Xenophobia is the baseless fear of other people who are not like you but it can be overcome with knowledge and understanding of others and their culture. Xenophobia is a crime against humanity.
I had a very interesting experience in Sicily once when I walked into a campsite by mistake near Messina that was for the Italians. Naturally they were surprised to see an Indian like me with a backpack just walk in so it was a first for them. They had never seen a real Indian up close. The children were the most curious and they swarmed around me and started chattering in Italian which I do not speak so all I could say was non parlare italiano but it did not stop them.
I noticed that there were a lot of kids of various ages starting from very young to maybe a few in their teens who looked at me curiously while their mothers and grandmothers kept an eye on them and sweetly smiled at me. There were no adult males that I could see anywhere so I figured it was a baby-sitting camp for the kids while their fathers went somewhere to soak up the night life or play with their steel balls.
I also noticed that they were extremely friendly and they all wanted to know all about me which was hard for me to explain but finally a teenage girl of about 12 or 13 years of age came forward and shyly said that she spoke a bit of English and could be of some assistance so I was greatly relieved because my Italian was going nowhere.
Once they learned that I was really an Indian from India and not a tribe found in the Amazon, their curiosity peaked because none had ever travelled anywhere and had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about another country so it was a very first for them. I also noticed that they needed attention which was in short supply because the mothers and the grandmothers were busy chatting or doing other things.
So an idea came to me and I thought I could teach these kids a new game that was simple to learn and play. I explained to the teenager that this game was very simple. First we should all join hands and form a circle and then sit down on the ground. She explained this to the kids in rapid fire Italian so their eyes sparkled in excitement not knowing what would come next.
After they all sat down, I got a handkerchief and placed it secretly behind one unsuspecting kid and continued to circle them until I came to the kid, picked up the handkerchief and hit him with it signaling that he was out of the game. If the kid found the kerchief before I could reach him, I was out of the game and he continued running behind the kids and placed the kerchief somewhere.
Now the kids understood the basics and were thoroughly excited so the game continued to the cheer of everybody. The kids understood that they were not supposed to look behind them to find the kerchief but no one told them that they could not feel so everyone started to feel behind them if there was a handkerchief.
The game was fun and hilarious so the kids enjoyed it tremendously. The women looked on and smiled and one of them asked me to take off my shirt so I was a bit surprised but took it off and gave it to her. She had noticed a few missing buttons in my shirt so she brought out her sewing kit and put on new buttons for me very lovingly.
I was totally amazed at their friendliness and so welcoming nature. Needless to say I had never experienced such welcome in any foreign country except in Japan and in the United States. I should also include Algeria.
But the kids were not finished with me and asked me to play with them more but I did not have the unlimited energy of kids so I sat down under a tree in an easy chair and closed my eyes for a minute or so. Now the kids brought all kinds of food from their tents and started to stuff it into my mouth. Someone put cheese in my mouth while others put grapes or other things. I mean there was this tussle among them to feed me.
Finally it was time for me to move on so I got up and said goodbye. Now the kids started to shed copious tears and pleaded for me to stay because they had opened their hearts to me and would not let me go. Believe me when I say that it was very hard for me to leave so I left with a heavy heart and still remember their tearful faces. When they knew that I had to go, they all started to kiss my cheek one by one.
I had to tell you this story here because my topic is Xenophobia or fear of strangers that I saw in many countries during my years of travel. It is perhaps human nature that we are afraid of the unknown and are fearful of what the unknown may portend. You may be afraid to explore an unexplored cave deep underground not knowing the dangers that may lurk there. You may be afraid to try a new kind of food or a drink you never had before. You may be afraid of heights or haunted places.
But these are normal fears we all experience sometime or other. Xenophobia is the fear of people that is the strangest of all because it is not only based on ignorance; it is often deeply rooted in the culture where you come from. Xenophobia is based on a deep sense of malaise about strangers who are very different from you and who represent someone whom you had no previous experience with.
But those Italian kids were not xenophobic at all so they were very friendly to me and shed tears when I left. The older women accepted me with a smile and repaired my missing buttons. What then makes people xenophobic in some countries?
I used to think that the language barrier is a hurdle we all face when we travel abroad but those kids loved me even if I did not speak their language because I taught them a new game and played with them. So language is not necessarily a barrier as I learned in Japan and Italy.
The adults are far more complicated than the kids because at a certain age, the kids are very innocent but the adults are not so they start forming their own opinions about strangers and absorb all the negativity they receive from their friends and relatives who are xenophobic.
This is the dark side of us all that some politicians exploit to gain an audience and their support to gain a few votes. Hitler could put a huge crowd into frenzy while shouting from his podium reading from Mein Kampf who would then go on a rampage through the Jewish quarters and maul them physically. This was an extreme example of Xenophobia.
Remember the pogroms in Russia in the movie Fiddler on the Roof? That was xenophobia. Often it is related to religious intolerance so Hitler said that the Jews were bad because they were not Christians so they should be literally eliminated but when the Khmer Rouge killed their own people in Cambodia in 1974, what do you call it?
It is also xenophobia based on political ideology so there are many kinds of xenophobia. I gave the example of the Italian children who were innocent and had no knowledge of racism or xenophobia but later in their life who can tell what they would become? The Italians supported Mussolini who persecuted Jews in Italy and was in cahoots with Hitler.
I have written about people in many countries where they treated me well and were friendly and in others not so friendly. When someone exploits this fear in people or others to gain political advantage like Hitler and makes people xenophobic then the result can only be catastrophic as history teaches us.
What surprises me the most about people is that this fear of people is baseless because it is based on certain assumptions that are false. People may be different from you and me but that does not make them inferior to us in any way.
I will mention a tragic example of xenophobia in India that some Muslim politician stoked to create a Muslim state of Pakistan where he would be the President. This led to a massacre of hundreds of thousands of people both Hindus and Muslims during the partition of India in 1947 because someone sowed the seed of this hatred among them using religion as the basis for political gains.
Interestingly the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians all fought together under the banner of the Indian National Army led by Netaji Bose who became the first Prime Minister of Independent India in 1944. That independence did not last but people of all religions fought as one under Bose whom they all revered. There was no hatred between them because Bose said that we are all Indians first.
Now some politicians are at the dirty game once again and are trying to sow the seed of hatred and intolerance for the immigrants among their rabid supporters who are bent on taking xenophobia to the next level. You will see the resurgence of xenophobia in some parts of Europe where the skinheads routinely beat up African migrants or war refugees because they do not want them.
The migrant caravans of thousands of South and Central Americans pressing against the barbed wire fence of the United States are greeted with tear gas and water cannons because they do not want them. It does not matter if there are women, children and people in wheelchairs seeking asylum because they are fleeing their homeland due to persecution and violence. They are met with violence at the border because of xenophobia.
The Muslim villagers are killed and their villages are burned to the ground by the mobs in Myanmar because of xenophobia. The UN estimates the number of refugees fleeing their homeland due to war and persecution in millions, who have nowhere to go. Nobody wants them.
I always write that the ignorance based fear of other people can be remedied through education but who is to provide that education to people who have made up their mind? Who is to bring knowledge about other people to them and show them that all people are wonderful? I have written many posts about Africans to show how wonderful they are and how wonderful their culture and traditions are.
To give up your fear of others, you have to learn about them. You will find that such fears are baseless. I have lived and worked in many Muslim countries where I found them so nice to me. Their mind was not poisoned by the politicians there about me being a Hindu so they welcomed me and invited me to their festivals, to their homes and showered their hospitality on me but sadly such things could not happen in my own country.
Once I was on my way to Mascara in the Mostaganem province of Algeria when the rains came soaking me thoroughly so I sought shelter under an awning near the road. A couple invited me to their home and offered me hot coffee and later food because they saw that I was getting wet. It did not matter to them that I was a Hindu and they were Muslims. We were just people. I was overwhelmed by their kindness and hospitality although I was a stranger to them.
So the key is to remember that we are all human beings and respond to kindness and generosity. It is human nature to smile when someone smiles at you even if you do not know that person. That show of kindness and smile breaks down all barriers so you gain a new friend.
When we remember that after all we are all brothers and sisters, it goes a long way to overcome the initial fear that leads to xenophobia so smile at a stranger, give him or her a helping hand, show your generosity by offering food and drinks. You will be pleasantly surprised at the results.
Human migration
The cause of massive human migration is due to man made disasters like wars that are forcing people to seek safety elsewhere only to find that no one wants them. Some die in the process of finding new homes and yet the migration continues .This seeks answers to the issue of migration and applauds the effort of the UN and NGOs.
Humans have been migrating ever since they stood upright in the Rift Valley in Africa millions of years ago. They have been doing so in order to find food and shelter when their place of origin could not provide them or were scarce but it was not a serious problem because the population then was very small.
Small groups detached themselves and moved on to find greener pastures or often to avoid conflict with larger groups over resources. This migration took place over a long period of thousands of years and was mostly voluntary. When they found a new land rich in resources like food and water, they settled down even if the new location was colder and less hospitable. They adapted to the new environment by wearing thick animal skin clothes and made strong weather proof shelters with stones or found caves to live in.
Thus our ancestors moved to Europe and others moved along the coast toward the East and settled into small groups everywhere expertly adapting to the climate, food and developed distinct cultures and even their physical features.
In very cold and harsh climates of Europe they shed their pigment and became white while those moving eastward retained the dark skin to a large extent. The inter breeding within various sub groups changed them into something similar to the Neanderthals and later to Homo sapiens from whom we all descend.
This transformation from dark-skinned Africans into what we have become took a very long time but was the result of evolution and migration but we maintain a strong link with our African ancestors through what the scientists term as the marker gene that has been found in people living in different parts of the world today.
With this background let us move on to the present day migration that is taking place from Africa to Europe and from the Middle East conflict areas to Europe and even Australia or North America. It seems that people are migrating in all directions due to economic reasons and political reasons as a result of war.
There was a time when Australia was considered a penal colony where someone in England was transported just for stealing a loaf of bread but mostly people convicted of serious crimes that included men as well as women and some children. It is a vast country that only had its native population who had arrived there tens of thousands of years ago probably as a result of ancient African migration. They had never met the white people before but welcomed them and were curious about them.
This welcoming attitude and their curiosity diminished when the newcomers decided to treat the native population badly as inferior people and called them aborigines. They ignored their rich culture and long history and called them savages. The white population slowly grew and settled into the Eastern shores where cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane etc. were established and thrive today that are a far cry from those early days.
Still for such a vast continent such as Australia, the total population remains miniscule at about 20 million people mostly concentrated in the Eastern part. But the government has a very strict immigration policy that restricts who can settle in Australia and accepts very few new immigrants who have to wait for a long period of time to get processed. The average waiting period to get an immigrant visa there is about 8 to 10 years.
Still hundreds of refugees fleeing their war-torn countries in the Middle East or elsewhere risk their lives to reach Australia in rickety boats that are intercepted in mid-ocean by the coast guards and the hapless people are taken to temporary shelters on some offshore islands where they languish for years just waiting for their fate to be decided by the government of Australia.
Often we hear of riots, hunger strikes and deaths in those shelters because people are so desperate to get out to live a normal life on the mainland but Australia does not want them and does not know what to do with them. They wanted to send only 2000 refugees to the USA that President Obama had agreed upon but the new president turned them down. Still more people are found in unseaworthy boats heading toward Australia hoping for a better life and often drown when such boats capsize in storms. The human traffickers make money out of them and do not care what happens to them.
We see this tragedy almost every day when boats full of starving and dehydrated Africans are intercepted in the Mediterranean by the Italian or Spanish coast guards who then bring them to Lampedusa for temporary shelters and processing. Thousands have died trying to reach Europe this way but more follow the same route.
The human traffickers make money but people still die in the process. Those who survive push on to Italy, France and the UK. Some try to reach Germany, Nordic countries or Greece. You will see large squatter camps in Calais or other places where these poor people live like animals and are desperate to get their basic necessities like food, water and shelter while waiting for some countries to take them. You will see them in the streets of Rome selling cheap trinkets. You will see them in small towns of France where they sell African carvings, masks or the things they make. Their struggle to survive is long and painful.
Economic migration:
The economic migrants seeking jobs in richer countries were the most numerous in the last century and still number in millions today. They were brought to the colonies by the British, French, Germans and all those countries that needed cheap labor to run their farms and plantations so these migrants spread out to the British colonies from Fiji to many parts of Africa and even Surinam where they still remain today. It was easy for any Indian to travel to any part of the British Empire without visa or custom regulation in those days as bonded laborers but many educated people went to England and settled there. There are now millions of Asians in England alone where you see them everywhere and have radically changed the demography of that small country in ways the British never thought possible.
Some have started to resent them and want a halt to fresh immigration so laws have been tightened and the waiting period for an immigrant visa is like in Australia still people keep coming illegally in container vans or trucks often suffocating to death in the process. It is a sad situation because small countries in Europe just cant cope with the deluge of immigrants that keep coming with no end in sight.
They try to cross from Turkey in rickety boats to reach Greece or Italy and drown. Often their bodies as young as 3 years old wash up ashore that highlights the desperation they face trying to find a new home.
The war refugees:
Now due to conflict in many countries like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan etc. there are hundreds of thousands of very desperate people who have fled their homeland to seek new homes elsewhere where they will feel safe only to find out that no country wants them so what to do? They are not economic migrants because in their country they were people with means to live well but the war changed everything for them. If you ask them why they migrate, they will say that it is to save their lives. They want to return home when the war ends but no one knows when it will end or if new conflicts will flare up again somewhere. Some flee due to persecution and ethnic cleansing by the terrorists like those poor people in Sinjar or the Kurds.
When India was divided into two countries, Hindus living in Pakistan fled to India and some Muslims in India fled to Pakistan and a million people died in the process. These refugees arrived with nothing and had a terrible time resettling in India because they received little help from anyone. This persecution of minorities in Pakistan and other Moslem countries continues even today resulting in migration of these poor people to safe haven.
The UNHCR and many NGOs help to some extent these people within their limited resources and always seek more funds from donor countries but the scale of the problem defies any attempt to help them in a meaningful way.
There was a tent city just outside Khartoum in Sudan where hundreds of thousands of refugees from South Sudan lived in appalling conditions and dire poverty because a war was going on in the south. They went back to South Sudan when the war ended and the UN Secretary General Kofi Anan attended the birth of a new country with great fanfare while people danced in the streets until the war broke out again between rivals and restarted the cycle of misery and death.
I used to see the freight trains loaded with bodies brought to El Obeid during the night but the Sudanese government did not want anyone to see their losses.
The asylum seekers:
Then there are those people who speak out against their illegal governments and their corrupt policies so they are persecuted relentlessly while they seek to escape and find asylum in other countries that are sympathetic to their problems. I remember how Svetlana Alliluyeva (Stalin) who was visiting Delhi as a part of a Russian delegation escaped in disguise and reached the US embassy asking for asylum and stunned the ambassador. She was given asylum because she was who she was but this does not happen to ordinary people.
Poor North Koreans try to escape their prison-like country and go to China from where they take trains to the Laotian border, swim across the Mekong to reach safety on the other side and escape to Thailand. From there they reach South Korea where they want to live but South Korea is only a stone throw away from North Korea that they cannot leave. They cannot cross the border strewn with landmines and other perils. Many have died trying to cross over just like in East Germany.
The South Americans flee to the north in very large numbers escaping the death squads, the drug war, the poverty and misery in their countries and seek a better and safe life in the United States so they too climb aboard freight trains to reach El Paso or other places. They are routinely victimized by the traffickers called the coyotes who for a good sum of money sneak them into the United States and leave them to die of thirst crossing the deserts on their own.
Now they are talking about building a wall along the border to keep out these poor people who need help and compassion but compassion is in short supply these days.
During the last war in Europe so many people tried to escape Germany to reach Switzerland but very few succeeded the treacherous journey risking their lives. Spain remained neutral during the war so many refugees sought asylum there passing through Casablanca that reminds me of the Ingrid Bergman movie Casablanca. Some allied prisoners kept in the Kolditz castle near Dresden tried to escape and reach Switzerland but only a few succeeded.
Human migration for one reason or another has been going on forever and will not stop anytime soon because people want to escape to a better life somewhere else at the risk of their lives, so desperate they are. Poverty, war, persecution, pestilence and other reasons push these people but what is the solution?
The end of war can bring them back to their homes that they can rebuild again. Some people are moving back to Mosul that has been liberated from the terrorists and other cities are being cleared of the jihadists in Homs and Raqqa in Syria. But the jihadists are like cancer that grows somewhere else in the body so as long as the deadly ideology of hard-core jihadists remains, the war will flare up in various parts again starting the migration all over.
The more developed countries must open their doors and take in more people who seek their help and not build walls to keep them out. The immigrants are assets and not liabilities because they help the economy grow and create jobs for others. Those fleeing persecution and death should be given priority.
The immigrants in turn should try to assimilate into their new country as fast as they can and not remain in their own enclaves not learning the language of the country or their customs and culture. It is sad to see their self-imposed isolation in Europe and America that leads to the radicalization of their youth who then start making trouble.
Any person who speaks many languages finds it easier to assimilate into a new society while preserving the essentials of his own. Just watch a Frenchman smile in surprise if you speak fluent French with them. They instantly open up to you and extend a hand of friendship. I know this because I have such experience.
I believe that this beautiful world of ours has room for everyone somewhere. All we need is compassion and understanding.