11 October 2015
Having car-pooled from
Herzogenrath - a German town close to the Dutch border near Maastricht - I
arrived in Mannheim late this evening, and went to the tram station to go to
Dossenheim. It was the first time I had carpooled, but the pleasantness of the
journey had left me underprepared for what I was about to encounter.
Tram tickets are quite
cheap in Germany, but I had not figured out how to correctly operate the
vending machines. So, I turned to a gentleman standing next to one to help me
out. He did not respond. In the rubbish German that I could muster, I asked
another elderly gent if he spoke any English or Dutch: “Entschuldigung mijn
heer, ich bin auslander, und spreche nicht Deutsche, sprechen sie English of
Niederlandisch?” He refused to respond beyond a few words muttered under his breath, and walked a few meters away to give me the dirtiest look.
“Okay, grumpy grandpa”, I thought to myself, and repeated my awful German to a younger guy, who was fiddling with his smartphone, this time around.
“Kidhar se ho? Pakistan ya
India?” (Where are you from? Pakistan, or India?), he responded in
Punjabi-Urdu.
“India se, aur aap?” (From
India, and yourself?), I replied.
“Pakistan.”
I shook his hand and asked
him if he could help me figuring out how to buy a ticket.
Ali Raja spoke neither
English nor German, and went on to explain to me in Punjabi that I should not
bother purchasing one. "No one here buys tickets, nor does anyone check
for them in here. You need not worry.”
Finally a Turkish guy
taught me how to operate the machine, and I purchased my ticket.
Ali - the Pakistani guy - approached me: “How long have you lived here?”
“Four years, but I live in
the Netherlands.”
His next question stumped
me.
“Do you think we are at
risk of being deported by these people?”
“Why, if you have a visa,
would they deport you?” was my instant reaction, realising only a moment later
that something was amiss.
“Seems like you haven’t seen
much in life. There are a lot of Indians and Pakistanis who have come in this
country without visas.” Ali was an economic migrant who had come into Germany camouflaged
as a refugee. He told me that had walked or hitchhiked all the way
from Karachi for over three months, via Iran and other countries all the way to
Germany to take advantage of the refugee situation.
I was flummoxed because of
his smartphone and the smart clothes. The phone he had purchased out of the
necessity to navigate and keep in touch with others while making the journey
from Karachi, and the clothes were given to him by the German government, which
also fed and housed him.
“It’s the money”, he said
rather matter-of-factly, when I asked why he would want to migrate (he wasn't a
refugee) with his language handicap. The “very big European Rupee” was equal to
“118 Pakistani Rupees”, and the 10 Euros that he earned per hour were
equivalent to his fortnightly earnings in Pakistan! And given that public
transport in Germany was free according to him – I suppose there weren’t as
many corresponding expenses.
The tram was a
rather crowded, but no one sat in the two seats next to me and another
foreign-looking guy. As I ran my fingers through my rather thick beard, I
caught an older woman, standing, and staring at me. Finally, it dawned on me that
they all had thought of me – bearded guy carrying a small suitcase – as a
free-riding alien! I smiled at the staring woman, but she promptly looked
away.
But the tram chugged along
anyway, and there weren’t many passengers by the time we were close to
Dossenheim. I started a conversation with a young woman about the refugee
crisis, and asked about her take on it. “I am partly for refugees, and partly
against them. I do understand that these people are only escaping war, trying
to save their and their loved ones’ lives. For this reason they are most
welcome. But having said that, I also know that many of the refugee men see
women as inferior beings. A woman from my sister’s university in Trier – was
raped by a refugee while she was walking alone. This cannot be! If they want to
come to Germany, then they must accept our values.”
Could one possibly argue
with these apprehensions, which were based on real experiences, and not
Trumpèsque rhetoric?
How is a migrant different from a refugee? Please share. Regards.
ReplyDeleteA migrant is someone who migrates - usually voluntarily for economic or personal reasons. A refugee, on the other hand is a term of art defined in international law.
ReplyDeleteThe 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees define a refugee as person who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”
In simpler words, a refugee is a person who is forced to abandon (without the need to migrate, as she may already be present in that country) her home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution.
Hope this clarifies.