IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Speech Hanif Den Haag 1 november 2015

I have been a refugee for 26 years and I am here to tell you about how racism and fascism dominated my life since the day I was born and in all my travels looking for a safe place.
With sharing my personal story with you, I want to make a stand for the millions of refugees and migrants around the world who suffer of systems build on racism and exclusion.

I belong to the Hazaras. When in the late 19th century, emir Abdul Rahman Kahn called us ‘unbelievers’ and told the people that it was alright to kill us or make us a slave,
62% of Hazaras got killed.

Now all Hazaras bare the history of genocide, slavery and discrimination.
When I was young, we where told to mary and make children with members of our oppressors so our faces would change into their faces.

Racism has deformed our minds;

fear has silenced our voices.

But I will no longer be silent.

Then the Taliban fascists called a fatwa against Hazaras, and thousands of us and other Afghans where forced to flee. We went to Iran when I was a child.

In Iran the racism just continued: As undocumented people with no legal rights we where abused in cheap labour and discriminated at school. I was a very good student, but the teachers would always remind me I’d never be as good as Iranian students. We where the lowest people in the rank.

I stopped school because of the racism.
I start working for 15 hours a day, 6 days a week, underpaid and often not payed at all.
The oppression made me depressed, so I fled to Europe.

In Turkey the police arrested me, they put me in jail, they beat me up and they stole my money.
Because I was a refugee and undocumented.
I was not safe in Turkey and my boss did not pay me for my work as a tailer.

This is just normal for refugees.

I lost 4 friends in the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece. They where never found.
Because of Europe policy, refugees must take the dangerous routes where so many of us die.

I don’t see difference between Europe and Iran who kill the refugees at the border.
But Europe let the sea do the killing, for free.
In Greece the racism did not stop.

The police like to beat us and arrest us for nothing.
They beat me for helping a family. The police did not let me help them, and they broke my glasses.

I went to the UNHCR to ask them why the police beat me but they keep the door shut and call the police.
The police took me in jail.
Many times I was in jail because of my Human rights activities for refugees.
Jail was normal to me.

I took my chance on Finland, but Finland rejected my case on Dublinclaim and deport me after 6 days of hungerstrike.
The Finnish police took 750 Euros from me and send me back to Greece.

My friend suffered from brain desease and I had to take him to hospital. But the docters refused to help him, unless we pay them 500 Euro.
We did not have the money. So I took him home again. In the middle of the night he woke up, he could not breath and collapsed, blood run out of his mouth.
Now the hospital must help him, but it was too late: they could do nothing.
My friend stayed in a coma for more then six months. I visit him every day and I talked with him through the one eye he could move.

At one day, the facists of the Golden Dawn ‘gricia afgi’ blocking the streets of Athens to beat up refugees or kill them. I could not visit my friend without risking my own life. On this very day, my friend died. Alone.
The fascists kept me from being with him.
I was very upset about what happened and went to Austria in september 2011.

But like many other refugees, they catched me at the border of Germany and Netherlands, and they put me in jail like a criminal for 45 days and later for 16 days. For nothing.
I did not want to be in this country, but they forced me to apply for asylum in the Netherlands.

So after my asylum in the Netherlands was denied I lived in the streets like many refugees.
The homeless shelter first let in the Dutch people and if we where lucky in the end there was some places for refugees.
Also in the Netherlands this is normal.

People walk away from me when I asked which way to go in the streets.

I hear about the attacks on refugee shelters in the Netherlands and Germany.
They say that we refugees are rappists, murderers, IS members and thiefs. That we take your money, your houses and your jobs.

Now I want to tell you:

I run my whole life for the people who are rappists, extremists and thiefs. A lot of them where people in power, like the police from Turkey, from Greece and from Finland, it does n’t matter.

I see the fascists in the Netherlands and Germany attack the refugees. The media calls them ‘worried citizens’.
I want to ask you: What is the difference between the Taliban who call on a fatwa against Hazara and the European politicians say refugees are ‘bad for economy and Dutch culture’?

It is simular to say: ‘It is allright to attack us’.

The Taliban have beards and European politicians wear suits.
The Taliban kills us fast but Europe kills us slowly. Now instead of what is human living, must we ask ourselves: What is a more human death?

I see no difference between Taliban, Golden Dawn, the Islamic State of Iran or Europe who put the refugees in jail, on the streets, deport them by force, or want to keep them in Turkey where they face human right abuse.
It is Europe and US, who sell the weapons to our countries. It is Europe and US who occupie our countries and give power to the war-lords.

It is Europe and US who take our sources, and devide our people and then say they safe us with a regime of gried and selfishness.

After 15 years of NATO intervention, the Taliban returned in full glorie, there is more killings of civilians then ever before, corruption has never been more expensive, more people then ever want to flee and the people who where deported flee again right away.

But Europe sends us back because they can not see our faces. In our faces they see their faillure and their greed.

I end with saying this:

We refugees don’t need your tears, we need you to fight with us against fascism.
We don’t need your pitty, we need you to fight with us to stop making us refugees!