Two Worlds

 

How does it make you feel when you look at this photo? I stumbled upon it recently and it stayed with me for a while.Then it came across again, and this time I decided to share it with you.  This image conveys mixed yet very distinctive messages to me, messages about injustice, war, oppression, discrimination, power and powerlessness, control, unscrupulous politics driven by greedy politicians, poverty, poverty and more poverty, to name a few. I feel uneasy and disturbed not because I am afraid of these people trespassing, as media and the world leaders would like us to feel, but because of the despair, and the hardship these people are experiencing and forced to run from.

The scene illustrates a dozen of undocumented immigrants on the triple fence at the border Spanish city Melilla. On one side of the fence lays Morocco, on the other side it is this beautiful and well maintained golf lawn. In between them is this six-metres-tall triple fencing with its layers of sensors, cameras and razor wires.

In collaboration with the Moroccan government, Madrid invested €72 million in border control and barriers against undocumented and unwanted refugees and migrants. Combined with the deployment of extra security forces to prevent trespassing, Madrid had pushed migrants away from Melilla, temporarily. Instead they opted for the more dangerous sea routes. And thousands of thousands migrants are dying in the Mediterranean every year in an attempt to ‘improve’ their lives. A record number of 3000 migrants have died in the Mediterranean only in 2014. Fences, as less harmful route for escape, are being preferred again by the migrants as a “safer option.”

Fuelled by the UKIP in the UK, and resting on imaginatively imposed fears, billions are spent for border fences in Calais to prevent the supposed masses entering Europe. Similarly, other countries invested more billions in their border security, Australia even went that far to send back a boat crammed with asylum seekers. After 9/11, America invested more than $100bn in border and migration control. Obama also promised stricter border security. From France to Australia, and from America to Spain instead of these billions being invested in tackling unemployment and poverty, they are spent to fuel hater. And the investments keep increasing. Consequently, the more money are spent on border security, the higher the fences are, the more migrants are forced underground and in the hands of smugglers who are benefiting from making deadly journeys; journeys as result of deprivation and despair. Despair for a better future…

So, the ones on the razors fence are hoping to go the land inhabited by those who executed the laws and the legislations that are keeping them in the plight, brought them the war, the terror and the life without future.

What more strikes me is the indifference of the two golfers, or the unresponsiveness of the politics today, locally and globally.  The picture simply sums up the two worlds, that of the rich and the one of the very poor. Whether these are Africans, Europeans, Asian, etc. it really does not matter. What matters is that poverty is drastic; and that instead of investing money in improving quality of lives across the globe, billions are fuelled into increased border security and political actions based on perceived threats. As long Western politicians actions set us against each other, their intentions are successfully accomplished.  As result of their political maneuvers, the ragged crowd on the top of the fences is a product of Western politics and their increased border security, paid by the taxpayers.

This spectacular photo mirrors the rise on anxiety about foreign terrorism have clear implications on how the third word is portrayed. The photo in itself speaks volumes.

Do we need more words?