More often than not, news coverage of Turkey’s treatment of refugees is negative. Last month, however, Turkey took a big step toward setting up a proper domestic legal framework and administrative infrastructure for asylum–and it’s something the United States should take note of.
On the cover of Refugee Hotel, a Burmese family lodged in a California hotel peers over the edge of a bathtub, gazing at it as though they’d never seen one before. It’s one of many fascinating images from this collaboration between photographer Gabriele Stabile and writer Juliet Linderman.
In 2008, Seyed Hasan, a father of 6, fled his home in the Wardak province of eastern Afghanistan. Hasan’s family applied for refugee status in Turkey, but their initial claim was rejected. Over four years later, the family was finally granted refugee status. But their situation did not improve.
The status of the province of Abyei is an unresolved issue from the June 2011 détente between Sudan and South Sudan. In the year since South Sudan’s independence, the two countries have managed to avoid a full-scale war. But minor skirmishes on the border and illegitimate air raids on the Heglig oil field in April 2012, however, have disrupted that faulty peace.
As a result of Kenya’s recent invasion of Somalia, the situation in Kenyan refugee camps has sharply deteriorated and is now on the verge of a full-scale humanitarian crisis. In Dadaab, the largest refugee camp on earth with close to half a million people, cholera has broken out, services have deteriorated, and access for both humanitarian agencies and international observers (including press) has become even more difficult.
The United States is an immigrant nation, a haven for those fleeing persecution. This image of a welcoming country, however, has dramatically changed since the Cold War. In the shadow of 9/11 and the recent economic recession, the immigration issue has become increasingly sensitive. Xenophobia, job competition, and the federal government’s limited resources have led to rigid and even harsh immigration policies and legislation. This change in public opinion and government policy has undermined the right of asylum.
Allegations have surfaced that the Guinean woman who accused the former executive director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, of sexual assault had lied during her asylum proceedings. This story has fed into a larger narrative that desperate immigrants, assisted by unscrupulous enablers, cheat their way through the system to gain asylum. Some media outlets played their part to further advance this impression.
“It is undeniable that Mexico is going through a situation of violence in which groups of armed civilians (organized crime) sow terror and death, provoking the displacement of entire families so they are not murdered,” read a statement from three human rights groups.
The ongoing oppression of Burma’s ethnic minorities, many of whom become refugees to Thailand, is overshadowed by disasters such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur.
On May 14, 2010, a U.S. immigration judge granted asylum to President Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt in a second hearing. Zeituni Onyangohad applied for asylum in 2002, but the request was denied in 2004 and she was ordered to leave the country. She stayed on, fighting the order. The asylum process is confidential, as are the grounds for the judge granting the request.