The Big Disconnect – Migrants and Prevent

I think I will start by quoting what Jeremy McLellan, comedian, said during the Hurricane Irma in the USA, “Florida is currently undergoing the largest evacuation in United States history. Millions of people are fleeing Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm to ever make landfall in North America.

Now imagine if no other state would take them in. Imagine if Georgia and Alabama built walls to keep them out. Imagine if we forced them to stay put and drown.

Sounds evil, right? And yet this is what we humans do every day all over the world, from Mexicans fleeing the violence of the drug cartels, Syrians fleeing a civil war, Yemenis fleeing forced starvation, Palestinians expelled from their homes, to Rohingya fleeing genocide in Myanmar.

We know in our hearts this is wrong. We know that if humans have rights at all, they have the right to flee certain death. We know this. It’s time we started acting like it.”

What Jeremy says is very self-explanatory and I am going to use his words to describe why there is a great disconnect in the understanding of the issues surrounding Prevent or the inflow of migrants.

Naturally, I am a very open-minded person, sometimes I surprise myself in my open-mindedness as well. I personally think that a human being should never have set opinions about anything, and one should always be open to listening to new people and ideas. I think it is just wrong to meet a new person and to already start preaching them about your values without making any effort to understand their beliefs.

Part I

In a nutshell, what I am really saying is, next time when we see a picture of a family fleeing their war-torn area, before we start questioning our Border Controls, let’s just take a moment to do two things: appreciate how privileged we are and; look at the context of that flee. They are not fleeing for the economic benefits available in our countries, they are fleeing to save their lives and their children’s lives. And yes, I know there are people who do move for economic benefits, and most people are usually fine with it because somehow we think their economic contribution to the country trumps just the inflow of diversity and diverse experiences in the country.

Now I have chosen to write on this topic after speaking to several people who have had to leave their countries due to the political turmoil in their own countries. They told me how the UK government at times handles their cases, for example not processing their applications so that they cannot claim certain benefits, but would also not allow them to go back should they wish to, because their human rights graph will go down. I am sure, some of us must be thinking that the UK is already doing them a favour by letting them to stay in this country, and that is all they deserve. For those who are thinking that way, I would like to remind you to the conditions these people left their homes in, and to what Jeremy said.

Having said this, I feel like there is a great big emotional disconnect amongst the humans, we are materialistic to some extent. We have pushed humanity second to our own welfare. Probably we don’t really understand what these people are going through because we haven’t had the same experience. I won’t claim to be the saintest of the human beings, and I cannot say for sure, that I would say the same things if there was a group of people fleeing to my country. For now, I think I would probably look at the bigger picture of that migration. I will not make the fleeing migrants the subject of my criticisms. I will probably criticise the people and circumstances involved that lead to such migration.

Part II

Prevent Strategy is no different I think. From the prevalent media rhetoric, one is easily tempted to appreciate the need for this strategy with no regards to the context of Prevent or to the effectiveness of it.

You have on one side the supporters of the strategy, and on one side a great mix of individuals and organisations trying to get this strategy scrap. Trust me, when I tell you that I have not only listened to the latter’s narrative, I have spoken to the people working as Prevent Coordinators in the Council, Police or Educational Institutes. I met quite a few of them in a conference I attended in London, on 5^th of September. I think, having met all these people, I realised that people working as Prevent Coordinators, genuinely believe in the cause, they think there is a significant need for that strategy to be in place. And without getting into the logical flaws of the whole strategy, I will just say this, again in the discussion for the Prevent, often what is forgotten is the context of the strategy.

All I am looking for from the people who support Prevent is for them to acknowledge the mistakes made as a part of this country’s foreign policy. Did this extreme version of the ISIS exist before Afghanistan/Iraq wars? And even now the solution is really easy, as Noam Chomsky says it, we need to stop meddling in other countries’ affairs. If you disagree with me, then I think we need to acknowledge that this disconnect exists due to us failing to see the contexts of things.