Nicholas Hildyard - The Corner House
www.thecornerhouse.org.uk

Silence is not an Option

No one should be forced into exile. To leave one's home, one's land, one's country is to leave more than leave more than a house or shelter or to abandon a familiar landscape. It is to be cut adrift from one's family, one's friends, one's language, one's culture, one's livelihood. It is, from all reports, an experience as frightening as forced migration is immoral.

To be forced from one's home is one thing: to be met not with humanity but with bureaucratic hostility, detention centres and institutionalised prejudice is another. Yet this is the double insult that the UK government routinely inflicts on asylum seekers. That Britain does so as a matter of policy is a disgrace that should shame us all.

Such treatment of asylum seekers tells us much about racism in Britain today - racism that extends to the highest levels of government. But it also tells us about the workings of power in Britain and the cynicism of our politicians. Playing the "asylum scounger" card is not just a vote winner: it is a powerful tool for deflecting attention from our own responsibility for causing forced migration.

Silence on this issue is not an option. For it is a silence that allows the victims to be further victimised. A silence that permits migrants, rather than those responsible for forced migration, to be cast as the problem. And a silence that must no longer go unchallenged.

In the pursuit of boosting UK exports - and corporate profits - millions in other countries have been forced to move to make way for infrastructure development projects - from dams to oil pipelines and large-scale agribusiness enterprises - from which they derive little or no benefit. Dams alone - many of them backed by Britain, either through its bilateral aid programme or through the World Bank - have displaced an estimated 80 million people since the Second World War. Where they object, they are frequently subject to repression - by regimes that that are backed and frequently armed by the UK with our taxpayers' money, notably through the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD). Indeed, such is the extent of the ECGD's support for the arms trade that it has recently been described as "a slush fund for the arms industry" and "BAe's bank".

For every Kurd who comes to Britain, millions of pounds of UK taxpayers' money have supported the Turkish regime that forced them to flee their homeland. For every Congolese that comes here, millions of pounds of UK pensioners' money are invested in the companies that fuel the civil wars in the region through exploiting the Congo's diamond and other mineral resources. For every Tamil, millions have been spent on arms exports to Sri Lanka and infrastructure schemes like the Victoria and Samanalawewa dams on the Mahaweli River (used as the location for the film The Bridge on the River Kwai), which displaced hundreds of thousands of people, exacerbated politically-manipulated ethnic tensions and caused conflict.

The UK government knows of these connections. It is well aware of how its support for repressive regimes and damaging infrastructure can cause displacement. But it remains cynically indifferent or, worse still, actively complicit.

Let me give an example. In 2000, the then Minister of Trade, Richard Caborn, appeared before a Select Committee of the House of Commons which was inquiring into possible ECGD support for the Ilisu Dam in South-Eastern Turkey, a project which, if built, would have affected 78,000 ethnic Kurds. No compensation arrangements were in place, no environmental impact assessment had been undertaken and no consultations were held with those affected. The Minister was asked by the Committee what assessment his Department had made of the dam's potential impact on the human rights of those affected? His reply is telling:

CABORN: "We take human rights very seriously indeed. In fact, the people who disabuse human rights, the record is there that we would not be supporting that type of regime. Clearly the criteria is laid down for that..."

30 second pass... Caborn continues

CABORN: "Nobody has raised a question as far as ECGD cover is concerned. Remember, that is the point we are dealing with . . . There is nobody who has come back and raised the human rights questions in terms of this dam and the awarding of ECGD cover."

15 seconds pass... Caborn continues

CABORN: "In terms of human rights, you have asked me a question and I have given you the answer. The DTI is not responsible for human rights."

This exchange took just 90 seconds - 90 seconds in which Caborn went from insisting that the UK would never support a project that infringed human rights, to saying that human rights are only an issue if someone complains about human rights abuses, to denying any responsibility for human rights.

Since then, the ECGD has adopted a set of "Business Principles" that nominally commit it to observing human rights. But has anything really changed? Where questions arise over human rights, the ECGD takes advice from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). But what advice does the FCO give?

Earlier this year, The Corner House and the Kurdish Human Rights Project wrote to the ECGD to alert them to the arrest of Ferhat Kaya, a human rights defender in the Kurdish region of North East Turkey. Ferhat had been sentenced to a year in prison for the "crime" of referring to the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan as "Mr Ocalan".

In our letter, we presented evidence that his arrest was connected to his work on pressing for the rights of those affected by the ECGD-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, being built by the UK oil multinational, BP. Subsequently, we received a reply from Denis McShane, the Minister for Europe at the Foreign Office, which stated: "Neither we nor Amnesty International have yet found evidence of a link with the BTC project."

We asked Amnesty to confirm this. What they told us strongly suggests that the FC misrepresented Amnesty's position - for the FCO's ends. Amnesty said that the reason they had "found no evidence" was because they had not looked into case. They had told the FCO this - and advised them to contact the Kurdish Human Rights Project for information, the very group that had first contacted the FCO.

A month ago, Ferhat was again arrested, whilst working to help one of those affected by the BTC project obtain compensation. During his detention, the police hit and beat Ferhat repeatedly, pointed a loaded gun at him and denied him proper hospital treatment. He was verbally abused and called a "traitor" and a "terrorist" for his efforts to secure rights for the local Kurdish people. Ferhat, who now suffers "extreme pains" in his back and abdominal region, insists that the arrest was directly related to his work on BTC. The FCO continues to deny the link.

The Refugee Project intends that UK complicity in such human rights abuses will not go unchallenged. It will expose the links. It will press MPs to hold the government accountable. It will press for the UK to cease involvement in investments and policies that cause forced migration. And in doing so, I hope that it will make a small contribution to puncturing the racist myths that surround asylum seeking.

It is time to listen to the refugees' stories and to act in response. Time to insist that freedom of movement is a fundamental human right but that no one should ever be forced to migrate against their wishes. Time to wrest the ECGD from corporate interests for the public good. And time to hold those responsible for the misery of forced migration to account.

Welcome to the Refugee Project

Back to Get Involved