Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.11.2009, Blaðsíða 10

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 17 — 2009 In late October, Grapevine dispatched journalist Haukur Már Helgason to Athens, Greece, so he
could provide our readers with insight on the situation faced by our asylum seekers when we
dispose of them. Read his full report in our December issue.
Article | Immigration
opinion | Valur Gunnarsson
Collectives organise to challenge recent deportations
MICHAEL ZELENko
The Icelandic government's hasty
and unfortunate move to deport four
refugees seeking asylum two weeks ago
came as a shock to both the refugees
and the Icelanders working on their
behalf. In mid-October, 19-year old
Nour Al-din Alazzawi, whose story the
Grapevine profiled this summer, was
arrested in his home after a 14-month
period of limbo and given 15 minutes to
pack his belongings. The next morning,
police escorted him onto a plane and
accompanied him on his flight to Athens,
Greece. Hearing word of the deportation,
Wali Safi, an Afghani-refugee with
a girlfriend and stepchildren here in
Iceland, went into immediate hiding.
Until the Ministry of Justice re-opens his
case and grants him asylum, Wali writes,
"I must remain in hiding."
For activists and sympathizers here
in Reykjavík, the event was a call to
arms—a reminder of the severity of
the refugee situation. The Hljómalind
Collective, born out of the now defunct
Kaffi Hljómalind—where Nour worked
from July 2009 until the cafe's recent
closing—banded together with the
stated goal of assisting Nour during his
stay in Athens and bringing him back to
Reykjavík for good. Helena Stefánsdóttir,
one of the original owners of Kaffi
Hljómalind and a founding member of
the collective, was in a state of disbelief
when she heard of the deportation. "He
was one of the best people we ever had
at Hljómalind," she said.
Stefánsdóttir set up a bank account
where people could donate money that
very night. By the next morning, the
collective had gathered 100.000 ISK to
send to Nour. By the time Helena came
home from wiring the money, another
70.000 ISK had been raised. The four
original owners subsequently met with
the Minister of Justice and asked for
assistance. The minister agreed, and
has since been guiding the collective
through the immigration process in
order to bring Nour back.
Although Nour recently received
permission from the Icelandic
government to stay in Iceland while
his immigration and work papers are
processed, the Norwegian Embassy in
Greece (Iceland has no Greek embassy)
advised Nour that he might still need
a visa to return, adding another layer
of uncertainty. Nour is currently still
awaiting the arrival of his Iraqi passport
in Athens.
"The chances are pretty high that
[Nour] will be coming back very soon,"
Stefánsdóttir says, claiming it is a matter
of days, not weeks or months.
Meanwhile, a separate collective
has been working on keeping the
refugee issue in the spotlight. Initially a
branch of the international organization
No Borders, the nameless collective
is composed of roughly 100 activists
updating each other and running www.
this.is/refugees, a website dedicated
to tracking refugee conditions within
Iceland. Along with raising funds, the
collective also aims to raise awareness
through demonstrations, marches and
benefit concerts, including one planned
for the 14th of November at Grand Rokk.
Living conditions at the refugee
hostel in Keflavík are trying, they say,
with asylum-seekers often rubbing
shoulders with young travellers on
vacation. Even though the refugees are
free to leave, their meagre stipends leave
them isolated for all practical purposes.
Uncertainty about their asylum status
only compounds their insecurity.
Members of the collective try to alleviate
the situation by visiting the refugees,
cooking meals, spending time with them
and creating personal connections.
Nour's case is not unique, but it
is important. The publicity "raises
the problem to a personal level,"
Stefánsdóttir said, while holding a
packet of immigration papers meant
for the Ministry of Justice. Instead of
approaching each case individually, "we
put refugees, criminals and gangsters
under one hat."
To celebrate my 33rd
birthday, I went to see the
GI Joe movie. What’s wrong
with this sentence? Sure, the
movie was crap, but I knew that going in.
Still, I felt compelled to see it. This may
sound like an alcoholic after another
drink, wondering why he expected a
different outcome this time. But see it I
did.
Being in your mid-30s, childless, and
still going to see movies based on 80s
toy franchises is indicative of a larger
trend: our basic refusal to grow up. Why
is this? Sure, your hair falls out, your
hangovers last three days instead of
three hours and you keep moving closer
to death. Still, it’s not all bad. Is it?
Last year in Estonia I went to see
Rambo IV. Apart from Sly’s botched
face job, my biggest surprise was that
I was twice the age of everyone else in
the cinema. This rarely happens to me
in NATO countries. What gives? Then it
hit me. Estonians my age grew up in the
Soviet Union. They weren’t saturated by
Cold War Hollywood culture as we were.
And so, they aren’t stuck in it anymore.
They grew up. When they go to the
cinema, they see adult movies. No, not
those. You know what I mean.
In Eastern Europe, people over 20 get
offended if you say they go to school.
They instantly correct you, pointing out
that they go to “the University” or “the
Institute.” School is for children. We,
however, quite like the idea of going to
school. It makes us feel young.
So the question remains. Why are we
so afraid to grow up? When did being
young stop being the means to an end
and start becoming an end in itself?
Youth culture started, as everything
did, with Elvis. Small wonder that people
are reluctant to grow up (and out) when
they see what happened to him. Still,
youth culture really took off in the 60s.
Almost as soon as the 60s were over,
people started getting nostalgic about
them. Just listen to (or have someone
translate) the song “Öll mín bestu ár”
from 1976. All together now, “Árið 69,
þegar Trúbrot var og hét...”
The 60s generation was the first
that refused to grow up, and every
generation since has taken their lead.
Coming-of-age stories of the kind that
Nick Hornby specialises in used to be
about teenagers, then 20-somethings.
Now they deal with 35 year olds trying to
find their way.
Why?
Perhaps the reason is rather simple.
As the hippies knew, we are living in
a morally bankrupt society. Capitalist
employers, from the banks to the
advertising agencies, force everyone to
do things they don’t really like doing. To
be true to our natures, to be curious and
creative, we either have to stay in school
as long as possible or pursue a career in
the arts, which will most likely fail. Both
pursuits best become the young. Small
wonder then that artists, actors, and
rock stars are the biggest heroes of our
culture. They are the lucky few who have
managed to get paid, as Springsteen
said, “a king’s ransom for doing what
comes naturally.” Accountants, who do
nothing but count money, should be the
superstars of capitalism if the system felt
natural to us. It doesn’t, and so we rightly
see them as the most boring people
about.
For those doomed to adulthood,
nothing awaits but debt, mortgages
and dreary jobs. Small wonder that
most people think of their school years
as the best time of their lives. Learning
something new every day is in our
nature.
Bringing Nour Home
Why I Don’t Want to Grow Up
If you are not from the
part of the world that
implicitly denotes itself
as “the first world,” then
whatever brought you here, whether
you are a migrant worker in Europe or
a refugee, there is a 50% chance that
your first destination within the zone
was Greece.
There is also a good chance that
you have left Greece at least once,
tried going somewhere else, but then
bumped into the Dublin agreement,
and realize why the Greek police
scanned your fingerprints. You were
then shipped back to Greece. Greek
authorities told you can stay, give you
show up by the gate of the Immigrant
Office once per month, to verify that
you are still hanging in there, get a
stamp, and wait. Forever, according to
statistics.
You sing the blues, the Dublin-
agreement-international-fingerprint-
database-I-have-no-passport-got-no-
job-got-no-home-and-they-won’t-let-
me-unite-with-my-family-blues.
It is quite possible, then, that
you sometimes sleep by the wall
surrounding the Immigrant Office,
since it sometimes takes days to get to
speak with anyone in there, and if you
are caught on the bus without a ticket,
you already know by experience that
the police might bang your head to the
pavement several times, for a laugh, no
matter how you plea.
Your wakeup call will be when the
office-workers arrive, since you are
sleeping in their parking lot. You will
then line up or loiter by the gate, where
a man stands with a machine gun –
not by his side – but ready in his hands,
finger by the trigger, replying to those
who address him: What do you want,
asshole?
The photograph above is from your
own reality show, where you struggle
for the right to have rights. You who
thought Europe was what they show
you on TV.
WoW, REAL FASCISTS!
Greek politics take place on the street.
On Monday, November 2, a group of
neighbourhood fascists occupied the
square Agios Panteleimonas in Central
Athens. Fascist is not a slanderous
name imposed by their opponents, but
their explicit identity. The reason, this
time around, was an anti-racist concert
to be held in that square that same
night. Less than a year ago, the fascists
occupied this same square and kept it
long into the year, beating and knifing
those foreigners and leftists who
dared enter the square. They did so in
cooperation with police authorities.
The leftists’ intentions to throw
an anti-racist concert precisely in that
square were to reclaim the place and its
surrounding area for all its inhabitants
and visitors. The fascists showed up
at 1 PM. This time, however, things
had changed, even if only slightly.
After October’s elections, a left wing
government is now in charge in
Greece. ‘Nominally left wing,’ say the
activists, furious about increased police
presence in their neighbourhoods.
Police presence – it’s actually more
as if the city is under siege. On a casual
walk through anarchist stronghold
Exarchia, you will see a gang of four
to five policemen every 3-4 minutes,
sporting full armour. Now, before the
concert, the police never escapes your
line of vision, in at least a kilometre’s
radius from the square. Apart from
those armoured packs that visibly do
not differ much from an army, the
concert would seem like a sweet little
neighbourhood gathering. Inside the
square you can even forget the tension
surrounding it. On the way home,
however, you remember that there is a
war. This was strategic music.
There is a long tradition in Greece
of fascists and police fighting side by
side against subversive groups. Athens
last boiled over after police shot and
killed a 15-year-old boy, an anarchist,
in Exarchia in December 2008.
CHANGE?
The new socialist government seems
intent on keeping up right wing
policies on refugees. It means they are
left in limbo, as mere bodies on the
streets, bereft of all civil rights. If the
more centrist parties of the coalition
government have little trouble leaving
the square in Exarchia to the fascists,
the Communist party obviously has
a reputation to defend. This time,
the police were sent in to remove the
fascists. Which they did. According to
a witness, “they know each other by
nicknames, so it wasn’t really any hard
fighting, but you know, bumping and
pushing.”
There were clashes also with the
concert’s promoters and its audience.
There were incidents. But all in all,
according to most witnesses, the police
was neutral this evening, and kept the
fascists from disrupting the gathering.
Most of the organizers and guests
were surprised, almost shocked. “It’s
historical,” the told me. “This has not
happened for, I don’t know, many,
many – many – years.”
Perhaps the fact that 1.000
policemen armed with guns and gas
don’t directly attack a group of people
when they hold an anti-racist gathering
is what the Icelandic Ministry of Justice
and Human Rights has in mind when
it says that reports and pleas issued
by the Red Cross and the UN Human
Rights Committee in 2008 and 2009
are already outdated – so there is no
need to fear for the asylum seekers we
dispose of on the streets of Athens.
There are no animals in the
picture above, except in the perverse
mind of machine-gun endowed state
bureaucracies. In the foreground of
the picture is Nour-aldin Al-azzawi.
He is a man. Since a large group
of state-acknowledged people have
testified to this, the Minister of Justice
and Human rights decided last week
to let Nour enjoy the benefit of her
doubt, at least temporarily. Meanwhile,
nonetheless, the state doesn’t dare turn
the machine off—the Deportation
Dogomat 2000 keeps on shouting:
Out! as they arrive. Out!
Report | Global Concerns
Machine Gun Democracy
Letter from Athens
HAUkUR MÁR HELGASoN
HAUkUR MÁR HELGASoN
1. Nour-aldin Al-azzawi, 19, recently
deported from Iceland, leads the
journalist around the wall of the Im-
migration office. Another Iraqi de-
ported from Iceland did not have the
good fortune of friends in Iceland
and Greece, and no place to stay,
and headed back to Iraq, where his
life is threatened, rather than play
dead outside the fences in Europe.
Nour-aldin has kept in touch with his
friends and campaigners through
Facebook, which is making it a bit
harder for governments everywhere
to ‘disappear’ people.