Not in My Name - Thoughts from an Indignant EU Citizen

By: Ebba Lekvall

Finally, finally, FINALLY, it seems, the people of Europe have woken up to the crisis at our doorstep – the worst refugee crisis since World War II. People across Europe are organizing themselves to provide food, water, clothes and other necessities to refugees who arrive in their countries and heart-warming images of citizens in Germany gathering at train stations to welcome refugees with applause and comfort fill our TV screens.

This weekend I spent two hours live streaming a ‘Refugees Welcome’ demonstration in Stockholm, Sweden. Despite rain and cold weather, around 15,000 people gathered to show support for those fleeing war and persecution and to demand more action from our government.

Several such demonstrations are planned across the EU, or have already happened. Among the speakers in Stockholm was Birgitta Ohlsson, former EU minister and currently spokesperson for foreign policy issues for the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet). This is what she said (translated by me):

 ‘I remember it like it was yesterday. 20 years ago many of us gathered on squares just like today. Indignant, distraught, but determined in our will to change. The war raged in the Balkans and millions of people were fleeing. Our TVs were filled with pictures of the genocide in Srebrenica, of emaciated prisoners at Omarska, and of murdered children. It was the rage and the anger of the decent that showed the way for a wide movement of solidarity and a Sweden which then, as today, was able to welcome refugees.'

As a liberal and big fan of BO (as well call her), I have to admit to being slightly biased here, but I did think her speech was an important reminder of our history. A European history that is filled with wars and endless human suffering and which has seen some of the worst atrocities and refugee movements in modern times. And it was a reminder of a Swedish history of solidarity for refugees from all over the world. During six months of World War II, from June to December 1944, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands of Jews, by providing them with protective passports and getting them out of Nazi-occupied Budapest.

During three months in the spring of 1945, the Swedish Red Cross, led by its Vice President, Count Folke Bernadotte, and the now famous ‘white busses’ carried out a rescue operation which saved the lives of some 15,000 people from Nazi concentration camps in Germany. (An interesting documentary about Count Bernadotte and the white busses can be found on Aljazeera).

Many more refugees came from Europe, including almost 8,000 Danish Jews, tens of thousands of children from Finland, as well as refugees from the Baltic States, Poland etc. Some estimate that Sweden welcomed as many as 120,000 refugees during and after World War II. During the horrors of the Balkan wars in 1991-1995, Sweden welcomed some 40,000 refugees, and we also have a history of accepting refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Eritrea, and many other countries around the world.

As a Swedish citizen I am proud of my country for historically having provided a safe haven for so many people fleeing war and persecution. I am proud that so many choose my country as the place where they want to try to rebuild their lives, that they consider my country as the best place to provide a better future for their children.

As an EU citizen (because I do see myself as such, having lived in four different EU member states), I am proud of a union that is built on the idea that nations shall be tied together so that there shall be no more war on European soil. A union of states built on the freedom of movement of people, and with human rights guaranteed to all (at least in theory).

However, as a Swedish and EU citizen I am pissed off. I am pissed off at our leaders for failing to address an issue many international human rights and humanitarian organizations have warned of for years – THIS is the reason we are currently facing the situation we are. The inability of EU politicians to develop adequate policies to assist the hundreds of thousands who have fled in the last few years has resulted in thousands of deaths and has turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard (as of August this year the death toll surpassed 2,000 for 2015 with 188,000 people having been saved).

As a Swedish and EU citizen, today I am also ashamed. I am ashamed at our politicians who, instead of reacting with compassion and humanity are pandering to a seemingly growing right-wing movement in Europe. A movement which tries to scare us with talk of the ‘Islamization’ of our continent and of ‘these people’ who surely are only here to take our jobs and force us all to convert to Islam. A movement which brings with it a view of people that has no place in the EU and is an affront to our history – a history that happened not even a century ago.

Hungary’s treatment of refugees is abhorrent (I don’t need to mention the fence in the border with Serbia) and Victor Orban’s comments that ‘we want no more Muslims’ and that if we allow all these refugees in, we (Europeans) risk becoming a minority on our own continent make my skin crawl. The comments coming from the UK government are likewise shameful, dehumanising and demeaning, describing those fleeing as swarms ready to invade, as if they were insects of Biblical proportions, not human beings. And the images of Czech police writing identification numbers on the arms of refugees arriving takes me back about 70 years.

Sure, immigration, and especially the following integration, is not easy. I would argue that for all our praise about our refugee and asylum policies, we have in Sweden failed spectacularly at integration. So have probably a lot of countries in the EU.  

There will be those who say some who arrive will never integrate into our societies and will in fact not want to. That’s probably very true. And I’m fine with that. Just like I am ready to accept that a system of free healthcare and with social security benefits will always be abused by some, I am prepared to accept that some of the people who are legitimately seeking refuge within our borders may never integrate for precisely the same reason – because they are in the minority.

As Birgitta Ohlsson pointed out in Stockholm, when parents know that they are risking their children’s lives, then it’s not a question of opportunism like some would argue, it’s a necessity, it’s about life. Then it is important that we have the courage to open our borders, and to create legal roads to Europe.

The images of little Alan Kurdi dead on a beach in Turkey seem to have awakened the conscience of the Europeans.

I won’t spend time pointing out that many people, including children like Alan, have been fleeing the war in Syria, armed forces in Afghanistan, and IS in Iraq, for several years. Many people before Alan arrived in Europe on non-sea-worthy boats across the Mediterranean Sea, or were packed into trucks that would supposedly take them across borders into the Schengen area.

I won’t point out that this happened without people rising up to demand that their fundamental rights to seek asylum be respected and that they be treated humanely.

I will instead let the recent awakening of my fellow Europeans fill me with hope that things may finally change – that people have finally had enough of a situation where human beings are being treated like less than deserving of respect and human treatment, where fences are being built to keep desperate people out, and where politicians seem to compete over who can win more votes from the right-wing parts of society.

Maybe this is the moment, and I desperately hope that it is, where the people of Europe will again rise up to say: ‘refugees welcome’ and ‘not in our name’.