Reykjavík Grapevine - 15.07.2011, Blaðsíða 6

6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2011 Do you wish he were YOUR mayor? Why/why not? We have a
fully functional letters page for you to tell us all about it.
Reykjavík | Welcome to!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Iceland. Whether you’re
here for fun and travel or for business, I
hope you’ll enjoy a good time here and
will get to know some locals. I would
also like to make a special request that
you spend a lot of money throughout
the duration of your stay. Do not save
on dining and drinking. Allow yourself
some luxury. You deserve it, and it is
good for the economy. I ask that you do
not visit the retail outlets run by the Sal-
vation Army (Gar!astræti 6, 101 Reykja-
vík) or the Red Cross (Laugavegur 12,
101 Reykjavík). Even though they are
fun shops, they are rather inexpensive.
You should rather visit more expensive
shops.
A lot of tourists that visit the country
wonder why it is called Iceland, be-
cause—despite what the name might
indicate—it isn’t at all cold here. The
average temperature in Reykjavík is
1°C. Nowhere in the world has bet-
ter summers than Iceland. It might
snow in the month of June, however.
That is called ‘a spring snowfall’. July
is the hottest month. When it comes
around you better have a t-shirt handy,
because the temperature can reach up
to 20°C. Weather.com often states a
temperature followed with a “feels like”
temperature. When the heat in Reykja-
vík reaches 20°C, they will often say it
“feels like” 15°C. That is probably due
to something known as ‘the wind chill
factor.’ No Icelander understands this.
If we had this “feels like” feature in our
weather reporting, we would say that it
“feels like” 40°C whenever the temper-
ature reached 20°C, without exception.
This demonstrates the importance of
‘mentality’ and ‘attitude.’
But how can it be that such a warm
country came to possess such a frigid
name? Yes, the explanation is simple:
MISUNDERSTANDING. Ingólfur Ar-
narson, the first man that found Reyk-
javík, wasn’t on his way here at all. He
was en route to the United States of
America, to buy grapes and other fast
food that grew wild there in those days.
He was very interested in food. And
also homicide. On his way he noticed a
cloud of smoke ascending to the heav-
ens from an unknown country. His cu-
rious nature got the best of him, and he
changed his course and set sail to Reyk-
javík (Reykjavík literally means “smoky
bay”!).
As he disembarked his ship, he saw
that the smoke was in fact steam ris-
ing from Reykjavík’s many swimming
pools. He was therefore quick in tearing
off the suit of armour that he had worn
in case he’d encounter some Native
Americans while picking grapes, and
jumping into some swim trunks. After
swimming a good 500 metres he sat
in the hot tub and relaxed. After a fun
chat with the locals he had forgotten all
about America. Who needs to travel all
the way to America to pick grapes when
there’s a shop on Laugavegur called
Vínberi! (Vínberi! literally means: “the
grape”)? Ingólfur decided to settle here.
He rented a small apartment along
with his wife, Hallveig Fró!adóttir, who
many claim was the daughter of Frodo
from ‘Lord Of The Rings,’ Nothing has
been proven about that, however.
One day Ingólfur and Hallveig were
taking a stroll around town. They were
walking their dog, who was called Plútó
and was a Great Dane. It was a sizzling
hot summer’s day. It was long before
the t-shirt was invented. They were
both dressed in full suits of armour,
with swords and shields and helmets
and everything. They stopped by at Ís-
bú! Vesturbæjar in Hagamelur to get
some ice cream and cool down. The
story goes that Ingólfur asked the clerk
whether she knew what the country was
called.
She thought it was called Thule. In-
gólfur felt that was a stupid name.
“No country can be called Thule,”
he said.
Outside the ice cream shop, a crowd
had gathered. They had heard that
foreign visitors were in town. A lot of
those people were elves. Ingólfur then
approached the crowd, raised his ice
cream cone aloft and shouted:
“Henceforth this country will be
called Iceland, because one can get the
world’s best ice cream here!”.
Today we have a statue of Ingólfur.
The statue depicts Ingólfur dying of
heat, leaning on his dog.
Don’t be a stranger, be like Ingólfur!
Best regards,
Jón Gnarr
Mayor of Reykjavík
Mayor’s Address:
WELCOME TO REYKJAVÍK
When I met Aisha, Bekele and
Dabir, I realised I was in a precari-
ous spot. As we settled in to chat,
Bekele smiled sheepishly and told
me, “If you hadn't come with him,”
pointing to the Lutheran priest in
my company, “we wouldn't be talk-
ing right now.”
Throughout the interview, in fact, I had
to reassure the three that we would
not reveal their identities: no names,
no photos, no saying what their politi-
cal affiliation was, no saying where we
even met. As I would learn over the
course of speaking with them, they had
every reason to be afraid.
Ethiopia is a country that has been
in constant turmoil, it seems. From a
crippling famine to war with Eritrea,
they held elections last May, about
which Human Rights Watch (HRW)
said in their 2011 World Report, “Al-
though the sweeping margin of the
2010 victory came as a surprise to
many observers, the ruling party's win
was predictable and echoed the re-
sults of local elections in 2008. The 99.6
percent result was the culmination of
the government's five-year strategy of
systematically closing down space for
political dissent and independent criti-
cism. European election observers said
that the election fell short of interna-
tional standards.”
Bekele, Dabir and Aisha were
among those who chose to dissent.
They were involved in educating vot-
ers on the different parties available to
vote for and what their platforms were.
For this, they were arrested, jailed for a
couple months, and then released. “But
they made us sign a paper,” Dabir said.
“It's a paper they make everyone sign,
that says you did something wrong, and
that if you do it again, you will be killed.”
NO SHELTER HERE
This story falls in line with HRW's find-
ings as well, who reported incidences
of political jailing, torture, intimidation
and execution. The three, who feared
for their lives, crossed the border into
Kenya and made their way to Norway.
It would seem to be an open-and-
shut case: Ethiopia’s jailing, torture and
execution of political opposition a mat-
ter of widespread public knowledge—
and these three individuals heavily
involved in political opposition in Ethio-
pia—one would expect Norwegian au-
thorities to grant them political asylum
to make a new home in Norway.
This would not be the case. In fact,
Norway has been seriously tightening
controls on Ethiopian asylum seekers,
taking away their right to work, as well
as their tax cards, effectively driving
into the street. This led to a general
hunger strike conducted by Ethiopian
asylum seekers in Norway last Febru-
ary. And then things got worse.
“They told us, you can't stay in this
country anymore,” Bekele said. “With-
out the papers to work, we were ille-
gal, and had to leave the country. But
we couldn't go back to Ethiopia. So we
were stuck.” Although not for long—last
April, police raided an Ethiopian refu-
gee camp in Oslo. The asylum seekers
were arrested, loaded into police trucks
and cars, driven out of town, and then
dropped off and told not to re-enter the
city.
MORE LIMBO
With this turn of events, the three de-
cided they had no choice but to leave
the country, and set their sights for
Canada. Like so many other asylum
seekers who've tried the same route,
they were stopped in Iceland, arrested,
and then housed, awaiting a decision
from Icelandic authorities.
Their prospects thus far are not very
bright. The three are aware of the Dub-
lin Regulation, an international treaty
on the treatment of asylum seekers,
part of which grants authorities the
right—although not the obligation—to
send asylum seekers back to their pre-
vious point of origin. Iceland's track re-
cord, as many of our readers are aware,
has been to deport almost by default.
Should they be returned to Norway,
they will most certainly be deported to
Ethiopia.
As it is now, they live—as most asy-
lum seekers in Iceland do—in a state of
limbo, unable to work, unable to really
leave their homes, unable to know if
they will wake up to hear they are being
deported, have been granted asylum,
or will be facing yet another long, frus-
trating day of uncertainty.
At the interview's close, they had
some words for the Icelandic people:
“We are human beings,” Bekele
said. “We are educated. We are not go-
ing to be a burden for the government.
We can work. Anything the government
gives us to do, we can do.”
Aisha, who speaks little English and
had remained quiet throughout the
interview, now felt the desire to speak
up, saying, “I ran away from Ethiopia
in order to rescue myself. I humbly ask
Iceland's authorities, and its people, to
look at us with humanity. We are just
running away to save ourselves. Rescue
us. I would rather walk into the ocean
and die than be deported to Norway.”
Iceland | Asylum Seekers
Opinion | Magnús Sveinn Helgason
Should Icelanders Be
Ashamed Of Themselves?
PAUL FONTAINE
JULIA STAPLES
After the publication of the SIC re-
port, there was a near unanimous
agreement in Icelandic society
that it was not only an important
analysis of the economic collapse’s causes, but
also a settling of the books if you will—a criti-
cal attempt to tally up the mistakes that were
made in the lead-up to the crash of 2008 and,
as such, an important step toward national
reconciliation.
Everyone realised that this would mean
that some people in power would be cast in
a less than sympathetic light, and that many
would be uncovered as incompetent and
greedy, even criminally incompetent and
greedy.
The report was universally celebrated as
simply the best example of an official report
ever prepared in Iceland. It had exceeded the
expectations of most people. It even received
very favourable press abroad, where it was
hailed as a landmark attempt to uncover the
roots of the global financial crisis of 2008.
That was then. This is now.
Enter the backlash
As Snorri Páll Úlfhildarson Jónsson—one of
the Reykjavík 9—discussed in his Grapevine op
entitled ‘The Reykjavik One’, the supporters of
Geir H. Haarde, the former Prime Minister who
presided over the largest financial collapse in
modern history, whine about a political witch
hunt. And Geir seems to fancy himself as ‘the
saviour of Iceland.’ In an interview with AFP he
claimed to have somehow saved Iceland from
an even larger catastrophe—had it not been
for his steady hand at the wheel, we would
have experienced ‘a real catastrophe’! The SIC
report, meanwhile, concluded that Geir had
failed to act in a timely and appropriate man-
ner in the face of the crisis.
At a meeting of his supporters, Ministry of
Economic Affairs chief of staff (and long-time
Social Democrat functionary) Kristrún Heimis-
dóttir delivered a speech in which she spoke
about how the SIC report had in many cases
gotten the facts wrong, and had made wrong-
ful accusations. She did not name any specif-
ics. No, she simply stated that this was some
general feature of the report.
The most forceful pushback against the
SIC report has come from L!"ur Gu"munds-
son, former executive chairman of Exista, one
of the largest investment companies of pre-
crash Iceland. L!"ur has mounted a one man
media campaign against the report, attacking
not only the SIC report but the entire attempt
to come to terms with the crash, learn from it
and identifying its causes and those respon-
sible. According to L!"ur Icelanders should
“be ashamed of themselves.”
And why? Well, L!"ur argues that because
no executives at U.S. investment banks have
been prosecuted, it is somehow shameful that
their Icelandic colleagues are! Basically, his ar-
gument is that because those guys got away
with crashing the world economy with their
irresponsibility, greed and questionable—if not
illegal actions—we should get away with the
same. Since U.S. authorities and regulators are
in the pocket of Wall Street and failed to mount
any serious investigations of its practices, it is
a heinous crime that such investigations be
conducted in Iceland.
Seriously. That is his argument.
Some honest mistakes
Oh, yes, also that his companies were all fabu-
lously well run, that he and all his underlings
did a heck of a job. He does admit to having
made mistakes, but they were all honest mis-
takes—and it is certainly not due to them that
everything came crashing down. Anyone who
says otherwise is engaged in a witch-hunt.
But did we really expect that these delu-
sional elites would face up to their mistakes?
Did anyone believe that people who actually
imagined that Iceland was on its way to be-
come a global financial centre (rivalling Lux-
embourg)—people who thought that you could
build a viable economy on leveraged buyouts
and an asset bubble or that it was sound eco-
nomic policy to turn a national economy into a
hedge fund—that such people would face up to
their mistakes?
The fact is, the SIC report is historically
unique—as an official report it is up there with
the findings of the Pecora investigation fol-
lowing the 1929 Wall Street Crash as a unique
attempt to uncover the causes of a financial
crash. And the Icelandic attempt to come to
terms with the causes of the crash, and to
force those responsible to face justice, even if
it is very incomplete and far from satisfactory,
is still far more robust than anything we have
seen in most other countries. When compared
to the US, the Icelandic effort looks pretty ag-
gressive. And none of this would be possible if
it was not for the SIC report.
By attacking the SIC report L!"ur and the
supporters of Geir H. Haarde are actively at-
tempting to undermine these efforts.
Ethiopian asylum seekers in Iceland
On The Run