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Opinion

Upside down at the bottom of the world

By Roger Pulvers


人間の良心を失わないために

裕福な国ほど難民に辛い態度を取りがちだが、彼らをわれわれの中に受け入れる努力をしなければもろともに絶望の淵に深く沈んでいくことになる。

The world has been turned upside down like a cheap tumbler. Inside, good and evil mix; and even with the best will and the most keen analysis it is becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between the two.

Most people would say that our world's most severe malady today is terrorism. But in my book this is just citing a symptom and calling it a disease. What is plaguing us all more than ever is the unbridgeable gap between rich and poor and the consciousness on the side of the poor that there is little or nothing they can do to eliminate it.

Constant poverty creates despair. Ordinary people who would like nothing more than to be able to live in their own countries seek ways of leaving and finding refuge elsewhere, where life is better for them and their families. This has been going on since the beginning of time. The ancestors of all of us were refugees.

But in recent years citizens of the richer nations have been closing their gates to refugees. Not a day goes by that one doesn't read in a newspaper about innocent and unfortunate people who, downtrodden or persecuted in their native land, attempt to reach Europe or America or Australia, only to find themselves treated with disdain and cruelty. As for those who assist them in their passage, they are branded "people smugglers" and, when caught, prosecuted for their alleged crimes.

There is a blatant hypocrisy evident in the policy of "go home whoever you are," and this hypocrisy has turned us in the affluent parts of the world into self-righteous bigots. On the one hand British, American and Australian soldiers are sent "to liberate" various peoples from oppression; and on the other, their governments will not recognize those fleeing that oppression as genuine refugees. We rich people are certainly occupying the moral low ground.

I personally know quite a few Jews who were spirited out of Nazi-controlled Europe by various kinds of brokers. Some of these brokers were motivated by altruism; others, by greed. Their motivation was not the issue then. Lives were saved and we were all grateful for it. The brokers who were caught were generally executed by the Nazis.

People who risk their lives to help starving North Koreans leave their country are considered courageous. If they are locked up by the Chinese authorities, we seek their release "on humanitarian grounds." Are "our side's" people smugglers good and the other side's evil?

My country, Australia, is currently pursuing what can only be described as a neo-Fascist policy toward refugees. Our government does not seem to care how cruelly it treats refugees arriving in its territorial waters. This policy will assuredly change. But in the meantime we are stuck with leaders whose callousness rivals that of the Nazis in their earlier years.

It is impossible for the richer nations to fling open their gates and accept all refugees. But if we do not begin to treat these unfortunate people in a more humane way and make every effort to find a place for many of them in our midst, we will surely lose the little humanity that we have left. We will, in a word, all sink together: upside down at the bottom of the world.
* パルバースさんのオピニオンは今回が最終回です。



Shukan ST: Feb. 27, 2004

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