair will have to provoke samples of absolute loyalty to the new prime minister. Many analysts point out that by Monday we will see within the new government a powerful Prime Minister's Office to initiate things in the cabinet as opposed to ''Super-ministers'' of the Karamanlis government.
I freely admit that I regret the fact that ''in a european country'' as Greece claims that is, we have prime minister-centered systems and we are placing our hopes in them- which is the worst.
I can not even deny the fact that, personally, I have suspicions over the democratic initiatives and manners of Papandreou, especially to what concerns things within his own party. However, I must admit that at this critical moment, only a super-concentration of control to the Prime Minister, may allow him to enforce policy. First of all Papandreou has to battle his party and the attitudes within it. Attitudes that remember us the pre-2004 Socialist Party. If he manage to beat these attitudes then he can battle the very-known problems of the country. The issue actually is whether or not George Papandreou can turn himself into a charismatic leader ...! If the politician who begun his carreer by representing the absolute antithesis of a weberian charismatic leader will be able to reverse these conditions. His personal bid is whether or not he is capable of making the 2009 elections a new 1981 elections, without the irresponsible rhetoric of his father ...
Over the last weeks, the eu-elections are one of the top news in every european country no matter how the people really care. Here in Greece, the political parties announced their candidates almost two weeks after PM Karamanlis announced that the Parliament will end its sessions because of the european elections- a move which provoked a lot of discussion because of the corruption scandals which dominate the political life of the country. It is sad that in Greece, the european election race will be held based on the national agenda - nothing about Europe was said from the parties until now..Very few debates were organised up to now, so that nobody knows what each party represents about Europe. Within the Greek political system exist a consensus over Greece's position within the EU. Except of the Communist Party, no other party has ever questioned that it is for good that Greece participates to the Union, no matter the different visions over the european project that each party has.
This phenomenon is not only apparent in Greece. A greater political consensus has been created in the european level as well. The two big political parties of the Union, the European Popular Party and the European Socialist Party are agreeing even to that point so they both want Jose Manuel Baroso to continue being the President of the European Commission. It is true that those big political coalitions do not seem to be that much different at all. After all, since the Reagan-Thatcher era, almost all the socialist parties which came to power, implemented liberal policies. ''So, what is the point of all this procedure ?
''
I am afraid, that all these years, in order to boost up the unification process we' ve lost something much more important : to politicize the procedure. Despite the fact that the European Parliament was given a lot of powers over the last years- powers that will be much more important if the Lisbon Treaty is about to be implemented- the percentage of people who vote in the elections is diminishing. To conclude, is this 60% of Europeans who believe that their vote will result to nothing on June the 7th, a message to Brussels that something doesn't goes well ? I think that we are in a desperate need of MEP's that are able to understand so..
chris
lycanthrope
Giorgos
SimonR
Dimi
benakiba
Britney
FROGGY
tintin
Elina
