Swedish asylum policy faces tougher times

The Swedish asylum policy faces greater problems today. The war is Syria and Afghanistan,
as well as troubles in Somalia and Eritrea have caused an exodus of refugees to Europe, least of all Sweden. They have to have housing, food, employment and a just processing of their refugee and asylum applications.

The situation has put strong demands upon the Swedish Migration Authority and the country's various county. Most of those coming here from the Middle East and Africa have one basic reason. Their lives in their home countries are in danger. 60 to 70 percent of them are granted asylum permits.

While at the same time, a huge number of asylum seekers to Sweden are coming from western Balkan, namely Serbia, Bosnia & Hercegovina and Albania. From these countries which no longer have travel bans to EU, came during the first eight months this year more asylum seekers than from Syria, which is in a civil war.

The reasons are quite clear. Many of the asylum seekers are gypsies reportedly exposed to prejudices and difficult discrimination in their countries. Even non-gypsies from the Balkan apply for asylum to escape poverty and unemployment. But their applications are rejected, as usual since many of them have no refugee reasons and only 1 percent are allowed to stay. These are refugees arranged by syndicates which continue to arrange asylum trips with promises of guaranteed residence permit and social benefits.

Sweden, along with five other EU member states with many asylum applicants, wrote to the EU Commission to restore a temporary visa restriction from countries west of the Balkan. This would make it difficult for organised asylum and refugee syndicates, as well as private individuals to flee from miseries at home.

It would appear cynical to impose a travel ban on say the gypsies who want to come to Sweden, but the asylum taking situation has become tedious. As an alternative to travel ban, EU countries with heavy influx of asylum seekers should give more funds to the Migration authority because the present reception system can no longer handle both the refugee exodus from war zones as well as from western Balkan. Those fleeing from war zones like Syria and Afghanistan should have priority.

One big problem in the refugee and asylum taking is the unequal burden of European solidarity. Some countries like Greece and Italy are reportedly treating asylum seekers in inhumane ways, and therefore they move to friendlier EU countries. But it would be unfair for Northern Europe alone to shoulder the whole continent's refugee and asylum burden. Sweden and EU cannot receive everybody who are treated badly in their home countries. However, Sweden can impose stricter demands that all people be treated humanely. (Translated and edited from DN editorial, 26 October 2012. )

Congratulations EU - despite all

It is easy to criticise the decision to award the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union.

The timing however is bad. EU is undergoing just now a paralysing crisis where North
stands against South, where top leaders' democratic ideals are in question and poor EU members are protesting in the streets.

At the same time, the Union has bigger problems. Several members - Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary - have shown little respect for EU's ground principles of democracy and human rights.
Political populism, up to pure Nazism wins terrain in many member-countries. Refugee politics is criticised for creating a walled Europe.

A new survey of Europe's barometer shows less surprisingly that sympathies for the Union has collapsed in the most crises-affected areas. In 2001, some 55 percent of voters in Portugal, Irland, Italy, Greece and Spain gave their confidence to EU. Today the figure is 25 percent. To think that a peace prize would change this is naive.

However, outside Oslo's peace prize committee's ill timing, there is good reason to applaud the decision. EU is a peace project - and unquestionably successful as such. It is more significant to give the peace prize to a united Europe than say, to PLO leader Yassir Arafat and warmonger Henry Kissinger.

For EU's history is Europe's peace. The one who saw earliest the need for reconciliation was Winston Churchill. Already in 1946, a year after the end of the war, he said in a speech in Zurich: "The first step in the re-creation of a European family must be a partnership between France and Germany." And so it happened, four years later when France laid to rest its suspicion against Germany and allowed in West Germany, in a cooperation involving coal and steel production.

Earlier, the German postwar economy wavered in a vacuum between the Marshall plans and the victors' benevolence. Today, EU's predecessor coal and steel union, integrated the country with its neighbours. France' fear of being out-competed in the steel area was eliminated, thanks to both countries' joint management.

In this way, the European Union's best moments continued to function. Enemies in the past have atoned and began to cooperate. Economies were woven together and boundary restrictions were abolished which set the conditions for improved welfare. Western Europe, one of the world's most war-ravaged region is now a model for peace and solidarity. Suffice to say, despite all of EU's shortcomings, it is worth a prize.

But the timing to say the least, is questionable. It would have been reasonable to give the union the peace prize in 2004, when it expanded membership to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union's former satellite countries- Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech and Hungary became members. In this moment, EU showed its best side as an example, a united force and umbrella for welfare through a market economy cooperation.

Maybe the Nobel peace prize has a double reminder of what the union was and could become again, a reminder for young Europeans who have not experienced the ravages of war and the Cold War and merely sees EU as a failed political project.# (My own translation and editing from Dagens Nyheter's editorial, Oct. 13, 2012)

The night of the military

Sept. 21, 1972 was like no other nights. It was the night of the military. There was something unwelcomed in the air, something that instinctively I knew was going to happen eversince I returned to Manila from Europe. I was a member of the Philippine delegation consisting of foreign service officers to the prestigious EROPA Public Administration/Foreign Service Course to Tehran, Iran and West Germany in 1971. When I came home to Manila after a two-month study tour of some European capitals, the writ of habeas corpus was suspended and I learned that many friends went underground. Student leaders, university professors, labour leaders and student activists became the target of an intensive surveillance.

I got a note from Satur C. Ocampo - then Assistant Business Editor at the Manila Times, that he went into hiding and that our two children Jose Sarni, aged 8 and Maria Sonora, aged 7 were left in 51 Tirona St, BF Homes in the care of my sister Daisy. Our house was newly-built in the prime Banco Filipino-developed housing subdivision. We lived before this in Avocado Street, United Paranaque.

On that fateful night of Sept. 21, 1972 - I stayed awake, stared into the darkness and listened to any noise from anything moving. It was dead still until I heard the alarm from Metrocom jeeps coming to a stop infront of 51 Tirona Street. I saw from the glass window some uniformed men coming out of the two military jeeps. And the knocking on the door followed. I opened the door and in came three men. The leader introduced himself as the captain. They were polite.
He asked: "Does Satur Ocampo live here?"
I replied: " No, he doesn't".
Next question: "Do you know where he is?"
I replied: " No, I don't".
He continued: "We are going to search this place".
I asked: "What are you looking for? He is not hiding anywhere here."
He said: " Subversive materials!"
The team of three - several were waiting outside, went through all the rooms, opened all the cabinets, went through all the books and things everywhere. The children who were sleeping then woke up and cowered in the dark, unable to ask anything. My sister was paralyzed from fear in her room. After some hours of turning the place up and down, the military men left. They didn't find any books that mentioned anything about Communism, Marxism, Leninism, Mao Tse Tung and all those political thinkers we were studying in my Political Economy Graduate course at Lyceum University.

As I was saying, when I returned to Manila I felt an eerie atmosphere, the feeling of a tempest wrapped in heavy rain clouds. With the lifting of the writ of habeas corpus, the dissappearing act of known activists, it was not too difficult to guess that the military would sooner or later make a general appearance. Our house has been a favourite meeting place of top leaders of the anti-Marcos opposition. In the house were dozens of copies of the newly-published book of Amado Guerrero. I took half to a friend's place and buried them in the backyard, and did the same with the other half in my own backyard. All my textbooks in my political economy class, as well as the books of Mao Tse Tung, my brother hid in the ceiling of the house. So, by the time the raiding military came on the night of Sept. 21, 1972, only some harmless books remained on the shelves.

When the television came to life the next day, it was the face of Francisco F.Tatad that greeted us - boyish bespectacled Kit was reading the proclamation of martial law in the country. He became the spokesperson of Ferdinand Marcos, the man who seized power unconstitutionally through the military and crushed all opposition to his dictatorship.

On the night of Sept. 21, 1972 we learned that no less than 5,000 top opposition leaders and politicians were arrested and thrown to jail. No, I was spared that night. The arrest came six months later, at midday of March 31st, 1973. Three Metrocom jeeps arrived and out came several men headed by a certain Capt. Napoleon Cruz. They showed me an ASSO document where my name was written along with Dr. Sotero Laurel and Mrs Laurel, President of  Lyceum University. They said they were taking me to a military camp in Laguna. In that camp which was three hours from Manila, I was the 13th female detainee held in the clubhouse. I was not listed as a detainee which was dangerous because I could have been salvaged without any records of having been arrested and detained. But I had a guardian angel who saw to it that my name was included officially as a detainee. I was there for a month.

The interrogation periods took place at midnight in what they termed "sugar and vinegar". It was plenty of questions asked each time, all coming from what they called the "blue book", a record of intelligence reports by paid spies roaming the universities and press club. My main interrogator was Jose Feria, then a Colonel but before this, a humble and friendly member of my editorial staff at The Lyceum. He was infact my bodyguard because he was built like one. So, when he kept on asking me about the Kabataang Makabayan, I told him that he should answer it himself because he overstayed both in Lyceum and in the KM movement. ( Feria died some years later in an encounter in Mindanao with the New People's Army, NPA. Capt Napoleon Cruz who led the arresting team that fateful morning in 51 Tirona Street, died in a car collision.)

When I was released after a month's detention, I knew I would never be at peace and that 51 Tirona will always be under surveillance. I packed my children and placed them to my mother's care in Camalig, Albay. The martial law regime was going to last a long time and my life, as well as that of their father- who was eventually captured and heavily tortured to near death, had changed beyond forever. If that detention was not enough, I woke up one day and read on Manila Times that I was among subversives working in the government. Some 5,000 people lost jobs that day.
The Marcos regime got rid of me and I got rid of the regime and begun a new journey into the challenging world of media. I became a journalist!
( This is just a summary of  a much longer story waiting to be told properly.)

Re-visiting the "motherless generation"

Sometime ago, I read an article entitled "A motherless generation" - based on an emotional narrative of a Filipina working as au pair in Spain. Her lamentations about missing her children who were growing up in the care of her relatives, portray the painful agony of thousand other mothers from countries like the Philippines, who are forced to work abroad in order to support children and parents. Marriages break up and the effect of broken homes further aggravate the social cost of overseas labour. The winner is the country's economy that benefits from the billions in foreign remittances of overseas workers.

This is the tragedy of a globalised labour market that forces people - a majority of whom are mothers and wives, to leave their families behind because of economic reasons. Many women work as domestics, au pairs as well as other service-related jobs. Each one has a story to tell, about the experiences in battling discrimination, unfair labour condition, sexual exploitation, loneliness and loss of self-dignity. And the children have their own sad tales of growing up without parental love and affection. No matter how loving grandparents and relatives maybe, there is no substitute for mother's love. It is the bedrock of one's childhood without which adulthood would be devoid of love itself. What could a child who grew up without a mother's nurturing love possibly share with her own family and children. As the cliche goes, you cannot give that which you never had.

Growing up without close maternal love and affection that plague the "motherless generation" is aggravated by an uncertain sense of moral and ethical values in the children's understanding of their relationship with the outside world. In worst cases, apathy replaces sympathy for one's own family and the humanity at large. And because they are deprived of the nearness of parental love, it becomes difficult for them to develop feelings of affection and empathy for others. They are emotionally handicapped to share the most important function of the heart, to give and reciprocate love and to be compassionate and forgiving to those who err against them.
I am not generalising that all children belonging to the present-day "motherless generation" suffer from deprivation of the finer qualities of the heart. There are lucky exceptions, who by sheer strength and determination overcome the overwhelming difficulty of growing up without mothers. It maybe genetics, intelligence and a nourishing alternative home environment that have cushioned the negative effects of absentee mothering.

However, before the present day "motherless generation", it was the era of a "fatherless generation". In the 60s and 70s, the Philippines underwent a social and political upheaval after the imposition of martial law followed by a prolonged era of authoritarianism. It was characterised by armed conflicts between the government's military forces and the rise of people power movements fighting for democratic changes. The Marcos dictatorship used the military to suppress all forms of dissent through oppression and suppression of all freedoms. It was the reign of state terrorism. Thousands of people - students, workers, farmers, professionals, journalists joined the underground movement and became the forefront of the people's revolution for democratic change. Many were arrested and detained for many years, often in solitary confinement.

The children of political activists became orphans, losing fathers and mothers to the struggle. They became "children of the revolution" - growing up in someone else care in some safer sanctuary beyond the brutal reach of vengeful military men and civilian defense forces roaming the cities and countrysides. These were dangerous days of "search, arrest and detention" of anyone suspected of involvment in subversive activities. Subversion meant affiliation with the illegal communist movement. It was a clear black and white definition of who was subversive - those against the dictatorship and those who were in favour. "If you're not with us, then you must be against us."

How many "children of the revolution" were deeply traumatised by the temporary, in some cases the permanent loss of parents. Have these children been compensated for their sufferings in early life, honoured for their phenomenal ability to grow up without hatred and regrets for the way they were born into parents with political commitments greater than family. How did the children understand that it was for the greater good, for a future in a democratically-governed society that they grew up without parents.

In my own private sphere, my children were martial law victims just as much as their parents. They had prolonged stay in the province in my mother's care when the military intelligence placed my BF Home residence under surveillance, for how long I cannot begin to guess. A year after martial law was declared, I was arrested and detained for more than a month. I was released due to the appeal and representation made by a close friend whose uncle was a former Minister of Foreign Affairs.

My children were not affected by any "motherless generation" syndrome. I was around, so was my sister who devoted her life to taking care of the children. She never married. I was always on the go, a single parent and breadearner. I did not sense any trauma affecting my children who in an amazing way, grew up with tremendous capacity for love and compassion.

Today's children of the "motherless generation" are inheriting their mother's work and hence treading the same uncertain path in some foreign countries where they have little or no rights at all. They are also paying the same social cost in the form of broken homes, loss of children's custody and worst- the weakening of Christian family values that had been at the core of Filipino nationhood. And while the economy depends on the overseas workers' remittances to pay for the crude oil imports, the "motherless generation" remains hostage to a future without mothers. #

A town and city in me

There has been a long gap between my last blog in August 9, 2011 and today, when I felt an impluse to write about living a dual life, about having two universes to traverse and make life complete. For me, it is having the town and city at the same time. I wish to elaborate on this because this is not a new phenomenon for me. I just realised that since I was young, I was living in two universes, commuting whenever life demanded a change of tempo, climate, belongingness and home.

As a child, I grew up in a small town at the foot of Mayon Volcano. It is a picturesque small town where everyone knew everyone, or where half the population was related by blood in the Filipino's expanded family system. I loved the small town and what it gave us in terms of childhood experience - the games we creatively made because technology was still underdeveloped, the town events that were mostly church-related but for which we looked forward to because it was the thing to be a part of. Most of all, the town fiestas which depending upon one's state of economy were huge feasts or simple ones but still awaited with much excitement, especially the town's formal dance at the plaza where the local society's who's who delightfully patronized in their latest fashionable gowns. As children, we watched outside the fence and felt awed at being part of the social landscape.

That was the town part. Then came the city part that arrived with the need for higher education in universities mostly in Manila. Even then, Manila was already a big metropolis with so much attraction, bright lights, department stores, huge parks that contrasted with the simplicity and smallness of a town. The city meant challenge in school, and later in one's chosen career. When I worked as a journalist for a foreign news magazine, I suddenly found myself submerged in my work. The challenges were so great especially at the time when the country's political situation was not at all friendly to the media.

I had my getaway from all the stress and madness of journalism. I disappeared into the smallness of my hometown and into the loving care of my mother. My children were all small and living partly with my mother during the martial law days. So much was my need for a small town not just to recover lost energies but to seek protection from the relentless harassments of both the military and the dictatorial leadership. I coped with the city's challenges by returning again and again to the simplicity of a small town. It had grown some poisonous snakes during the military's dominance in the countryside but still, the feeling of safety was always there.

Why am I rationalising between a divided life just because I find myself in the same situation today? I want to say that living in two spaces has always been in us. I didn't realise it right away. I thought it was because winter in Western Europe has become harder. This is not really the main reason. Living in a sophisticated city like Stockholm has many demands so much so that time is never enough to complete a day's lifetime. I can appreciate the Swedes love for duality in their lifestyle - of being in the city as well as in the country on weekends. Life goes a full circle. It is having both the simplicity and calm of a town and the challenges of greater living in the city.

In a small island town like Sta. Maria in Sal, life is so much simpler and uncompromising. A mini carnival is already a big event because everyone becomes a part of it. Things that one needs for daily living are not always available but it is the little discoveries that colour a day, like the joy of finding fresh ingredients for cooking, the bountiful food from the sea, the friendliness of the local population.

If I could not live in a town and city and appreciate all there is to being part of both spaces, then I am totally missing the essence of a complete life, of enjoying the variations in environments and of sharing friendships and affection with those around me. It is not wrong to admit that even while I glide in the marble floors of grand places in the city, I can also wade in the mud of a town or village.#