#beyondourheadlines

Myanmar, a country with more than 60 years of civil wars and conflicts which are usually put aside by international media, is now facing many inter-political problems as a sudden change cannot take place after NLD, National League for Democracy, was democratically elected. The election was considered the very first fair election after independence. Previous government, which I call a puppet-government, was claimed to be a democratic government after military dictatorship resigned. However, till 2010, Myanmar was ruled by military dictatorship and before the so-called election is 2010, the military wrote a new constitution which would benefit themselves after they resigned. The military government claimed that the constitution was agreed and signed by the whole public. However, here is the thing. In 2008, terrible natural disaster, Cyclone, whipped through the coastline of Myanmar, resulting in one of the most terrible disaster. While people were struggling to survive the aftermath, the government refused to accept international aids. Meanwhile, they drew the constitution and claimed that people agreed and signed. In reality, people did not even have time to read or care about the constitution. In 2010, the election took place, and it was an electoral fraud. A military general came up to the parliament, taking off his military costume, claiming that they were democratic. Many conflicts were not ended and some new conflicts emerged during their regime.

When the new government came in, the military already has 25% of seats in the parliament according to the 2008 constitution. The military is still not under the government. That is creating lots of problems to stop civil wars and conflicts. The Commander and Chief once said that if necessary, military coup should take place. In my opinion, the most important thing the Myanmar needs is that the military becomes a part of government. But now, the military and the government are like two separate governments in one country. The military has completely changed the mindset of soldiers, which gives them false and bad impression on the democratic government. That is happening among people as well. People’s mindsets were ruined by previous military dictatorship for more than 50 years. Now that’s one of the main problem the government is facing. I believe that people in my country really need to be more educated. The education system needs to be restructured, which the government is doing now. But it takes ages. Going back to military, what is being presented in media about conflicts are mostly about highlighting the conflicts and giving false impression on those opposition forces. These armed ethic forces asked for federal states; they want control of their own territory. That is the main reason they are fighting for. Since the military is refusing to withdraw their forces from territory and create peace, conflicts continue to happen. The military has been shelling and bombing ethnic armed force base. However, aircraft bombing and motor shelling also hit civilian villages, causing many fatalities. The new government has no control over the military.

Us Russians are quite good at dressing for the cold. You would have trouble finding a single child outdoors in the winter without snowpants, a hat tied tight around their chin, and a scarf wrapped around their face. The resulting effect is quite comical, with small unidentifiable creatures waddling around like penguins, but at least they’re warm. Women can often be found in long chestnut coloured shubas (fur coats) hanging down to their tall stylish boots, and buttoned high up to their chins. Men in furry black leather hats bob up and down on the streets on their way to work, and at you can sometimes find bundled up old women selling knitted woolen socks and mittens when exiting the metro. Even our diet, which includes brown bread slathered in butter, steaming cabbage soup, and thick slices of salla (salted fat), is intended to give us an extra layer of warmth under our skin in the cold winter months.

But in recent years, for the first time in decades, a biting wind is blowing from the west. This icy wind has been picking up for a while now, mostly carrying sharp words of war that that cut and sting our cheeks, our fingers, and our pride. But this week, for the first time in long while, it blew so strongly that it carried 35 Russian diplomats with it across the Atlantic Ocean. And when the winds of East and West pick up speed like this, as they have done a few times in recent years, unearthing lies and spies, a toxic mess is left in their wake that we often find it easier not to clean up. It is a wind that we have forgotten how to dress for, a wind that blows in warning now but has the capability to turn into a wicked storm of ice and fire.

Us Russians rarely give spontaneous outbursts of loud positivity when we meet somebody for the first time; it just isn’t in our character. When we do not smile at you in the metro, or in the ticket office, or on the street as snow swirls in front of our eyes, it does not mean we do not like you. It means we do not know you well enough to take off our scarves and show you our true faces. You see, we are not immune to the cold, we have just become well protected against it. And, indeed, it is only natural that we do not take off our protective layers until we know that it is warm enough. But, if one finds themselves with a Russian grinning at them from across a table behind a cup of hot sweet black tea, or from behind a stopka (shot glass) of throat searing vodka, they can rest assured that they’ve made a real friend.

However, when the two quarreling giants of Russia and the West know they are to meet each other in a world of ice, they come prepared. They both wear puffy jackets that mask their silhouettes and hats that block their field of vision and thick scarves that muffle their words. Their stiff gloved handshake is a bare echo of human contact, and the white puffs of air that escape their lips envelop formalities in a layer of frost. And the longer they stand in the cold, the more numb their lips get, and the less they are able to understand one another. And in a furiously frustrating exchange of icy phrases hopelessly lost in cultural translation, I wonder if either of them notice the warm yellow light emanating from the café behind them. And I try to understand why they won’t go in and sit together at a table, and maybe warm their hands, and slowly peel off their layers.

But I wonder if instead they’re comfortable out there in the cold, or if maybe there’s some blemish on their face or stain on their clothes that they’re too ashamed to uncover the light of warm yellow lamp. Or perhaps they both think that the other one has got a gun or a knife or a string of insults tucked away underneath their coat, and they’re just too scared of their own power. And perhaps as long as they are giants built of intertwining victories and atrocities, there will never be a thaw. Because to survive as giants, they must stay out in the cold; if they move into the warmth, their power will melt. But these giants don’t see the lives that they are crushing under steel booted feet; they are locked in a game with no clear rules or foreseeable end. They are content to spit icy daggers at each other, calling each other incompetent, inhumane, ignorant. Hackers, killers, power-hungry monsters.

And I am furious when I think of the children of those 35 Russian diplomats who had to pack up their lives in 72 hours and leave the country on New Years day (the Russian equivalent of Christmas), because they didn’t do anything. And is it really surprising that they will likely turn their backs to the country that just expelled them? I really do hope some of those children from the American embassy really did get to go to the Yolka (Christmas tree) at the Kremlin, like Putin offered. But perhaps that was just more rhetoric in this complex game of giants. My heart cracks just a little bit more when I see people caught in the middle of this icy blizzard; it has no geographical borders, these warring winds tumble into the Middle East, and into Europe, and in different places they alternate in superiority, but neither will ever win.

In wars, we speak of death tolls and civilian casualties. We report the statistics of death and forget those of life. I have lived in a war zone for long enough to understand that life goes on, whether this pleases the conflicting parties or not.

What saddens me about war Syria is not solely the tens of daily deaths. It is not sieges, unreported famines, or even the hanging question of millions of refugees and internal displacements. Don’t get me wrong; those are the hideous outcomes of an inhumane conflict, which consumed every aspect, significant or not, of our lives. What does dishearten me, though, are those little daily encounters that slip through our survivalist lives; ones that assure me that this conflict had changed us so drastically, altered our coexistence with disguised hatred, and caused deceit to grow its roots in the minds of everyone - youth and adults alike.

I came back to Syria for my summer holidays and rested my head on my pillow after a long travel. Having lived in a boarding school for only a year, I seriously doubted that any significant changes had taken place in my war-afflicted country, but little did I know that sectarian prejudices were plaguing the hearts and minds of the people, including my family.

It is commonly known that today’s Muslims over the breadth of the world, by no means, constitute one cohesive entity. Since the death of Prophet Mohammad, Muslims’ search for the Prophet’s legitimate successor resulted in a major breakthrough which would later alter the landscape of the Islamic faith. As different groups of Muslims chose to follow the teachings of different descendants of the Prophet, sectarian divisions came into being. This, in effect, meant that Islamic teachings were no longer unified in their essence, interpretations of Quran largely varied, and disagreements regarding what is prohibited, permissible, and what is to be eschewed widened. Needless to say, these divisions came at the expense of igniting conflict and catalyzing the emergence of infinite atrocities amongst people who belong to sects with conflicting ideologies.

It is definitively unrealistic to claim that the social life of pre-war Syria was void of sectarian prejudices. Those are as old as the Islamic faith is, and although they surface most clearly in conflicts and times of political instability, they are easily detectable in the everyday life affairs of peaceful states’ communities. Away from generic statements, I am eager to provide my personal experience with this issue, regardless of whether it complies with the claims of other members of the Syrian society, home or abroad, or not.

I knew of the concept of sects when I was 9 years old. Someone mentioned the word ‘sect’, and after my question about the meaning of the word, there were many awkward coughs and exchanging of perplexed looks from adults around the room, who clearly understood that such a separatist mentality should not be introduced to children to avoid corrupting their innocent outlook on the world. Granted, back then, naming sects or speaking about sectarianism openly could only take place in family reunions and private spaces in general. The media never dared to mention anything regarding sectarianism –but rather denied its existence, bragging about the cohesiveness of the Syrian society- and mentioning the name of a certain sect in public was considered hugely inappropriate. For my primary and secondary education, I attended a school with students and faculty who belonged to a majority sect in Syria, one that has a history of conflict with my sect, and never had I been explicitly mistreated or discriminated against based on my religious orientation. Maybe the most overtly sectarian remark I received was by a fellow student asking about why I don’t wear hijab (Muslim headscarf) with an undertone of disapproval. Throughout my life, I had met people from all sorts of sects and become very good friends with many of them. I resided a neighborhood where people from 3 distinct sects in addition to those belonging to the Christian faced coexisted. Holistically, sectarianism existed, and many minor daily incidents, (being cursed in the street for not wearing hijab, fearing to walk down a street of an ‘enemy’ sect alone, being warned not to go to a friend’s house because of their sect etc.) could account for this claim, but it was always in the background and never in the forefront of social life.

Upon my return to Syria, I came to understood that I cannot AT ALL enter certain neighborhoods of Damascus anymore. I don’t wear hijab which makes my religious orientation overt, and going to neighborhoods whose residents from ‘adversary’ sects became dangerous. I attempted calling some of my friends from middle school and, to my surprise, no one would pick up. I then found out that they also blocked me on Facebook. Once, I had a reunion with friends and everyone was saying how much they missed each other. A couple friends excused themselves to go use the bathroom, and the rest of the group, who belonged to a different sect than theirs, started bluntly condemning their hypocrisy, saying “I would never believe those bastards. If you only bother to see the hypocrisy which persons x and y in their history manifested and is manifested by the actions of their fighters today, you’d understand that it runs through their veins.” During the Eid (Muslim celebration), two women who clean the staircases of our building show up to ask for a treat on the occasion of Eid. My father refused to give his money to those belonging to the ‘other’ sect, saying he does not feel sorry for any of what they have to go through to make a living because they deserved it. In sectarianism, being from the ‘other’ sect makes you damned. It means that God disliked your soul enough to make you a part of ‘them’. The Wi-Fi was not working properly in our house, and mom asked dad to bring in a technician from our sect to check the router. “I don’t feel safe having one of ‘them’ in the house. You can’t guess what they’d do”. All talks involve ‘us’ and ‘them. It puts every individual belonging to a certain sect in one box; the box is then closed and labelled. Media started naming sects and sects’ names became indispensable vocabulary for political analysts arguing on TV channels.

Although politics in the Middle East have always been intermingled with religion and hence sectarianism, during conflicts this becomes crystal clear. This is also one of the prime obstacles that hinder our quest for democracy and political modernism. Many of the political discussions I had this summer revolved around the interaction between the regime, dominated by members of one sect, and the population, dominated by the members of another, majority sect. The talks were mainly about how the president’s sect would be cleansed if he was to abdicate his power, because in the midst of all this chaos, he is the only figure from this sect in power. They also emphasized how the so-called Syrian Revolution is solely based on sectarian hatred; the fact that the majority of the population coming from a certain sect are not pleased with a regime dominated by a minority sect.

Beyond the growing hate towards migrants reaching the shores of Italy, beyond the numerous right wing parties that are gaining power in Europe and the episodes of terror and violence, there are a few rays of hope.

All over Italy, a country which has been and still is the reaching point of so far more than 100.000 migrants from Northern Africa, there are people who didn’t surrender to fear and hate, wrapped their minds around the fact that we are dealing with human beings like us, and started helping out as they could. This led to 14 official permanent refugee welcoming centers, where they are identified and registered, as well as 1.861 temporary shelters all over the peninsula, ready to welcome and provide the migrants with what they need.

These centers are controlled by the ministry of internal affairs and are supported by a big network of volunteers, people who work in another place and devolve their free time to the migrants who reached their country.

After arriving and being identified in one of these centers, the migrants are sent to one of the many refugee shelters in Italy, where they are provided food and shelter as well as basic needs, a community that supports them, volunteer work opportunities, education and Italian lessons.

Around 200 of the migrants that reached the shores of Italy in the past two years now live in a town in the North called Bergamo.

 Bergamo is a town in Lombardy, a region known for the extreme right politicians, who in fact rule the regional government.

However, refugees and migrants in this town, mostly male and aged between 17 and 40, have a place to stay and people who believe in them so much that they decided to get to work and help them.

I am one of them.

I started volunteering in three of the refugee shelters in my town when I met some of the refugees in a volunteering activity organized by an environmental organization. I saw how willing they were to work and connect with us, the citizens of the town where they are staying, and I wanted to help them.

So I contacted the main organization helping migrants in Bergamo, and I asked them what kind of help they needed.

The answer was easy and understandable: Italian lessons and help with the homework.

 The refugees in this center were all male and aged between 17 and 35, they fled violence, poverty and persecution hoping for a stable job and peace in Italy. However, their education doesn’t have any value in my country and so they had to start school again.

They were 25 years old and they were in middle school.

Learning Italian was the main goal of the school, as well as getting a diploma that would finally enable them to work – as they couldn’t before, without an education recognized by the State.

So I put together a small number of volunteers, six of my friends, all aged 16 and 17, and we started going there once a week for two hours helping them with Italian, Math and Grammar.

The progress they were making and the effort they put was outstanding and working with them was a joy. The willingness they have to learn and be useful, the determination to be worth the help they are receiving and to gain economic independence is the reason why I believe in them.

 Of course hate is still here, you can hear it when people talk about them, calling them “extracomunitari” which means “out of the community”, you can feel it and they can feel it.

You can watch it on TV, when politicians try to fuel the fear and the hate in people.

You can see it outside of the church next to my house, that is hosting four refugees from Northern Africa, when exponents of the right wing party Northern League try to blame every problem on these four human beings and the community that is hosting them.

On the 24th June 2016, I woke in the early hours when it was becoming clear that, against all predictions, the UK electorate had voted to leave Europe. 

At breakfast time, my wife and I talked in a state of amazement shock and shame.  Shock that in a world that needs to move together, to share problems and to have an open generous international approach, our country was taking a major step towards narrow nationalism.

I certainly felt shame that I personally had not challenged sufficiently the, to my mind bigotted and selfish talk of the previous months.  I had not wanted to confront and it had seemed easier to avoid an issue that might well cause friction.  It always is easier in the short term and to my shame I took the easy route.

Shame too at the fact that a country, which has prided itself on openness to strangers, welcoming the oppressed and on liberal (in the true rather than political  sense of the word) views should have opted for such a step.  I was proud when the country welcomed the Uganda Asians (and didn't we gain hugely by an influx of hard working determined entrepreneurs!), proud that we were part of Europe, proud that in our country reason was put ahead of prejudice, thought before emotional reaction and care for others before selfish interest.

By breakfast we could almost hear the slamming of metaphorical doors.  Understandable that after a bitter campaign there should be a sense of triumphalism but there was also a frightening lack of any reaching out to the other.  It was more a matter of feeling that something rather nasty had been let off the leash.  We had the impression that many were thinking that, simply because a majority had voted to leave Europe, they were justified to mouth frankly hateful views.

I also mentioned amazement as being in the mix.  Part of the shock was realising that, with a populist movement, the more extreme the views the more applause and that the steady voice of reason had been shouted down by destructive soundbites.  This was the pattern during the run up to the vote. For instance, the IMF gave a measured, reasoned and restrained assessment of how damaging Brexit was to our country and the world but those responding saw no reason to meet argument with rational counter-argument. Far easier just to say "What do they know about anything they are just rich foreigners".  An unpleasant mix of xenophobia, ignorance and the underdog feeling it has a chance to bite back.

That so many should have accepted infantile claims of money to be saved by leaving Europe, claims about Europeans taking jobs, claims about foreigners misusing the National Health Service was frankly depressing.

A man has exploded himself and has killed dozens with himself.

Within 12 hours it features in world’s major media.  Photos are being published; A young man crying for the beloved one he has lost. A small girl with blood all over her body uselessly shouting among the fallen because as convincing game of thrones may seem, the dead do not hear. CNN would call its international correspondent and The Guardian and New York Times would see who claimed responsibility. Many minds would remember the headlines and for a long time for some the rest of their lives relate the two words “bombing” and “Afghanistan”. Sometimes maybe those are related but nobody asks what was going on before and after and about the things behind the headlines. The headlines will remain isolated on web and lives behind headlines forgotten. But before those headlines are being written. In every city and village across the country TVs and Radios will be turned on to announce the news and though they announce the news of an unfortunate event but there is a story behind the event and behind their existence, that of freedom.

To speak is civil but perhaps it is more civil to shout. You have spoken and everyone has acted like a stone and to stones you shout in hope of hearing the echoes back. But to shout you need to be free…

In Kabul, an asphalt street runs out of the center of the city and after some turns goes straight. Somewhere between where the asphalt road passes the mountain and the last turn, in one of the narrow streets, in a house just like lots of other houses, a young man leaves his room and walks quickly to the hall stands in front of the mirror and looks at himself. Then goes back to his room and comes back with a banner and a sun hat then runs out of the door. He probably walks the narrow street quickly. On the road he is not alone. There are many like him. Young and passionate boys and girls. The crowd gets larger every minute. More people, more banners, more voices. About a million maybe more people come to street and voice up their opinion peacefully. Some of these protests are aired live on some TVs. In a country where it was banned for women to leave their homes without a man a decade ago, the progress is not measured by buildings and asphalt streets but by how many can voice up their opinion.

In one of these protests where a young a man with a sun a hat and a banner passionately voices his idea with thousands others, on the streets of Kabul close to turn, they are stopped by barrier. Sometimes the barrier is a bunch of people claiming to be leading the protest who read a paper and end the process. Sometimes it is the containers put by government blocking the way. The first is a paradox since those who voice up stop themselves but the second is not because the freedom is not given by government. A government can be protecting people’s right to freedom but it does not give them freedom, they are already free. This time it was containers but people did not stop though they did stop walking and some minutes later an ice cream cart just like many other in town came close to the crowd and suddenly there was blood and bodies fallen apart before there anyone heard the sound of an explosion. Those close to the cart never heard the sound of the second explosion. But the headlines were there, blood and destruction. The voice of those whose pictures filled newspapers and TV screens will never be heard and every newspaper and TV becomes a container this time blocking their voice by their images. \

Somewhere miles from the capital, in a village where asphalt roads are unknown to kids and there is not more than a shop to buy the daily needs of a family that is not produced locally. Here money is not unknown but is rare and not used so much. People farm and harvest what they need, wheat, barley and some vegetables. Though surrounded by mountains, it is a green village. There is a small steep hill, around and on which houses with narrow pathways are located. An even narrower street going from down the hill all the way to top of it, running through its top and falling on the other side is connecting the houses to each other. There is one thing distinguishing the houses. Antennas. Differently shaped and colored antennas on the roofs of quite every house can be seen. Further from the hill where the river is flowing from the mountain, the small dam, on one side of which the concrete words indicate the INGO’s which helped people build it, is providing electricity for the people. Day and night during summers and only nights during winter. Wires going to houses and each room can be seen, different colors, different types but they all do one thing lighten up the village. Most have televisions that their relatives have sent from city or they have brought in one of their trips. In the evening everyone sets quite so that all can watch the news, the 6PM news. Early in the morning when he goes, the kids have their breakfast, later one or two – the eldest ones – help take out the sheep, goats and cows to join the herd taken by shepherd to the green hills and grassy fields. Then they all gather gaze at the television and watch cartoons. Sometimes children change the networks to see what is on others. And sometimes what they wish does not come up. On this day when they are changing the networks searching for a better cartoon the screen goes black and then pops up the news host with a breaking news. A man has exploded himself and has killed dozens with himself. Mom starts reading a prayer. Mom stares at the television and listens carefully to each and every word and then remembers each and every relative and friend living outside the village. She remembers someone and the sound of prayer stops with her calling one of her children. The child stands and goes to mom. She takes out a phone and the child takes it. Searches the contacts and reads each one out loud, stops at one and calls and gives the phone to mom. Someone on the other side of the line answers. They talk for a while and the phone call ends with mom thanking god and saying goodbye. That night when her husband comes home they talk about the incident for a long time. Days later cars will arrive from city to a village close to them. The cars carry crying women, sad men and a corpse. That night when the man coms home, he looks at the television and the cell phone on it. some years before this would have been a shock and now it is not. The pain is felt right away and sadness occupies every home at once. Isn’t it what connection means?

Today's western media have pointed their big and influential eyes on one of the greatest Europe's humanitarian and political crisis of the 21st century: the migrant crisis due to the instability of the middle eastern regions. Beyond this there is another big emigrational wave that is as dramatic and as worth consideration as the widely debated middle eastern one. In this text I won't speak about big powers, strong political actors, rich organisations or stable institutions: I'm going to write about normal citizens, doctors, personal of the coastguard, labourers, children. I'm speaking about the people that every day since 2011 are rescuing thousands and thousands of families, children, old women and men, people that come from central and north Africa and strive to reach the other continent full of dreams and expectations that are hardly ever fulfilled.

Especially after the "Arab spring" and due to the geographical position of Italy the numbers got much higher. Daily, here in Italy, we witness dramatic rescues that aren't always successful: the 18th of April 2015 for example, there was the biggest tragedy on sea ever, since we speak of “migrant’s routes”, where around 800 people died drowning, the majority of them stuck in the hold of an old boat that sank in the Mediterranean Sea.  Everyday there are boats, that often are simple unsafe rubber boats, that are coming and approaching islands like Lampedusa, Pozzallo, Taranto or Trapani. Every day the guard coast saves lives of hundreds and hundreds of refugees that have the dream of reaching Europe and come from Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, Nigeria and others. The Italian ministry of internal affairs declared that in the first three months of 2016, in the southern islands of Italy arrived 24 thousand (the double, in comparison to 2015) refugees from those countries.

An artwork has perfectly described this situation.

I’m speaking about the docu-film called "Fuocoammare" (literally “Fire at the sea”) by Gianfranco Rosi, that already won the Golden Bear in the international film festival of Berlin and is a candidate for the best foreign language film for the Oscar awards 2017. The protagonist of “Fuocoammare” is Lampedusa, the island in which sea died thousands of people, driven by the dream for a better life. This documentary tells us, through the character of a doctor, how it is to rescue this lives, how is it to cure and how, often, it is to verify their dead bodies.

There are black closed sacks with bodies in it shown in their tremendous normality, and there are the tragic stories of the migrants on their journey (one of the most heart-breaking moments of the film is the rap song sung in a refugee shelter).

This is a snapshot of what is happening on the sea “down there”. Saying so, I’m openly attacking the European countries that are closing borders and hiring walls instead of building bridges. It is a big statement of egoism, being part of a union that is clearly only economic, only getting from it without giving anything back.

In this little words I want to give space to those normal Italian citizens, those heroes, often left behind from institutions and media, that are saving thousands of lives in silence.

An Italian moved by the scenes of “Fuocoammare”