When in 1950, China sought to ‘Liberalise’ Tibet, what it did in effect was persecution of the native Tibetans by attacking their unique culture in an attempt to impose Chinese Marxist ideology and practices in the social and political culture of Tibetans, who practice and preach Tibetan Buddhism – with the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader. In an attempt to save themselves and their identity after a failed revolt against the Chinese in 1959, the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans came to NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh) in India. They were immediately granted asylum by the Indian Government and relief operations were kick-started.

The aim of this article is to analyse how refugee Tibetans became the world’s most successful refugee community, as is proclaimed by all leading scholars on the subject.

Melvyn Goldstein, the American anthropologist arrived at Bylakuppe January, 1966 to do field work among the refugees in South India. Within five years of starting the settlement from scratch in 1962, the refugees at Bylakuppe had “become a tremendous economic success” by 1966 (Goldstein, 1978: 399). He observed very little manifestation of the dysfunctional behaviour commonly associated with the “refugee” syndrome. There was little incidence of mental and emotional disorders and no incidence of alcoholism.

Girija Saklaini, an Indian sociologist, did exhaustive fieldwork and research on Tibetan refugees living in Dharamshala, Delhi and Dehradun (Northern India) and her findings are similarly positive. She wrote that Tibetans have, on the whole, “successfully emerged from a self-sufficient barter economy into a competitive economy, and have adjusted to the new situation which is a tribute to the Tibetan community in exile” (Saklaini, 1984: 216).

The reasons for the ‘success’ of the Tibetan refugee community are sociological as well as political. A few of these come from Girija Saklaini’s explanations as noted by her during her anthropological study of Tibetan refugees: such as work ethics, lack of sexual division of labour, simple entrepreneurship. These simple characteristics can go a long way. For instance, in a country with plenty of unskilled labour, a refugee community without abilities of entrepreneurship and business skills could never have achieved self-sustenance.

However, all of these reasons could not have proved sufficient without the active support that the refugees received from the Indian State. As noted by various scholars, a factor of supreme importance when it comes to settlement of refugees in third world countries is the political charisma shown by the echelons of the host State’s government.

In the instant case of Tibetan refugees, it was Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India who came to their rescue. Right from the beginning in 1959, Jawaharlal Nehru showed keen personal interest in the Tibetan refugee problems. One of the main reasons was that his China policy was severely criticized in India throughout the 1950s, and his critics took the Tibetan crisis as the proof of his policy failure. Moreover, in India there was widespread sympathy for the Tibetan cause, mainly due to India’s cultural affinities with Buddhist Tibet. It was probably in order to compensate for his political inability to do anything for Tibet that Nehru sought to put the Tibetan refugee problem high on India’s domestic agenda in the 1960s.

On March 30, 1959 the Government of India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. On April 4, 1959 Nehru stated in public that India’s policy was governed by three factors: the preservation of the security and integrity of India; India’s desire to maintain friendly relations with the People’s Republic of China; and India’s deep sympathy for the people of Tibet (Holborn, 1975: 719). India’s deep sympathy for the people of Tibet was translated into her concrete concern for refugees from Tibet. Though it was the last component of India’s foreign policy, the fact that the Tibetan people figured in that official policy meant that the question of Tibetan refugees was high on India’s agenda. It made a tremendous difference to the Tibetan refugees in India. In this way, Nehru’s political guilt was compensated by his deep personal concern for the refugees. The government provided for settlements by requesting various State governments to allot land for such settlements. Many of them answered Nehru’s call. Further, Bhutan and Nepal also provide land for refugee settlements.

Another reason for successful settlement is also sociological is nature. The Tibetan refugee community in India already had a systematic leadership and power distribution mechanism in place, which they were successfully able to implement in India. When the Dalai Lama took refuge in Dharamshala in India, his ministers and advisors came along with him. This endured that there was no vacuum of control, as well as, that the Indian Government as well as the NGOs and various Aid groups, whether Indian and or International, always had a distribution network available to them which was free of corruption and worked smoothly. The micro level organisation was intricate and at each level, there were elected or nominated leaders who were accountable to their superiors, who were skilled administrators and were also paid a meagre salary by the Tibetan Government in exile at Dharamshala. There were procedures for dispute resolution and bank loans, employment, schooling, as well as health and wellness.

Here, an observation can be made, that it was the successful settlement of these refugees, that ensured that the host population does not come in conflict with them. A few points are worth considering here: first, these Tibetan settlements were planned and execute in such a way that the Tibetan culture does not get assimilated with the culture of the host population. This was the view of the Indian as well as the Tibetan (exile) Government.

Second, in a span of two decades since their establishment, these settlements became self-sufficient. Since Tibetans primarily prefer trading, the local population was hired for agricultural activities all round the year, such as tilling, sowing, harvesting etc. Even though there was some resentment in these workers of the fact that their land was given to the refugees, they nevertheless benefitted from the employment created, which was not there earlier.

Members of the host population are employed by Tibetan refugees in other spheres too. In Nepal numerous local Nepalis are employed in Tibetan refugee carpet factories, which are the largest foreign exchange earner next to tourism. Moreover, increasing number of Tibetan refugees are entering secondary occupations such as selling sweaters in winter, running restaurants and hotels etc. in which local workers are being employed as can be seen in Delhi, Dharamsala, Darjeeling, Kathmandu etc.

The other beneficial type of refugee impact on host society is the extension of Tibetan facilities to the host population. Most of the Tibetan settlements are located in remote parts of India which had not received much attention from New Delhi in terms of developmental funds and projects. With the establishment of Tibetan settlements in such areas, the surrounding Indian or Nepali villages began to receive side benefits. Tibetan schools and hospitals are open to the host population as well. While digging tube wells or making irrigation canals for the Tibetan refugees, foreign charity organizations also have sponsored similar schemes for the surrounding local village as well. To such remote and poor villagers in India or Nepal, the establishment of a Tibetan colony in their locality means new jobs, more business opportunities and new modern facilities.

The scheme of things in the 21^st century is different. Now, the third generation Tibetans, have more expectations, and wish to live rather than survive. The young are often disgruntled by the imposition of multiple identities on them. They are told to remain true to the ‘Free Tibet’ cause and retain their culture uniqueness amongst a sea of local population. And, on the other hand, their belongingness and attachment to India is asserted by them since they have grown up here and consider it their Home.

Even though they can apply for Citizenship, they almost never do so. The Dharamshala Government maintains that if the Tibetans take Indian Citizenship, they will lose focus of their cause and struggle. Based on the Indian Government’s laws for Tibetans born in India who seek Indian Citizenship, it is imperative that they let go of all their benefits provided as members of the Tibetan refugee community. They cannot live in Tibetan settlements, take benefit of employment or education provided by the Tibetan Government, etc.

Thubten Dorje, a Tibetan in exile since the 1960s, has run two thriving small businesses in Dharamsala for decades, raised two children and supported his extended family, but despite his many successes there, he remains optimistic that India is merely a temporary refuge for himself and his family. He is frustrated that his talented son, who is ineligible for seats reserved for specific Indian minorities, will have to pay an unthinkable sum of rupees to gain admission to a good medical college in India. He says,

“We aren’t Indians. We don’t get benefits. We can’t buy land. There is no Indian citizenship for us. There is only a residential certificate that we have to renew once a year. We can’t take loans, no buying lands, and we can’t get good jobs. You can apply for Indian citizenship, but it’s very difficult to get. We pay taxes to the Indian government, and one tax to the Central Tibetan Administration too . . . Tibet is always in our mind. We are still hopeful. We want to be totally independent, but I don’t think there’s any chance of that. Time is fading and he [the Dalai Lama] is getting older day by day. . .”

As Dorje dreams of a better life for himself and his family, either in a free Tibet, he underscores that he will never feel at home in India as long as he is a second-class resident, a non-citizen, a glorified guest. (Jessica Falcone & Tsering Wangchuk, 2008)

This feeling can be traced in many of the second and third generation Tibetans and is proved by the fact that the Tibetan diaspora in India has been reducing each year. Families are migrating to US, Canada, France, Germany etc, since these countries provide better job opportunities and quality of life.

Finally comparing the experience of the ‘most successful’ refugee community with the rather bitter experience of the other communities, some observations can be made.

Firstly, it becomes clear that if the host State’s political leadership and the community shares ethnic and religious or spiritual connections with the refugee group, the settlement of the refugee group becomes peaceful and expedient. In this case, the people of India found spiritual connection with the Dalai Lama and empathised with the Tibetan Community. This helped avoid regional conflicts and violence, which would otherwise be plausible.

Secondly, a crucial factor that worked in favour of the Tibetan Community was their unwillingness and strong determination to not mix or assimilate in the socio-political fabric of their new home. This made the local communities comfortable in multiple ways. They didn’t perceive the refugees as political competitors, or even competitors for common government services and goods, since these facilities were to Tibetans not from the common systems for locals, but from the Tibetan Administration, with aid from multiple agencies as well as Government of India.

Thirdly, since Tibetans were moderately skilled persons with entrepreneurial capacity and individual agency to work, they benefited from the initial support provided by the government and became a self-sufficient community in less than two decades. This ensured that they were not perceived as a liability on the economy of a country in which 40% people at that time were below the poverty line.

Fourthly, and most importantly, the functioning of the Tibetan government in exile with its modern administrative techniques and concrete power structure ensured the well-being of all the refugees through efficient distribution channels. The Dalai Lama being perceived as representing the entire Tibetan Community enabled a centrality and stable dialogue between the Indian State, the Tibetan Administration, and various NGOs and International Donors.

Why India does not have a uniform policy framework for Refugees: Twin Perspectives

India is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol and does not have a national refugee protection framework. However, it continues to grant asylum to a large number of refugees from neighbouring States and respects UNHCR’s mandate for other nationals, mainly from Afghanistan and Myanmar. While the government of India deals differently with various refugee groups, in general, it respects the principle of non-refoulement for holders of UNHCR documentation.

However, it is a signatory to a number of United Nations and World Conventions on Human Rights, refugee issues and related matters. Hence its obligations in regard to refugees arise out of the latter. India has also voted affirmatively to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which affirms rights for all persons, citizens and non- citizens alike.

Many experts in the area of refugee law believe that the more practical alternative to proposing an entirely new law is to push for changes in India’s current policy regarding refugees. As stated above, no current Indian law refers directly to refugees. The Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939, the Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Foreigners Order, 1948 are the primary documents dealing with the treatment of foreigners in India. Article 2 of the 1939 Registration of Foreigners Act defines a foreigner as “a person who is not a citizen of India.” The Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Foreigners Order of 1948 also uses this definition of a “foreigner.” Both the Act and the Order affirmatively grant the Indian government powers to restrict the movement of foreigners inside India, to mandate medical examinations, to limit employment opportunities, and to control the opportunity to associate, and the ability to refoule, or “return,” refugees. The Refugee Convention, however, bars all these actions.

Therefore, the reasoning that India’s policy toward refugees already matches international standards and is, consequently, not in need of any change is not acceptable to watchdog agencies like the UNHCR and the NHRC and rightly so. It is patently obvious that although India grants its refugees certain rights and privileges, these are only conferred upon select groups, leaving the question of equality and uniformity unanswered. A clear case of this is the preferential treatment conferred upon the Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees. [1]

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A UN report reveals that one-third of all immigrants come from 10 countries and that Immigrants living in India have declined from 5.4 million in 2015 to 5.15 million in 2019

Even as the ultra right wing Indian government continued its tirade against the bogey of “illegal immigrants”, a UN report concludes that it is India that  has emerged as the leading country of origin for immigrants across the world, with 17.5 million international migrants in 2019 coming from India, up from 15.9 million in 2015, according to a dataset released by the Union Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York on Tuesday.

Sharp Spiral
The report is titled ‘The International Migrant Stock 2019’ , released by the UN DESA’s Population Division. It states that the number of international migrants in the world had reached an estimated 272 million 2019 — 51 million more than in 2010. The percentage of international migrants of the total global population has increased to 3.5% from 2.8% in 2000.

Interestingly, while India remained as the top source of international migrants, the number of migrants living in India saw a slight decline from 5.24 million in 2015 to an estimated 5.15 million in 2019 – both 0.4% of the total population of the country.

Bangladesh was the leading country of origin for migrants in India, the report stated.

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Bachelet noted the publication of a report by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General which revealed systematic overcrowding, lack of showers and meals that made immigrants sick.
 

The former president of Chile said she is “deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions.”

Bachelet directly criticized the primary goal of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, which is to round up, detain and deport immigrants without regard for due process and international law: “States do have the sovereign prerogative to decide on the conditions of entry and stay of foreign nationals. But clearly, border management measures must comply with the State’s human rights obligations and should not be based on narrow policies aimed only at detecting, detaining and expeditiously deporting irregular migrants.

“In most of these cases, the migrants and refugees have embarked on perilous journeys with their children in search of protection and dignity and away from violence and hunger. When they finally believe they have arrived in safety, they may find themselves separated from their loved ones and locked in undignified conditions. This should never happen anywhere.”

She also noted the government’s prosecution of immigrant rights organizations and activists for providing humanitarian assistance to immigrants, saying, “The provision of lifesaving assistance is a human rights imperative that must be respected at all times and for all people in need—it is inconceivable that those who seek to provide such support would risk facing criminal charges.”

In March, four activists with No More Deaths were sentenced to probation and fined for leaving water jugs and food for migrants making the dangerous crossing from Mexico to the United States. Scott Warren, a volunteer with No More Deaths, faces a retrial on felony charges for caring for and feeding migrants after the first jury refused to convict him.

Bachelet, a pediatrician, specifically denounced the detention of children, declaring, “Detaining a child even for short periods under good conditions can have a serious impact on their health and development—consider the damage being done every day by allowing this alarming situation to continue.”

The recent DHS Inspector General report revealed that of the 8,000 detainees across five CBP facilities, 2,669 were children. Of these children, 826 had been held longer than 72 hours, and 50 were younger than 7 years old. Three of the facilities lacked showers for children.

Even for adults, Bachelet said, “Any deprivation of liberty … should be a measure of last resort.”

As is typical of UN statements, Bachelet’s statement contains a toothless plea for the US and other governments to “work together to address the root causes compelling migrants to leave their homes.”

Instead, the Trump administration is extending its war on immigrants south of the US border by cutting aid to Central American governments and pressuring the Mexican government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, into deporting more immigrants in June than in any month since 2006.

Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, backed a military coup against elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009, creating horrific conditions in Honduras that have forced tens of thousands of workers annually to seek a better life outside the country.

Further indicating that the US government has no intention of heeding Bachelet’s statement, on July 3 DHS requested another 1,000 National Guard troops to the border between Texas and Mexico. The request, made public Monday by the Department of Defense, implements an order from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, allowing for the state’s National Guard to assist Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

When Abbott issued the order last month, he called Congress “a group of reprobates” for supposedly not doing enough to stop immigrants.

“They carp about a humanitarian crisis and about reforming an immigration system all the while refusing to pass laws to fix the problem,” he said to justify deploying soldiers to block impoverished immigrants from reaching the US.

The Corpus Christi Caller Times reported, “The troops are expected to arrive at various locations along the border later this month to assist federal authorities.”

They will join 1,900 other National Guard troops and 2,300 active-duty troops on the border.

Chillingly, a Pentagon spokesman told CNN that the new troops will be deployed because “[s]upplemental holding support is requested for CBP facilities located at Donna and Tornillo, Texas.” DHS did not elaborate when requested by CNN. However, this raises the prospect of National Guard troops directly staffing the concentration camps.

Originally published by WSWS.org

Courtesy: Counter Current

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For leftists, socialists and communists of all kinds, it is highly regrettable, because they are advocates and practitioners of class politics. They would rather see the masses fighting against their class adversaries.

Assam – A Case of Inner-Indian Conflict
Against this general background, recently, a particular old conflict broke out anew in Assam, one of the Easternmost provinces (states) of India. Assamese speaking people, the original inhabitants of the province, have been complaining since long that too many people from the other provinces of India, particularly Bengalis from West Bengal and the republic of Bangladesh, are legally and, alternatively, illegally migrating into Assam and occupying jobs, business opportunities, and arable land, which, they say, should go to the Assamese, the sons of the soil. To make matters more complicated, in the past few decades, the number and percentage of Muslims, who have for a few centuries now constituted a substantial minority of Assam, have been swelling because of illegal immigration of Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh, thus also fanning the already existing Hindu-Muslim conflicts in the province.

In order to contain the anti-foreigner agitations of the Assamese and allay their fear that they were losing control of their own country, the authorities acceded to their demand that the names of genuine Indian citizens residing in Assam be ascertained and published in a National Register of Citizens (NRC). This was first done in 1951. A similar operation was carried out in 2017 and an updated NRC was published on 30^th July 2018. In the process, it was found that some four million residents of Assam were not citizens of India.

A debate then ensued on the question regarding the future of these illegal immigrants, the non-citizen residents in India. In the process, also the whole problem of illegal immigration in Assam was discussed. From the contributions to the debate I can filter out two main viewpoints: (1) Immigration of Bengalis into Assam had begun in the 19^th century when India was under British rule. It only continued after the subcontinent became independent and divided into two separate states (1947). The British had promoted it in their own imperial interest. The blame for the resulting conflicts between the Assamese and Bengalis should therefore be laid at the door of the British rulers (see e.g. Sharma¹). (2) The other view is that the Bengali immigrants have deprived the Assamese of their legitimate right to enjoy and control the wealth and economic opportunities of what is their territory (see e.g. Gohain²).

The True Cause of the Conflicts
What I miss in this discussion/debate are some relevant statistical data, particularly some on the demographic development in Assam. They could be helpful both in regard to identifying the most important cause of the conflicts and in regard to suggesting solutions. Assam is a province (state) where, in 2001, Assamese was the mother tongue of less than half of the population (48.8%) and Bengali that of a substantial minority (27.5%), where Hinduism in all its varieties was, in 2011, the religion of 61.5% of the population and Islam that of 34.2%, where, in 2011, Muslims were the majority in 9 out of the 27 districts. On economic development in Assam we read: “The per capita income of Assam was higher than the national average soon after Indian Independence. But it has slipped since, and the difference has become larger since liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1980s.” In such a state, the population grew from 8 million in 1951 to 31 Million in 2011. It is estimated to be 35 Million in 2018. (All data from Internet and Wikipedia).

Seen against the background of these data and given India’s history full of all kinds of conflict since the early 20^th century, it is no wonder that Assam has been suffering so many communal and linguistic conflicts. That Sharma blames the British for all these does not surprise me. It is an age-old explanatory model of the standard Left to blame imperialism/colonialism/CIA for everything bad. (Another such model is capitalism.) As if it was the British who were to blame for Assam’s and the Indian subcontinent’s huge exponential population growth since 1951, as if mass migration of poor people to greener pastures in other countries is not a universal phenomenon.

Gohain at least comes close to the truth when he speaks of “natural resources” and “unemployment and landlessness”. More so, when he speaks of the “fact” that “the Indigenes” (i.e. the Assamese) have been “robbed of their power to decide how many guests they could welcome in their homes.” At another place, he truthfully uses the term “aliens” for non-Assamese Indians and Bangladeshis. For such people’s coming to Assam he uses the term “infiltration”. (Trump uses the term invasion).

But neither Gohain nor Sharma mention the ever worsening population problem, the fact that Assam and the Indian subcontinent, in fact the whole world is simply overpopulated. Today, if we do not take cognizance of this fact, we cannot really and fully explain any serious problem in the world. We then cannot explain why already in the 1960s to 1980s, many Maharashtrians were complaining that South Indians were occupying the urban areas and the jobs of their territory, nor why they wanted to push the Indians from South India out of Maharashtra, a province of India. They did the same, in 1914, 1915, 1917, with regard to Biharis, who had occupied many menial jobs (private car drivers e.g.) in the urban areas.

The feeling that aliens are infiltrating and occupying their“home” is not only troubling Assam, but also many other countries of the world. Today, in Europe, Australia, and the USA, it is called the problem of illegal immigrants or too many immigrants. In such countries, it is the main cause of the recent rise of fascistic forces. In Sweden, it has already destroyed the formerly glorious social-democratic model of an ideal society

And the Feasible Solution?
Sharma has very generally thought about what to do, but he could not come up with any concrete proposal. He writes about “assimilating the huge immigrant masses in a democratic way”, “providing opportunities for those who are left out”, and “democratization of the polity”. But what opportunities can help assimilate the huge masses of immigrants other than jobs and small businesses, which are already in very short supply for the indigenes? Democratization of the polity does not create jobs and other sources of income! Gohain implicitly suggests that at least non-Indian (if not all) Bengalis should be deported out of Assam. But this is an idea that is very difficult to implement. Bangladesh would most surely not recognize them as citizens of Bangladesh.

I have an idea for a long-term solution of the problem. We may learn from the Chinese. When Deng Xiaoping took over power in China in 1979, he, firstly, opened up China for exploitation by foreign imperialist capitalists. This has already been done in India and Bangladesh. Secondly, Deng initiated and enforced the famous (for some, notorious) one-child policy. This has not been done in India, nor in Bangladesh. Of course, it promises to bear fruit only in the long run. But it must be done, while in the short and middle term we somehow muddle through. For, as Paul Ehrlich said, “Whatever [be] your cause, it is a lost cause unless we control population [growth].” In the present case, the cause is peace and harmony among the ethno-lingual and ethno-religious groups in Assam. And we will never achieve this end as long as there is no stability at the demography front of the whole Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan and Bangladesh).

Democrats, rights-people etc. might object that such a policy violates human rights or reproductive rights. But firstly, the right to produce as many children as one wishes is not a universal human right, and secondly, it is usual, because necessary, to curtail certain rights in times of emergency. I agree with Gohain when he says: “ … human rights … is an ideal goal, not a reality during a period of transition to that.” For a nation, I would like to add, survival and internal peace have top priority.

 
References:
1. Devabrata Sharma: “Assam – Contextualising NRC Historically”
http://frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-51/51-7/51-7-Assam%20-%20Contextualising%20NRC%20Historically.html
2. Hirain Gohain: “An Open Letter to Indians”
http://frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-51/51-7/51-7-An%20Open%20Letter%20to%20Indians.html

Saral Sarkar was born in 1936 in West Bengal, India. After graduating from the University of Calcutta, he studied German language and literature for 5 years in India and Germany. From 1966 to 1981, Sarkar taught German at the Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), Hyderabad, India. Sarkar is living in Germany since 1982. He is the author of 5 political books(see list in Wikipedia/German) that have appeared in English, German, Chinese, Japanese and (in internet for free downloading) French and Spanish. Sarkar has also published many articles and essays in several journals in India, USA, Germany, UK, Holland, China, Spain. He also writes regularly in two blogs of his own (see Wikipedia/German).

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

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Roughly 5,000 people, mostly from Central America’s violent and unstable “Northern Triangle” of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are reportedly making their way through Mexico with the intention of claiming asylum at the U.S. border. The so-called “migrant caravan” is attracting intense social and political attention, with U.S. President Donald Trump declaring it a “national emergency.” He has also claimed, erroneously, that the migrants “have to” claim asylum in Mexico first.
 

Naira and her daughter, who are traveling with thousands of other immigrants from Central America, rest in Huixtla, Mexico, on Oct. 22, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Migrants aren’t obligated to claim asylum in any country, but have a right to seek asylum in a country of their choosing, the right to a fair process in that country, and crucially, a right not to be sent back to a country where they will face persecution – or even death.

I’ve been working with asylum-seekers in Europe and the U.S. since 2008. Over the last decade I have witnessed firsthand the increasing pressure on the asylum system to manage complex situations at borders. The reality is that even if the migrants currently traveling through Mexico are able to claim asylum at the U.S. border – a big if, considering they are still more than 1,000 miles away – the legal path to safety is challenging.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND

What has always been a difficult process has been made more difficult by growing governmental and public concern that asylum-seekers are gaming the system or that asylum itself has become a backdoor route for economic migrants.

Pressures like these lead to ever-narrowing legal protections for asylum-seekers.

The asylum system is flawed, and ensuring fair access to genuine protection requires making significant improvements to the broader legal, administrative and social contexts.
 

The legal framework

The international legal framework for asylum is the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, which was developed at the end of WWII by the United Nations.

The convention established five categories on which asylum claims can be based: race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

From the beginning, however, these protection categories were political. Much like recent efforts to limit protections for those fleeing domestic or gang violence, these categories have always protected some, but not all persecuted people. For example, the 1951 convention excluded Germans expelled from Eastern Europe and those forced to flee partition of India and Pakistan.

Many of the people displaced or persecuted today also struggle to fit their experiences into the boxes created by the law. For example, despite broad global support for the rights of women and LGBTQ persons, no specific categories exist for gender or sexuality.

The 1951 Convention is not useless – far from it. However, it contributes to a legal environment in which successful asylum-seekers must have rather narrowly defined experiences in order to be protected.
 

The administrative process

Sandra Gutierrez, who fled from gang violence in Honduras with her family and was granted asylum by the United States in 2016, at home in Oakland. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

When a person seeks asylum – not just in the U.S., but in any country that is a party to the refugee convention – they have to prove they have been persecuted because of their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. What’s more, they have to prove that they cannot live safely in their country of origin. Their proof depends in large part on being able to demonstrate credibility. In other words, they have to share their experiences in such a way that their claim is believed to be true and their fear of persecution is found to be genuine.

This process is made more challenging by suspicions that asylum-seekers are abusing the system. For example, in January 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages the administrative process, changed their policy regarding interviews so that those who have claimed asylum more recently are interviewed first.

The assumption by USCIS is that newer applications are more likely to be fraudulent and quicker interviews will deter people from “using asylum backlogs solely to obtain employment authorization by filing frivolous, fraudulent or otherwise non-meritorious asylum applications.”

In the meantime, those who have been waiting years to be interviewed will wait even longer. In January 2018 more than 300,000 people were waiting. USCIS used to publish a bulletin of wait times, but discontinued it when the interviewing policy changed in January. The last published bulletin showed that, for example, people in Miami were waiting nearly four and a half years to be interviewed.

In addition to confronting suspicion that they are abusing the system, asylum-seekers face a lack of legal support for making claims, and the reality that decision-makers have a great deal of discretion in deciding their fate.

No legal representation is automatically provided for asylum-seekers. Many manage the entire process, including going before an immigration judge, entirely on their own. Unsurprisingly, those who do have an attorney are five times more likely to be granted asylum.

Research also regularly shows that the chances of being granted asylum vary considerably depending on the applicant’s nationality and the location within the U.S. where they seek asylum. In 2017, almost 90 percent of claims from Mexicans were denied, compared to only 20 percent of Chinese cases. All three Northern Triangle countries – El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – are in the top five most frequently denied, with more than 75 percent of claims being refused. Similarly, a case is more likely to be granted in New York or San Francisco than in those courts closer to the border in Texas or Arizona.
 

The social context

Lastly, asylum has in many ways become an outlet for broader social anxieties about borders, security, terrorism, economic inequality and multiculturalism. Research shows us that migrants and refugees are in fact not more likely to commit crime than citizens. Nor are they likely to be terrorists. In fact, they contribute to local economies in positive ways. But until these social attitudes and assumptions change, the prospect of there being sufficient political will to create workable legal solutions will likely remain low.

The legal and administrative frameworks can only really be addressed once adequate social and political will exists to make the kinds of changes that would support a just and humane asylum system.

Abigail Stepnitz, PhD Candidate, University of California, Berkeley
 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Photo Courtesy: Moneycontrol

It is time Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi reins in Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and his friends from vitiating the process of updating the National Register of Citizens for Assam, which aims to separate genuine Indian citizens from those the State defines as “illegal immigrants”. Through their venomous speeches they have turned the exercise into a tool for communal polarisation and terrorising Indians outside the northeastern state in a bid to gain votes.

Justice Gogoi has a reason to worry because he and Justice Rohinton F Nariman have been supervising the updating exercise. Even though there have been many claims of faulty exclusion from the National Register of Citizens, the process has acquired credibility precisely because the Supreme Court’s monitoring of it has been devoid of political motivations.

But this perception is likely to change, if it has not already, because of the manner in which Shah and the BJP have been invoking the National Register of Citizens to frame the undocumented immigrants issue in India. This comes at a time polls in five states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram – are imminent. Ever since July 30, when the final draft of the National Register of Citizens was made public, Shah has been explicitly or implicitly crediting the decision to identify such immigrants to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This is downright fiction. The exercise to update the National Register of Citizens in Assam – for the first time since 1951 – was because of a Supreme Court ruling in 2013. Modi and the BJP had not yet come to power then. Judges are not inclined to demand credit. But what is worrying is the gradual politicisation of the National Register of Citizenship updating process.

For instance, on August 4, at a public rally in Rajsamand district of poll-bound Rajasthan, Shah said, “The BJP government has undertaken the screening of illegal Bangladeshis in the country but Congress is opposing so that their vote-bank remains intact.” He, however, also said at the rally, “There is a Supreme Court order and we will ensure it is implemented and they are identified.”

But it is not the BJP government but the bureaucracy, working under the supervision of the Supreme Court, which is engaged in the exercise of updating the National Register of Citizens. Nor is it correct to describe the 40 lakh people who did not make it to the final draft of the National Register of Citizens as “illegal Bangladeshis”.

For one, they all have yet another chance to prove their citizenship before the register is finalised. It is likely that the figure of 40 lakh could go down dramatically. Second, those who fail to make it to even to the final National Register for Citizens will still not become “illegal immigrants”. In each case, that status will have to be judicially determined.

But such legal subtleties are lost on Shah. In Gangapur town of Rajasthan on September 22, Shah was reported as saying, “The BJP government brought NRC [National Register of Citizens] and prima facie identified nearly 40 lakh illegal immigrants.”

Depending on what Shah speaks and where, it could very well appear to his listeners that the Supreme Court’s role in the updating of National Register for Citizens was either nominal or subservient to that of the government. Or, worse, both were working in tandem.

Us vs them

This should worry the chief justice because Shah has fashioned the National Register of Citizens into a veritable instrument for both terrorising and polarising people. In doing so, he has violated the very spirit of the observation that the bench of Justice Gogoi and Justice Nariman had made after the final draft of National Register for Citizens was released. They had said, “Court would like to observe that what has been submitted is a complete draft NRC [National Register of Citizens] which, naturally being a draft, cannot be the basis for any action by any authority.”

For sure, the Modi government has not taken any action on the basis of the draft. Nevertheless, in language both menacing and virulent, Shah has laid out a template for what that action would be in the future. For instance, in the rally at Gangapur, Shah said: “The infiltrators have eaten the country like termites.”

The only way to tackle termites is to eradicate them. The use of the word “termites” conjures a violent imagery, suggestive of the liquidation of human beings as a solution even though it is possible Shah did not literally mean it. Equating illegal immigrants with termites certainly dehumanises them. But it was not a one-off lapse. Shah repeated the word “termites” again at a rally in Madhya Pradesh, another poll-bound state. “While you [farmers] feed the people, they [soldiers] guard our borders,” Shah told the crowd at Ratlam on October 6. “But infiltrators are like termites, which eat away at the country’s security. They need to be removed.”

The National Register of Citizens is fast emerging as the most potent weapon of “othering” segments of Indians – that is, treating people of one group as outsiders and enemies. This is discernible from an analysis of Shah’s public speech in Delhi on September 23. “There are illegal infiltrators in Delhi,” he said. “Are they not a problem, tell me? Shouldn’t we remove these illegal infiltrators? Illegal infiltrators in crores have entered the country.” In Shah’s imagination, the 40 lakh people who could not make it to the final draft of the National Register of Citizens for Assam have multiplied to crores of infiltrators who slip through the borders to settle in different parts of the country. In Delhi at least, Shah described illegal infiltrators as those who “throw bombs and kill innocent citizens”.

Shah resorts to ambiguity of language because undocumented immigrants have never been perceived as a demographic or economic threat in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh or Delhi. His description of undocumented immigrants consequently becomes an innuendo against Indian Muslims, some of whom have been convicted in terror activities in the past. His references are in the nature of dog’s whistle that seeks to arouse the majority community’s suspicion of Muslims. Alarmingly, in Delhi, Shah again resorted to the termite imagery. “Like termites, they have eaten the future of the country,” he said. “Shouldn’t they be uprooted?”

The issue of undocumented immigrants has a long history. But what is new is the projection of the National Register of Citizens as a magical mechanism that was not available earlier to sift such immigrants from genuine citizens. Shah is implying that it is imperative to introduce the mechanism across India as there are, according to him, “crores of infiltrators” in the country.

It is this twisted logic that has had Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattarpromise that the National Register of Citizens will be updated for his state too. This will certainly terrify Haryana’s Muslims, who comprise just about 7% of the state’s population. Economically and educationally backward, their citizenship will be imperilled in the absence of requisite documents to prove it. Unlike Assam, the people of Haryana do not have a tradition of maintaining documents dating decades ago. However, the Hindus of Haryana will not fear the National Register of Citizens because their names will become a foolproof guarantee of their citizenship status. Haryana is not a border state. After Partition, unlike Assam, it has not reported an influx of Hindus from Pakistan or Bangladesh. From this perspective, the National Register of Citizens has become a tool for profiling and tormenting Muslims.

Supreme Court must act

The Supreme Court has been understandably sensitive on the National Register of Citizens issue. For instance, when the coordinator of the National Register of Citizens, Prateek Hajela, told the Indian Express in August that it was premature to describe as infiltrators the 40 lakh people who could not make it to the final draft, Justice Gogoi and Justice Nariman severely reprimanded him. “We should be holding both of you [the other person was registrar general Sailesh] guilty of contempt and sending both of you to jail. Whatever you say they all reflect on us,” the justices said.

Shah and leaders of the BJP are not officers of the court. Yet there can be little doubt that their pronouncements have brought the National Register of Citizens into disrepute, which, as it was in the case of Hajela, also reflects on the Supreme Court. Might not Chief Justice Gogoi take suo motu notice of Shah’s comments to rein him in from turning the National Register of Citizens into a darkled symbol of the future awaiting the nation?

Courtesy: Scroll.in
 

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True, several European leaders, including Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, went home to speak triumphantly of a ‘great victory’, achieved through a supposedly united European position.

Italy’s Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, used more derogatory terms in explaining his country’s new policy on refugees and migrants.  “They will only see Italy on a postcard”, he said, referring to refugees who have been arriving in Italy with the help of humanitarian rescue boats.

The first of these boats, carrying over 600 refugees and economic migrants, the Aquarius, was sent back on June 11, followed by another, carrying over 200 refugees. When Italy carried out what then seemed like excessive action, the decision erupted into a massive political controversy between Italy, France, Spain, Malta and others.

However, the pandemonium has subsided since then, as Italy’s Conte declared that, following the Brussels summit, his country ‘is no longer alone.’

What Conte, who presides over a populist, right-wing government, meant is that his country’s unwelcoming attitude towards refugees is now gathering greater European consensus.

The debate over refugees and migrants has reached the point that it has become a source of political instability in countries like Germany. The latter is not considered a ‘frontline state’, as in countries that are likely to be the first destination for refugees escaping war or poverty at home.

Austria and other countries are also caught up in the crisis, each with its own angry constituency to appease.

On paper, representatives of European countries did, in fact, reach an agreement. The real problem ensued as soon as delegations returned to their respective countries.

Despite opposition from Poland and Hungary, and Italian threats to ‘veto’ any text that is not consistent with Italian priorities, the Council agreed on four main points:

First, the establishment of disembarkation centers outside European territories, to be stationed mostly in North Africa. At that early stage, economic migrants would be separated from political asylum seekers.

This first stipulation is made hollow simply because, as the Guardian reports, “no North African country has agreed to host migrant centers to process refugee claims,” in the first place.

Second, Europeans agreed to strengthen borders control through the Frontex system.

Aside from the questionable tactics of this pan-European border police, this system has been in use for years and it is difficult to imagine how ‘strengthening’ it will translate into a more efficient or humane border control system.

Third, the Council called for the creation of ‘controlled’ refugee and migrant processing centers within Europe itself, like the North African non-existing centers, to quickly separate between refugees fleeing strife and economic migrants.

This clause was offered as a ‘voluntary’ step to be exercised by any state as it sees fit, which, again, will hardly contribute to a united European policy on the issue. Yet, despite the voluntary nature of this provision, it still stirred a political controversy in Germany.

Soon after the Council issued its final statement, Horst Lorenz Seehofer, Germany’s Interior Minister, threatened to quit Angela Merkel’s coalition government.

The German Chancellor is now under dual pressure, from within her fractious coalition, but also from without, a massive political campaign championed by the far-right party, the ‘Alternative for Germany’. In fact, the latter group’s popularity is largely attributed to its anti-immigrant sentiment.

A compromise was reached, calling for the establishment of migrant ‘transit centers’ at the German-Austrian border. However, instead of resolving a problem, the decision created another one, propelling a new controversy in Austria itself.

Austria, which also has its own populist, anti-immigrant constituency to placate, fears that the proximity of the German ‘transit centers’ would force it to receive Germany’s unwanted refugees.

“If Berlin introduced national measures, which would have a chain reaction, it could mean that Austria would have to react,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz commented in a press conference. The magnitude of this ‘reaction’ is, of course, to be determined later, depending on the nature of counter-pressure emanating from Austria itself.

Austria has, in fact, already threatened to shut down the Brenner Pass, connecting Italy and Austria.

The fourth, and last, decision by the European Council called for the boosting of North African economies and offering training for Libya’s coastguard.

As altruistic as the last stipulation may sound, it is, indeed, the most ridiculous, especially since it was placed on the agenda with French enthusiasm. Even if one is to ignore France’s colonial history in Africa – grounded in the notion of usurping African resources under military threat – one can hardly ignore the current role that Emmanuel Macron is playing in the current Libyan conflict.

Various media reports suggest that Macron’s government is carrying on with the legacy of intervention, initiated by the government of Nicolas Sarkozy, most notably in the military intervention of March 2011.

Libya, a failed state par excellence, is now fighting proxy wars in which France and Italy are the main players.

Bearing that in mind, it would be absurd to suggest that Macron is keen on respecting the sovereignty and supporting the economies of Libya and other North African nations.

Considering Europe’s past failures and foot dragging on the issue of refugees, it is hard to imagine that one of Europe’s greatest challenges is to be resolved as a result of the Brussels summit and its lackluster ‘agreement’.

Europe continues to view the refugee crisis in terms of security, populist pressures and national identity, as opposed to it being a global humanitarian crisis invited by wars, political strife and economic inequality. of which Europe is hardly innocent.

As long as Europe continues to operate with a skewed definition of the crisis, the crisis will continue to grow, leading to far dire consequences for all of those involved.

(Romana Rubeo, an Italian writer contributed to this article)

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net. 

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions (FBI / Flickr)

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Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

One panelist, journalist Sonia Mabrouk, argued that Muslims in France are constantly used by opportunists, from politicians to intellectuals, as a constituency to serve their own purposes.

The incident recalled the final televised debate of France’s 2012 presidential election, when then-candidate François Hollande sparred with incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy over the “Muslim vote”.

Hollande was in favour of extending the right to vote in local elections to non-EU citizens living in France, while Sarkozy argued against it. The president claimed that such a move would lead to “identity-based voting practices” and “divisive sectarian demands”.

Women, it’s worth remembering, were once suspected of voting with their sex.

As the French go to the polls on April 23 and May 7 to elect their new president, the question reemerges: is it reasonable to assume that Muslims’ voting behaviour is based on their religion and on the Quran?
 

The impact of religion on votes

Some 93% of French Muslims cast their ballots for François Hollande in the second round of the 2012 presidential election, according to a poll by OpinionWay. That’s 41% above than the national average, since Hollande was ultimately elected with 52% of votes.

Several attempts have been made to explain why French Muslims voted almost unanimously for the left.

In their 2012 book Français comme les autres? (As French as everyone else?), political scientists Sylvain Brouard and Vincent Tiberj concluded that the impact of religion on the voting practices of believers should not be overestimated.

Catholics in France and in the United States, for example, vote in ways diametrically opposed to each other. In France, people who identify as Catholic are today markedly in favour of the conservative Républicains, particularly since the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2013.

In the US, on the other hand, they tend to vote for the Democrats, a more socially progressive party.

How can this difference be explained? According to Brouard and Tiberj, Catholics in the US vote Democratic for precisely the same reasons that Muslims in France went for Hollande’s Socialist Party: they cast their ballots for candidates who support minority rights.
 

Both groups are often found among racial and religious minorities – American citizens of Latin American origin and people of Maghrebian or African background in France – who have faced economic and social marginalisation in their respective countries.

In France, on the other hand, Catholicism is the main religious faith. Hence the difference in voting orientations (though a bastion of left-wing Catholic voters has also historically existed in France).

In other words, religion is not the be-all, end-all of a believer’s political choices.
 

Identifying as Muslims

Though the impact of faith must be taken with a grain of salt, it is not entirely irrelevant in the context of elections. Qualitative research I conducted in 2012 and 2013 found that the vote of French Muslim citizens I interviewed was indeed influenced by their religious identity.

Being a Muslim did not predetermine their answer to the question, Who should I vote for? But it did lead people to ask, Who shouldn’t I vote for? The impact was negative, helping them eliminate candidates deemed Islamophobic, rather than positive ([I] choose a candidate who defends my values, including religious values).

French Muslims took into account laws banning the headscarf or niqab, a veil that covers the face, as well as public comments against Islam, for instance, when weighing different candidates and their platforms. Candidates’ positions on foreign policy were also considered, with military interventions in Muslim-majority countries particularly frowned upon.

This is similar to how French citizens who identify as Jewish tend to be especially sensitive to antisemitism and to the position of candidates regarding Israel.

According to my study, being a Muslim can have three different effects on a person’s vote: it can consolidate a choice previously made, based on factors unrelated to religion; it can help select among a few candidates on the basis of the Islamophobia criterion; and when a candidate’s attitude towards Muslims is negatively perceived, it can destabilise and change a person’s political orientation.

Take, for example, Youssouf, a self-made man who in 2007 voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, the Republican party candidate. But in 2012, after what he called “the unashamed Islamophobic discourses and public policies targeting Islam made by him and his governement”, Youssouf decided to vote for the left-wing François Hollande. Even though Youssouf didn’t at all like Hollande’s stance on economic and social issues.

Because of their lower socioeconomic status and the marginalisation they face, many French Muslims, especially those living in France’s banlieues (suburbs), might simply choose not to vote.

Some of them justify their abstention with religious explanations, claiming that “voting is not halal”, since France is not a Muslim country.
 

Calls for abstention in 2017

Generally, this position is only held by a minority of highly orthodox Tabligh or Salafist Muslims. But today, several public Muslim intellectuals, including leaders who are not necessarily from those sects are calling for an “active abstention” by Muslims of the 2017 presidential election. The intent is to escape the constant trap of voting for the “lesser of two evils”.

Nizarr Bourchada, leader of the Français et Musulmans (French and Muslim) party, advocates a similar approach. His is one of the first French political parties to claim a strong attachment to both Islamic and French Republican values.

This echoes French author Michel Houellebecq’s prescient 2015 novel Soumission (Submission). Set in 2022, the book imagines the rise to power in France of a Muslim political party that imposes polygamy and prohibits women from wearing clothes that make them “desirable”.
 

Within a few weeks of publication, Soumission had become a bestseller in France, Italy and Germany. It bolsters the idea that a collective vote of French Muslims, or at least their federation into a political party, would be a threat for French society.

The reality is quite different. But whatever the outcome of this election season, it seems that the fantasy of a “Muslim vote” will continue to haunt Europe’s imagination for years to come.
 

Fatima Khemilat, PhD Student, Sciences Po Aix

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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The Dutch elections on March 15 have received a lot of attention in the international media.

The reason for the attention is clear: A Trump lookalike populist, Geert Wilders, was rumored to win big as part of a western populist movement that some call the “Patriotic Spring.”

His rise has the liberal West confused and concerned, because if the land of gay marriage and coffee shops falls, then where is their hope for western liberalism?

But, as results are coming in, two things are becoming clear: Election turnout was high and Wilders’ support relatively low. Projections show Wilder’s party winning 19 seats compared to 31 seats for the Dutch-right liberal conservatives of Prime Minister Mark Rutte. What does all this tell us about the populist movement? Is our bedrock of tolerance safe again?

To understand what happened in these Dutch elections, we need to look beyond Wilders and his place in western populism to the myth of Dutch tolerance.

Students in my race and ethnicity courses at the University of Michigan have been engaged in this very task as they examine current and historic diversity in the Netherlands. When they read University of Amsterdam sociologist Jan Willem Duyvendak or Free University of Amsterdam Holocaust historian Dienke Hondius, a more complicated picture of Dutch tolerance emerges.

Wilders doesn’t represent a sudden movement of the Netherlands away from tolerance. Dutch tolerance does not really exist in the way the stereotype dictates. Seventy years ago, the country saw a larger percentage of its Jewish population deported and killed than any other Western European nation. This fact does not lend itself to simple explanations but has at least in part been attributed to the lack of protection of Jews by non-Jews and to Dutch collaboration with the Nazi occupation.

Looking at modern times, CUNY political scientist John Mollenkopf reports poorer immigrant integration outcomes, such as employment rates and job retention, in Amsterdam than in New York City and Duyvendak finds explanations for these outcomes in white majority-culture dominance.

A pretty story

A few weeks after the 2016 U.S. elections, elderly Dutch statesman Jan Terlouw made a plea to the Dutch nation. Speaking as the Jimmy Carter-like voice of reason of the political establishment, he asked the nation to go back to a time where Dutch people trusted each other, a time where people could enter the homes of other Dutchmen freely and without suspicion. It was a “Make the Netherlands Great Again” message of sorts, but coming from the Dutch center-left.

I grew up in the Netherlands of Jan Terlouw. The country gave me an idyllic childhood, with soccer and hopscotch in the streets, but I never stepped freely into the homes of Indonesians who lived, grouped together, on the next street. My white Dutch friends still know little to nothing about the relationship between race and our colonial history, or about the people of color who came to live in the Netherlands through that history. Some Americans may be surprised to learn that the Netherlands has a more than 20% non-majority ethnic-Dutch population, 10% of which are Indonesians, Surinamese and Dutch Caribbeans from former or current colonies, as well as Turks and Moroccans who (or whose family) originally came as part of guest worker programs.

Terlouw’s story is a beautiful story then, but it isn’t true, and neither is the story that the Dutch have suddenly become intolerant as part of global western populism. In reality, the Dutch good old days were good old days because racial minorities were sidelined and did not complain, for example, about the slaves depicted on the golden coach that carries the Dutch king to the annual “Throne Address,” or the state of union.
 

Wilders isn’t unique

Now Dutch intolerance in the person of Wilders is on display around the world, and it is not limited to his party.

Of the 28 parties on the Dutch ballot this year, five have anti-Islam or anti-immigrant platforms, some more openly so than others. The Party for Entrepreneurs, for example, calls for a “mosque watch.” Another one of these five parties – the Forum for Democracy party, which has a restrictive immigration and EU-cautious platform – appears to have won two seats.

Dutch nationalism does not just live on the right. All the big parties that are contenders to enter a coalition government after this election – from all the way left to all the way right – reference “Dutchness” in one way or another in their party platforms, as a presumed understanding of what it means to be Dutch, or in the form of shared national values and a “be like us” message to immigrants. Dutch nationalism is ubiquitous.

But one important aspect of today’s elections is overshadowed by the Wilders discussion. The Dutch citizens who voted Wednesday had the choice of voting for a party called “DENK”, with mixed Dutch-Turkish, or Dutch-minority, values that some critics call the Dutch Erdogan satellite party.
Voters could also support “Artikel 1,” a party founded by minority rights activist Sylvana Simons nine weeks ago – and just four months after the country saw its racist holiday character of Zwarte Piet (the blackfaced helper of Saint Nicholas) phased out on national television amid white nationalist screams and quieter criticisms about the end of Dutch culture and tradition.

Artikel 1, named for the equality clause in the Dutch constitution, has the slogan “All Different But Yet The Same” and calls for equal rights for all Dutch people, men, women, gay, straight, and importantly, black, white, native and immigrant. This election was the first time we saw such minority parties such as DENK and Artikel 1 with programs advocating for education about Dutch migration history, the teaching of languages beyond the traditional European ones, a registry for racist hate crimes, and a national holiday to celebrate the emancipation of Dutch slaves. Remember: The Kingdom of the Netherlands is still a colonial power over the nation states of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten, and the country of the Netherlands over the three Caribbean islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

As a new Dutch government is formed in the weeks to come, we could brush the minority parties off as a reaction to Wilders’ populism, and see his defeat as a return of Dutch tolerance, but we would be wiser to see these elections as the beginning of a sea change in a country that is slowly changing to meet its tolerant mythology.
 

Annemarie Toebosch, Director of Dutch and Flemish Studies, University of Michigan
 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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