Seen from Ukraine: everyone is a potential refugee

Whatever the causes of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in terms of international relations, balances of power and politics, the humanitarian drama before us is no different from that of all wars. Westerners have for a very long time watched these dramas, taking place in non-Western societies, with the flavor of a TV series. Without any responsibility placed upon them, without feeling their effect in their lives in any way, without a pang of conscience.

These wars, which have turned into the routine of life, are after all taking place in Muslim geographies, in Africa or in the Far East of Asia. And, on top of it, these wars are in fact taking place in arenas where the Western powers’ own sharing of power and resources among themselves is being carried out by proxy.

What now seems a little strange and hard to accept is that these film scenes are being shot on their own soil, in the West. As he watches, the Western viewer realizes with great shock that these are, after all, not a film. Under the effect of this shock, he cannot keep himself from expressing outwardly, at the first moment, the feelings within him or the thoughts beneath his mind.

The words that Prince William of England spoke the other day during his visit to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in London were precisely an unguarded expression of this subconscious: saying that “war and bloodshed are quite normal in Africa and Asia, not in Europe,” William did not neglect to tell the volunteers present at the Centre: “It is very foreign to us to see this in Europe. We are all behind you.”

Meanwhile, the speech of the Irish parliamentarian Clare Daly in the European Parliament’s session on refugees coming from Ukraine very clearly expressed the discomfort Europe is experiencing or will be obliged to experience in this matter. In her speech, Daly criticized the double standard applied to Ukraine and Afghanistan and asked the members why the humanitarian crisis the Afghan people are living through is regarded as unimportant:

“There is no doubt that we are living in times of catastrophic crises in which innocent civilians’ lives are sacrificed in their masters’ wars. Yes, in Ukraine, but not only in Ukraine. Since the last plenary, tens of thousands of Afghan citizens have been forced to flee in search of food and safety. 5 million children are facing famine, agonizing and painful death, there has been a 500 percent increase in child marriages, and children are being sold so that they may survive. That is not mentioned. Not here, not anywhere is it mentioned.”

Daly’s question of course must not be limited to Afghanistan. War and children’s dramas from Syria, from Yemen, from Kashmir, from Myanmar too can be grasped in their most current form. What is of course not desirable is that the insensitivity displayed toward all these be displayed toward the situation in Ukraine as well. On the contrary, what is desirable is that what is happening in Ukraine these days draw humanity’s eyes to the whole world without distinction of religion, language, race, geography. That they realize that events which, even when they chanced upon them on their screens, they immediately removed from their agenda by changing the channel, are being lived just as much as in Ukraine, and of course in a far more painful way than that.

The asylum from Ukraine toward Europe has exceeded two million by the end of only the second week of the war. This figure is in fact a population movement far beyond even what happened in Syria. What is happening in this process of asylum, in which there are only women, the elderly and children, is the typical drama of all asylum processes.

A person’s being forced to leave his home, his place, his homeland is in itself a great tragedy. If one can become a refugee even when white-skinned, blue-eyed and Christian, the saying “being a refugee is something that can happen to anyone,” a cliché that meant nothing to most people, must by now have ceased to be so and turned into a lived reality.

Being a refugee is a condition that the world we live in, a world that is in essence treacherous, can place before anyone at any moment. That is why granting asylum is a human right, and it needs to become a common value of all humanity. To turn this right into a matter of security and sovereignty, and, as if that were not enough, to reduce it to that, is possible only by moving miles away from humanity.

The tragicomic side of the matter is that the great majority of those who adopt this attitude toward refugees themselves, or their ancestors, surely have an event of asylum in their past.

The refugee, contrary to what is supposed, is, before being a security threat, a stranger who has to hold on as a human being. In Zygmunt Bauman’s famous expression, “the refugee is not the person who has changed place, but the person who has lost his place. He has been deprived of his homeland but has not found a new homeland either.” This statement holds in all events of asylum. This is often not because the refugee cannot adopt the place he has come to as a homeland, but unfortunately generally because the place he has come to cannot adopt him. As long as someone keeps reminding him that he does not belong to these lands, being a refugee becomes an unending tragic existential category.

Yet it is established, historically and sociologically, with countless examples, that the refugee often serves the homeland he has taken refuge in far more than that homeland’s residents do, and contributes far more. Because he has the anxiety of holding on, and this drives him to work far more, to be far more enterprising and productive, and meanwhile to show far more care for his relationships.

On the other hand, the modern world we live in also has a side that makes all of us migrants. Perhaps one motivation behind the world’s moving so much, growing so much, and technology and creativity increasing so much is this as well.

We are all refugees: to whom, from where, how?