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Friday, 21 November, 2008 01:10 pm
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| Curbing Xenophobic Attacks |
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| Written by Rekpene E. Bassey | ||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 23 May 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||
     On 14 December 2005, to be precise, he referred to the Holocaust, to wit: the mass massacre of Jews during the Second World War, as “a myth.” While both statements echoed international angst on anti-Semitic violence, recent spates of killings, rape and mugging of foreigners in South Africa, and the wanton destruction of their property have once more brought old time universal trepidation about the hate crime of xenophobia to front burner of putrefying global social order. Xenophobia, a word which many people are not familiar with, is derived from the Greek words xenos and phobos. Xenos means stranger. Phobos denotes fear. The term xenophobia describes the fear of others, other than oneself, kindred, nativity or aborigine. Acts of xenophobia are propelled by extremism. Xenophobia is often expressed through anger, hostility, violence, and in worse cases genocide against people viewed either as strangers, settlers, of another race, and or ethnicity. The hostilities in Kenya between supporters of opposition leader, Raila Odinga's Kikuyu tribesmen, and president Mwai Kibaki's, over election rigging culminating in the loss of 1000 lives typifies one of the numerous cases of xenophobia in our world. But the last century witnessed some of the worst cases of xenophobic attacks. According to Allan Bullock, author of Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, an estimated 5,672,000 Jews were annihilated between 1939 and 1945. The number was made up of Jewish men, women and children who were slaughtered within a span of about 72 months in different countries, from Poland to the Baltic States, and from Germany to Italy. Even in Netherlands and Greece, Jews were murdered, for no cause other than being Jews. Stark evidence of these massacres can be found at the Museum of the Holocaust in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Descendants of some of the Nazi henchmen who perpetrated those gruesome acts of genocide are still alive today, living and moving freely in countries like El-Salvador, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, among others. In Africa, 49 years after the Holocaust, between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were murdered. The Rwandan genocide in which most of the victims were Tutsis occurred within a space of about 100 days. That was not the first time Tutsis would be mercilessly killed by Hutus. In 1959, 35 years earlier, Hutus had murdered some 200,000 Tutsis. Thousands of others took flight to neighbouring countries like Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. The later day murders were a reprisal sparked by the explosion of president Juvenal Habyarimana's aircraft. With him in the aircraft on that melancholic day were the president of Burundi and many top government officials. Himself a Hutu, president Habyriamana's airliner was allegedly shot in the airspace of the country's capital, Kigali. Ethnic acrimony among the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis can be traced to the colonial era, under Belgium black in 1916. Ironically, in this case, both Hutus and Tutsis share a lot in common. Both speak the same language, inhabit the same geographical area and have similar culture. Only that the Belgian colonial authorities created a big tribal gulf between both peoples. The executors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide included presidential guards, military commanders, politicians and businessmen. Spurred on by media propaganda, a 300,000 strong force of militiamen called Interahamwe, meaning those who attack jointly, was formed to carry out the genocide. Other perpetrators of those dastardly acts received monetary compensation and were also rewarded with food, and the property of their victims. Many of the perpetrators of the genocide who later fled to Zaire, now Congo Democratic Republic have since returned to Rwanda. More recent investigations indicate that Rwanda's current president Paul Kagame personally ordered the rocket attack that killed president Habyriamana in 1994. A similar situation had occurred in the new world a few years earlier, during Guatemala's 36-year old civil war. Security forces there killed an estimated 110,000 innocent citizens in indigenous communities in the country. About 600 Mayan villages were targeted and set ablaze. The genocide committed by Guatemala's security forces under the maximum rules of Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia (1978 - 1982) and Efrain Rios Montt (1982 - 1983) was described by a UN Truth Commission as “state policy of genocide against indigenous communities.” The said state policy of genocide referred to as “scorched earth” campaign also left many Mayans in abject conditions of homelessness. Many fled their homes to jungles, living without food, medicine and portable water. Consequently, many died of starvation, and disease in jungles. Many of those that perpetrated the genocide in Guatemala are still in the government of that country today. The cases cited above involved large-scale xenophobic attacks. But there are several cases of smaller groups and or individuals that have been persecuted, attacked, killed and violated on account of their race or ethnicity. Examples include the murder of Steven Bantu Biko popularly known as Steve Biko (1946 - 1977). Steve Biko was a non-violent anti-apartheid campaigner in the days when apartheid held sway in South Africa. Having founded the South African Students' Organization (SASO) in 1968, he became SASO's first president. South African Students' organization comprising blacks, Indians and coloured, later translated into a very formidable black consciousness movement. Biko who was a medical student at the University of Natal Medical School at the time, was elected as the honourary president of the Black Peoples Convention (BCM) in 1972. His campaigns apparently offended the apartheid regime, which banned his activities in March 1973. Consequently, he was forbidden from speaking to more than one person at a time. He could therefore, not address two persons at one go, was restricted to certain areas, and anything he said could not be quoted, mentioned or cited. Steve Biko's activities culminated in the Soweto riots of 16 June 1976. He was thereafter hounded and nabbed on 18 August 1977 by the Police at a checkpoint. Steve Biko was battered and brutalized while in police custody, resulting in his sustaining severe head injury. He was reportedly chained thereafter to a window grille for 24 hours. He died in September 1977 shortly on arrival at the Pretoria prison where he had been taken to after a 750 mile drive behind a truck. Twenty-six years later, on 7 October 2003, officials of South African Justice Ministry in the post apartheid era announced that the five police men accused of the murder of Steve Biko could not be prosecuted due to absence of sufficient evidence. There were no witnesses either to the killing. Besides, the time limit provided for prosecution within South African criminal law was said to have expired. Xenophobic incidents have occurred even in post-apartheid South Africa. There have been reported incidents of such attacks on nationals of other countries, refugees from Ethiopia and Sudan, in particular. One week after Haille Shamebo an Ethiopian refugee was attacked in Pretoria, a Sudanese man was severely assaulted and thrown out of a speeding cab in September 2002. One of the most recent cases occurred around Durban, Johannesburg and other cities. The attacks on foreigners living in South Africa - - Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Pakistanis and other nationalities began 11 May 2008, was spontaneous, and well coordinated, leaving in its wake nearly 50 dead persons. Over 16,000 others who escaped death were either severely injured and or displaced from their residential quarters. Most of the victims, unfortunately, were Zimbabweans who had fled from the excruciating pangs of poverty occasioned by the political imbroglio in their once beautiful country. Sundry motives were responsible for the attacks under reference; ranging from soaring crimes, to high rates of unemployment among the local folks. South African young males, it would appear, are either too lazy or educationally less or more qualified for certain jobs, which foreigners are only too glad to take. Thus, young unemployed male South Africans see such foreigners as interloping usurpers. The attacks on foreigners in South Africa, as one analyst put it, is a “cruel twist of faith,” considering the support, love and camaraderie they enjoyed during the apartheid days. During that period, South Africans in their hordes sought refuge under the benevolence of other brotherly nations in Africa to escape murder, humiliation and dehumanization in the hands of minority white leaders. There are empirical examples of xenophobic attacks in the United States predating the times of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968). King himself suffered many such attacks. His house was bombed; he got arrested and suffered a stint in the Birmingham jail. Even J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the time almost pathologically hated King more for his colour than his cause. Indeed, some analysts inferred FBI complicity in King's murder on 4 April 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Other more recent US examples of xenophobic attacks are those of James Byrd, Rodney King and Latasha Harlins. In Jasper, Texas, one Saturday night in June 1998, James Byrd an American of African extraction ran into three white folks during a hitchhike. The threesome who turned out to be members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), had Byrd chained to a truck and toed on tarmac for over two miles. After that, they cut of his head and dumped-off his quivering body. Byrd's killers, William King and two others were consequently sentenced to death in March of the following year. Rodney King's case had occurred five years earlier. King, a motorist and also an American of African extraction had been badly battered by the police in south central Los Angeles. The video evidence to that effect was uncontroversial. But the decision of the predominantly white jury on 11 May 1992 was in favour of the white officers that battered King. As a result, bands of mostly Africa American protesters attacked white motorists. But as it turned out, the riots were also an indirect reaction from pent up anger resulting from the earlier shooting of 15 year old Latasha Harlins, a girl, and another African American, by Sun Ja Du, a Korean grocer, for stealing a bottle of orange juice valued at $1.79. The murderer was only sentenced to a five-year probation term. Xenophobic attacks increased sharply in Western Europe in the wave of the Middle East crises, and after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. In Western Europe, Jews, Arabs, Moslems and ethnic minorities are the targets. The Police in France recorded 395 cases of anti-Semitic attacks in less than one month in 2002, few months after 9/11. Attacks on persons of Jewish extraction and Arabs included schools, synagogues, mosques and cemeteries in places like Paris, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Marseille. In fact there were celebrations in France by neofacists and neo-Nazi groups in Germany, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US during which about 3000 persons perished. Immigrants from the Maghreb, that is, Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians have severally been attacked in Spain. On 14 July 1999 about 1,300 Spaniards, mostly skinheads carried out violent demonstrations on the streets of Terrassa in Barcelona. In the course of the demonstration, a 23-year-old man of African extraction was stabbed at least three times on the chest, while seven other blacks were assaulted under the watch of uniformed and plain-clothes police officers. Similar attacks have been recorded in the Netherlands, Belgium, UK and Canada. Of all these, Russia has one of the worse records of xenophobic attacks in recent times. Racial attacks on foreigners in cities like Mosco and St. Petersburg are recorded almost on a daily basis. The attacks are usually planned and executed by neo-Nazi groups targeting persons of African and Asian origin. The murder of Kamhem Leon, a Cameroonian student late December 2005 brought to ten those that were murdered within a short space of time in St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, where about 23% of the population consists of migrants. In fact, the situation in Russia is so bad that Aleksandr Brod, Moscow's Human Rights Bureau Chief exclaimed, “more than half of Russians are xenophobic!” Besides the Rwandan and South-African examples cited earlier, a number of xenophobic incidents have been recorded in other African nations. However, a peroration of a few other cases in the West Coast will suffice here. In several instances, xenophobic attacks have occurred in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. Of the lot, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire can be cited as classical examples in recent times. Xenophobia accounted for the intractable crises between the Americo-Liberians and other tribes like the Gios, Manos and the dominant Kran ethnic groups. In Cote d'Ivoire, French, and other West African citizens and Moslems have been targets of xenophobic attacks, sadly, under the watch of the nation's political authorities. A few local examples of cases of xenophobic conflicts include Ebom/Ebijakara (2005/06) and Usumutong/Ebom (1978). Both cases occurred in Abi Local Government Area in Cross River. Noted elsewhere were the ethnic clashes between the people of Itu in Akwa Ibom State and those of Odukpani in Cross River State; the Jukun /Kutebs and Tiv/ Jukun in Taraba State in the 90s, and 2000s. Then there were the Aguleri and Umeleri crisis in Anambra, and Ife/Modakeke in the late 90s and recently as the 2000s. The Okrikas and Eleme's in Rivers State are neighbours, but virtually abide in mutual suspicion. Xenophobic activities have existed in the Middle East since the Bronze Age. The region still remains one of the hot beds of hate-crimes. In less than 24 hours after its establishment on 15 May 1948, the young state of Israel suffered combined military attacks by five of her neighbouring Arab countries. More hate attacks continue to occur in the region. Shortly after the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq al-Hariri on 14 February 2005, hundreds of Syrians working and doing business in Lebanon were attacked, shot and robbed. In one of the cases which occurred in the later part of the same month, two Syrians got bundled up to the last floor of a four-story building, from where they were thrown off. About three weeks later, two other Syrians were stabbed by a mob in Ghobeiri, Beirut. In other attacks, Syrian women, according to Amnesty International, were rapped, while stones, sticks and grenades were used to attack others. Xenophobia here, xenophobia there. For how long will this evil continue? How long? Considering causal variables, it appears as if the perfidious phenomenon will continue, and perhaps exacerbate in the emerging universal economic, social and political atmosphere in the years ahead if not curbed today. Apart from crime, the decline in the economic fortune of many third world and some countries in Western Europe, which has necessitated restructuring and privatization, has been identified as one of the underlying factors responsible for the increase in the general escalation in cases of xenophobia. Obviously, in times of economic and invariably social decline, immigrants become the first and easiest targets for resentments, as was the case in Nigeria. Between 1978 and 1981, Nigeria witnessed a huge influx of migrants from neighbouring and other third world countries like Ghana and India. The influx of aliens into Nigeria began in the early days of the oil boom, and progressed as the political, social and economic problems of her neighbours became increasingly acute. Especially caught in the nightmare at the time were Cameroon, Chad, Ghana and Niger Republics. Chad was at the time, after the overthrow of presidents Tambalbaye and Felix Malloum respectively, a country torn apart by civil strife. With eleven armed factions warring against themselves, Chadian nationals increasingly fled to other countries mainly Nigeria. The drought stricken Niger Republic was not very accommodating either to its citizens. Thus, with surplus petronaira then, Nigeria received her neighbours, both legal and illegal immigrants, with open hands. Unfortunately as the economic fortune of the nation began to nose dive, social decay also rapidly set in. As an immediate reaction to the situation, the then Minister of Internal Affairs Alhaji Ali Baba ordered the comprehensive expulsion of two million so-called illegal immigrants out of Nigeria. The situation noted with regards to Nigeria is similar to the pattern elsewhere. Weak immigration procedures combine well with weak border control to attract aliens to countries with vibrant economies. When things begin to go awry: political uncertainty, social decay, economic down turn, geometrical progression in crime rates, employment crises and capital flight, aliens become targets of attack. This combination of factors blend with the pathological, psychological and cultural nature of certain elements that target perceived enemies of the indigenous social order. But racial bigotry, chauvinism, and extremism propelled by inherent traits of superiority assumption and unwillingness to endure the religious expressions of others are among the major factors responsible for xenophobic attacks. It is not totally an unfounded fear for citizens to express their concern about the erosion of their socio-cultural and other core values upon infiltration by aliens. Nonetheless, xenophobic attacks must be condemned in no uncertain terms. The development is dangerous and could spread. No one can imagine the international dimension it could assume if left unchecked. Standing up against hate crime should therefore, be an imperative. The situation calls for renewed national and international checks, control and prevention; utilizing appropriate legal instruments. At any rate, what is by far more important is the creation of awareness to conscientise people against hate crimes. In rising up against xenophobia, one point that must be uppermost in our minds is the moral question associated therewith. The truth is that all human kinds are related somewhat. Our pigmentation is immaterial. It does not matter if we are Jews, Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Druse, Persians or Jains. It does not matter if we are Africans, Indians, English or Dutch; black, white, a mixture of both or yellow. Professions and creed do not make any difference before God. How does being a Bantu, Bahumono or Fulani eradicate poverty, disease, illiteracy and crime? In every community, there are the poor and the rich, the godly and godless. If bad people tend towards xenophobic attacks, should the good merely stand and watch from the side? Did the same God not create us? Shall we all not pass away someday? If an omniscient, omnipotent God wanted us to be of the same ethnicity, language, religion, culture and all, it was well within His ability to make us so. Tolerance for one another is a major key to curbing xenophobic attacks. We must learn to co-habit our environments in forbearance and love. Our lives are gifts from God! Let us put them to positive use by adding value to others. The seed of true peace and joy is the love we offer others!! Rekpene E. Bassey, Author of General Principles of Security President, African Council on Narcotics, Jos, Plateau State. Tel: 08034530504.  Quote this article on your site | Views: 586 | Print | E-mail
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