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Jan 11, 2006
NO MORE WALLS
This was last October. Next door to Hotel Djene, Bamako. 7 pm. The woman who was waiting for me is that kind of person you just cannot forget, partly proud, partly desperate. A kind of militant fighting against absurdity. Proud of her africanity. Desperate because of the poorness of Africa and the consequences it has on its populations. It was the time of Melilla and Ceuta. Of those people trying to climb by force walls separating the South from the North. Northern Africa from Europe. Some people here were shocked to see this human wave running after a dream of prosperity, or simply a way to survive. Aminata met some of them. What they told her was scaring, simply because it says much about the world we are living in: “Say what you want but we prefer to die here rather than going back home and show our parents, friends and neighbours we did not succeed in reaching Europe!, they said. Shame would be on us and we would lost honour.” This story looks far from what the French ambassador in Bamako told me the day before: “There are of course economical reasons that explain why people leave, but there are culturals’ as well. Most of the people trying to reach Europe come from the region of Kai and are members of the ethnos group of the Soninke. Those people made from the travel a tradition. A kind of initiatory rite…”
I do not know exactly if the guy sincerely believed in what he said, but there is something pretty dismaying in his comment, moreover when you carry on listening to Aminata. “Let me tell you: we are not human bombs! You complain about the terrorists. You pretend that they fight against your values. But the thing is that you (in Europe) have created frustrations and some people are ready to die to get a little piece of your cake”. Die by killing other people as in Irak or Israel. Or die by trying to get access to a fantasy as in Ceuta. “Europe is mistaken in stake. Instead of building walls she should give back to Africa what she stole her. Our forests are destroyed, entire lives are destroyed. You came to tell us we had to reform public services, to lay off some workers, suppress grants in a country which drastically needs education. You, as occidentals and via the IMF, the World Bank or the EU, say what is good for us. You decide the price you will buy our agricultural production while this sector represents 75% to 80% of our economy. People here are unemployed, they cannot gain any revenue from agriculture, neither from other products because you flood our market which cheap ones. What do you want us to do? We are just cannon fodder in an economic world war which we do not even know the rules ! And building new walls won’t change it.” Will not stop people from trying to cross the sea, to reach an occidental dream.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to listen to the South. Neither in Europe, neither in the US… where another wall is planned to be built. Strange paradox in those countries which celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall; which ask for the reconciliation between Northern and Southern Cyprus; which worry about the edification of another wall, separating the Israelis from the Palestinians… This new wall, Washington plans to build it on 4,5m high and 1116km large, southern Rio Grande… Of course, there will be also some watchtowers, with armed civil servants. Just in case a (poor) migrant wouldn’t have understand that he is no more welcome in the US. That the American dream is no more for him. As the European’s is no more for the (poor) African. In France, Jean-Christophe Ruffin wrote a fiction two years ago which name is Globalia. This was the story of a world separated by huge windows between those who were following the rules of the state and living in quite good material conditions and those - the poors and some resistants – living behind those shiny walls. Of course, this story was taking place in the future, but it just seems it is already today.
Christophe Nonnenmacher is journalist
12:40 Posted in ECONOMICS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, IMMIGRATION, US | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: EUROPE, US, Europe, wall, christophe nonnenmacher, immigration, europeus
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